Chapter 128: Both Individuals And Groups Have Breaking Points
Yun Ce took advantage of Zhang Min not paying attention, lifted his hand to flip up her skirt, and sure enough, just as E Ji said, there was indeed a one-foot-long scar on this woman’s lower abdomen, and her thighs were covered in scars, shocking to behold.
Zhang Min showed no displeasure and instead said very calmly: “Last time you saw my chest, this time you saw my lower body. Isn’t it quite off-putting?”
Yun Ce nodded and said: “This is an ugliness that even the black night can’t hide.”
Upon hearing Yun Ce’s words, Zhang Min’s eyes immediately turned red, but just before the veins on the back of her hand bulged, Yun Ce spoke again.
“Luckily, I can treat it. Otherwise, with your body like a ragged rag doll, who would want you?”
She had already gathered all her strength throughout her body, ready to explode, but Zhang Min suddenly heard words like heavenly music, her body instantly went limp, and she leaned into Yun Ce’s arms, saying: “Weren’t you going to do that and kill me? Once it’s cured, you can make your move.”
Yun Ce pulled a bottle of crystal-clear liquid from his sleeve, dangled it in front of Zhang Min, and said: “Do you know what this is?”
Zhang Min greedily stared at the little bottle and reached out: “Give it to me.”
Yun Ce smiled: “Of course it’s for you to use, but first I have to tell you, your injuries are very serious—extremely serious, in fact.
You always say these are just superficial wounds, but whether they’ve damaged your internal organs, you know better than anyone. Your five organs aren’t even in their proper positions anymore; they need to be reset. And for the external injuries you care about most, to heal them completely will take at least five treatments or more. The most dangerous part is reopening the wounds on your body.
1 So, you’ll need to be knocked out to continue the treatment. I hope you understand that.”
1 Zhang Min nervously gripped the bedsheets and after a long while said: “So mysterious that even I can’t see it?”
1 Yun Ce nodded: “You could say that.”
1 “I’ll only face you—you’ll be the one treating me?”
1 “No, you’ll also have to face E Ji. I can’t manage it alone.”
1 “No, just you alone. Even if it’s slower, even if it hurts more, even if the effect isn’t as good as with two people, I only want you alone.”
1 Seeing Zhang Min’s determination, Yun Ce couldn’t help but reach out and pat her head: “You and your damned warrior sense of honor. But let’s be clear: you’ll need to bathe first, then lie naked on the bed. Being seen and touched all over by me is inevitable—you need to be mentally prepared.”
1 Zhang Min snorted with laughter: “With this broken body of mine, if you can bring yourself to do it, then come on.”
1 Seeing Yun Ce put the little bottle away again, Zhang Min couldn’t help but say: “Can you give it to me?”
1 Yun Ce smiled: “You know what it is, so you want it.”
2 Zhang Min bit her lips: “With your habit of plucking feathers from every goose that flies by, this thing must come from Peng Zeng.”
2 Hearing this, Yun Ce turned and walked out, stopping at the door to say fiercely: “Wash clean tonight, strip naked, and wait for me.”
2 Zhang Min laughed very happily.
2 “Young Master, Young Master, how did that woman throw herself into your arms? Did she beg you not to abandon her just because her body is covered in knife scars?”
2 No sooner had he returned than E Ji eagerly asked.
2 “No, when I went in, she was eating cake.”
2 “That’s not right, I heard her crying.”
2 “That was just dry howling.”
2 E Ji angrily waved her fist: “That cunning woman.”
2 Chang’an City was right in front of them, but Yun Ce and E Ji had no mood to go in and stroll around. Mainly because Zhang Min said there wasn’t much fun or worth seeing inside—just countless government departments, not to mention that the residents were all Great Han nobles and high officials, with hardly any wealthy gentry.
3 People like that entertained themselves at home and never went out. All their household needs were supplied by their own caravans, so Chang’an City was a place full of rules, troubles, and cold human relations. Even the lechers who went to ogle pretty girls headed to Anqing Town, not Chang’an City.
3 At E Ji’s strong insistence, Yun Ce took them to the slave camp to check on their property.
3 Yun Ce knew that treating people as property was the most inhumane practice in this world, even contrary to his moral view.
3 But in the Great Han, it was the most normal thing possible. If Yun Ce tried to use slave-liberation tactics, he’d only be looked down on by even more Han people.
3 There were many ways for a person to become a slave, the main one being becoming a slave after committing a crime. The Han Law here inherited the Qin laws and didn’t use Liu Bang’s ‘Three Chapters of Law’ from before he entered Chang’an. Perhaps Huo Qubing also felt that just ‘kill the murderer, punish the injurer and thief accordingly’ wasn’t enough to govern the Great Han well, so he used the Qin laws from his memory.
3 Under the Qin laws that heavily punished even mistakes like dumping furnace ash incorrectly, the abundance of convicted prisoners in the Great Han became a characteristic.
3 Yun Ce already knew that in the Great Han, diligence couldn’t make you rich, and wisdom couldn’t make you rich either. The only way for a commoner to get rich was to earn military merit.
