Chapter 80: Three Things I Must Do

The grain officer's head had hung at the camp gate for three days.

Though this man was merely one link in a vast chain of corruption, he was by no means innocent. Over these past months, dozens — even hundreds — of Boar-Rush Braves had been carried out of the huts, dead from cold, starvation, and sickness. He bore responsibility for that; death was too light a punishment.

And in an army where orders are strictly obeyed, there was never any shortage of charges to convict him on.

Early in the first month, the cold was brutal. Another night of frost and snow had frozen the head rock-hard, yet the black crows that kept flying in could still tug the tongue out through his wide-open mouth — frozen in what looked like a final cry of injustice — and devour it.

Every day, the boy Zhang Yu passed the camp gate and would lift his head to stare for a while. This made Diwu Lun somewhat regret killing the man in front of the child that day.

Though this was also the first time Diwu Lun had watched a man die up close — his throat slit by Seventh Biao like a chicken's — Diwu Lun's cheeks had only twitched slightly at the time. Since arriving in this era, he had witnessed too much death, both directly and indirectly.

When Zhang Yu heard Diwu Lun tell him to stop looking at the dead man's head, he immediately felt slighted and protested loudly, "Clan Leader, I've seen plenty of dead people!"

He began to talk on and on about the two years the Jing River flooded, when corpses lay everywhere in the wilds.

And the heads that hung at the gate of nearly every county seat — they belonged to some long-wanted bandit, or perhaps an ordinary farmer who had resisted rent by force. But a severed head was a severed head; after hanging on the city wall for a few days, they all looked the same.

"The crows always eat the eyes first." Zhang Yu told Diwu Lun, as if to prove his courage, describing it vividly. "Then the cheeks sink in, the flesh turns green, and if it's high summer, some thick pus oozes out, the same color as this vegetable soup…"

Diwu Lun looked at the meal that had just been delivered — the green, viscous mallow soup — and frowned, telling Zhang Yu to get lost at once.

After the former grain officer lost his head, Diwu Lun made an immediate battlefield appointment, having Xuan Biao take over this dangerous post. Once his strength returned, Xuan Biao recovered his old dignity and backbone. He was still that young man who cried, "Spirits of the dead and living share one heart; we tread righteousness and brave peril" — only now he no longer used that creed to demand it of others, merely to discipline himself.

"Bohu, I'm making you grain officer for three things: fairness, fairness, and fairness!"

Diwu Lun placed the standard measure into Xuan Biao's hands, and along with it gave him the two hundred shi of grain that Dai Gong, Jin Dan, and the others had previously funneled to him as payoffs.

In the past, each man had been allotted only two and a half dou of grain per month; now they could have three and a half dou.

Another Biao brother, Seventh Biao, grew anxious and said in a low voice, "Clan Leader, what about the food for the private retinue and the personal guards? It can't be the same as for the common soldiers."

Degrees of closeness and distance must be expressed through the distribution of external goods. The higher one's status and the more one is regarded as a trusted confidant by Major Diwu, the more one ought to receive preferential treatment in food — this is common sense, and another kind of "fairness." Otherwise, why would they bother coming to stand guard for him?

Diwu Lun was quite decisive: "For these several dozen men, I will bring private grain from my family to solve their food and clothing."

Since they were elite household troops, he might as well have them eat the Diwu clan's grain and wear the Diwu clan's clothes directly. Diwu Lun had long since sent men to bring enough bedding from Changling, and personally distributed it to Zang Nu and the others, making them overjoyed.

Diwu Lun had only just learned that Zang Nu, being a slave, had never in his life covered himself with such a thing. For over twenty years, he had slept under the stars and moonlight, covered only in straw. A big, burly man, the moment the bedding wrapped around him, he broke into a grin like a blooming flower. "It's really warm."

Meanwhile, on Xuan Biao's first day in office, the Boar-Rush Braves were delighted to discover that their rations had changed from thin, watery gruel to thick porridge in which chopsticks could stand upright for a moment. Xuan Biao even promised that on training days, they would get a meal of dry rice.

The food entering their mouths was visibly more plentiful — a far more effective propaganda than sharing clothes and meals or making grand speeches. So when Diwu Lun made his daily camp inspection, he saw the Boar-Rush Braves bowing to him with genuine, heartfelt respect.

"To them, a commander's goodness or wickedness lies entirely in whether he lets them eat a few more mouthfuls each day."

After securing a small core staff, Diwu Lun had now also captured the hearts of the rank-and-file Boar-Rush Braves. Following this, he began to turn his blade against the camp's mid-level officers: the squad leaders.

Based on reports from Xuan Biao and others, combined with Diwu Lun's own daily observations, three squad leaders who had treated the soldiers most harshly were successively stripped of their posts on various grounds. Apart from one man who dejectedly submitted and yielded, the other two, after casting helpless glances at Dai Gong and finding no aid, spat out harsh words and walked straight out of the camp.

