Chapter 348: A Scheme Within a Scheme
“Woo-woo-woo…”
“Woo-woo-woo…”
The wind outside was like a child crying, or perhaps a female ghost chanting.
The kind of crying that sounds truly miserable.
It made one’s skin crawl.
The soldiers in the camp should have felt scared and fearful upon hearing this sound.
But at this moment, they couldn’t care less.
They were listening to a story.
Listening to a young soldier recount the hardships of the past and the sweetness of the present.
The story was very ordinary; it was about overthrowing the local landlord in the village, where everyone received grain and land, everyone farmed together, trained together, and stepped up when needed, but because he had fields and a wife at home, he was willing to fight…
This style of storytelling was something Jiang Feng had started doing since he began leading the troops.
He had been telling them all the way from the capital to the border.
He selected soldiers trained in Jingzhou to tell these stories, while simultaneously giving private lessons to the sharper young men in the new units.
In a world where the average person had no opportunity to read or write, where knowledge was monopolized by the upper classes, and where knowledge was as precious as private property, passed down only to one’s own family.
Jiang Feng had established a systematic theoretical education.
He initiated an ideological storm, an ideological propaganda campaign, with effects comparable to a pyramid scheme.
It struck directly at the heart and soul, making people tremble from head to toe.
Everyone felt as if they were injected with adrenaline every day, walking with increasing vigor.
The further they walked, the more excited they became.
Along the way, he reorganized the troops and cleansed their thoughts.
When they arrived at the border, Old General Meng was shocked.
Since when did their country have such an army? Had they been drugged?
They all looked abnormally excited and agitated.
In the past, those who came to the border had to have two or three deserters executed to deter the others before they would stay.
There was no other way.
It was too bitter here.
If a few people weren’t killed, morale would disintegrate before the fighting even started.
It was cruel, but normal.
Because it had always been this way.
Only through war, by facing life and death together, fighting side by side, luckily surviving, and being tempered time and time again, could they become steadfast soldiers, comrades-in-arms, and continuously grow stronger.
Death was the most real and effective training.
To forge a powerful army, the attrition rate had to be two-thirds.
If an army of ten thousand went out, and three thousand remained, those three thousand could truly be called soldiers.
Old General Meng had come up this way himself.
He had also experienced countless life-and-death situations.
Only then did he have the army he had now.
But the army in front of him hadn’t even started fighting yet.
Why did they have such crazy fighting spirit? They were like the nobles in the city who took the powder, feeling neither pain nor cold.
But the powder was extremely expensive, its price exceeding that of gold; it was impossible to use on a large scale.
Secondly, people who took the powder were ruined; they could only use it once or twice, and afterwards, they had to keep using it, otherwise they would be no different from lunatics, and might even suffer from incontinence.
The nobles were too bored, addicted to the momentary clarity of mind that the powder brought, hoping to write poems that would be passed down through the ages, and addicted to the strong body and powerful heartbeat they felt while on the powder, oblivious to fatigue, thinking they had taken a miraculous elixir, when in reality they were just overdrawing their lives.
The army before him, every single one of them looked as if they had taken the powder, their eyes fanatical and excited.
Not a hint of lethargy could be seen.
They ate cold, hard coarse steamed buns with gusto, and not one person complained.
Old General Meng was a bit panicked.
Was this normal?
This was not normal.
It went against human nature.
To be thousands of miles from home, fighting an unknown enemy, risking their lives at any moment, yet still so excited, so firm, and so determined to charge forward.
Had these people been bewitched?
Old General Meng asked his grandson what was going on.
Meng Shaoxia had watched it all the way and accompanied them the whole time; it was a long story.
He was responsible for leading the troops, while Jiang Feng was responsible for ideological work.
At first, the ideological work was not easy to do either.
But after Jiang Feng demonstrated his formidable martial prowess and told everyone that ideological work could also kill people, everyone became much more obedient.
Old General Meng had previously told his grandson to go away to avoid trouble, to stay away from the matters of those princes, but now, he had gone straight into the royal family to avoid trouble.
The person his grandson married was actually Princess Huiyun’s granddaughter; well, they were one family now.
Old General Meng met Jiang Feng.
Through correspondence with his grandson, he was actually quite familiar with Jiang Feng.