3 And if a person lost even the status of commoner or good family child, he and his descendants would likely fall into darkness forever—of course, assuming he had descendants. As convicted prisoners, they wouldn’t even get the chance to risk their lives for military merit.
3 Because military merit earned by slaves belonged to the slave owner.
3 Under this not-so-benevolent legal system, the best outcome for convicted prisoners was to become retainers of some noble, just like the so-called ‘partisan troops’ that appeared later in Han and Jin.
4 The rebellion model of the partisan troops era differed from previous peasant uprisings; their strength was too weak. Once they turned into roving bandits, their ultimate fate was certain failure.
4 Only uprisings led by great nobles or powerful clans could overthrow the old dynasty and establish a new one.
4 When Yun Ce and E Ji arrived at the slave camp, Feng An, Liang Kun, and Steward Qiu had already thoroughly purged the people here and given them new clothes.
4 Feng An even generously allowed these people to wash their old clothes clean and keep them as their only property.
4 People, once washed clean and fed full, started looking human. Now, they were on a flat open ground, watching the contention between ten-man leaders and centurions.
4 But the tradable slaves had no experts!
4 The person responsible for this situation was Huo Qubing. Because Wei Qing came from horse slave origins, during his lifetime he was very keen on digging talent from slaves and established a system allowing talented slaves, every Twilight Month, to showcase their abilities to the government officials and gain a chance to shed their slave status.
4 This method of talent discovery was used for a thousand years and gradually became the go-to way for slave owners to find their own talent. After Huo Qubing was carried into his tomb, this law gradually faded away and was ultimately forgotten.
4 From then on, the darkest era for slaves descended.
4 This time, Yun Ce selecting ten-man leaders, centurions, and even commanders of a thousand from the slaves was already a tremendous grace for them.
5 Therefore, the selection field was exceptionally bloody. Those who started fighting each other with wooden sticks and bamboo poles as weapons switched, after the sticks and poles broke, to using any combat-capable part of their bodies: teeth, fists, claws, nails, elbows, knees, legs and feet—nothing was off-limits.
5 E Ji glanced at the fighting arena and then lowered the curtain that could cover her face.
5 After Zhang Min saw it, she said to Yun Ce: “Without armor or sharp weapons, these people couldn’t even beat wild beasts.”
5 This involuntarily reminded Yun Ce of how Miss Hong, in the battle at Shui zhu, used wooden sticks and bamboo poles to make those well-equipped armies piss themselves and flee in panic.
5 By Zhang Min’s logic, Miss Hong would have died long ago, and there wouldn’t be today’s rebel giant spanning Chuyun and Daizhou Prefecture.
5 Yun Ce hoped these people would compete well and work well later, to break the mental barriers he had long formed and give them a good outcome.
5 “Doggy, can these people really be reformed?” Seeing the spectators outside the field looking like madmen, drooling at the mouth in frenzy, Yun Ce couldn’t help but ask Doggy for advice.
5 Doggy said indifferently: “Your starting point is much higher than your old ancestor’s instructor. The people you face are slaves, a group of true proletarians. Their quality may not be high, but their thoughts are very unified—not like the motley crew of all classes the instructor faced.
5 Slaves’ demands are relatively simple: just food and clothing. Back in the day, the crowds the instructor faced were far too complex, with poor peasants, middle peasants, and rich peasants having different demands, and handicraft owners, small merchants, traveling merchants, ordinary merchants, and big merchants having varying appeals.
5 Unifying the demands of so many types of people, finding common ground, then launching a revolution and seeking success amid failures—that’s the hard part.
6 Believe it or not, if the instructor himself had come instead of you half-useless guy, he would’ve already built a base area and started tangling with the government officials.”
6 “People can’t compare to gods.” Yun Ce thought for a long time before finally reaching this conclusion.
6 “You’re even more godlike than the instructor right now. The instructor was at least flesh and blood, but you’re awesome—casually conjuring a dragon claw, killing gods who block gods, Buddhas who block Buddhas.”
6 Yun Ce took a deep breath: “Take it slow. Times are different, methods are different—that’s one of the things the instructor taught us.”
6 “No need to make excuses for your incompetence.”
6 “This isn’t an excuse; it’s fact.”
6 “Can’t facts be changed? Just like the scar on Zhang Min’s belly, the scars on her thighs, the scar on her chest, the scar on her arm—none of those scars are real.
6 Believe it or not, with Peng Zeng Brand Rapid Growth Liquid, I have over ninety percent confidence in smoothing out the scars on her body.”
6 Yun Ce fell silent.
6 “Believe it or not?” Doggy pressed.
7 Seeing the crowd ahead start cheering, with a tall, thin man being carried on shoulders in a parade, Yun Ce knew the first commander of a thousand had been selected—he had single-handedly taken down ten centurions.
7 “I believe it, I definitely believe it.”
7 “Huh, why aren’t you arguing back?”
7 Yun Ce pointed at the cheering crowd and smiled: “I’ve realized their sense of honor is extremely strong. Perhaps because they’ve been stripped of all honor, any honor they can grasp now is a new path to being alive for them.”
