Chapter 311: I'm Here to Audit the Payroll — Bringing Extra Men Is Perfectly Normal, Right?

At year's end, the official road from Funing Guard to Shanhai Pass should have been at its busiest.

But today, though it was New Year's Day, the road lay empty and deserted.

Several Ming army outriders with blue flags strapped to their backs galloped back and forth through the mire.

"Clear the way! Withdraw ten paces off the road!"

"Military column passing! Any who break the formation will be executed!"

The outriders raised their horsewhips and bellowed harsh commands.

On both sides of the road, traveling merchants and pedestrians driving carts were all herded into the snowdrifts beyond the verge.

"Whenever an army marches, scouts must be dispersed, dividing into five posts: van, rear, left, right, and center..."

"Wherever the van-scout officer is stationed, he is issued ten blue way-clearing flags and one command flag; all matters great or small must be reported by messenger to the center..."

"The way-clearing flag-bearers shall, in advance, prohibit all persons and livestock from mingling with the column or dashing against the banners..."

— The Great Ming Army Drill Manual (Provisional Edition), "On the March"

In the crowd, a young traveling merchant blew a puff of white breath into his frozen hands, craned his neck toward the empty road, and muttered under his breath:

"What kind of high-and-mighty lord is this? Not a soul in sight, and they've already cleared the road?"

An old merchant beside him, hands tucked in his sleeves, shot him a glance and answered:

"Where'd you crawl out from? You haven't heard? This is the Son of Heaven's own troops, the Valiant Guard Camp, on their routine drill march. These past two months, they've been this overbearing every time." "That is too overbearing." The young merchant shrank back. "Normally when a big army moves, they only clear a few li up ahead. There's not even a ghost in sight, and they've sealed the road?"

The old merchant gave a wry laugh. "Look on the bright side — being this overbearing has its merits. These Son of Heaven's own troops won't shake you down for drinking money." The young merchant blinked, nodded reflexively, then shook his head, his face a mask of misery:

"True enough. But I've got the rotten luck to run into it! I'm barely twenty li from Shanhai Pass — I figured I'd be inside the city by noon and sell my goods at a good price on New Year's Day. Now, waiting for the soldiers to pass, I'm afraid today..."

The young merchant sighed, turned to glance at the cargo on the cart behind him, his lips twitching as if to grumble a bit more.

Suddenly, a burst of pounding hoofbeats surged from far to near — before he could turn his head, they were upon him.

Boom!

Iron-shod hooves slammed down hard.

Mud mixed with shattered ice exploded barely half a zhang before the merchant's eyes!

Filth splattered across his tattered leather coat, startling him so badly he whipped his head around.

A warhorse charged past like a gale.

In the bitter cold, the horse's hide and flesh quivered violently, sweat steaming off in thick white plumes.

Tracing up from the horse's belly, a pair of cowhide riding boots stood in the stirrups.

A man lay low over the saddle, a yellow command flag strapped to his back, the wind snapping the cloth with a sharp crack.

This was a scout racing back against the column's direction.

Before the merchant could react, he heard the man, not slowing in the least, roar into the wind:

"Dispatch returning! Forward fill, in order!"

A way-clearing scout nearby immediately shouted back:

"Understood!"

With that, he yanked the reins, lashed his whip down, and horse and rider surged forward, instantly filling the gap ahead.

The flag-bearing rider did not look back; he kept galloping.

All the way west.

"Forward fill, in order!"

The riders along the route obeyed in turn, spurring their horses and moving forward, each filling the next position in sequence.

Across the vast, pale snowfield, the dozen-odd scouts moved like links in a chain being pulled taut.

A dispatch rider returning to camp to report left a gap at the very front; the men behind had to link ring to ring, each advancing to fill the space ahead.

No one whispered to his neighbor, no one hesitated or shrank back, and certainly no one stopped to ask questions.

The travelers along the road, too, were stunned into silence by the sudden commotion; for a moment, only the ceaseless sound of hooves trampling snow could be heard.

The young merchant, recovering his wits, grew flustered.

Here, so close to Shanhai Pass, great armies were massed and the defenses were tight — how could there be any urgent military intelligence?

