Chapter 195: Waxing and Waning

In the sick-and-wounded camp at Lion's Bay, Liu Chengzong let out a long breath of relief.

Huang Shengxiao could finally get out of bed.

This artillery-sentry squad leader, ferociously brave in battle, had fought bare-assed and felt perfectly at ease cheering and leaping about when they won — but once the fighting ended, he collapsed and could not rise again.

Even getting to Lion's Bay, he had been draped over a mule's back and propped up by others just to make the journey.

The six sentry squads had split up to forage, and Zhang Tianlin had returned to West River, so Lion's Bay grew quiet, leaving only the supply sentry, the wounded, and the people his father and elder brother had brought over.

Liu Chengzong simply stopped staying at the command post and lived in the wounded camp every day — he was a wounded man himself, after all.

Some soldiers in the sick-and-wounded camp had injuries no worse than his; it was just that theirs were to the belly or legs, making movement difficult and barring them from military operations.

As for him, his injury at most only hindered him when eating with chopsticks.

But Liu the Lion was not idle either. The moment he had a free moment, he summoned Song Shouzhen to the command post.

"General, you sent for me?"

"Brother Song, please sit."

Liu Chengzong looked at Song Shouzhen, who was steeped in scholarly air from head to toe, and shook his head with a smile.

He recalled that last year, they had been enemies too. But ever since they robbed the prince's estate, they had become the same kind of people.

And as his power grew, Song Shouzhen had naturally stayed on with the Lion Camp, even ending up in the kind of work he had always wanted to do.

Song Shouzhen was from a musician household, but his ancestors had been high officials, and he had always wanted to take on the work of a literary man.

Now the opportunity had come.

Liu Chengzong smiled. "You've come at the perfect time. My hand isn't fit for writing. Let's put our heads together and write a few essays, to use for basic literacy in the wounded camp."

These words puzzled Song Shouzhen. He asked, "Second Master, the Sky-Piercing Academy has basic literacy materials. Why not just ask the Old Master for them?"

He had not spent much time with the Lion Camp, so his way of addressing Liu Chengzong followed the manner of Liu Laoye's side.

Liu Chengzong did not mind that. He waved his hand. "I know the Sky-Piercing Academy has teaching materials. What they use for basic literacy there are the military code and regulations my father, brother, and I compiled together in earlier years."

"The students at the Sky-Piercing Academy before were peasant soldiers under Jiusi's command. Learning that was useful for them, but now the Lion Camp is mostly frontier troops."

"They already know everything in those texts, so I need to teach them something they don't know."

In truth, basic literacy was easy — they were all adults, unable to read but able to listen and speak.

His father and Teacher Yang had the foundation of the Sky-Piercing Academy, and in his own mind he had the image of a unit, centuries later, conducting lessons while on the march, writing military discipline and regulations on small drawing boards.

But his soldiers were neither peasants nor new recruits; they already knew the military code and regulations perfectly well.

"Besides, time is tight. A chance to rest like this might only come once a year. Better to write a few new pieces that will still be useful later."

Once Liu Chengzong finished, Song Shouzhen nodded in agreement.

He was idle anyway.

Song Shouzhen truly was idle at the moment. Liu Laoye, Teacher Yang, and Liu Chengzu — the three of them were busy surveying the terrain and topography, heading east from Nine Dragons Spring through Nanniwan and Lion's Bay.

This was Liu Chengzong's idea. He, his father, his brother, and his teacher had spoken with Li Bei once more without taking him along, and the plan they finally settled on was much the same as his original thinking: prepare on two fronts.

On one front, they would still search northern Shaanxi for every place that could avoid the drought — not necessarily to fully supply the army, but at least, like Apricot Seed River, to be self-sufficient with a surplus to spare.

On the other front, they had to be mentally prepared to face a full encirclement and suppression campaign by government troops.

Though the Great Ming in northern Shaanxi and Shanxi was like a pile of rotting flesh, that flesh still had sinew and bone — one convulsion could scare a man to death.

In the end, it came down to what Yang Yao had said when he first came over to his side: strike decisively when it is time to fight, and when it is time to run, do not look back or hesitate.

