Chapter 50: The Realm Nears Chaos, a Wise Sovereign Shines Like Light

Li Fu and Zhang Yu returned at dusk, and as soon as they arrived, they had young Master Yun brought out from the inner courtyard.

Zhang Yu was of an impatient nature and immediately said with excitement, "Master Yun, you have no idea! I was so nervous playing my part for the first time, terrified that my acting might be flawed and they would see right through it. But Master Li is truly remarkable—as expected of a scholar, he performed as if it were all completely real!"

Master Yun gave Zhang Yu a peculiar look.

Was this supposed to be praise for his father?

Wasn't this basically saying that his father was a scholar, and scholars were actually thick-skinned and dark-hearted, wrapping their deceptions in a veneer of culture?

However, Li Fu did not argue with him. Instead, he said, "Master Yun, those two spies should be trying to find a way out of the city now, and it is time for us to get ready to reap the fisherman's profit."

Li Fu and Master Yun agreed to set off early tomorrow morning, taking the local militia with them.

Long County was a small county. Although there was a county lieutenant specifically in charge of military affairs, it actually lacked regular troops from the state of Liang. However, this did not mean the lieutenant had no men under his command; he had three shifts of bailiffs and runners at his disposal.

The first group consisted of the lictors, who were responsible for protecting the county magistrate and assisting in bringing prisoners up or down during Li Fu's trials. The second group consisted of the beat constables, whose primary role was to capture criminals outside and handle interrogations when cases occurred.

The final group was the local militia. They were not regular soldiers, and the state of Liang did not equip them with uniforms or weapons. Generally, each county was allocated a certain quota for recruiting militia, funded in the name of the county yamen. Their main duties were guarding the granaries, prisons, and the city gates of Long County.

There were a total of 50 militia members in Long County, along with 8 beat constables and 16 lictors. For this upcoming expedition, Li Fu planned to leave behind only the essential militia members, while equipping all the others with light armor and weapons to set off together.

The county yamen actually possessed light armor, though it was rarely used in peacetime.

The purpose of these militia members was that once a war broke out, they could be transformed into soldiers with a little training, which was why the yamen had a dedicated armory. However, before Li Fu's arrival, the yamen's armory had long been in complete disarray, leaving only a few broken pieces of armor and rusted sabers for mere decoration.

Since Li Fu was bent on rebellion, he had prepared for a rainy day and replenished the armory—and wasn't it coming in useful today?

Besides these yamen runners, there were also the deserters under Ma Yi. Those deserters had been rounded up one by one, numbering nearly two hundred in total. During the discussions over the grand construction projects of the past two days, Master Yun and Li Fu had also debated how to handle these captive deserters.

When Master Yun previously divided the villages, he had tried his best to group familiar people or those from the same region into the same village, as this made solidarity much easier.

However, these deserters could not be handled this way.

Even as deserters, they had been on the battlefield. They were afraid of regular government soldiers and yamen runners because they were still criminals under the law.

According to the laws of Liang, deserters were punishable by decapitation.

What if they were placed in the newly built villages? These deserters feared those above them, but they dared to bully those below them. They had seen blood and even killed people; mixed among ordinary people, they were likely to form a criminal underworld.

Therefore, Master Yun and Uncle Jiang had screened these deserters. Those who had never killed anyone and were truly too timid to cause trouble were integrated into the villages, while those who clearly had a murderous aura were directly incorporated into the township braves squad, numbering about a hundred and twenty men.

These members of the township braves squad did not have to worry about building villages these days; instead, their tempers and spirits were being ground down.

How were they being ground down?

Running, drilling, duck-walking, and the like.

Master Yun had practically brought out all the training methods from his memories of college military training.

Every evening, Master Yun made them come up one by one to tell their stories—how they were conscripted into the service, how they became deserters, and finally, how they had muddle-headedly followed Ma Yi.

At first, these men were unwilling to speak, but eventually, someone took the lead.

When the first person spoke, Master Yun was personally present. It was dusk, and the deserters, having trained all day, were lying sprawled on the ground in exhaustion. In the dead of winter, they were sweating profusely, stripping off their clothes and scattering them everywhere while cursing under their breaths.

Then Jiang Guang's heavy saber slipped from its scabbard, a look of rising fury in his eyes. He was genuinely furious, to the point where his hair seemed to stand on end with rage.

Master Yun was even startled for a moment.

Only afterward did he figure it out: the "workers" of this era possessed a unique, ingrained sense of loyalty. It was much like how Uncle Jiang, upon seeing so much gold, silver, and grain, did not have the initial reaction of swallowing it all or claiming half of it; his first priority was to protect Master Yun's safety.

If it were Master Yun himself, his philosophy of working for someone else was simply: I do the job for you, you pay me money, and risking my life is out of the question. You give me compensation proportional to the value I create. If the job sucks, I walk away.

Master Yun knew this was because he was influenced by the memories of his college self, so making him act like Uncle Jiang was utterly impossible.

Uncle Jiang's anger, however, was simple: according to the ethos of this era, the humiliation of the master meant death for the servant. How dare these deserters strip off their clothes and curse at Master Yun!

Those deserters were quite terrified of fierce men like Jiang Guang. Seeing his heavy saber drawn, they hurriedly scrambled back into their clothes, their expressions turning anxious and uneasy.