"Could it be the Tartars have attacked again?"

The old merchant beside him panicked too; the dry tobacco pipe clutched in his hand trembled. He hesitated a long moment before quavering, "It can't be... didn't they just report a great victory last year? In the middle of the New Year, how could they come again?" Someone nearby cut in: "Why impossible? Weren't Guangning and Ningyuan both attacked right in the first month?"

At those words, the people on the road fell silent as winter cicadas. Some had already begun turning their carts around and heading back.

Just then, through the windblown snow and mire in the distance, the outline of a marching column at last loomed dimly into view.

No banners streamed, no clamor or drumming arose.

The column was as silent as a block of moving raw iron.

Carts guarded the flanks of the formation, their beds covered with oilcloth, beneath which the cold gleam of armor and blades faintly showed.

Mules and horses snorted, hauling the baggage train slowly forward.

Among the soldiers marching in the center, no one rode a horse.

From the officers on down, the entire force moved on foot.

In every three files, one file wore cotton armor over their uniforms; the rest wore only padded winter coats.

Their feet trod through the slush of snow and mud; as hundreds and thousands of war boots rose and fell, they produced a muffled, heart-shaking thud.

The scout who had turned back just now stared straight ahead, racing along the column until he soon reached the great central banner.

"Whoa—"

The warhorse neighed. The scout swung down from the saddle and dropped to one knee:

"Reporting to the Battalion Commander! The van scouts, at a point thirteen li out, spotted a party of outriders lingering and refusing to withdraw — they appear to be probing our strength!"

"We challenged them according to protocol; they gave no answer and fled straight north into the woods. File Leader Zhang, fearing an ambush, dared not pursue in force and dispatched this humble subordinate to report!" Beneath the great banner stood the man leading this march: Sun Yingyuan, Battalion Commander of the Valiant Guard Camp's First Regiment.

Beside him was Sun Chuanting, who was likewise traveling to Liaodong to take up a new post.

Sun Yingyuan's eyelid twitched sharply the moment he heard the report, and he demanded at once, "What were they wearing?"

The scout cupped his fist and replied, "The leader was a youth, clad in a brocade cloak. From a distance, he was certainly no Mongol tribesman, nor did he look like a Jianzhou barbarian Tartar!" "Bang!"

Sun Yingyuan slammed his fist against the side of a baggage cart, setting the blades and armor on it clattering.

Gritting his teeth, he could not hold back an oath:

"Son of a bitch! Pulling this same trick again, are you?!"

"Snatching my Camp Officer post wasn't enough — now you're coming after me too?!"

Sun Yingyuan's outburst was by no means groundless.

Since the eleventh month of last year, apart from routine drill, the Valiant Guard Camp had begun a form of training that could only be called torturous: "route marches."

At first it was twice a month; by the twelfth month, it had become four times a month.

Every time, the destination, route, timing, and mission were all issued at the last moment.

Often the order came down at noon, and the camp had to break march by cockcrow the next day.

In the beginning, the whole affair was a complete shambles.

When a camp of over a thousand men pulled out of the capital and hit a hard forced-march assignment, it was considered decent if half of them reached the objective; the rest would take two or three days to straggle back in.

But the Regional Commander of this army was truly cold and merciless.

Pay was issued in full, meals were provided to the brim — he did not care about your excuses. If it did not kill you, he drilled you to the brink of death.

After enough drilling, and after a few greedy, insubordinate, civilian-harassing troublemakers had their heads taken to consecrate the banners, the unit gradually began to shape up.

On top of that, the military studies team had compiled the Great Ming Drill Manual (Trial Edition), based on a synthesis of Lord Qi's New Treatise on Military Efficiency and Practical Record of Troop Training, and it was now being forcibly rolled out across the camp.

At least in marching and encampment, the Valiant Guard Camp now genuinely carried a faint hint of an elite force.

Yet drill was one thing; real combat was another.

In the eleventh month, the Valiant Guard Camp selected its Company Commanders; in the twelfth month, its Battalion Commanders; and now, on New Year's Day, it was time to select the Camp Officer who would command three thousand men. And it was during the final assessment of the twelfth month that the accursed Yongchang Emperor introduced the "simulated engagement" segment.

