Chapter 104: Section Twelve

"Stop," Huang Shi cried out in grief, then added, "This general's orders are absolute and will not change. Kneeling here until you die is useless."

Zhao Manxiong endured the searing pain and shouted, "My lord, the troops' morale is already unsteady!"

Seeing that Huang Shi did not immediately rebuke them, He Baodao also yelled, "My lord, it is not that your subordinates have failed to do their utmost, but twenty soldiers have already fallen into the water and frozen to death. Over a hundred and fifty have fallen ill and collapsed, and more are dying every day. The soldiers have begun to clamor in uproar — what is to be done? What is to be done?"

"I have said, if we do not persist in breaking the ice, every officer and soldier on this island will be in mortal danger." Huang Shi walked up to them, bent down, and said with the frustration of one seeing iron fail to become steel, "How is it that you cannot understand such a simple principle, eh?"

"We would rather fight to the death against the Jianzhou slaves than freeze to death without even seeing the enemy." He Baodao's eyebrows shot up, and all the pent-up grievances of being caught in the middle burst forth: "My lord, the soldiers' bitter complaints have not been just for a day. We have scolded them, we have beaten them, but we truly can no longer suppress them... My lord, we are all utterly loyal to you, which is why we came to offer you our counsel."

Huang Shi sneered in retort: "The Liaodong military regulations clearly state that breaking the ice is a standing order for all coastal garrisons. Others can manage it — why can't you?"

"My lord, those military regulations were drawn up a hundred years ago. Who knows if they truly work? The soldiers all say that breaking the ice is defying Heaven itself." Zhao Manxiong's courage had risen now too.

"Indeed, your subordinate does not fear the Jianzhou slaves, but I have no ability to defy Heaven," He Baodao chimed in loudly. "How can a mantis's leg twist an elephant's trunk? Going against Heaven's course will bring down divine punishment."

Huang Shi straightened up and said with a cold laugh, "Since the military regulations contain it, that proves it is feasible. Are you bandits? You dare disobey military orders, you cannot even control your soldiers — with only this much ability you still want to go to the battlefield and kill Jianzhou slaves? Ridiculous. Truly, you make me laugh to death."

"We are not bandits!" Yang Zhiyuan, who had always been deeply respectful toward Huang Shi, raised his head in indignation — from where he found the courage, no one knew. Huang Shi saw that his eyes were already glistening with tears.

"We were originally the elite core of the Guangning Army. From Guangning to Lüshun, we did not begrudge the thousand li, the thousand li we followed you the whole way, my lord, unflinching through nine deaths. Your subordinate dares to ask you, my lord — could bandits do that?" Yang Zhiyuan finished and glared at Huang Shi, his voice hoarse as he shouted, "Breaking the ice has brought down nearly one in ten of my soldiers, yet still there has been no mutiny. Your subordinate dares to ask you, my lord — besides my Fire Rescue Battalion of Changsheng Island, what other army could do that?"

Apart from being in a death trap, even the finest feudal army could endure no more than ten to twenty percent casualties before collapsing. History recorded many instances where a Ming army suffered only a few hundred casualties, and then an entire force of over ten thousand began to disintegrate, ultimately ending in total annihilation. Even the Later Jin army, the most elite force of this era, had a tolerance for field casualties that was utterly unremarkable by modern military standards — yet in the late Ming, that was enough to sweep across the realm unopposed.

Huang Shi's unit was a diehard force he had personally forged. Countless trials of hardship and crisis had given them a cohesion even higher than the personal retainers of ordinary generals. Otherwise, under peacetime conditions, such a high rate of loss would have long since thrown the army into total chaos. These subordinates had fought desperately to suppress the soldiers, striving to accomplish a goal they believed nearly impossible — only to be beaten. Now Huang Shi could somewhat understand their fury.

For a moment, the atmosphere in the tent was as cold as the weather outside. Huang Shi felt he had discovered where the problem lay, and he knew where he himself had gone wrong — using feudal methods to control officers would naturally never produce a modern army...

Huang Shi stood for a long time with his hands clasped behind his back. When he spoke again, his gaze, leveled straight ahead, had become distant and yearning: "If I told you that a band of roving bandits could march on an expedition of a thousand li, would you believe it?"

