Chapter 18: The Assessment

"Chen Mo lifts five hundred catties of stone, Grade A." An old man with a goat beard wrote Chen Mo's results on silk paper.

Hearing this, Chen Mo slowly lowered the stone wheel he had been holding above his head; he was currently participating in the monthly routine assessment for the Personal Soldier camp alongside many other Personal Soldiers.

All Personal Soldiers in the Personal Soldier camp must be assessed once a month, with assessment grades generally divided into four levels: Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, and Grade D.

Grades A and B receive rewards, Grade C is neither meritorious nor at fault, while Grade D must be punished.

The assessment result Chen Mo achieved last time was Grade A, and naturally, he wanted it again this time.

In addition to a reward of one tael of silver, Grade A also grants a celebratory feast; not only can one have a wonderful, filling meal, but the silver obtained can also be used to buy more meat.

Over these past two months, the Transformation Pearl within Chen Mo's body has accumulated nearly fifty percent more Qi and Blood; at this rate, in another two months or so, he will be able to undergo his next rebirth.

Putting down the stone wheel in his hands, Chen Mo walked toward the Drill Ground to begin the archery assessment.

Only by achieving quite good results in all assessments can one finally obtain a Grade A evaluation.

However, while it is called an archery assessment, it is actually a test of drawing the bow; there is no need to actually shoot an arrow out.

Of course, releasing the bowstring while empty will damage the bow, so after they pull the bow open, they must be very careful to let the bowstring back down.

The reason they are not allowed to actually shoot arrows is also very simple: arrows are too expensive. The cost of a single high-quality feathered arrow is no less than one mace of silver; even General Sun does not dare let his Personal Soldiers shoot at will—he truly cannot afford that expense.

Only during daily practice do they have the opportunity to shoot a few arrows themselves, and after shooting, they must retrieve the arrows.

From this, one can see that the saying "the poor study, the rich practice martial arts" is by no means an empty phrase.

This is only shooting on foot; if one wants to practice mounted archery, one must also be equipped with a horse, and the expenses would skyrocket.

Therefore, the monthly archery assessment actually only looks at whether the drawing motion is standard and how many stones of tension the bow they can draw has.

Chen Mo has sufficient strength, so even though the time he has spent practicing archery is short, the evaluation he obtains each time is not low.

The archery assessment ended, and the evaluation Chen Mo obtained was Grade A-minus, a clear improvement over his previous Grade B-middle.

Rebirth, aside from increasing his own strength, also greatly enhanced Chen Mo's control over his own body; to put it simply, he is better able to control the exertion and circulation of his own strength.

Therefore, he is not slow to learn anything, and his speed of progress is faster than that of ordinary people.

After the archery assessment, the next item was flag signals.

On the battlefield, the situation is complex and ever-changing; it is not possible to rely on sound to transmit messages at every moment, so these Personal Soldiers must be able to understand flag signals.

This is even simpler; except for some fools who are born with slow brains and cannot remember things, most Personal Soldiers can learn it quite well in a month or two.

After these two items were assessed, the final one was spear technique.

Most of these Personal Soldiers learn the spear, with only a small minority who have family martial arts and are skilled in other weapons being the exception.

Spear technique is easy to learn but difficult to master.

Even a fool, if given a long spear and allowed to practice for ten days or half a month, can learn to thrust forward to kill.

But to achieve mastery and reach a state of proficiency, it takes a very long time.

Chen Mo has learned spear techniques for two months; he practices the basic moves of thrusting, parrying, lifting, stabbing, and sweeping quite well, but compared to those veterans who have been in the camp for a long time, he still lags far behind.

In the end, he only got a Grade B-minus.

However, with all four items combined, he still received a Grade A evaluation.

It was not just him; one Personal Soldier after another was undergoing assessment, and their results naturally varied.

Those who obtained Grade A or B evaluations were naturally happy; Grade C is neither meritorious nor at fault, and it is good that they can rest for the remainder of the day.

As for Grade D, not only must they go for training afterward, but they will also be punished with the loss of two days of leave next month.

Since they only get three days of leave a month to begin with, for them, only one day would remain.

The treatment these Personal Soldiers enjoy cannot be said to be the best in the entire Great Gan, but looking at the entire Xingyuan Prefecture, it is absolutely second to none.

