Chapter 127: The locust plague threat first appears, Yu Guo's border now has disaster victims

The Yu Guo King's face was iron‑blue, yet he remained unmoved.

Some ministers grew anxious, wanting to run out of the hall to find a doctor themselves.

"Halt!" the Yu Guo King barked, "Without my order, anyone who steps out of this hall will be executed on the spot!"

The minister who had only taken a few steps could only grit his teeth and stop.

"Enough… enough…" gasped the old Prime Minister, supported in the arms of several ministers, his breath faint, "Our sovereign… has changed… he… he wants me dead…"

"Prime Minister… Prime Minister!" a minister burst into tears.

The old Prime Minister stared blankly at the splendid beam above the hall, "Yu Guo… its fortunes are gone… the root of the illness lies with the king, there is no cure… no… no hope…"

Having spoken, he opened his cloudy, aged eyes and breathed his last.

Instantly, the ministers inside the hall broke into uncontrollable sobs.

Seated on the throne, the Yu Guo King's eyes flickered with a complex expression, but quickly turned cold as he growled low, "If anyone dares to block my attack on Xuan Guo, or block my revenge for the Crown Prince, this will be their fate! Seize him, drag the Prime Minister out, and bury him wherever you like!"

Soon, several palace guards rushed in and carried the still-warm corpse out of the hall.

Inside the hall, the ministers bowed their heads and wiped away tears.

Their tears were cold, and their hearts colder still.

This was the Yu Guo Kingdom's most venerable and respected old Prime Minister, who had devoted his whole life to the state.

It can be said that without this old Prime Minister, the originally weakest Yu Guo among the states could not have survived to this day.

Looking back, all past kings heeded the old Prime Minister's counsel.

It was he who discovered Yu Guo's advantage of abundant high-quality iron ore, and it was he who made Yu Guo's forging technology surpass that of all other states.

Thus Yu Guo was able to use iron tools while other states still widely used bronze, and its iron-smelting technology repeatedly leapt forward.

The weapons and equipment of Yu Guo's troops could crush those of the other states.

Otherwise, how could this tiny state defend itself?

How could the people of Yu Guo find security and livelihood?

Even in his twilight years, he still thought of sending envoys to the other states to devise comprehensive plans for Yu Guo.

But who would have thought that such a pillar of the state would meet this miserable end, and that the sovereign seated on the throne has truly changed…

"Do you have anything else to say?" the Yu Guo King asked coldly, looking down upon the ministers.

In the rear of the crowd, a minister glanced at the wooden slip memorial he clutched, his eyes filled with conflict.

The memorial concerned an urgent matter regarding Yu Guo's eastern border region.

Several months ago, Xuan Guo's Xi Tun Guan and surrounding areas suffered severe drought, and the neighboring eastern part of Yu Guo also showed similar conditions, though not as severe as Xi Tun Guan, yet the drought gave rise to a locust plague threat.

Local officials from several places had already reported the situation, hoping to receive court support before the locust plague reached scale, to eliminate the hidden danger.

Now, with the autumn harvest approaching, should a locust plague truly occur, it would surely inflict great damage on Yu Guo.

This minister had intended to report the situation to the sovereign at today's court assembly.

But from the start, the sovereign spoke only of conscription and war preparations, giving him no chance to speak.

He could only wait until the sovereign finished his war preparations remarks before presenting his memorial, but unexpectedly, what just happened occurred next.

"Since there's nothing else, you may withdraw." the Yu Guo King said, rising from his throne.

The minister gritted his teeth, ready to risk reporting the situation, but a colleague beside him quietly gripped his arm and shook his head.

His companion lowered his voice, "Don't say it—haven't you seen what happened to the old Prime Minister?"

He squeezed out a few words from between his teeth, "It concerns the people; I cannot stay silent."

"It's useless," his companion said despairingly, "The sovereign won't listen; even if you speak, he'll think you're making excuses to delay his war preparations, solving nothing and only throwing away your life… give up."

Meanwhile, the Yu Guo King had already departed first.

The minister holding the memorial gazed at the empty throne, sighed bitterly, and slipped the memorial back into his bosom.

——

At the same time.

Before a border-defense city on Yu Guo's eastern frontier, a group of sallow, thin villagers arrived.

The guard at the city gate blocked their path, sized them up, and asked, "Who are you, and where do you come from?"