Then Master Yun employed a tactic similar to the one he had used to win over the villagers at the foot of the ridge—setting up cauldrons to cook rice and sharing a meal together.

He even pulled Jiang Guang down to sit and eat with them.

Jiang Guang sat stiffly beside Master Yun, still harboring anger, one hand firmly resting on the hilt of his heavy saber.

That evening, a sheep was slaughtered, alongside bubbling pots of plain white rice.

To these men, there was no need for fancy delicacies; plain rice was the finest food in the world. Moreover, there were large chunks of mutton sprinkled generously with salt—it was nothing short of heavenly.

As they began to eat, these men finally relaxed their tense minds and even felt a stirring of gratitude. What did a bit of inexplicable, bitter training matter? They had previously thought they were being intentionally tortured, but now that they were given such fine food, could this possibly be torture?

It seemed that what Master Li's men had said earlier—that this was to build up their physical strength and truly for their own good—was the truth. After all, following Ma Yi, except for a few favored deserters guarding the food who ate and drank well, everyone else alternated between starvation and mere sufficiency.

Halfway through the meal, Master Yun smiled and asked someone to come up and share their experiences.

With Jiang Guang's expression growing increasingly annoyed, and under the gaze of Master Yun—who was lowering his pride to mingle with them, only for these shameless wretches who had deserted the battlefield to remain so unappreciative—someone finally bit the bullet and stepped forward.

When he started, his face was beet red, and his words came out in stumbles and starts.

Listening to his fumbling nonsense, some people began to mock him. His face flushed even brighter, his speech stuttered, but as people chuckled and he kept talking, his words began to flow more smoothly.

Everyone present was a poor wretch, and never before had anyone wanted to genuinely listen to what they had to say.

Poor people were always hungry; they had no room to listen.

Gradually, the laughter died away. The speaker still flushed red, but his eyes grew slightly damp.

"I didn't even need to be conscripted for labor. My older brother was eaten by a mountain beast last year, leaving me as the only male in the family. My father and mother pooled together the exemption fee and gave it to the county clerk in our village, hoping to cross my name off the list. But when the day for service arrived, my name was still there, and the county clerk claimed he had never received our exemption fee."

The young man began to cry. He was not old, only sixteen, just reaching the age eligible for military service. The laws of Liang stipulated that males aged fifteen and above could be conscripted for military service, while those under ten were exempt, and those between ten and fifteen performed lighter miscellaneous corvée labor with relatively lower difficulty.

He had been through the battlefield once, and his courage had been completely shattered. Later, a fellow villager found him and proposed escaping together, and one night he fled under the cover of darkness.

At that time, his heart had been in his throat.

He had eventually lost track of the villager; although he escaped, he dared not return to his hometown, drifting aimlessly until he was eventually recruited by Ma Yi.

After listening to him finish, Master Yun patted him on the shoulder like a little adult.

Master Yun told them, "You are all suffering souls. In the past, you had words in your hearts, and a spark of fire within you. You attempted to speak out, but no one would listen."

"So you lowered your heads."

"Most of the time, you also forgot that you once wanted to speak loudly and express your own thoughts. You lived day after day until that tiny flame was extinguished."

"If you don't understand that, let me put it more simply and directly."

"When was the last time you truly, easily smiled? When did you start thinking that your entire life would just amount to this? When did you decide that you had no hope, and that your children would have no hope either..."

The crowd began to murmur in whispers.

Master Yun smiled and said, "Then let's start today. I won't make grand promises about leading you to a life of luxury, wealth, and glory for your descendants, because you wouldn't believe such things anyway."

"But starting today, you can follow me, and follow the entire Li clan. The first step is to fill your stomachs. Once I achieve that, you can learn to trust me. Once your bellies are full, you will completely say goodbye to the starving yesterdays, and you will forget the fact that you were once deserters—do not torture yourselves, and do not mock your comrades."

"Starting today, you have a new identity: you are the township braves of Long County, and you are starting completely afresh. Afterward, you can hold your weapons tightly and watch me well. I will lead you, so that those who could never hear your voices before will finally hear what you have to say!"

"If I fail to do well, you can leave me just as you left Ma Yi, or even turn your weapons against me! But if any of you remain cowardly, unwilling to become upright speakers and wishing only to live muddle-headedly in the shadows, then I and the other braves will certainly not spare you!"

At that moment, Jiang Guang looked at Master Yun in sheer astonishment.

No matter how many times he stayed by Master Yun's side, he still found himself feeling incredulous toward the boy.

He truly deserved to be called a Qilin child.

Indeed, as the world approached chaos, true dragons and monstrous talents emerged in droves.

Though his voice was still youthful, it carried a unique, unyielding resolve under the setting sun. Clearly his figure was tiny, yet he seemed to possess a most distinctive aura—a brilliance akin to that of an enlightened lord, one that could never be buried by youth or poverty.

Whether they were peddlers, scholars, or seasoned generals, people would always be drawn to such an enlightened lord and naturally gravitate toward him.

Jiang Guang had traveled far and wide and seen many people, but none had ever shocked him quite like Master Yun.

Though his own learning was shallow, he had heard storytellers in taverns and teahouses recount tales of enlightened monarchs through the ages. Previously, those stories had left him with no real concept of what such rulers were like, but now, thinking back, it must have been precisely like this.

It was also on that day that Master Yun and those township braves established a pact to speak out with dignity and uprightness.