It was in that very engagement that a scene unfolded which, to this day, made Sun Yingyuan want to vomit blood whenever he recalled it.

Cao Bianjiao!

That thieving scoundrel had actually changed clothes himself and posed as a young noble out hunting.

With a dozen or so followers, he pretended to present game and refresh the troops, then, when he was a few dozen paces from the central command banner, he struck without warning.

Coordinating with scattered outriders concealed several li away and a larger force farther still, in barely a quarter of an hour he linked up from within and without and tore Sun Yingyuan's formation to shreds.

In the post-action review, Sun Yingyuan, eyes bloodshot, pounded the table and strained his neck arguing with the umpire team, insisting that if it had been a real fight with real blades, he could have cut that whelp Cao Bianjiao down from his horse in single combat, then organized a countercharge — the outcome would have been far from certain!

And the result?

The umpire team discussed it briefly, then upheld the original verdict: the battle formation had collapsed, the unit had lost all capacity for self-organization, and the commanding officer had been taken in the melee — defeat was conclusive! For this route march, Sun Yingyuan's unit score: zero!

That single goose egg rendered utterly meaningless all the "cultural studies marks" that Sun Yingyuan had painstakingly scraped together, neglecting food and sleep. After this battle, his composite score plummeted from first place to third.

Cao Bianjiao, on the strength of this brilliant surprise attack, vaulted upward and became the Valiant Guard Camp's first-ever Camp Officer!

And he, Sun Yingyuan, was saddled with the disgraceful title of "the first man captured (albeit in simulation)" since the Valiant Guard Camp's founding.

Now, hearing that another "brocade-clad youth" was snooping around, Sun Yingyuan felt as though someone had trod on his tail. He turned his head toward Sun Chuanting beside him and asked through clenched teeth:

"Master Sun, give me a straight answer. Is today's business normal official duty, or does it still count as a route march?"

"If it's normal duty, fine. But if it's a route march and they're playing this tiresome tactic again, I swear I'll skin that little bastard alive today!" Sun Chuanting drew his sleeves together and shook his head:

"Battalion Commander Sun, this official has now been relieved of his post as umpire of the Valiant Guard Camp. This matter is no longer my concern."

He paused, clearly aware of Sun Yingyuan's history, and shook his head with a rueful smile:

"Even if I had not been relieved, I would not breathe a word of such military secrets."

"I am the umpire for the entire Valiant Guard Camp, not for your First Battalion."

"Battalion Commander Sun, do not think to wheedle any advantage out of me. You had best make your own decision."

His probe having yielded nothing, Sun Yingyuan was not annoyed. He gave a cheeky grin and said shamelessly:

"An umpire for my battalion? I haven't seen hide nor hair of one yet!"

"I only hope that when the new umpire arrives after the second-month assessment, he'll have half of your skill, Master Sun. Then this humble officer would wake from his dreams laughing." Having slipped this unobtrusive flattery to the red-hot "top secretary," Sun Yingyuan's grin vanished in an instant, replaced by the decisiveness of the Valiant Guard Camp's second-in-command.

He pondered for barely two breaths, then issued three consecutive military orders:

"Orders!"

"The marching column will change at once from two files abreast to four files abreast!"

"All troops are to shorten their stirrups, but still do not don armor. Maintain marching posture and be ready to engage the enemy at any moment!"

"All scouts on rotation are to be cast out to a range of twenty li. Find me the enemy's main force!"

The orders were given.

Dispatch riders with small flags on their backs immediately galloped the length of the long column, relaying the commands.

Sun Chuanting, standing to the side, grasped Sun Yingyuan's tactical intent the moment he heard the orders.

Changing from two files to four sacrificed some marching speed in exchange for depth in the formation, to prevent it from being casually pierced through again.

Shortening the stirrups was a very inconspicuous detail.

When cavalry marched, unless on a forced march, they generally alternated between riding and walking. This conserved the horses' strength for sudden engagements and also spared the mounts.

Even on relatively secure interior lines, without forced-march orders, they normally would not ride the whole way, still less gallop about at will. After all, horses were far more precious than men.