"Sir, reporting," the leading elder said politely, "We are all Yu Guo people living in the villages outside the pass; I am their village head. Our hometown has been overrun by locusts, devouring nearly all our nearly ripe grain… we have no choice but to come here seeking aid."

The guard frowned, "How many people are in your village?"

The village chief looked back, then sighed, "Altogether 132 persons; all came out of the village. Over these days on the road, thirty died along the way, leaving only these 102."

The guard paced back and forth beside the group, pointing and saying, "You, you, and you few… come out."

He selected a dozen or so able-bodied young men in succession.

These young men, though also sallow and skin-and-bones, were relatively the healthiest among the hundred or so villagers.

"Sir, what is this?" the village chief asked.

The guard waved his hand, "The thirteen I just selected, hurry into the city and report to the camp!"

The village chief hurriedly asked, "Sir, are you… conscripting them into the army?"

"Nonsense!" the guard snapped impatiently, "The Royal City issued an order for nationwide conscription; we're short-handed here, being the nearest pass to Xuan Guo, so get moving! Do you want me to carry you in?"

Everyone was stunned.

They lived at the border between Yu Guo and Xuan Guo, where news was most blocked, and only upon arriving here did they learn that Yu Guo was conscripting.

The elder turned to those thirteen villagers and said, "Hurry… at least you'll get a full stomach."

They nodded, feeling both a little happy and a little fearful, hesitantly walking toward the gate.

The remaining villagers instinctively followed behind.

"Huh? Who let you come in too?" the guard glared and shouted, "Those I didn't call—go back where you came from! Don't expect to freeload here; we don't have enough grain to waste."

Upon hearing that, the dozen or so villagers who had just reached the gate stopped in their tracks.

Several of them turned back and returned, and then a group of old, weak women and children ran out from the rear villagers.

They were each other's family members; upon realizing that only the heads of households could enter the city while the others would be driven away, they refused to be separated on the spot.

Seeing this, the guards quickly called for more guards and forcibly pulled the two groups apart.

For a while, the sounds of wailing and lamentation never ceased.

A man, desperate, clung tightly to his child and wife, shouting at the guards: "If you want me to go in, you must bring my family as well; otherwise I won't do it!"

"Hey, you're still trying to negotiate with me?" the guard captain stepped forward, drew his battle blade, and said, "Are you looking for death?"

The man lifted his head, puffed out his chest, and shielded his wife and children behind him.

The guard captain snorted coldly, laying his battle blade horizontally across the man's neck.

The man's wife and children behind him immediately fell to their knees, wailing: "Sir, spare our lives, spare our lives! We… we will obey, please show mercy!"

Having said that, they wept while urging the man to go inside.

The man, however, was still hesitating.

Besides this family, the other villagers' situations were much the same.

Likewise, some could not bear to be separated from their wives and children, some refused to abandon their parents, and others, having no parents and relying only on their young sisters for survival, were unwilling to be torn from flesh and blood…

The Old Village Chief watched, tears streaming down his face; he himself had once had a pair of children, but they had perished in the jaws of wolves while he was rushing here to protect the villagers.

The agony of being torn from blood relatives fiercely stabbed at his heart.

He knelt on the ground, kowtowing as he said: "Please, sir, show mercy and take us all in; we old, weak women and children may not be able to go to the battlefield, but we can still do what we can inside the garrison… we will certainly not waste food; please, sir, give us all a way to live."

Watching the crowd tugging and pulling, sobbing and wailing, the soldiers grew impatient.

The guard captain's face grew ever darker; he narrowed his eyes, then suddenly lowered the blade that had been pressed against the man's neck, saying, "If that's the case…"

The villagers thought he had agreed, and they all sighed in relief, kneeling and kowtowing in thanks.

Who would have thought, the guard captain sneered and ordered: "Besides those just selected for enlistment, keep a few younger village women; the rest—old, young, disabled, and sick—shall all be killed!"

"Yes!" several guards shouted in reply.

Before the villagers could even react, the guards swung their butcher knives.

In the blink of an eye, blood flowed like a river beneath the garrison gate.

How could unarmed, starving villagers stand a chance against them?

In no time, they were slaughtered down to only about twenty people.

Even the eldest Village Chief did not escape disaster.

"I'll fight you to the death!" a young, able-bodied male roared as he lunged at the guard captain.

The guard captain decisively chopped off his head with one blow, held up the head, and sneered at the remaining survivors: "Don't think giving you a way out will stop you from seeking death—I don't mind killing you all. If anyone still wants to defy orders, just step forward."

