Chapter 68

The two mess cooks were still in a daze when Xue Jin'an had already adapted to his role as the commander-in-chief of an army, naturally giving them orders. Seeing them standing there motionless after he finished speaking, he looked at them with some confusion and asked good-naturedly, "Is there anything you still don't understand?"

The two of them: "..." Is this a matter of understanding or not?!

After all, the two had walked the entire way with Xue Jin'an. Although they hadn't even exchanged names, they felt this young boy had a pretty good personality and considered themselves somewhat acquainted. After hesitating for a moment, they voiced their thoughts.

"Little brother, we are people from the Red Camp. Isn't it a bit inappropriate to switch factions just like that?" The older mess cook who spoke was surnamed Ding.

There was a long scar on his face, a hacking wound from top to bottom that slanted from his right cheek to his left cheek. The wound was very deep, and at first glance, one might mistake it for his face being split in two, which spoke volumes about the danger of that moment. Because of this injury, his right eye was ruined, and his eyeball was a blind, grayish color. Therefore, he had the nickname "Ding the Blind."

As Ding the Blind spoke, he pointed to the red ribbon tied around his arm.

The younger mess cook, surnamed Jia, also nodded along, looking very troubled as he said, "The Grand General hates traitors the most. We're just little soldiers in the mess camp, just trying to make a living..."

After the implementation of the new policies, the treatment of soldiers had improved, especially for border-defense troops. Consequently, becoming a soldier suddenly turned into a good job in the eyes of impoverished families, shifting from something everyone avoided to something everyone scrambled for. Little Jia obviously did not want to bear the cost of potentially incurring General Helian's displeasure and losing his military position to go home and farm.

After a brief analysis, Xue Jin'an understood the reason for their hesitation. Although he didn't understand it, he respected it, and directly nodded in acknowledgment. "You're going to fight me."

Xue Jin'an thought, if he didn't want to submit to the enemy commander, and moreover, the enemy commander was all by himself, what would he do? Naturally, capture the ringleader first to capture the bandits; since he didn't want to submit and work for the other party, he would simply capture the other party to increase his own side's winning odds.

Judging others by himself, Xue Jin'an felt there was nothing wrong with his logic. Without waiting for the two to react after reaching his conclusion, he directly picked up the Green Dragon Crescent Blade standing beside the table. The pole of this weapon was like a long staff, and it actually looked a head taller than Xue Jin'an himself. It felt quite heavy in the hand, and judging by the blade marks, it should be a new blade forged not long ago that had never tasted blood.

This Green Dragon Crescent Blade was the legendary weapon of Lord Guan Yu, Guan the Second, but it was also a weapon unsuited for actual combat. For such a weapon to appear on the battlefield was, truth be told, somewhat related to Xue Jin'an, because the shape of this blade was obviously a one-to-one replica of the template from his chicken-dinner game.

—There were many weapons in the chicken-dinner game, and Xue Jin'an, being a rigorous code life-form who would not make things up randomly, naturally dug them out from his own database just like the origins of martial arts manuals, pulling out the weapons of all those famous figures. The Green Dragon Crescent Blade, the Halberd of Heavenly Fang, and the like were all in there.

This Green Dragon Crescent Blade was a bit too long and large for Xue Jin'an, and swinging it around tested his stature to some extent. However, if used temporarily to subdue the enemy, it was still usable.

"Which of you is coming first?" Xue Jin'an thought for a moment and said, "Let's come together to save time."

Ding the Blind & Little Jia: "..."

The two looked at the cold, glittering blade of the precious weapon, then looked at the original Blue Camp commander lying dead on the ground, and very knowingly and understandingly slid to their knees: "Little brother—no, Commander! We greet the Commander!"

"What did the Commander just order? We'll go do it right away!"

The expressions of the two were extremely sincere, and as soon as they finished speaking, they immediately tore off the red ribbons on their arms, showing not a shred of their previous reluctance.

Xue Jin'an had just taken over the Blue Camp, which was still almost an empty shell, and he didn't have many people he could order around. With some regret, he put down the super-large saber in his hand and repeated his previous instructions.

Everything was very simple. Ding the Blind would go out and call back the flag guards, while Little Jia would stay behind to tidy up the main command tent, such as first moving the original commander's "corpse" onto the couch.

Little Jia desperately wanted to swap jobs with Ding the Blind, but he heard Ding the Blind say, "There's only one person inside, and he's still unconscious. With him presiding over things, you won't have any trouble. Those flag guards outside are extremely vigilant and might even start a fight."

Little Jia looked at him in alarm and suspicion. "Then you're still going? Aren't you afraid?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of. What haven't I seen on the front-line battlefield before? Besides, this is just a drill; it's impossible to actually cause casualties, and even if a real fight breaks out, they'll pull their punches." Ding the Blind's tone was calm, looking down upon such skirmishes.

"What, you've even been to the front lines? I thought you were just an ordinary wounded soldier..." Little Jia, who had been assigned to the mess camp just a month after entering the military camp, was even more shocked. He couldn't help but look Ding the Blind up and down.

Although the Northwest Army was a border army, in reality, when there was no direct full-scale war, the ones who could truly go to the front lines to fight to the death against the Rong and Di were elite main forces like the vanguard troops. Such elite main forces took a considerable amount of time, effort, and money to cultivate; unless they suffered fatal wounds that impaired their combat effectiveness, they would not be withdrawn from the front lines.

Yet Ding the Blind was not missing arms or legs, nor did he limp; his only injury was that scar across his face—

Little Jia suddenly birthed an absurd guess and exclaimed in shock, "You couldn't be an archer from the Divine Archery Camp, could you?"