A warhorse cost twenty taels, a packhorse six taels, and the annual beans and fodder were paid in hard silver.

On long marches, for comfort, stirrups were usually lengthened, so that the legs and knees would not grow sore.

But the moment there was a chance of engaging the enemy, the stirrups had to be shortened.

This allowed a man to stand firm in the saddle with power in his stance, his body rising a head above others — the very meaning of "an extra inch of reach, an extra inch of advantage."

As for casting all the scouts outward, that was to seize the initiative on the battlefield, guard against ambush, and at the same time seek an opening to bite back. This whole combination of moves showed that Sun Yingyuan was actually trying to juggle three objectives at once: entering the pass on schedule today, guarding against a surprise attack, and watching for a chance to counterstrike.

Sun Chuanting laughed inwardly.

It seemed this "Sun Black-Charcoal" had not let a single day pass without remembering the humiliation of being captured alive by Cao Bianjiao last time.

Only… today's sortie beyond the pass really had no ambush drill arranged.

At least when Sun Chuanting left the capital secretariat, no such plan sat on the military group's desk.

Sun Yingyuan's elaborate, battle-ready deployment was like batting eyelashes at a blind man.

Yet as Sun Chuanting watched the troops rapidly change formation before him, he gave a slight nod.

The entire response adhered perfectly to the Great Ming Drill Manual's standards, while also accommodating the realities of the marching mission and even preserving room for a tactical counterattack. Had this been a field-training assessment, as a military advisor he would have given this on-the-spot reaction full marks.

His Majesty once said with a laugh that Sun Yingyuan, for all his rough appearance, was dark of face but fine of mind — a truly shameless rogue who would one day become a man of great consequence. Seeing him today, that was indeed the case.

The so-called military advisor was in fact a civil-service post in the Ming army.

This position began in the Hongxi era and was a detached assignment, not a substantive office like Minister, Vice Minister, or Bureau Secretary.

Civil officials were usually seconded to serve as staff officers to commanding generals, handling documents, pay, and provisions.

Lu Shanji, for instance, had once been sent to the Liaodong field headquarters as a military advisor by Sun Chengzong while holding the substantive post of Bureau Secretary in the Bureau of Operations of the Ministry of War.

Another example: Mao Yuanyi, who held only juren status, still had to be recommended to become Vice Regional Commander of Zhejiang before he could enter Sun Chengzong's field headquarters as a military advisor. A military advisor had to be a ranked official. So this role was in fact somewhat different from a mere staff aide. But that the august Son of Heaven's chief secretary and head of the military group, Sun Chuanting, would stoop to serve two months as a military advisor in the Valiant Guard Camp was certainly not just to help these military officers keep accounts and draft paperwork.

In fact, this reform slowly unfolding in the Valiant Guard Camp was titled, in the military group's files, "Trial Implementation of the Reorganization of Civil-Service Work in the Great Ming Army." The civil-service system related to the Great Ming military, after developing for over two hundred years, was a hopeless mess.

Within the army itself, civil-service work meant detached officers like the military advisor.

Outside it, agencies like the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Works, and the Court of the Imperial Stud managed horses, pay, armor, and such matters.

At the local level, posts like Circuit Intendant and Defense Circuit handled it.

Everyone's authority and responsibilities intertwined in a tangled mess, patched and mended for two centuries, until it became a system that worked — barely — but that no one could be bothered to change. Worse still, beyond these "officials," the military system also contained a vast body of "clerks."

Namely, the "literate soldiers" and "military attendants" — these two leeches that clung to the Ming army's veins and sucked its blood.

Literate soldiers were generally assigned one per several dozen to a hundred men, handling the army's pay and provisions accounts and weapons registries.

In terms of function, they resembled the six-office clerks in a county yamen.

Military attendants, on the other hand, more closely resembled the runner-lictors of a county yamen.

By regulation, a Regional Commander was allotted thirty, a Vice Regional Commander twenty, and the remaining officers varying numbers, down to a Company Commander who still had four.

These men were usually filled by the officers' trusted confidants, handling the transmission of orders, clearing the way, and making arrests.

