Chapter 283: Refugees
Wanting to survive cleanly in the world is almost impossible.
Yun Ce understood this principle. The Tiger Guards would definitely have to do some things that did not conform to moral standards in the future. At least, he hoped to push this result as far back as possible.
There were many caravans and villages of people who could not dodge or avoid them. There was no way around it, so Yun Ce had no choice but to kidnap them all and take them away. Not only did he kidnap their people, but he also kidnapped their livestock, horse carriages, and grain, so they would not starve to death and to conveniently support the two thousand six hundred Tiger Guards.
At the beginning, this practice had no problems at all. The scattered people and caravans captured by the Tiger Guards still needed to have their hands and feet bound with rope and strung together to walk in the military formation.
This approach worked very well until Yun Ce led the Tiger Guards to travel day and night and exit a thousand li of territory. Liangzhou still had not discovered the Tiger Guards’ whereabouts. For this reason, Yun Ce even specially had the Black Feathered Eagle fly in the sky all day to scout around, confirming there were no enemy traces in all directions before finally relaxing.
Next, Yun Ce focused on sensing his internal breath and completely handed over the Tiger Guards’ marching arrangements to Doggy. He even felt that with Doggy’s wisdom and ability, he could fully handle such a dull march.
Inner observation was an important milestone for a martial artist advancing toward becoming a ten thousand enemies slayer. Yun Ce hoped to break through this pass in the shortest time. Only by breaking through this pass would he have the qualification to face off against an expert like Shen Tingyu, rather than fleeing far away immediately upon hearing of their existence.
After entering the inner observation state, Yun Ce lost perception of the outside world. However, Doggy had stationed five hundred Tiger Guards around him. Even if Shen Tingyu came personally, it would take some time to kill through this five hundred-man military formation, and that time would be enough for Yun Ce to wake from the visualization state.
Yun Ce was very enamored with this visualization state. The blood in his bloodline flowed endlessly like great rivers, his heartbeat struck rhythmically like thunder in the sky, his breathing was like a gale—sometimes violent, sometimes quiet. He could even hear the rupture and rebirth of the cells in his body and feel his breathing nourishing his body.
Whenever Yun Ce was about to wake from this visualization state, Doggy would give him the internal breath essence from the collected thousand-man general, allowing him to have more internal breath to participate in the new visualization state.
1 After accepting the internal breath from three thousand-man generals, Yun Ce’s mind plunged into boundless darkness. This darkness had light, even brightness, but Yun Ce just knew it was darkness. He rushed left and right trying to escape the darkness, only to fall into even darker gloom.
1 When Yun Ce suddenly gasped for air like a drowning man and hurriedly opened his eyes to look around, he discovered he was now in a vast camp.
1 If not for seeing the Tiger Guards guarding around him, Yun Ce might even doubt whether he had truly escaped from that colorful darkness.
1 Doggy came climbing down from a big tree like a huge spider swinging eight tentacles. After landing on the ground, he burrowed headfirst into the Dragon Pearl.
1 “You’re awake? Big harvest?”
1 “Very big. My internal breath grew a lot. It’s just that during visualization, I nearly visualized myself to death.”
1 “I’m really envious that you can touch the new world. Unlike me, I can only help you do some odd jobs.”
1 “No, whenever you start being modest, it’s when you’ve caused trouble. Tell me, while I was doing inner observation, what did you do?”
1 Doggy said doubtfully: “I always resolutely used what you did before as the template and continued doing things. But while doing it, I always felt something was off somewhere.
1 But I calculated countless times and still couldn’t find exactly what was off.
2 Look!”
2 Yun Ce followed Doggy’s tentacles and looked around. He remembered that when he entered the visualization state, it had been no more than ten days at most. Ten days ago, his camp was just a small camp that could hold three thousand people. Now, although he was still in the core of the camp, looking out, the camp in front of him stretched at least four or five li. Not only that, countless women were gathered around a hundred or so large pots in the camp cooking things. There were also groups of children running around in the camp, and teams of men were hammering sharpened thick logs into the ground. It looked like they were actually building a village.
2 “Where did all these people come from?”
2 “All captured to hide our tracks.”
2 “How did you end up capturing so many people?”
2 Doggy said doubtfully: “To hide our tracks, we controlled everyone who saw us. But doing this still had consequences. The Tiger Guards already had many people, and adding these kidnapped people made the marching team even larger, with heavier supply demands.
2 So, the chance of us being discovered became higher, resulting in even more kidnapped people…
2 Therefore, before you entered meditation, our three-thousand-man team quickly expanded into a ten-thousand-man team. After all, many were entire villages or entire villages’ people.
