Chapter 834

The lime stick drew four characters on the blackboard.

Loyalty. Bravery. Strictness. Clarity.

Every character was written extremely large, occupying a quarter of the blackboard, the strokes so vigorous that they carved shallow marks into the wooden board.

One hundred and three seeds stared at those four characters, their lips moving; some were reciting silently in their hearts, and some were following along and reading them out in small voices.

Chen Yan threw the lime stick back into the wooden bucket, patted the white powder on his hands, and turned to face everyone.

"These four characters, from today on, are your bones, your blood, and the reason for your existence."

His finger pointed to the first character.

"Loyalty."

Li Gen's body leaned forward by two inches, his voice carrying a subconscious urgency.

"Loyalty to His Majesty!"

Chen Yan looked at him.

"Wrong."

Li Gen's mouth paused.

Chen Yan's palm pressed on the character 'Loyalty' on the blackboard, his fingers tracing slowly along the strokes.

"I ask you, has His Majesty allocated you a single acre of land?"

Li Gen shook his head.

"Has His Majesty given you a single mouthful of rice?"

Li Gen shook his head again.

"Does His Majesty know what your name is?"

Li Gen's lips trembled, and he shook his head for the third time.

Chen Yan's hand withdrew from the blackboard, and his finger pointed in the direction of the vast fields outside the training ground.

"Who allocated those fields outside to you?"

One hundred and three voices exploded in the same breath.

"The Zhuguo!"

Chen Yan's finger withdrew from the direction of the fields and pointed at his own chest.

"Loyalty doesn't mean loyalty to that chair in the temple; it means loyalty to the person who lets you eat your fill, loyalty to the person who treats you like a person, and loyalty to this land that lets you live like a person."

His voice sank, grinding every word past his lips.

"As long as I am here for a day, you are loyal to me; when I am no longer here, you are loyal to the rules I left behind, and loyal to every iron law I established for the commoners."

Zhang Wenqian stood in the shadows on the edge of the training ground, his hands folded in front of him and clenched until slightly white; his Adam's apple rolled up and down, his lips moved, but no sound came out.

Chen Yan's finger moved to the second character.

"Bravery."

His gaze landed on Zhou Xiaoman's face.

"You tell it, what is called bravery."

Zhou Xiaoman clenched his fists, his voice dry but unambiguous.

"Not being afraid of death in battle."

Chen Yan shook his head.

"There are many people who are not afraid of death; the ruffians who fight others when drunk are also not afraid of death; is that called bravery?"

Zhou Xiaoman's mouth closed.

Chen Yan squatted down, looking at him eye-to-eye.

"When you carried your sister and ran from the Qi State, were you afraid?"

Zhou Xiaoman's Adam's apple moved.

"Afraid."

"If you were afraid, why did you run?"

"Because if I didn't run, little sister wouldn't survive."

Chen Yan stood up, pointing his finger at Zhou Xiaoman.

"This is bravery."

He turned to face everyone, his voice raising a notch.

"Bravery is not about not being afraid of death; it's the drive to grit your teeth and charge forward even when you know there is a mountain of blades and a sea of fire ahead, for the sake of your brothers behind you, and for the sake of the mothers and children at home."

His finger drew a line in the air with force.

"Fighting for yourself is called recklessness; fighting for the people behind you is called bravery!"

The light in the eyes of one hundred and three people brightened by two degrees.

Chen Yan's finger moved to the third character.

"Strictness."

His voice sank by half a degree when saying this character, sinking to a temperature that made people's backs tighten.

"What is strictness?"

His finger pointed in the direction of the flagpoles hanging with heads around the training ground.

"Look at those heads; Zhao Heizi ate phantom pay, Liu Si Hai drank soldiers' blood, Sun Decai sold military grain, Ma Biao betrayed the country; how did they die?"

"Beheaded by the Zhuguo!"

Chen Yan's mouth twitched.

"Did my hand soften when I beheaded them?"

"No!"

"In the future, when you become Political Commissar and encounter such parasites, can your hands soften?"

"No!"

Chen Yan's palm patted heavily on the character 'Strictness', and a layer of lime powder shook off the board surface.

"Strictness is being ruthless to those who suck the blood of the commoners, and being heartless to the beasts who bully brothers."

His voice lowered by half a degree, every word bitten into tooth marks.

"You can have ten thousand tendernesses in your hearts, but the blades in your hands must always be aimed at those parasites riding on people's heads."

Chu Ci sat in the corner, his brush recording every word spoken by Chen Yan on the silk booklet at high speed, the brushwork flying, and he turned to the next page before the ink was dry, and then to the next.

His hand was shaking, not because of the cold, but because every time he wrote down a line of text, he felt his heart being gripped tighter by something.

These words were too hot, hot enough to make the fingers holding the brush turn red.

Chen Yan's finger landed on the last character.