They were going to dig canals and level land in Lion's Bay. After all, it was a massive project, not something the Lion Camp could finish this year.

They would open up as much land as they could; whatever could not be opened would be left. They would draw up the large-scale plan properly, and even if it were left in the future to a chieftain on good terms with them as a secret camp, that would be no bad thing.

If this river-bend valley were fully reclaimed, it could support far more people than Apricot Seed River.

But Second Master Liu's father and elder brother had no intention of bringing Song Shouzhen along. Earnest as he was, he had no systematic education. To put it plainly, he was a bookish scholar, not a man of practical statecraft.

Even if they took him to survey the terrain, he would not be able to make sense of it.

Now, hearing Liu Chengzong ask him to compose essays, the order truly struck home in his heart. Excited, he said, "General, tell me — what sort of essay would you have this student write?"

Liu Chengzong thought to himself, I only asked you to take up the brush and write — since when did you plan on composing it yourself?

But he did not want to dampen Song Shouzhen's enthusiasm, so he said, "The current plan is to do four thousand-character essays."

"General, rest assured. What shall I write? Parallel-prose four-six couplets, paired phrases with balanced tones and rhetoric?"

"No need for that. Write plainly and clearly, with substance. Listen to the topics."

Liu Chengzong chuckled and raised a hand, counting off four. "Four essays. The topics are: Why the People Hunger, Why the Army Hungers, How to Settle the People, and How to Sustain Troops. Can you do it?"

Song Shouzhen was dumbstruck.

He had thought Liu Chengzong wanted to write discursive essays. As it turned out, he wanted policy treatises!

Song Shouzhen felt that Teacher Yang might be a more reliable person for this task.

Liu Chengzong saw his difficulty and raised a hand. "No rush. I will tell you how to write them. These things don't need to go very deep... Hm?"

As the two were speaking, Fan Sanniang walked into the courtyard and said, "Commander, Battalion Commander Ren is here."

Ren Quan'er?

Liu Chengzong was taken aback, then furrowed his brow.

Ren Quan'er had just been here the afternoon of the day before yesterday, saying that since they had moved, he wanted to come familiarize himself with the place. But because the journey was long, he had hurried back after staying barely half a shichen.

This place was a hundred thirty or forty li from Ansai Garrison; even on horseback, you would need to change horses along the way.

How could he come again today, just after the day before yesterday?

Could something have gone wrong?

Liu Chengzong asked Song Shouzhen to wait a moment and walked out of the large compound. Just as he reached the gate, he looked up to the west.

Good heavens — Ren Quan'er had not come alone. He had brought four mounted guards, eight horses, and two mules.

The mules were laden with two full baskets of goods.

Startled, Liu Chengzong hurried forward to meet him. Drawing near, he asked, "What's all this about? Has the affair been exposed?"

"Huh?"

Ren Quan'er was stunned by the question, then broke into a silly grin. He flipped over to perform a salute and said, "The day before yesterday, when I came by and saw you were wounded, Commander, I sent someone back to my station to bring a few things over."

Having said that, Ren Quan'er leaned forward and asked, "Commander, am I too late?"

"Not late."

It was Liu Chengzong's first time receiving such treatment, and he felt a little embarrassed. But he adjusted his mindset in the blink of an eye, waved his hand with a smile, and said, "The wound hasn't healed yet."

"Good that it hasn't healed, good that it hasn't..."

Ren Quan'er echoed with a beaming smile, then his expression froze. After a pause, he smiled again and said, "Then I should have come a few days later. In a few days it would have healed — that would be a good thing too."

"Hahaha!"

He made Liu Chengzong laugh heartily. Liu then put an arm around him and led him toward the camp headquarters, saying as they walked, "You've come at the perfect time. I was planning to write a few pieces to explain things to the wounded soldiers. Now that you're here, why not listen in?"

"Ah!" Ren Quan'er nodded hurriedly. "I humbly receive the Commander's instruction!"

Truly, if one were to speak of a young soldier-oil-slick reeking of feudal bootlicking, the youthful Ren Quan'er was the most glaring example Liu Chengzong had ever seen.

