Chapter 828

Lu Ming's mouth opened twice; that expression of 'it goes without saying' faded layer by layer from his face, leaving only a blankness in the end.

Gu Yuci's fingers clenched and then relaxed at his side, a deep vertical line twisted between his brows.

Zhang Wenqian stood before the desk, hands folded in front of him, his lips pressed into a line.

The study was quiet for five breaths.

Chen Yan stood up, walked to the window, and pushed open the window lattice.

Outside the window was the training ground on the east side of the Governor's Office, where hundreds of soldiers were drilling formations under the afternoon sun; the movements of their long spears rising and falling were uniform, looking from afar like an iron machine with its springs tightened.

Chen Yan's gaze stopped on those soldiers for three breaths, then he turned his head to look at the three people in the room.

"Look at these soldiers on the training ground; are their formation movements beautiful?"

Lu Ming leaned to the window and took a look, his voice carrying a sense of pride.

"I trained them myself; the speed of their formation is three times faster than half a year ago."

Chen Yan's finger tapped lightly on the window frame.

"No matter how fast the formation is trained, if you change their commander, will they still recognize this banner?"

The corners of Lu Ming's mouth stiffened.

Chen Yan turned around, leaned against the window frame, and crossed his arms over his chest.

"He Lanhu could incite thousands of people to mutiny with a single sentence; do you know why?"

Zhang Wenqian's voice squeezed out from in front of him, carrying a kind of extremely restrained gravity.

"Because He Lanhu gave them a rice bowl for ten years, and they were afraid of their rice bowl being smashed."

Chen Yan pointed his finger at him.

"You hit the nail on the head."

He straightened up from the window frame and walked step by step to the center of the study.

"Why did these soldiers join the army in the first place? To eat grain, to receive pay, not to starve to death; some didn't even count as that, they were purely forced to join."

His finger drew a circle in the air.

"Their motivation for fighting comes from two things: one is fear of death, and the other is fear of poverty."

He withdrew his finger and clenched it into a fist.

"An army driven only by fear of death and fear of poverty will compete to be first in favorable situations because there are rewards for winning."

His fist slowly relaxed in front of him.

"But once they encounter a desperate situation, or the enemy offers a higher price, this kind of army will instantly become like a pile of loose sand kicked over by someone."

Gu Yuci pressed his fingers on the hilt of his sword at his waist twice, his voice low but carrying obvious agreement.

"I have led cavalry charges for these years and have indeed seen many scenes of people scattering in defeat; sometimes the front formation hasn't even been broken, and the back is running faster than rabbits."

Chen Yan looked at him.

"Why doesn't your cavalry run?"

Gu Yuci's answer came out instantly.

"Because the people I lead are the old brothers who followed the Zhuguo from Qinzhou and Jingzhou, killing their way out with every blade and spear; they trust the Zhuguo."

Chen Yan pointed his finger at him.

"Trust me, so they don't run."

He lowered his voice by half a degree.

"But what if one day I am no longer here? What is the difference between this army without me and those three thousand provincial soldiers of He Lanhu?"

Gu Yuci's mouth closed.

Zhang Wenqian interjected at this moment, his voice carrying the sharpness of a civil official.

"Does the Zhuguo mean that our soldiers lack a spiritual core that does not depend on any individual?"

Chen Yan turned to look at him, and a very shallow arc finally appeared at the corners of his mouth.

"Old Zhang's brain still turns the fastest."

He walked back behind the desk, sat down in the chair, and picked up a wolf-hair brush from the brush rack.

"When I was in the Qi State, I heard of an army called the 'Hundred-Protect Xianbei'."

Zhang Wenqian's brows moved slightly.

"This subordinate has seen this name in the secret files; they are the elite personal guards of the Qi Emperor, fierce and unafraid of death, and they do not collapse even if the battle damage rate exceeds seventy percent."

Chen Yan dipped the wolf-hair brush into the ink and slowly began to write on a blank piece of silk.

"Why are the Hundred-Protect Xianbei fierce and unafraid of death? Because they have an extreme sense of ethnic honor; every Hundred-Protect Xianbei soldier feels that he is the purest bloodline of the Xianbei, that dying on the battlefield is glory, and that retreating is a betrayal of the entire race."

His brush tip drew the first character on the silk.

"But this kind of thing is too narrow; it can only bind one race, not an army composed of people from various races."

He rubbed the brush tip against the edge of the inkstone and continued to write.

"I want to inject something into this army, something broader than ethnic honor and deeper than personal worship, so that every person holding a gun knows what they are fighting for, and even if I die, this banner will not fall."

He finished the last stroke and pushed the silk to the front of the desk.

Zhang Wenqian walked to the desk and looked down at the characters on the silk.

His brows twisted.

Gu Yuci leaned over, looked for two breaths, and the confusion on his face was three degrees heavier than Zhang Wenqian's.

Lu Ming stretched his head over, his lips moved twice, and he read those two characters out one by one.

"Zheng, Wei?"

He raised his head to look at Chen Yan, his big face filled with twelve points of blankness.

"Zhuguo, what kind of official is this?"

Chen Yan's fingers released the brush handle and landed on the second line of characters on the silk.

"Look down."

Lu Ming's gaze moved down two lines.

"One Heart Society?"

He scratched the back of his head, and that blankness thickened by three layers.

"What is this again?"

Zhang Wenqian's fingers clenched and then relaxed on the edge of the silk; his voice slowed by half a beat, as if he were trying hard to digest something completely new.

"Zhuguo, forgive this subordinate for being dull."

He raised his head to look at Chen Yan.

"For the two characters 'Political Commissar', this subordinate has searched through all the classics in his brain and cannot find their origin."

Chen Yan leaned back in his chair, his fingers slowly tracing arcs on the armrests.

"You can't find the origin because this thing has never appeared before."

The arc at the corners of his mouth lengthened by two degrees, carrying a weight that made everyone in the study feel that they were standing in front of some huge watershed.

His fingers lifted from the armrests and tapped heavily on the two characters 'Political Commissar' on the silk.

"I want to insert a brand-new type of officer into this army."

His gaze swept over everyone present.

"They don't teach martial arts, and they don't drill formations."

His voice lowered, and every word was bitten extremely heavily.

"They only care about one thing: forging the soul."