Although Diwu Lun still distributed coal briquettes to the officers and tacitly allowed them to continue drawing empty-payroll rations, and although he let the grain officer take the full blame for the grain embezzlement without expanding the crackdown,

after all, like injures like, and with Dai Gong secretly frightening them, the officers were all on edge, wondering if they would be next.

But the best moment to resist had already passed. Now, besides his private retinue, Diwu Lun was also surrounded by fifty loyal personal guards who protected him closely. Things like setting fire to a superior or stabbing someone in the back were genuinely not so easy to pull off.

What was more, Diwu Lun was acquainted with the State Preceptor, which made the centurions and squad leaders somewhat wary.

It had also become extremely difficult to incite the rank-and-file soldiers against Diwu Lun. As the days passed, the view that "Major Diwu is a good man; the company commanders, centurions, and squad leaders are bad men" took deep root. Any shortfall in food was the thieving officers' embezzlement; any extra food was Major Diwu's compassion.

But Dai Gong, who styled himself the shadow commander of the camp, would of course not sit still and wait for death. When he realized that petty tricks could no longer do anything to Diwu Lun and that his own wings were being plucked one by one, he could bear it no longer and finally brought out his backer.

On the tenth day of the first month, Diwu Lun received an order to go to the Colonel's main camp.

…

This meeting with Liangqiu Ci was entirely unlike the last one — there was no harmony or ease.

"Major Diwu has been quite busy making big moves." The moment Diwu Lun entered, Liangqiu Ci set down the bamboo slips in his hand, his face stern.

"A few days in office, and you've already beheaded a grain officer and dismissed three squad leaders."

He gave a cold laugh. "Such bold, sweeping strokes — you're one step away from tearing the camp down. Tell me, what exactly are you trying to do?"

Diwu Lun stammered an acknowledgment, understanding in his heart that someone must have come ahead of him to speak ill. His eyes flicked behind the curtain — that person might very well be there right now. As an outsider, he truly could not compare to the Colonel's trusted men.

He merely explained, "Colonel, you misunderstand. The truth is, certain squad leaders in my camp are greedy and base, frequently mistreating and working soldiers to death — it truly is too excessive. Your humble subordinate feared that before the army even mobilizes, there would be hardly any soldiers left in the camp. That is why I punished one or two, absolutely with no other intention!"

"Ha, you youngster — it's indeed your first time commanding troops. You fail to understand that doing this is actually heading south while your cart points north; it will only bring the opposite result."

Seeing that Diwu Lun's attitude was not bad, Liangqiu Ci softened his tone a little and began a lengthy lecture to reason with Diwu Lun, still preaching that same theory of "don't be the only sober one when the whole world is drunk."

He patted his large, bulging belly and said, "When I first became an officer, I was just like you, wanting to accomplish something. The result was that my subordinates disobeyed orders and were hard to command, while my colleagues all viewed me with hostility. Therefore, action is not as good as inaction."

This was an old principle of officialdom: as a newly inducted officer, one must learn to read the atmosphere. Do as others do; do not stand out and be different, for that will break the unwritten rules everyone has agreed upon and make you the target of all arrows.

But Diwu Lun was somewhat special. Unlike those officers who held themselves loftily aloof, he benefited the lower ranks while maintaining the upward flow of payoffs, taking exactly as much as was customarily skimmed and not interfering in the slightest. His blade cut only at the middle ranks, his goal being to purge the disobedient squad leaders and replace them with his own men.

Yet in Liangqiu Ci's eyes, Dai Gong was his own man. Diwu Lun's actions had touched the Colonel's forbidden preserve.

As a dignified Colonel, was it that bit of profit skimmed from passing geese that he cared about?

No — what mattered most was the obedience of his subordinate officers, and control over the grassroots camp fortifications!

How to control them? In any government office, it is the same: the chief officers flow like water, but the petty functionaries are forged of iron. What truly supports the operation of a camp are the company commanders and centurions.

As long as he controlled the two company commanders and a few centurions, he could hollow out the Major and make them obediently heed the Colonel's words. No matter who was rotated into the post, everything remained under Liangqiu Ci's manipulation — he said east and they went east, he pointed west and they went west. The Major did not need his own thoughts; obedience was enough.

Now, Diwu Lun had barely been in office a few days, and with a few punches and kicks, he had thrown all of Dai Gong's arrangements into chaos, with a clear intent to remake the camp's entire order. So Dai Gong came running to lodge a complaint: "Is Diwu Lun targeting this humble officer? No, he is targeting the Colonel! If he is this rampant while still at the main camp, later, once we reach the frontier, Diwu Lun will dare to disobey military orders and act on his own!"

This was what a Colonel dreaded most. As for the soldiers' lives that Diwu Lun spoke of, they did not enter Liangqiu Ci's consideration at all. What he cared about was not the army's fighting strength, but whether they obeyed — and whom they obeyed! As for those cheap Boar-Rush Braves, no matter how many died, when the time came, couldn't he just conscript able-bodied men on the spot at the garrison?