"Clarity."

His voice slowed down when saying this character, slowing down until every syllable could echo twice in the air of the training ground.

"What is clarity? It is understanding, it is being clear, it is having your hearts as bright as a mirror."

His finger withdrew from the blackboard and pointed at the one hundred and three people in front of him.

"Why do you carry guns? For military pay? For spoils of war? For whose face?"

He asked and answered himself, his voice rolling up from the deepest part of his chest cavity.

"None of them."

"You carry guns to ensure that you and those behind you who are the same as you never have to kneel to live again."

His fist clenched in front of him, his finger joints making a light cracking sound.

"This is clarity: understanding why you are fighting, understanding who the blade in your hand should be aimed at, not being fooled by anyone, and not being used by anyone."

The training ground was quiet for five breaths.

Then Li Gen stood up, his voice hoarse but not a single word ambiguous.

"Loyalty to the Zhuguo, bravery to die, strictness to the enemy, clarity for the battle."

He looked back at the one hundred and two people behind him.

"Brothers, recite with me!"

One hundred and three throats exploded in unison in the autumn wind.

"Loyalty to the Zhuguo, bravery to die, strictness to the enemy, clarity for the battle!"

The sound wave surged from the center of the training ground, rushed past the camp wall, rushed past the wilderness, and rushed into the golden wheat waves rolling in the autumn wind in the distance.

Chen Yan stood in front of the blackboard, letting that roar echo in his ears three times.

He turned his head and looked at Chu Ci standing in the distance.

"Chu Ci."

Chu Ci stood up from the corner, the silk booklet in his hand clenched until his finger joints were white.

"This subordinate is here."

Chen Yan's finger pointed at the silk booklet filled with text in his hand.

"Organize every word I said today and compile it into a booklet; the title of the booklet will be 'Political Commissar Drill Manual'."

Chu Ci's voice was tight but full of confidence.

"This subordinate will compile it tonight and present it to the Zhuguo for review after it's compiled."

Chen Yan shook his head.

"No need for review; I trust your pen; you know better than I do how to speak words into people's hearts."

Chu Ci's eyes turned red, his arms holding the silk booklet tightened in the air like a fully drawn bowstring.

For the next half month, the special training at the Lecture Hall entered a state that made all onlookers feel terrified.

The daytime was extreme physical fitness, weighted cross-country, and close-quarters combat; Lu Ming personally went down to teach fighting, his arms, which were thicker than iron pliers, throwing the seeds onto the muddy ground one after another, throwing them and then pulling them up, pulling them up and then throwing them again.

The night was high-intensity ideological indoctrination; Chen Yan personally gave a lecture every three days, each lecture starting from the most personal suffering of the seeds, and each lecture would return to the same question at the end.

"Why do you carry guns?"

The content of the answers from the one hundred and three voices went from uneven on the first day, to basically unified on the seventh day, and to uniform on the fifteenth day.

"To ensure that we and those behind us never have to kneel to live again!"

Chu Ci's 'Political Commissar Drill Manual' was compiled into a first draft on the tenth day, wrapped in a cowhide cover, every page filled with small regular script, from the interpretation of the four characters of the military soul to the daily work rules of grassroots Political Commissar, from how to hold bitterness-telling meetings to how to handle the family difficulties of soldiers, everything was detailed and every rule was clear.

Chen Yan flipped through it once and wrote four characters on the title page in his own hand.

The Sword Wielder.

Zhang Wenqian stood beside him and finished reading the entire drill manual; when he closed the booklet, his voice carried a tremor that he couldn't suppress himself.

"Zhuguo, this subordinate saw something in this booklet."

Chen Yan lifted his eyelids.

Zhang Wenqian's voice slowed by half a beat.

"This subordinate saw an army that wouldn't scatter even without a general."

Gu Yuci stood at the door, pressing his hand on the hilt of his sword, his lips pressed together.

"I have led troops for these years and felt afraid for the first time."

Chen Yan looked at him.

"Afraid of what?"

Gu Yuci's voice lowered by two degrees.

"Afraid that after these people go out, the old soldiers under my command will all become walking corpses when compared to them."

The arc at the corners of Chen Yan's mouth revealed a very shallow arc.

"Then let your old soldiers come alive too."

On the eve of the graduation ceremony, Gao Jiong brought back a heavy wooden box from the casting workshop in the city; the box was covered with red silk and placed on the desk in the commander's tent.

Chen Yan lifted the red silk, took a metal object the size of a palm from the box, and flipped it twice in the lamp light.

Gao Jiong stood to one side, his gaze landing on that object, his voice pressed extremely low.

"Zhuguo, once this thing is issued, the sky in the army will really change."

Chen Yan clenched that object in his palm for two breaths, the coldness of the metal passing from his palm to his fingertips.

He didn't speak, the arc at the corners of his mouth slowly setting in the lamp light.