Chapter 994 It Was Right Not to Let Them Out
The large army passed through a small village.
The village was deserted, not a soul in sight.
Beneath the ruins of a dilapidated house, a skeleton lay half-reclined, its jaw agape as if laughing mockingly at the heavens.
Gao Jie, however, felt no fear of skeletons. While he hadn't spent a decade gutting fish in some grand market, his heart was colder than anyone who had.
A militia soldier ran to the well, peered inside, and then looked up, announcing, “There’s only a trickle of water left.”
Bai Yuan nodded. “As expected. We’ll continue forward; we should reach a major river by this evening.”
The militia soldier turned to rejoin his unit from the well, but as he spun, he heard a dull thud. His foot had struck something.
He looked down to see a skull rolling away with a clatter.
The soldier gasped in surprise, then quickly scrambled to retrieve the skull. He carefully placed it upright, bowed respectfully, and murmured, “My apologies, I didn’t mean to kick you. Please forgive me... As an apology, I’ll help you rest in peace.”
He bowed once more to the makeshift grave before hurrying back to his unit.
His actions had indeed taken some time, but Bai Yuan did not rush him. Instead, he ordered other soldiers to collect all the scattered remains in the village, bury them, and mark each with an anonymous wooden slab. Only then did the army resume its march.
Witnessing this, Gao Jie felt a subtle understanding dawn upon him.
This army truly was different from his own subordinates.
If his men encountered a skeleton on the road, burying it would be unthinkable; not using it as a ball to kick around would be considered good conduct.
They knew nothing of respecting others, let alone the dead.
That night, five thousand militia members camped by a river.
The river's water level had dropped by sixty percent, forcing the soldiers to descend deep into the riverbed to draw water.
Five thousand fires were lit for cooking, their smoke rising in wisps into the air.
As they bustled about, a sentry suddenly reported, “Instructor Bai, there are people watching us from the woods across the river.”
Bai Yuan pulled out his telescope and scanned the woods on the opposite bank.
The setting sun made visibility poor, yet through the lens, he could clearly discern a group of gaunt, pale-faced commoners.
“They are common folk,” Bai Yuan stated. “They carry no weapons, only farming tools like hoes. They’re watching us cook from a distance, swallowing hard, but they dare not approach.”
Gao Jie listened, then shrugged.
Such incidents were common during his past campaigns, but he had always ignored them.
However, Bai Yuan suddenly produced a tin megaphone, and, aiming it at the woods, he bellowed, “Listen up, people on the other side! We are not bandits, not bandits, nor are we government soldiers come to pillage your homes! We are the militia from Xiaolangdi, we are militia! Do not be afraid, we are common folk just like yourselves.”
After his powerful address, a few heads indeed emerged from the trees across the river, their eyes fixed on Bai Yuan with a dazed stare.
“Don’t be afraid,” Bai Yuan urged. “Come out, we have food here, and we can share some with you.”
At these words, Gao Jie was startled. *Share military rations with commoners?*
Lured by the promise of food, the commoners across the river grew bolder. One man cautiously approached the riverbank. Had a river not separated them, he would never have dared to come so close. Standing on the opposite bank, he called out weakly, “You’ll really share food with us?”
“Are there any former Armored Grenadier Battalion members present?” Bai Yuan called loudly. “Toss them a package of food!”
“Yes!” a militia soldier declared, rising to his feet. “I served in the second squad of the Gao Family Village Armored Grenadier Battalion, an elite grenadier under Captain Zheng Daniu. The Armored Grenadier Battalion has since been disbanded, and I’ve been reassigned as the Fifth Battalion Commander of the Xiaolangdi Militia. Please entrust this glorious task to me!”
Bai Yuan replied, “Good, go! But don’t drop the food in the river, or you’ll disgrace your Armored Grenadier Battalion!”
“I guarantee success!” the soldier boomed.
With that, he took a package of crushed “Divine Rice” from Bai Yuan—a package as large as a human head and quite heavy...
The elite grenadiers of the former Armored Grenadier Battalion were no joke; this man could hurl a hand grenade seventy meters!
Now, returning to his old skill, he felt a slight thrill.
He gripped the package of crushed rice in one hand, took a running start, put his full weight into it, let out a mighty yell, and flung his right arm forward. The package soared through the air in a perfect arc, clearing the river, and landed on the ground on the opposite bank.
The man on the other side quickly ran to pick it up. He tore it open, then erupted in a cry of ecstasy, though his voice was still weak. “Folks, we have rice! The soldiers across the river have given us rice! Come quickly, eat!”
The commoners hiding in the woods surged out, a group of fifty or sixty, all crowding around the man.
A package of rice the size of a human head was certainly not enough for so many people.
But they were already calculating that each person could at least manage half a bowl of rice porridge.
In their simplicity, they dared not even consider asking the soldiers for more grain.
However, while they wouldn’t ask, Gao Family Village would actively provide.
Bai Yuan picked up the megaphone again. “Now you know we’re not bad people, don’t you? Wait just a moment; we’ll get a boat ready right away to bring you across the river. Come over to our side and share a meal with us.”
The commoners stared across the river in astonishment, their faces etched with disbelief.
Gao Jie was equally surprised. *Get a boat ready for these people? Are you serious?*
He quickly realized Bai Yuan was serious!
The engineering battalion soldiers set aside their tasks and began preparing a boat. They carried strange bags with them, made of some unknown material. Using a blower, they inflated the bags, which quickly formed into peculiar, soft inflatable boats.
The engineers paddled these unusual boats to the far bank, picking up the famished, weak commoners one by one, and bringing them across.
A group of soldiers on guard duty, armed with flintlock rifles, maintained order and ensured safety.
Other soldiers enthusiastically approached, handing plates of their freshly cooked food to the commoners. “Eat,” they urged, “eat slowly, don’t choke.”
As the fifty or sixty commoners took their first mouthful of food, tears immediately streamed down their faces, unstoppable.
Gao Jie sat at a distance, silently observing the scene.
Suddenly, he looked up at the sky and sighed, “Tian Zun, you were right. I haven’t been fully reformed, and my men—those scoundrels—are even further from it. It was truly wise not to let them come out.”
“Now I finally understand what the Political Commissar was telling me!” Gao Jie sighed. “I used to be a commoner just like them, yet after taking up a blade and gaining subordinates, how could I have forgotten that?”
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