Chapter 30: Solid Foundations
In the main hall of Yongji Pass, Wu Fei took some time to hold a meeting with the Wu Family Elders who had rushed over from the rear. After all, they were family, and in this current state where unity was needed, he had to play the grandson for the sake of unity.
After seeing the orderliness at the checkpoint, the Wu Family Elders said to Wu Fei, “Sparrow, you’ve made something of yourself, but…” Before he could finish the second half of his sentence, Wu Fei said, “Uncle Grandfather, I’ve always taken you as my example. I’ve heard since I was young that back then you led the troop, backed against the hillside, and took over three hundred heads! You are the Wu Family’s first iron armor brave! Now that you’re here, victory has arrived.”
Then Wu Fei looked toward Zhao Tu. Zhao Tu was stunned for a moment, then under Wu Fei’s lead in clapping, he hurriedly clapped and shouted, “Elder, you are the Wu Family Army’s first iron armor brave!” “First iron armor brave!” The entire main hall’s pre-arranged cheering team that Wu Fei had set up joined in together, lifting up the clan’s old uncle high. Even the dragon horses lined up outside the city wall began to join in the cheering, neighing proudly toward the old general together.
This supportive atmosphere was just missing a song of “If you come in the three winters, return me a city of white snow.”
Under Wu Fei’s such care, this Wu Family old uncle also seemed to fall into memories of his past glorious years, forgetting the purpose of coming to persuade Wu Fei, namely: Currently, steadily hold the checkpoint, and wait until Wu Hanluan stabilizes the situation in the north, then send you (Wu Xiao Que) some people to back you up, and then move the saber against the southern barbarians—wouldn’t that be great?
In the end, this Wu Family elder could only quietly pull Wu Fei aside and ask, “Give old uncle the real scoop: do you actually have a grasp on this.”
Wu Fei tightly gripped old uncle’s hand full of old calluses, scars, and wrinkles, and said very solemnly, “It will definitely succeed, easily so.”
For those who couldn’t help him at the moment but could cause trouble, whether sincere or false, all Wu Fei could do was soothe them.…
After receiving the old uncle, he left the old uncle there, and at the same time gave bribe money to the accompanying family youths, letting them bring word back to the family that the old uncle staying here was to watch the southern border enemies be crushed like clay chickens and tile dogs. If there was still doubt, that would be doubting the family elder.
In other words, the family side wanted to send the old senior to give “Sparrow” earnest guidance, but now Sparrow was using the Son of Heaven to command the vassal lords.
…Victory is not guaranteed by generals, but by everyone united…
With the latest intelligence from the scouts, they had already seen across the southern Ling River over ten thousand demons and monsters noisily swarming north like holding a massive rally. Chaos and infighting along the way.
Wu Fei had high transparency on the battlefield, and even when estimating victory in various simulations, he still left a backup plan for possible defeat.
That is, Wu Fei began recruiting reserves.
Regardless of reserves, Wu Fei now had only one thousand three hundred fifty regular troops at Yongji Pass, and these one thousand three hundred fifty were all elite forces capable of exiting closed-door cultivation for surprise attacks; just squatting on Yongji Pass to hold it was too much of a waste.
Of course, Wu Fei wouldn’t send all one thousand three hundred fifty out of the city. Because the larger the scale, the greater the logistics supply pressure; a troop of three hundred just needed to carry food and grass with them, but over one thousand required special military supplies wagons for transport, had to consider if the roads could let those big wagons through, and had to send soldiers to guard those slow-moving targets. Thus, rotate batches of these troops to strike.
Now about the reserves: the Wu Family Army’s reserves were the good sons of those in the Wu Family’s fiefdoms. The imperial court gave the Wu Family a fixed amount of fiefdom, but in reality, Da Yao had basically been at peace for the past century, and the Wu Family, like other noble houses, had hidden households. If Wu Hanluan were here, he could pull two thousand able-bodied youths for Wu Fei as a safety net, but now Wu Fei had no way to mobilize them.
But fortunately, Wu Fei had another force, namely the escort agencies originally from Yongji Pass to Zhu Prefecture along that line.
The merchants now lacked confidence, but this escort force was still stable; after all, escort agencies relied on their reputation to eat, and risk? As long as there was money, it was fine. Moreover, Wu Fei had always maintained control over those five escort agencies by mixing in military camp elders and a reward money system.
After taking shares in those merchants, Wu Fei set personnel at important checkpoints to inspect goods, then issued “post tokens” to the escorts. And at the checkpoints, escorts holding post tokens could get a portion of road money at the endpoint by using the post token merchant stamp.
This post token first allowed escorts to prefer this safe road, and tallied the total goods transported by merchants; second, if the post tokens in the escorts’ hands lacked a certain stamp somewhere! Wu Fei would know the goods had bypassed here! Merchants might have sold items midway without reporting to him.