Having been steeped in it since childhood at the guard station, all manner of formulaic flattery and honorifics seemed to have become instinct for him, requiring no thought at all.

When they reached the camp headquarters, the two mules were unloaded of the goods on their backs. Fan Sanlang helped carry things inside, her eyes widening wider with every item she moved.

Boxes of all sizes held the goods. Ren Quan'er had each one opened for Commander Liu to inspect.

The Ansai Chiliarch's treatment of Liu Chengzong was already an eye-opener for Fan Sanlang, and now she realized that chest of gold from the Yonghe Pass garrison commander was no unique case.

When the boxes large and small were opened, Fan Sanlang was left utterly dumbfounded. Inside were things she had never even seen before. One enormous tiger skull in particular made her jump in fright the moment the box was opened.

"Two tiger tibias, one jar of wine-cured tiger bone medicine, eighteen jin of tiger bone powder, eighteen jin of butter-cured tiger bone, one full tiger skull, and one tiger pelt."

Ren Quan'er was proudest when speaking of these items. His face lit up as he said, "The hunters said this beast came running in from beyond the pass. It was terrorizing several villages in Ansai, so I rid the people of this menace."

This was Liu Chengzong's first time seeing a tiger. This pelt was a different color from the tigers in his other set of memories — the base color was pale yellow with very faint stripes, and there was quite a bit of white fur.

Liu Chengzong said, amazed, "I never would have guessed. You've got the skill to wrestle tigers?"

"What skill do I have for that? We surrounded the mountain and hunted it down. I brought eight specialized bowl-mouth cannon for shooting stones just to preserve the tiger pelt. A pity two of the tibias were shattered."

Liu Chengzong did know about tiger bone powder. Mister Yang had mentioned before that if a person's bones ached, they could take a little, mixing the bone powder with myrrh. But the dosage was measured in qian.

Ren Quan'er, on the other hand, had gone and clunked down a whole eighteen jin.

Liu Chengzong figured his good brother had done the math — exactly enough for four years of uninterrupted daily consumption.

He wouldn't have to worry about any bone aches in this lifetime.

But Ren Quan'er's performance wasn't over yet. One after another, he opened more boxes large and small: "Bird's nest from the Southern Seas, amomum from Liangguang, deer antler from the Sea Tatars, ginseng from Liaodong, camel hoof from beyond the pass."

Liu Chengzong was dumbstruck.

He took a long moment to recover before asking, "You... how on earth did you get your hands on all this stuff?"

"This was confiscated from smuggling merchants. This one and this one — I posed as a bandit and seized them from a wealthy gentry family in Ansai. And this... this camel hoof was a gift from a petty official, but no one at my station knows how to cook it."

Liu Chengzong paused for a moment, then said, "Just because your people at Ansai Station don't know how to cook it, what makes you think the cooks at Lion Camp would?"

The fire-troop cooks at Lion Camp truly only excelled at two things: one was clear-stewed horse meat soup, and the other was donkey meat huoshao.

If not for the fire-troop cooks who had come over with the Ningxia soldiers under He Huchen, Liu Chengzong would have always believed they were eating authentic Baoding donkey meat huoshao.

Only after eating what He Huchen's fire-troop cooks made did Liu Chengzong realize that what they had been eating all along was the famous northern Shaanxi delicacy: Henan donkey meat huoshao.

Of course, compared to the authentic Baoding huoshao these fire-troop cooks brought with them, Liu Chengzong cared more that they were from Baoding — so that if the chance ever came to have an audience with the Chongzhen Emperor, they wouldn't get lost once inside the Northern Metropolitan Region.

"Just cook it for fun, Commander. Give it a taste."

This kid had clunked over a huge pile of tonics. Liu Chengzong felt these things were practically aimed at making his nose spout blood.

How to put it — his feelings were actually quite complicated.

Every person has an id, an ego, and a superego. Faced with this situation, his superego felt guilt and shame on a moral level, while his id gloated over the power he now wielded.

And his ego — his ego was analyzing how many soldiers in Lion Camp with fractures and wounds could be helped by these tiger bones and tonics.