Therefore, the training is also the most rigorous.

After collecting the one tael of reward silver for his Grade A evaluation, Chen Mo walked back to his barracks, waiting to eat the feast used to reward them at noon.

His barracks room still only housed him, and no one else had moved in.

Nowadays, there are many barracks and few Personal Soldiers; the veterans mostly live together in groups, so for these dozens of new Personal Soldiers, even if each lived in their own room, there would be more than enough space left over.

Chen Mo even specifically entrusted Mo Hu to help him, asking him not to arrange for anyone else to move into this room later.

The reason he gave was also very simple: he had a good friend who was still in training, and if that person also became a Personal Soldier, the two of them could live together later.

If someone else were arranged to move in, it would be difficult to ask them to leave later.

The reason he wanted to live alone was also because he had some secrets that he did not want others to see.

As for what to do if Ma Caitong wants to move in later, he would think of a way when the time comes.

Mo Hu agreed to his request directly; he also has some authority in the Personal Soldier camp.

Although Chen Mo has spent this period of time focusing solely on eating and training, he basically does not ask about other matters in the Personal Soldier camp, aside from having a slightly better relationship with Mo Hu and knowing a few new recruits who trained with him.

He is not very familiar with the others in the Personal Soldier camp.

But when there are many people, there will be factional divisions; this is an unavoidable matter.

The entire Personal Soldier camp is roughly divided into three factions: the Clan Faction, the Fellow Townsman Faction, and the Neutral Faction.

The Clan Faction consists of General Sun's own kin, people who share his surname; the leader is General Sun's own nephew.

The Fellow Townsman Faction also has a very close relationship with General Sun.

Because General Sun has not only his father's kin but also his mother's and wife's kin, the leader of this faction is General Sun's own nephew (on his sister's side).

Within these two major factions, there are many smaller factions, with both fighting and cooperation between them, but these are not things that an outsider like Chen Mo can understand right now.

Besides the two major factions, there is also a Neutral Faction of more than thirty people; this group is led by Mo Dao and Mo Hu.

One part consists of people who do not want to participate in the fighting between the other two major factions, and the other part consists of people who joined the Personal Soldier camp for other reasons.

Chen Mo has had more contact with Mo Hu, so he is now classified into this faction.

There is no help for it; he is neither a clansman nor a fellow townsman, and apart from this faction, the other factions would not accept him.

Choosing a side is not something he can avoid just because he wants to; to remain absolutely neutral, one must be strong enough.

And he is still far from that; joining a faction is, after all, a case of "it is good to enjoy the shade under a big tree."

Lying in the room resting, Chen Mo took that Red Blood Stone out from his Huai again; ever since he obtained this stone, he would take it out from time to time to fiddle with it.

However, until now, he had not discovered any use or abnormality in this stone.

"Hurry up, let's go eat, Foster Father is also here today," Mo Hu knocked on the room door and shouted at the top of his lungs.

Chen Mo had been in frequent contact with him during this period and had also roughly understood the relationship between him and Sun Jiangjun.

Both Mo Hu and Mo Dao were foster sons of Sun Jiangjun, and the reason Mo Hu was called Fifth Brother was because he ranked fifth among the many foster sons.

The few people ahead of him could call him Fifth Younger Brother, but most other Personal Soldiers called him Fifth Brother.

Taking in foster sons in the military camp was a common tactic, mainly to deepen relationships.

Furthermore, only after taking in a foster son would a general feel at ease cultivating them.

A Personal Soldier betraying their master or defecting to another, and a foster son backstabbing their foster father—the scorn received by the two were completely different concepts.

Especially for a Personal Soldier like Mo Hu who did not have much of a relationship with Sun Jiangjun to begin with, if he were to defect to another, no one would say much gossip.

Therefore, before wanting to promote and cultivate them, one would often first take them in as a foster son.

If he himself wanted to gain the heavy trust of Sun Jiangjun in the future, he would likely also have to acknowledge him as a foster father.

"Coming," Chen Mo stood up from the bed with a swoosh and walked toward the outside of the room.

The meal available at noon today was several times more sumptuous than usual; eating meat would definitely be enough to get full, and if there was extra, he might even be able to swipe some back to have as a midnight snack.

As for the point that Sun Jiangjun was also coming today, he was actually not very concerned.

(End of this chapter)