After this bloody display of intimidation, the remaining people, no matter how grieved, could only proceed like meek sheep, honestly entering the gate.

The guard captain threw down the head, blood still on his blade, and said to the other guards: "Lately, even our border pass's food supplies have run tight; we ourselves barely have enough. Take these corpses, process them into jerky, and use them as rations for the troops coming later."

"Yes!"

The guards didn't even blink, immediately beginning to process them.

——

Meanwhile, on the side near Lin Xian Cheng.

Also, a group of Yuguo Villagers, hearts filled with extreme anxiety, slowly approached the gate's city wall.

The reason they did not go to the Yuguo Border Pass was simply that, comparatively, their village was actually closer to Xi Tun Guan.

Given their situation, they would surely all die on the way to the Yuguo Border Pass.

It would be better to head to Xi Tun Guan and try their luck.

When they saw the distant city wall, this group of villagers stopped in their tracks.

Someone wondered aloud: "Is that really Xi Tun Guan? The wall looks extraordinarily tall and sturdy, nothing like what we heard."

The crowd chattered: "Yeah, I used to hear that because this place is all wasteland, neither Yu Guo nor Xuan Guo pays it much attention, so both border cities are especially crude."

Could we have gone the wrong way?

How could we have gone wrong? If we were heading to our own border pass, we'd still be less than halfway there by now, so what lies ahead must be Xuan Guo's Xi Tun Guan.

……

Border regions are naturally isolated from news.

Moreover, this is a desolate, remote area; even as locals, most of them have never left their village in a lifetime.

As for outside conditions, they hardly know anything beyond rumors.

Everyone chattered away, both surprised and doubtful, yet because they saw such a fine wall, they dared not go further.

"Alright… let's talk less and conserve our strength." An older person narrowed his eyes, shaded his hand to gaze into the distance, and said: "No matter what, we've already come this far; going to take a look is better than standing here guessing wildly."

Everyone thought that made sense, so they prepared to continue onward.

At this moment, someone worried: "A few months ago I met a stranger outside the village who said… the drought at Xi Tun Guan is especially severe, unlike our side where we can still get a little water. We are all Yu Guo people, yet we have run to Xuan Guo's border pass… In normal times it wouldn't matter, but now I fear the people there have already run out of food and water and would be unwilling to help us; they might even treat us as rations."

As soon as those words were spoken, the crowd that had just been about to move again came to a halt.

"How come you're only saying this now?!"

"I… I just remembered it myself…"

"What should we do—should we go or not?"

"We're now even farther from the Yuguo Border Pass… we can't turn back, can we?"

"But… but if we reach Xi Tun Guan and the Xuan Guo people kill us for food… aren't we just as good as dead?"

……

"We're done… completely done! No matter where we go, it's death—Heaven wants to destroy us!"

The crowd grew ever more fearful, a pall of despair hanging over everyone's heads.

At this moment, the sun had already risen high into the sky.

The early autumn sun remained fierce, like a tiger's tongue bristling with barbs, incessantly licking the half-naked bodies of the crowd.

They could no longer remember how long they had been traveling.

Their dry rations were gone, and not a drop of water remained.

Under the sun's glare, compounded by panic, someone immediately collapsed and died without even making a sound.

Then several more went limp on the ground; though still breathing, they were bloodless and clearly about to succumb.

Just then, several shadows flashed swiftly across the high sky.

The crowd heard a strange buzzing sound and instinctively looked up.

"What kind of bird is that? It's flying so fast!"

"No way—what bird has four wings?"

"It looks like those birds' wings aren't flapping…"

"..."

Buzz!

A sudden rush of hoofbeats immediately appeared.

The crowd had no time to ponder the strange birds that had flown overhead; they all turned toward the direction of the hoofbeats.

In the time it took to turn their heads, a dozen or so tall, strong horses came galloping up, kicking up clouds of dust and completely surrounding the several dozen Yuguo villagers.

It was obvious without asking that these people could only have come from the border of Xuan Guo.

The villagers were tense and dazed; their legs went weak and they kept kneeling, kowtowing repeatedly.

Now they dared not ask for help; they only hoped the other side wouldn't kill them.

"Military Lord… spare, spare our lives!"

"We really… really have no choice; our village suffered a locust plague, everyone lost their harvest, our stored food is gone, we're almost starving to death… we had no choice but to come here…"

"Please, Military Lords… show mercy, we… we will leave at once…"