But upon meeting him in person, he found it to be different.
Shaoxia said his martial arts were incredibly high; even though she felt she had made rapid progress, she always lost whenever she sparred with her brother-in-law.
And she suspected that the person with the highest martial arts in the family was her mother-in-law.
This might be a family trait, and Old General Meng was curious about the background of his in-laws.
As it turned out, looking at Jiang Feng, he looked quite honest and steady, except for a scar on his forehead that made him look a bit different.
Meng Shaoxia told Old General Meng how they had led the troops and marched along the way, which left Old General Meng stunned; he didn’t sleep all night, feeling that he was old.
In the past, he always felt that the world would fall apart without him.
Now, he felt both lost and relieved, because he realized that in the future, it might not matter if he wasn’t there; he wasn’t that important. He was relieved because their country possessed a powerful military force again, and its future development would be even more prosperous.
The border war situation was very good.
Although there were casualties.
And they also discovered there were traitors.
But the spread of ideology was much faster than the collusion of traitors.
The enemy even suspected whether the other side was a trap.
Was someone deliberately sending them messages to make them jump into a trap? How could there be a group of soldiers who weren’t afraid of death, who were so excited to kill them, and who looked thrilled even when injured?
They had originally intended to take advantage of the internal strife in the Chu Kingdom to reap the benefits.
But unexpectedly, now it felt like they had been tricked.
Tricked into coming in to be killed.
Those soldiers feared no death, and before dying, they shouted:
“Xiahe Cuiwu, I die without regrets!”
“Lishan He’er, we shall fight again in the next life!”
“The Wang clan of the capital shall not be disgraced!”
They charged forward one by one to kill, with chaotic slogans shouted with immense ferocity.
This time, although Prime Minister Lu was not there, various accidents still occurred with the supply of grain.
Fortunately, Censor He put in a lot of effort here, and the He family had been prepared for a long time.
The war situation was excellent.
However, according to the prior agreement.
The letters sent to the capital to report the news were still becoming more and more dire, one after another.
And the channels for sending such letters had actually been controlled by others.
One by one, the dire letters of appeal were swapped for letters reporting good news.
Seventh Prince entered the palace to visit the Emperor.
Shortly after, 9th Prince also arrived.
Then, the good news from the border arrived.
Great joy, a great victory!
The Emperor on his sickbed had a rosy complexion, as if injected with vitality, and he looked at the good news greedily.
Eunuch Yan returned and took over the position of Eunuch Duan.
He did not mind at all the musty smell emanating from the Emperor’s aged body.
The two princes, two great filial sons, also guarded the bedside.
Both of them smelled this strange odor.
It was a stench.
It was impossible for there to be unsanitary corners in the imperial palace.
The floors were polished spotless.
This stench was emanating from their father, the Emperor.
The smell of an old man.
The smell of someone on the verge of death, the smell of rotting wood.
“Good, very good!”
“Cough, cough, cough, cough.”
The Emperor coughed, his whole body trembling.
Eunuch Yan immediately handed over a handkerchief.
With one hand, he patted the Emperor’s back, and with the other, he took the handkerchief, wrapped up the Emperor’s phlegm, and tucked it back onto his person.
Seventh Prince and 9th Prince both saw the crimson on the handkerchief and saw their father shaking and swaying.
9th Prince’s eyes were red, and Seventh Prince was directly tearing up.
“Father.”
“Father.”
The Emperor reached out and grabbed the hands of both children, one in each hand.
The Emperor reached out and grabbed Seventh Prince’s hand; his son’s hand was strong, but not warm—it was ice cold.
9th Prince’s hand was warm.
“Tomorrow is the New Year. I am afraid I cannot hold on for much longer. Tomorrow, we shall hold a family banquet. Bring all your children so that I may see them; then I shall have no regrets. I have an important matter to announce.”
The Emperor’s hand kept trembling while he spoke.
9th Prince was stunned.
But Seventh Prince wailed loudly.
“Father, your son does not want to hear this, your son does not want this. Your son has never had any ambition; I only wish for Father to look at me more. I want nothing else, I only hope to be by Father’s side always.”
On the antique shelf in the main hall, the flower that had been watered to death earlier had been replaced with a new one, bright and gorgeous, quietly watching this scene unfold.
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