That was bad enough, but some even helped officers run their private businesses — trafficking illicit salt, managing garrison farmlands, opening shops…

Though called military attendants, it would be more fitting to call them private servants.

One need not think hard to know how these "military clerks" at the very bottom of the power structure would use their sliver of authority to flay flesh and suck marrow. The rot of the Ming army was not merely a matter of unpaid wages and deficient equipment, but this systemic rot that had festered from the bottom up for two hundred years!

And the "Trial Reorganization of Civil-Service Work" project undertaken by the military group was precisely aimed at rectifying this entrenched abuse.

Like the other new policies, the goal was first to achieve complete reform within the small Valiant Guard Camp, and then attempt to extend it more broadly.

This was also the reason Sun Chuanting personally took the field as the Valiant Guard Camp's military advisor.

He intended to start investigating from the lowest military attendants and literate soldiers, sorting out every strand of civil-service work in the army.

By now, the preliminary regulations had already been drafted. As soon as the New Year holiday was over, the formal selection of military clerks would begin, and this brand-new civil-service system would be officially rolled out in the Valiant Guard Camp.

Its core, just like the overhaul of local sub-official functionaries, was to open a channel of advancement from "clerk" to "official," and to establish within the army a civil-service officer corps slightly independent of the military ranks.

This both catered to the civil officials' desire to control military power;

and was also the thinking of a normal empire… Though using civil officials to restrain military officers had problems of one sort or another, in the end, civil officials must restrain military officers, and civil officials must oversee military officers.

Therefore, if the army's civil-service system was to be rebuilt, it absolutely could not be placed entirely under the military command structure; it had to be kept somewhat independent.

However, these tangled, deep-rooted power games now had little to do with Sun Chuanting.

His burden now was heavier.

He had to take the Valiant Guard Camp's successful (or at least seemingly successful) experience and strive to replicate it among the ten thousand troops of the Liaodong Demonstration Camp. And further, he had to figure out how to combine the drill manual born of paper theorizing with the hard-won, blood-forged experience of the Liaodong border troops.

And how to draw on each other's strengths and offset weaknesses, thereby advancing the further deepening of the Great Ming military reforms.

In the year ahead, among the constantly rotating Valiant Guard Camp, the Capital Camps Demonstration Camp, the Liaodong Demonstration Camp, and the old Liaodong units — how to transfer them, how to promote and demote, how to reward and punish, how to make them compete and spur each other on…

These countless threads, matters barely begun, were now his, Sun Chuanting's, entirely new challenges.

Sun Chuanting drew a pocket watch from his sleeve and flipped it open for a glance.

Click.

Twenty past ten.

This spot was twenty li from Shanhai Pass.

The timing was perfect; it seemed they would be able to enter the pass smoothly just after noon.

Sun Chuanting put away his pocket watch, still not mounting a horse, and trudged along in the column, one deep step, one shallow.

Feeling the piercing, half-melted slush, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind:

"Marching on snow and marching through mud after snow — the road conditions are utterly different, and the toll on the soldiers' stamina and the consumption of baggage are completely different. The drill manual ought to split these apart and list two separate detailed clauses…"

"Once inside the pass, I must write a letter back. Before winter ends, I should find a chance to test the effects of these two conditions and update the war-gaming parameters." He raised his head.

Beside him, the brief formation change had already concluded.

The column of over a thousand men had completed its switch to a four-file parallel march and resumed its normal pace.

Slush splashed, footsteps tramped in confusion, yet the entire unit remained utterly silent. Occasionally a low command was relayed, curt and forceful. "The foremost rule in the army is simply that no clamor or talking is permitted…"

"For every halt or advance, there are flags, drums, and gongs. If no order permits speech, whoever opens their mouth shall be severely punished…"

—Great Ming Army Drill Manual (Trial Edition), Chapter on Marching

Feeling the power contained within this silence, feeling the present state of things he had changed bit by bit with his own hands, Sun Chuanting's heart suddenly surged with an irrepressible heat.

He gazed ahead, as if beholding that mightiest of passes under heaven.

"Your Majesty… in your mind,"

"does recovering Liao really require ten years?"