Chapter 1190: Cooking Without Rice

Ju gathered Ma and the other members of the leadership together, preparing to hold a meeting that Yishang would not attend.

"Everyone, there is a very serious problem now. Our General has fallen ill, which you all know. The Military Doctor just told me that General Yishang is quite seriously ill, and since there is no medicine here, we don't know if the General can recover on his own."

"Therefore, we must make a choice now: either take the General and hurry back, at least returning to the Western Development Group as soon as possible, where the Military Doctor says there is enough complete medicine to treat the General's illness."

"Or, we wait here to see when the General can recover. If the General recovers, then we can continue our journey to the Golden Autumn Gathering, but we don't know if the gathering will still be able to proceed normally by then, or if it will be too late."

"Furthermore, there is the possibility that the General might not hold on. After all, the current situation is somewhat serious, and the General's condition is very poor. The doctor is already preparing porridge, saying that adding sugar and salt might help the General's illness improve faster."

"If the General truly cannot hold on and dies here, what should we do? Should we take the General's corpse back to Huaxia, or continue forward? Or perhaps, should we split up? Everything is uncertain right now, so I want to hear your opinions and see what you all think. I cannot make this decision by myself."

Upon hearing this, everyone felt chaotic inside. The battlefield could be divided into two camps: one was the Huaxia City Soldiers led by Ju, and the other was the Western Development Group Soldiers led by Ma, though Ju's status was certainly higher.

But why were they divided into two parts? Because everyone's thoughts were different.

The people of Huaxia City valued Yishang more. They believed that missing one Golden Autumn Gathering was not as important as General Yishang. General Yishang's significance to Huaxia was too great, and his status too high. If something happened to him, all of Huaxia might launch a crusade against them, or even punish them.

As for Ma and his group, they knew Yishang's status was high and that Yishang was important, but they did not know exactly how important. Having not stayed in Huaxia long enough, they naturally had no way to understand the true value of a founding General and Marquis.

They only thought that since they had already reached this point, if they just walked a bit further and persisted, they would reach the place of the Golden Autumn Gathering. Once there, wouldn't the opportunity to build merit and establish a career arrive?

From a single Golden Autumn Gathering, one could obtain many, many benefits. Just the number of tribes that could be won over was immense; the value was high, and it would be another great fortune for Huaxia.

As for a Leader, weren't they just a consumable? One dies today, another dies tomorrow; there is no difference from a Soldier. Since you are a Leader, you must be prepared for death. In any case, they themselves had already made that preparation.

However, thoughts aside, given the current situation, Ma himself felt that perhaps there would be no one at the Golden Autumn Gathering. Everyone might be on the road right now, and a sudden Snow would make most people think that Winter had arrived early, or directly cause some small tribe to perish on the road, making it impossible for them to reach the gathering place. There was experience with such things.

But after all, he could not go against the wishes of Yishang, or even Ju. He was only here to offer his own opinion, but Ju had not yet stated his own position.

"Battalion Commander Ju, what is your meaning? What do you think? I want to hear your thoughts first."

Ju sighed and said, "I personally believe that General Yishang is more important than anything. If he dies here, all of us will be punished. And not just that, in terms of General Yishang's importance to Huaxia, I also believe it exceeds the importance of this gathering."

"Therefore, my personal opinion is to wait a while and see if General Yishang's condition improves even a little. If there is improvement, then we can consider going to the gathering. If the General's condition does not improve, or even worsens, then we can set off and return to the Western Development Group to treat the General. We cannot delay at all."

"Ma, what are your thoughts? Everyone, speak up. I cannot decide this alone. Let us discuss our opinions together."

Ma did not know that if Yishang died, it would actually lead to them being punished, so he felt a bit afraid. Now he hurriedly rearranged the importance of the various matters in his mind, deciding to put Yishang in first place after all.

"I also believe General Yishang is the most important. If the gathering is delayed by another two days, I don't think there is any need to continue going, because we would arrive too late and the timing would be wrong."

"Even if the gathering is held successfully, if we go, we will be late and won't achieve our goals."

"It is even possible that because of this weather, the gathering won't be able to be held successfully. After all, it has been like this before, and more than once. So, I also believe we should prioritize General Yishang."

Ju turned his head to look at the others, signaling with his eyes for them to express their opinions.

The others all followed the words of Ma and Ju, and had no other different thoughts.

Seeing that everyone's thoughts were basically the same, Ju made a summary: "Since everyone thinks this way, I will take the porridge to ask the General later and tell the General our thoughts to see what the General plans to do. After all, military orders are like mountains; whatever the General says is what we do. We do not have the power to decide."

Everyone now wore a troubled expression, no longer having the relaxed feeling of the first day. They had thought everything would go smoothly, but who could have imagined that the most important person would fall ill like this, leaving them leaderless.

The doctor now looked at the boiled porridge, his heart also in a mess. If General Yishang could manage to finish drinking it, then everything would be manageable; at least there would be hope for recovery or for holding on until they reached the Western Development Group. If General Yishang could not even drink a bowl of porridge a day, then the General would be in danger.

At the same time, he also felt some problems existing in Medicine, which was that they had no way to carry all the medicine. In such an emergency, it was difficult to have medicine available immediately. A doctor like him was like a castrated ram in Huaxia, looking at ewes everywhere but having no way to do anything himself, because the tools were gone.

It really was a ram without balls looking at ewes, only able to feast his eyes.