"No!" all the officers roared in unison. They had thrown caution to the wind.

"If I told you that this band of roving bandits did not march a thousand li, but marched fifty thousand li, would you believe it?"

The kneeling officers stared at Huang Shi as if looking at a madman, their mouths gaping wide, unable to utter a word.

"I can also tell you that on this fifty-thousand-li journey (all right, Huang Shi had misremembered and confused kilometers with li), this band of roving bandits did not even need to burn, kill, and plunder to maintain morale." Huang Shi looked down at his subordinates, his expression calm and serene, without the slightest trace of deception.

"How could such a thing exist?" Zhao Manxiong was the first to react. "Are they even human?"

Huang Shi viciously flung down a sentence: "I don't think they were either!"

He tore off his cloak and strode to the doorway — "It's very cold outside. I truly ought to feel ashamed." He forcefully fastened his helmet tight and, without looking back, walked toward the seashore, leaving the stunned officers and personal guards behind in the tent.

The hot breath from his mouth had already frozen into icicles on his beard. The gale-force wind buffeted Huang Shi, making him stagger left and right; the thick wooden pole he had been carrying on his shoulder was now being used as a walking stick.

"My lord... my lord..." Distant shouts came from behind him. He did not look back.

In Huang Shi's memory, China had once produced an army of indomitable perseverance, one that never broke despite a hundred setbacks. The average quality of that army was probably not much higher than any peasant army or roving bandit force, and it certainly was not, like Huang Shi's unit, of regular army origin with a systematic officer corps and authority structure.

Some people believed that army's fortitude was created by brainwashing, demagoguery, and land redistribution. Huang Shi did not know whether they were right, but he always felt that this could not explain that army's tenacity in the face of adversity — the matter was surely not so simple.

Huang Shi, who had not read many books, still had a few small incidents impressed upon his memory:

— To combat the economic blockade, the Central Soviet Area ordered that latrine pits be scraped to boil salt. After this salt was boiled, no one was very willing to eat it. Who would be willing to eat it... Zhu De ate the first mouthful, and from then on he ate only this kind of salt.

— When crossing the grasslands, ordinary soldiers were given one jin of rice... Party members were given eight liang.

— Many parents could not bear to leave their children behind... *and gave their sons away to villagers.

"Since I am powerless to let my subordinates share in my comforts, then I must at least share in their hardships..."

Huang Shi accidentally fell, but immediately scrambled up and continued forward. Although to the people of this era it was utterly unimaginable, Huang Shi believed that an army could be more steely, more resilient: "That was an army. We are far too lacking — so much so that I do not even hope to reach half of what they were. If I could have just three-tenths, I would be very satisfied, and that should be enough to sweep across the realm."

"This is Deng Ken, a soldier recommended by the Jesuits."

Zhang Pan and Jin Qiude had returned, and they had brought back a long-nosed foreigner. This Western man had a pair of gray-blue eyes and a curious little mustache, and he wore a set of Chinese-style clothes.

"Rest well, and drink plenty of hot water." Huang Shi had just recovered from a serious illness and still looked somewhat listless. He extended his hand toward the foreigner: "Welcome, Mr. Sir."

When they had returned to Changsheng Island, floating ice sheets had appeared on the northern, western, and southern shores, and they had been unable to find a place to land. Jin Qiude, warming his hands over the stove fire, exclaimed, "Who would have thought that the Beixinkou passage still hasn't frozen over — there are even exposed rocks and a shoreline."

Before Huang Shi could speak, Deng Ken picked up the thread: "General, if I may be blunt, I do not understand why the General wants to break the ice there. The place where we landed is not a good harbor."

"It is for defensive needs." Huang Shi smiled and explained the current situation — the failed ice-wall plan and the ice-breaking operation they had been forced to undertake.

"Already thirty percent of the soldiers have fallen ill?" Jin Qiude was stunned when he heard this.

"That's right. Jin Qiude, go see Zhao Manxiong later. His fever is so high he's already delirious."

Deng Ken also became very serious: "Is the ice-breaking still continuing now?"

"Exactly. My Changsheng Island stands as steady as Mount Tai."