Wu Fei: Since you’re doing that, I’ll dispatch military strength to create some “banditry” to let the merchants know that this sneaky business of avoiding me is provoking me. I’ll create some “high risk” for you.
On the trade route side, Wu Fei had always been doing monopoly business. And he was not stingy with the escorts either.
Of course, now for some escorts, it would be even better if they could share some military merit. Wu Fei now gave these escorts a chance to take heads, though it didn’t conform to the imperial court system, but now as long as they won this war, Wu Fei had the ability to replace the imperial court system and fulfill the promise.
The imperial court’s legal rank system could exempt taxes and corvee, and reduce penalties for crimes like killing; currently in the places scraped along the way by the Wu Family Army’s march, Wu Fei could talk to the local government offices.
Wu Fei had always been building a “military interest group”; this was no longer the various house troops maintained by “military pay” interests as set by the imperial court nobles, but shaping relative special interests for military personnel from various angles to maintain the group’s cohesion.
…Some truths must be spoken with a knife…
As Wu Fei’s people went to the various escort agencies, the various escort agencies pooled three thousand men for Wu Fei together; these three thousand Wu Fei did not pull to the frontline, but directly stationed them at various paths north of Yongji Pass.
That is, two days after Wu Fei’s meeting with Wu Family Uncle Grandfather, Wu Fei hosted the various merchants with plain water banquet. These merchants were all very awkward upon seeing Wu Fei, because their little scheme of quietly smuggling people and supplies out of Yongji Pass to avoid unnecessary losses had been exposed.
In the merchants’ eyes, at the various checkpoints, Wu Fei somehow rounded up a large batch of people and intercepted their prepared materials and people for stepping back one step.
Merchants are like this: thinking Yongji Pass is unsafe and might use scorched earth defense, leading to their losses, without considering that if everyone follows suit, when the skin is gone, where will the hair attach? In the long run, once the checkpoint really falls, the people and goods they previously plotted to move out of the pass will all be plundered. Of course, they all had confidence in Wu Fei, believing Yongji Pass couldn’t possibly fall, at most it would be beaten badly with more deaths.
In the words of these self-proclaimed scholarly merchants: they were just gentlemen not standing under a dangerous wall.
But Wu Fei was very unhappy with these merchants’ “gentlemanly way.” Wu Fei thought to himself: You’re all gentlemen, so am I the fool?
Wu Fei went through the list one by one for allocation, and announced the news that “there are too many people in the group, need to streamline a bit,” so under the plain water banquet, the merchants all “generously contributed”; since the retreating little scheme was exposed, might as well go further and bet! Because now with channels becoming more stable, everyone felt there were too many eating at the table, time to kick a few off!
The merchants’ attitude turned to: Should’ve said earlier that you, old man, were willing to fairly and justly open the table; we’d definitely bet together with you.
In just three short days, large amounts of supplies were transported to Yongji Pass, and the merchants also sent fully five thousand civilian laborers; these civilian laborers were originally slaves farming in the surroundings, now all rounded up.
…Everything Wu Fei scraped together, after rounding up, would ultimately fall to those daring to fight…
On the city pass, Wen Si shook off the newly issued vine armor on himself; upon arriving at the checkpoint, his slave status was directly canceled. As for the tattoo mark on his forehead, it was temporarily not removed, but promised to be directly eradicated after this battle.
At the same time, strict military law and curfew were set in the large city; if violated, they would face more severe killing than other non-slave status, namely in these two days some original slave status soldiers violated curfew and had their ears cut off.
Today it was Wen Si’s turn to stand guard on Yongji Pass; bored alone, he poked his body out from the parapet to look around, and after looking retracted his body, loaded the crossbow, raised it to aim from the parapet. His attention focused on the mountain sight for a good while; aiming and aiming, his hand suddenly itched, then he quickly pulled the trigger, immediately looking toward the direction of the arrow.
“Where’d it hit?” Someone behind asked.
Wen Si patted his leg: “That shaking dust smoke, saw it—”
He suddenly paused, abruptly turned around, and saw it was Wu Fei.
He hurriedly went soft against the wall, thinking if he had violated military regulations. According to rules, violating military regs on the city wall meant having the nose cut off.
But his mind turned very fast, saying, “Marshal! I wanted to test how far the crossbow could shoot when the enemy attacks!”
Wu Fei glanced at him and asked, “Is that so.”
Wen Si was sweating all over, hurriedly nodding: “Yes.”
Wu Fei turned and whistled; a captain ran over. Xuan Chong asked, “Your troop hasn’t arranged zeroing training?”
The captain looked at the arrowhead: “Not yet,” then he looked at Wen Si’s quiver, “Each city wall patrol soldier only has five arrows, this one wasn’t issued by us.” Then he picked out the arrow from Wen Si’s quiver; clearly the arrow fletching was pasted with rice, belonging to secondary modification.