And so, Liangqiu Ci cut off Diwu Lun's explanation. The camp officers might fear the State Preceptor, but he did not. He merely said with a stern face, "As officers, we must work together with one heart. Let bygones be bygones. Stop here, now!"

"Otherwise, do you believe I, this Colonel, cannot dismiss you from your post right this moment?"

Hearing this, Dai Gong, hiding behind the tent, revealed a smug smile.

What he hoped for most was that Diwu Lun's blood would rush to his head and he would argue back at Liangqiu Ci a few more times, confirming the accusation that he "refused to obey command." In that case, Liangqiu Ci would surely view Diwu Lun as a major threat and within days either dismiss him or kick him to another camp — and then he, Dai Gong, would have won.

Unexpectedly, Diwu Lun readily accepted the advice, cupping his hands. "The Colonel's lesson is well taken. Your humble subordinate understands!"

…

"Hemmed in on all sides within the system, trying to make a little change is truly difficult."

Leaving Liangqiu Ci's camp, Diwu Lun could only sigh with such emotion.

Every person was controlled by this system, riddled with years of accumulated abuses, like a marionette on strings. The threads of vexation tangled thicker and thicker, until at last one could not move at all, bereft of one's own thoughts, able only to move with the system's inertia.

Diwu Lun touched the knife at his waist and ground his teeth in secret: "I truly wish I could cut through this tangled mess with a swift blade and smash all these fetters to pieces!"

But the time was not yet ripe. Working in this environment, Diwu Lun had to tread carefully — he needed to expand his power within the camp, yet could not afford to provoke Colonel Liangqiu Ci too far. Otherwise, a single transfer order, and with no truly solid backing, he would have no choice but to slink away with his personal followers.

In that case, he would have to start all over again, and the camp that he had with such difficulty pulled back from a hundred paces of evil to fifty would revert to its old state.

And Diwu Lun's sole trump card could not be revealed too hastily — what use was winning a momentary quarrel? If he truly tore his face off with Liangqiu Ci, the Colonel would have ample opportunity to work him to death later, and take the eight hundred Boar-Rush Braves down with him — such as ordering them deep into the Xiongnu heartland on a mission, and if they refused, hauling them off and beheading them, their heads hung alongside that grain clerk's. Who would cry out for justice on his behalf?

When he returned to camp, Dai Gong was still there with the centurions to receive him. Beneath that humble and obsequious exterior lurked a secret smugness — he believed he had won.

Diwu Lun responded with a false, feigned smile of his own. His aggressive push had come to an end for now; he had gained enough authority and had room to maneuver.

He would need to ease relations a little going forward. Diwu Lun reckoned that once they reached the border fortress and he had space to act freely, he could find a chance to take that old dog's life!

But he had barely warmed his seat in the camp when Liangqiu Ci sent someone to summon Diwu Lun back in haste.

When they met again, Diwu Lun could see that Liangqiu Ci was deeply displeased, yet the Colonel could only force a smile and placate him a little before continuing: "Just now, Wang Dang, Protector of the General of Renewal's army, entered my camp."

"He also brought a piece of news."

Liangqiu Ci lowered his voice: "The General of Renewal has word that, in a few days, His Majesty will bring the civil and military officials to Hongmen on an inspection tour."

"When the time comes, your camp will stand in the front rank of my section."

Diwu Lun understood at once why Liangqiu Ci's attitude had shifted. He himself had volunteered and thus obtained the post of Major — who knew whether the Emperor might suddenly remember and ask: "Where is Diwu Lun?"

This was his greatest source of confidence, and it was also why, despite his dissatisfaction with Diwu Lun, Liangqiu Ci was still discussing and prodding him rather than directly exercising his authority as commanding officer and simply, cleanly driving Diwu Lun away.

"Within a few days, get the soldiers under your command tidied up until they are presentable!"

"A few days — how many days exactly?"

Liangqiu Ci's face hardened: "Insolence! The Son of Heaven's itinerary is a confidential matter — how could the likes of us know?"

Diwu Lun assented, groaning inwardly. So Wang Mang might come as soon as tomorrow. With the camp in this wretched state, the soldiers collapsing at a puff of wind — what kind of crash training could make them "presentable"?

But this was also his best chance to come into contact with Wang Mang. An idea formed in Diwu Lun's mind, and he simply said: "This subordinate will do his utmost, but I have one request."

"You whelp, don't push your luck." Liangqiu Ci could only agree: "Speak, then. As long as it is not excessive, it can be granted."

If Diwu Lun demanded that he transfer Dai Gong away, he would have to agree for the time being. Liangqiu Ci would endure it, and deal with Diwu Lun once they reached the border fortress.

To his surprise, Diwu Lun merely smiled and said: "I venture to request, Colonel, that for these few days, my camp's grain and rations be supplied without limit!"