Chapter 1323 - 323: Exhilaration (Part 2)

Chapter 1323: Chapter 323: Exhilaration (Part 2)

And this is a national war, a national war—just from the name you can tell, it’s a battle fought with the strength of the whole country. How could it possibly be stingy with expenses?

Impossible. Even a rotten ship still has three thousand nails, doesn’t it.

Besides, in the Yan of today, the Yan Emperor is pushing hard for the campaign against Chu, and with Ji Chengjue’s talent for stripping land to the bone, there’s no way the logistics would suddenly sputter out right after the war starts.

"To answer Lord Zheng: grain, fodder, and armaments aren’t lacking. What we’re short of is laborers. This summer, several rounds of torrential rain came down on the upper reaches of the Wang River."

"The embankment broke?"

"No, it hasn’t."

"Hasn’t broken, then..."

"It’s, it’s, it’s..." Sun Liang looked like he was about to cry again, his hands clutching Lord Zheng even tighter. "It’s that we have to conscript laborers to haul grain and armaments and also to repair the river banks. My Ying Capital City, my Ying Capital City is in a tough spot..."

"You still have to work on the river banks?"

How could there still be river works this year?

We’re in the middle of a war!

You have to understand, river works are a major affair. The amount of manpower and material they consume is beyond counting. Even in peaceful years, if you want to repair embankments, the Ministry of Revenue has to make a budget one or two years ahead of time. And now they’re attacking Chu here, yet they still want to do river works over there?

Then doesn’t that mean the Fifth Prince is actually doing real work over there?

Sun Liang nodded heavily.

"So that’s why I came specially to ask His Highness to let us slow down a bit on the transport of grain and armaments."

"How can a matter of war and nation be delayed?"

Lord Zheng understood that what Sun Liang meant by "slow down" wasn’t "stop sending," but that because the rear has too few laborers, the schedule of transport will inevitably slip.

So he came ahead of time to ask Prince Jingnan to loosen up a little, because once he missed the deadline, his head wouldn’t stay on his shoulders.

But clearly, he didn’t succeed.

"Well, just do what you can."

Lord Zheng himself didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. Anyway, let him and his father figure something out.

"Sigh, Lord Zheng, this subordinate will take his leave. I still have to get back later."

"Mm, be careful on the way."

Sun Liang left.

In Lord Zheng’s heart, suspicion started to grow: river works?

What kind of crazy trick is the court playing?

The quartermaster went in, then came back out again very quickly.

Lord Zheng took a deep breath and, after his personal guard lifted the curtain, walked into the King’s Tent.

Inside the tent, Tian Wujing sat in the commander’s seat, holding a memorandum in his hand, reading.

A main general is definitely not someone who holds a war council, issues orders, and then has nothing to do. With hundreds of thousands of troops on the front, plus laborers and so on, there are countless matters that require the main general to make decisions.

And once forces from different regions are combined, the problems they face increase. If it were all Prince Jingnan’s own army, things would be a bit easier, but only a bit.

Even someone as bluff and carefree as Li Fusheng, once he’s back in his own camp, has endless tasks to handle. If he wanted to take it easy, he could, but no one dares.

Only Lord Zheng gets to have ample free time to sulk.

For one reason: his "devils" are all extremely capable; each can command on his own, and he doesn’t have to worry about them hollowing him out or rebelling against him. That’s a blessing, something others can’t envy into existence.

"This subordinate pays respects to Your Highness."

Lord Zheng saluted Prince Jingnan.

Tian Wujing set down the memorandum, raised his head, and glanced at Zheng Fan kneeling on one knee below, saying:

"With war about to begin, what are you doing here?"

"To answer Your Highness: this subordinate just rode out to the south for a turn."

Tian Wujing nodded, knowing he’d gone to scout the enemy. It’s dangerous, yes, but it’s also an indispensable step for a commander.

Scouts may be able to bring back information, but when it comes to actually deploying troops, decisions still have to be made by the main general.

Even he, Tian Wujing—when he passed through Qian and Kai into Jin back then, that march route was one he’d personally walked beforehand.

"The troops at Yangshan Village are Baipu rattan-armor soldiers from Long Creek County of the Chu State. They’ve spent years along the edge of the great marsh suppressing bandits. Their weapons and armor may not be as fierce as the Blue Luan Army’s, but their toughness is indeed quite good.

After you went to take a look, did you discover anything?"

"Discover, not really. It’s just that I myself almost got killed by a stone hurled from the catapults in that Chu army fort. I’m fine, but my warhorse got smashed into mince."

On hearing this,

Tian Wujing’s gaze suddenly hardened.

The thing is, Lord Zheng wasn’t trying to show how much he’d suffered. He’d simply had a brush with death, and upon seeing Prince Jingnan, he wanted to talk to him about it—just talk, nothing more.

"You’ve always been hard to kill."

Lord Zheng raised his head and smiled.

"But you’ve got one problem. Other people’s laziness might be self-preservation, might be self-debasement. Your laziness, though, runs from the inside out.

Think on it: you crawled out of the piles of corpses in the Beifeng Prefecture laborer camp and made it all the way to where you are now. It wasn’t easy. And now you’ve gone lazy—doesn’t that seem a waste?"

"Your Highness, it’s precisely because it was so hard back then, so bitter. It took grinding and struggling to claw my way to where I am now. If I don’t slack off a bit, don’t relax a bit, don’t indulge in some ease, wouldn’t that mean all the hardship and struggle before had no meaning?"

Inside the King’s Tent,

The atmosphere

froze.

Tian Wujing said nothing,

and Zheng Fan said nothing.

Another man would never say something like that to Prince Jingnan’s face.

Prince Jingnan’s regard, Prince Jingnan’s support—they’re plain for all to see, solid and real, something others couldn’t envy into their own lives even if they tried.

But,

If it were someone else, he likely wouldn’t receive this kind of treatment at all, so there’d be no such hypothetical, no such possibility.

In the army,

men eager for merit,

are as common as the sisters in the red tents eager to pick up work—you can point at random and find one.