Wu Fei looked at the arrow, the atmosphere heavy.
Wu Fei said: “Transport a batch of arrows up, and have the city wall soldiers practice shooting every afternoon. In addition,”
Wu Fei pointed at Wen Si again. Wen Si felt his heart was about to jump out of his throat from this finger, but what he heard next was, “Promote him to squad leader, and have him responsible for recording the accuracy of each troop’s shooting practice.” Wen Si let out a sigh of relief amid great joy and sorrow, preparing to thank the general. However, Wu Fei’s words were not finished: “After duty, collect five planks from the drill ground!” Wen Si paused; this punishment was much better than corporal punishment. Wu Fei then explained: “These five planks are for punishing you for not reporting your idea and acting on your own.”
At this time, the military law officer who ran over said: “General, as a sentry, acting without authorization, according to military order, this calls for decapitation.” — The military law officer was not trying to harm Wen Si, but feared that Wu Fei would deeply investigate whether military law had been properly announced, so he immediately indicated that he was on duty.
Wu Fei said: “He just discovered a suspected target outside the city, so he shot an arrow! The mistake was not raising the flag to report after shooting.” — With Wu Fei finding an excuse for Wen Si, the matter was settled.
In the afternoon, at the bustling gathering place on the drill ground, Wen Si cheerfully lay down, then bit on a stick, and performed taking military cudgel blows in front of everyone.
……
As for why he let Wen Si off lightly!
A person who could immediately organize his eloquence in a critical moment, rationalize his actions with reason, and under the fear of military law punishment, come up with a relatively reasonable defense based on his actions and explain it clearly and logically, could use his brain in desperate situations on the battlefield—such a person is talent!
There are many critical moments in the army where one must think flexibly while fighting for life. So why not let him off lightly?
Military law is to constrain people to fight wars; as long as they are willing to fight, it can be a bit lenient toward soldiers with ideas.
After taking a beating with planks, Wen Si began every afternoon leading teams to inspect whether the soldiers on each city wall were shooting toward the outside on time, testing everyone’s shooting accuracy on the lines outside the city, then compiling statistics and reporting them. He did this matter very diligently.
While colleagues mocked him for having dog shit luck, fooling the young marshal and saving his life, he cheerfully said: “The general was appreciating me,” then lifted his buttocks to show off: “Didn’t I take the planks?” The crowd asked: “Then what was it?” Wen Si boasted: “That was the young marshal reminding me that in this battle, I need to perform well to rise five levels.” After he spoke, the crowd burst into laughter: “Keep blowing!” Clearly, they didn’t believe it at all.
…Meanwhile on the other side…
Ang Ri watched the troops crossing the river and the distant Da Yao dragon horse scouts retreating, staring at the “Wu” flag among their cavalry. Such cavalry troops in the Haotian Realm were also elite “brave cavalry.” Hmm, in the Haotian Realm, cavalry are divided into three grades: the lowest is peasant cavalry, the middle is “brave cavalry,” and the upper is “elite cavalry.”
Ang Ri patted Tai Yue Luan and muttered to himself: “Is it worth it for my clan to fight the Yao People to this extent?”
At this time, below him, chaos broke out in the troops. The clawed people’s troops and the horned people’s troops seemed to be fighting over snatching a river-crossing straw rope. Why fight over a straw rope? Because after crossing the river to set up camp, they needed twigs to build the framework, and the framework required rope to bind it. The Southern Border was poor, with very tight resources. So they had to fight, had to compete.
After a Li Huo Sect disciple arrived, he raised his fan and fanned it slightly. Fire patterns appeared on the heads of all the troublemakers. Amid the bursting firelight, red firelight appeared on a horned person’s skin. This firelight “ate” like worms, or rather burned away all the muscle. After a few breaths, the horned person shriveled up, and finally, after the skin burst, it revealed the charred bones inside.
The Li Huo Sect disciple glanced at these kneeling Southern Border tribes, spat a mouthful of saliva, and sneered: “Vile beasts.”
Ang Ri, riding on Tai Yue Luan, watched all this, gradually feeling chill in his heart. He had always known that the medicine from Li Huo Sect he gave his clawed people had side effects, but it was actually life-and-death control in others’ hands.
Ang Ri quietly tightened the bag of “ember medicine” inside; it could not be used unless absolutely necessary, and he must find a substitute.
Twenty kilometers away, a big eye was watching Ang Ri.
Yao San Gu, who had unfolded wind-thunder wings to exit closed-door cultivation for gathering medicine, was now watching this Ang Ri with the eyeball in her brow. San Gu drawled: “Oh, confusion, not knowing how to respond, and begging for a new solution!” (Her corners of the mouth were already upturned.)