In these ancient military camps, soldiers were also divided into various ranks. Mess cooks were considered the lowest tier; those assigned here were either wounded soldiers or "good-for-nothing soldiers" who couldn't improve no matter how much they trained and had no combat effectiveness. The highest tier of soldiers, apart from highly mobile cavalry, were archers.

Archers were a very rare troop type because archery heavily relied on talent, and the physical fitness requirements were not low either—after all, how many stones of a bow you could pull depended entirely on your arm strength, and physical fitness was not something you could master just by trying hard.

Other troop types did not have such high visual acuity requirements and would not be pulled back from the front lines simply due to an injured eye, but archers couldn't do that.

"I am just a mess cook, no different from you." Although Ding the Blind did not directly answer Little Jia's question, his attitude indicated that Little Jia's guess was true nine times out of ten.

Little Jia instantly became completely dazed. The three of them had come out together: one was a formidable figure who directly captured the enemy camp and rose to become the commander, and the other was an expert who had retired from the Divine Archery Camp... It turned out that mess cooks really were all formidable big shots hiding their true capabilities!

Could it be that I also have some identity I don't know about? Little Jia was so shocked that he somewhat lost his wits.

Ding the Blind truly lived up to having mixed on the front lines, thoroughly well-versed in the techniques of communicating with front-line soldiers. Before long, he had persuaded a group of flag guards, deciding to first send two people back with him to take a look.

As it happened, the people who followed back had witnessed the scene earlier where Helian Yong had unilaterally caused trouble for Xue Jin'an, and they froze on the spot: "You're Long Aotian!"

Ding the Blind & Little Jia: "!!!" This turned out to be Long Aotian!

The tit-for-tat rivalry between Helian Yong and Long Aotian was indeed a matter known to everyone. Once Xue Jin'an's identity was exposed, they couldn't help but think of this matter, and instantly accepted Long Aotian's defection to the Blue Camp with grace: it wasn't that the Red Camp was too lousy, it was simply that the Red Camp had Helian Yong.

Clearly, they were not the only two thinking this way. The flag guard took Xue Jin'an's identity back and reported it, successfully bringing all the other flag guards back as well.

However, although they all accepted Xue Jin'an coming to the Blue Camp as commander, they still held skeptical attitudes toward his commanding abilities. It was precisely at this moment that the original Blue Camp commander woke up.

The first thing the original Blue Camp commander did upon waking up was to pat his clothes. Sure enough, he felt no trace of the commander's token. Raising his head, he met Xue Jin'an's calm gaze.

Clutching his stinging side-neck and looking at this child who didn't even reach his chest, his mood was quite complex. Fortunately, his temperament was fairly decent; he was neither angry that his position had been snatched nor did he feel that Long Aotian played dirty. The victor is king and the loser is bandit—he accepted the fact of his failure, acknowledged Xue Jin'an as his commander, and returned to his old profession as deputy general. He was, after all, General Helian's deputy.

Deputy General Han even helped Xue Jin'an persuade the rest of the Blue Camp, actually using only a single sentence: "Even the Grand General holds his abilities in high esteem."

The Grand General was the stabilizing pillar of the Northwest Army. Someone whom even the Grand General deemed formidable was definitely not someone at their level could question. They completely let down their guard against Xue Jin'an, truly treating him as their commander and obeying his orders without distraction.

And Xue Jin'an's very first order was that he would personally lead people to wipe out Helian Yong's hundreds of men in one fell swoop.

Upon hearing this, Deputy General Han's mouth twitched. He now understood everything: Helian Yong was simply the bait thrown to them, and those men he had sent out were probably trapped in traps set by this new commander.

Xue Jin'an confirmed his guess: "They aren't the only ones trapped."

Since traps were going to be set to catch people anyway, they naturally had to be put to maximum use. Trapping the Blue Camp's men was to buy time and seize political power, while trapping Helian Yong meant he never intended to let them go in the first place.

After all, since they had already come.

The Blue Camp troops were truly out in full force this time, and Xue Jin'an led the flag guards to clean up the battlefield over there.

The fighting over there had been extremely fierce. Everyone assumed those vicious traps that had trapped them and brought them such terrible luck had been set by the opposing side, and their anger was soaring through the roof. Especially Helian Yong, who had been caught off guard—yet the Major General Zhao fighting against him possessed genuinely formidable combat skills, and Helian Yong was actually being suppressed and placed at a disadvantage!

Simply preposterous! Insubordination! Helian Yong cursed furiously in his heart, causing his attacks to lose a bit of proportion.

Major General Zhao had originally been holding back his strength. He was, after all, a well-known general in the Northwest Army with abundant combat experience. Even if Helian Yong had been tutored by the Grand General, it was impossible for him to win against Zhao in such a short time.

Fortunately, this was just a drill. Although everyone was fighting with real sabers and spears, they couldn't actually hack people to injury or death. Thus, everyone kept it restrained. If any moves were too fatal, they would use the backs of their blades, which were smeared with red powder to leave marks on clothing. Soldiers who sustained "severe injuries" or were in a "dead" state would voluntarily withdraw from the arena.

However, even though Major General Zhao had already left several marks on Helian Yong, the latter acted completely as if he hadn't seen them, relentlessly tangling with him and landing heavy blows.

This suddenly triggered Major General Zhao's temper. He increased his strength, and the back of his blade slammed heavily against Helian Yong's shoulder, directly causing the latter's breath to reverse and forcing him to stagger back half a meter while clutching his chest.

"Hey, little general!" Major General Zhao's mind instantly cleared and calmed down. He was annoyed that he had lost his sense of proportion earlier and actually injured Helian Yong. Although such things were unavoidable in sparring, and even if the Grand General knew he wouldn't say anything, this was still the cub of his immediate superior officer...