These thoughts processed almost instantaneously. Liu Chengzong patted Ren Quan'er on the shoulder and praised him, then said to the guard standing at the entrance of the camp headquarters courtyard, "Keep the tiger pelt for me. Move everything else to the wounded soldiers' ward at the logistics outpost. Let the medics use them as they see fit."

Having said that, he turned back to Ren Quan'er and said, "That reminds me — when you came the day before yesterday, I forgot to tell you. Send someone back with some red dye for me later."

Ren Quan'er agreed at once.

The rain had been heavy those few days, and the red banner's mane had faded. He'd find time to dye it again.

Once these matters were settled, several dumbstruck country bumpkins sat together with Chiliarch Ren in the camp headquarters courtyard, listening as Liu Chengzong gave Song Shouzhen his instructions.

"'Why the starving people, why the starving army, how to settle the people, how to sustain the troops' — these four questions are linked, one leading into the next, so the writing must follow this order as well."

As he spoke, Song Shouzhen took notes. Ren Quan'er, Fan Sanlang, the Han brothers, and Zhong Bao all sat in a row to the side, five faces utterly bewildered.

"Why do the starving people come about? Because the court has no money. The money is spent on the feudal princes and embezzled by corrupt officials. To make up for it, they impose crushing taxes and levies, neither exempting taxes nor providing disaster relief. Thus the common people have no means to withstand the drought, and masses of starving people appear."

"Why does the starving army come about? The people's livelihoods are ruined and they cannot pay grain taxes. The court's finances are strained, so military funds are diverted. This leaves soldiers without pay and short on rations. Over time, military strength collapses."

When Liu Chengzong finished, he looked at Song Shouzhen and said, "Make the soldiers and civilians understand who has brought them to this — the emperor is heartless, the court is unjust, the feudal princes are useless, the gentry are irresponsible."

Song Shouzhen had never in his life written anything like this. With an extremely solemn expression, he recorded every key point Liu Chengzong uttered.

This was very difficult for him, because he was fighting with all his might to suppress his mind from wandering into flights of fancy.

He felt the power of the Dao, and at the same time, felt a great weight lift from his shoulders.

The emergence of people like them was a natural and logical progression... not because they were born with rebellious bones.

At least for Song Shouzhen, even though his essay was not yet written, he had already, because of this, set down the guilt he felt in his heart toward the world.

And for Fan Sanlang and the Han brothers, they were firsthand survivors of this disaster that befell soldier and civilian alike. They felt this all deeply in their bones, yet the chain of cause and effect had never been laid out so clearly before.

Ren Quan'er was completely immune to all of this.

Drought, corruption, feudal princes — none of it had anything to do with him.

Commander Liu was the first person who had ever treated him like a human being, who knew he needed rest when tired, that his wounds hurt, that he needed treatment when sick.

In over ten years of living, he knew for the first time that he was also a person. Looking around at this world, there was only one person in it who saw him as a person.

So did it still matter whether that person was an official or a bandit, whether he spoke, sang, or cursed in the street?

It doesn't matter.

Ren Quan'er stood up and said, "Commander Liu is right!"

Liu Chengzong thought he was speaking from shared experience, and with a solemn expression patted his shoulder and nodded heavily.

He said, "See, this is power! The power to make people feel what you feel!"

Song Shouzhen deeply agreed.

Once he finished recording, Liu Chengzong continued, "I haven't fully thought through the issue of maintaining troops yet, but the general approach follows this same line. However, what it means to bring peace to the people is very important — this is the explanation, the explanation for the soldiers."

"Not how to bring peace to the people — everyone knows how to bring peace to the people. What we need to explain is why we must bring peace to the people. Not merely to let more people live on, but more so to oppose our enemies."

"We must make everyone understand that the imperial court is powerless to solve the problem. Refugees will grow ever more numerous, deserting government troops will grow ever more numerous. The high officials and nobles whose fortunes are spent, along with the court's running dogs, are bound to strangle us."

"As this war drags on, as one side wanes and the other waxes, we shall become invincible in battle!"