2 The kidnapped people were fearful and scared at first, always thinking of escaping. But no matter how they tried to escape, they could not evade the Black Feathered Eagle and my surveillance. No matter what method they used to escape, they would ultimately be found by the Tiger Guards and brought back.
2 Slowly, those people realized they could not escape and stopped trying.
3 When they discovered we fairly distributed the obtained food to everyone, they became even more unwilling to escape. Not only did they not escape, but when encountering some villages on the road, they even proactively went to persuade them to surrender. In just ten short days, we ended up with a camp of this scale.”
3 Yun Ce sighed, rode the red date horse and wandered around the camp once. He found that the men and women in the camp all had sallow faces, with few robust men. As before, most were the old, weak, women, and children.
3 Seeing this scene, Yun Ce basically understood what was going on.
3 The places the Tiger Guards had passed through this time were basically not good places. People who could settle their families in these remote areas could be imagined—they were all a group who could not survive under the Great Han government officials’ control.
3 When the Chang’an Grand Marshal began fighting with the Emperor, the world was actually already in chaos. Vassal lords and inspectors everywhere began recruiting soldiers and buying horses, especially after Cao Kun unified the Eastern Five Provinces, the inspectors’ recruitment efforts became even greater, and wars became continuous.
3 Under the policy of military priority, materials brought by caravans could not reach the bottom layer. Thus, some common people who could not make a living had no choice but to leave the Great Han’s control, flee to the wasteland, and rely on gathering to seek a way to survive.
3 These people formed villages to protect themselves, but their strength was weak. Not only did they have to cope with the harsh climate that Shehuo could not reach, but they also had to fight with wild beasts on the wasteland, living precarious lives.
3 Food that could fill the belly could be gathered on the wasteland, but wanting fairness was a pipe dream.
3 Fairness is the result of strength. Precisely, Doggy’s database emphasized fairness in food distribution. In an environment where food was obtained fairly, evil people would definitely be suppressed, and most of the weak became beneficiaries.
3 In this team, the two thousand six hundred Tiger Guards were undoubtedly the strongest existence. Many weak ones were willing to depend on them for life. In ten days, a three-thousand-man camp expanding into a ten-thousand-man camp became a very natural thing.
4 More people brought many disadvantages, but the obvious benefits were also there: the two thousand six hundred Tiger Guards mixed in a ten-thousand-man team were no longer so conspicuous, especially after having them remove their armor and wear civilian clothes, they became even less noticeable.
4 After touring the camp once, Yun Ce prepared to accept this fact before his eyes. However, although there were quite a few men here, most of the people were the old, weak, women, and children.
4 Who knew what was up with the Great Han’s men. It seemed they all had Liu Bang’s habit of abandoning children and wives to flee when facing danger. If these people had fled with their families, Yun Ce might have let them go.
4 But these people heartlessly abandoned their wives and children to run away themselves. Since they ran, who would support their wives, children, and elders in the future? In view of this, Yun Ce planned to wait here a bit, until those hidden men let go of their worries and automatically reunited with their wives and children.
4 After just riding the red date horse with five hundred Tiger Guards touring the camp once, everyone in the camp already knew who held the greatest strength and highest power here.
4 When a group of people are together, there will inevitably be some who want to stand out and live good lives.
4 Moreover, these people did not need to be sought; they would appear before Yun Ce one by one on their own.
4 Sure enough, when Yun Ce rode around inspecting the camp again the next morning, he had already discovered signs of management in the camp.
4 When Yun Ce appointed a woman who looked the most diligent, capable, and proactively leading a group of women to cook porridge for everyone as the kitchen steward, that evening, a group of people came before Yun Ce’s camp tent. These people looked either wise, heroic, or shrewd.
4 Yun Ce accepted all comers and directly appointed these people as centurions regardless of their abilities, to divide and manage the more than ten thousand followers in the camp.
5 Having managers was better than chaos. When Yun Ce required them to register people and materials in ledgers, a simple power structure was established.
5 As the camp became more regulated, more men came to the camp looking for their wives and children. It was on the third day that Yun Ce ordered to break camp and head east.
5 There were still too few people at the Yun Clan Villa. Since he could pick up so many people along the way, how could Yun Ce let them go? He no longer specifically avoided villages in the wilderness but led the large group like a whirlwind sweeping through places beyond government officials’ control. Wherever the large camp passed, no human traces remained.
5 Occasionally, an albatross’s huge figure glided across the sky. Several times, the albatross even proactively descended to scrutinize this massive team.
5 When they discovered it was just a group of refugees marching east under the King of Changsha’s banner, they immediately soared into the sky and no longer glanced at these refugees.
