Border Soldier: My fiancée snatched credit and broke off the engagement, so I promptly became a marq

The north gate of Bailang Pass remained open all night.

The damaged car was the first to return.

The dead are behind that.

Ten large carts slowly entered the gate from Langya River, each cart carrying three layers of wooden planks. The bottom layer contained silver and medicine, the middle layer contained seriously wounded soldiers, and the top layer was covered with a black cloth.

Beneath the black cloth were the dog tags, armor, and personal belongings of 146 corpses.

Not all the bodies were recovered.

The frozen soil of Langya River was too hard, and the people of the Six Ministries were unwilling to let their sons leave the place where they died in battle. One hundred and forty-six stone graves had already been built on the east bank of the river. Wooden plaques were erected for those whose names could be identified, and broken knives, horse bells, or pieces of soot cloth were hung on the graves of those whose names could not be identified.

But the family will eventually have to know that someone is gone.

So every deceased person had something that came back with the vehicle.

a knife.

A boot.

Half a military license plate.

Or a single hair cut from a horse's mane.

There was no crying inside the north gate.

It's not that no one is crying.

Everyone who saw the car immediately bit their lip.

Er Gou, with a thick cloth wrapped around his chest, sat beside the large pot. Unable to stand up, he had himself, along with a low couch, carried to the doorway.

When the first car stopped, he lifted the pot lid.

"Eat at the house of the dead first."

The meat in the pot isn't for celebrating a victory.

It consists of white rice, mutton, and chopped herbs.

An old woman walked by, leading two children. Her husband and two sons had all died in the Langya River, and only three military tags had returned.

Su Wan placed the three cards in her hand and then had three horses brought over.

The old woman did not take the reins.

"Nobody in my family knows how to ride one."

"Then keep one to pull the cart," Su Wan said. "The other two will graze on the North Mountain Ranch. If they have foals in the future, they'll still be yours."

She pushed another wooden box over.

There were ninety taels of silver inside.

This is not a single instance of compensation.

Each deceased person first receives thirty taels of silver, then chooses one of the following: a horse, sheep, a shop, or a grain ration. Families with children receive a bag of rice from each of the three public granaries on North Street each month until the child turns fifteen. Those willing to work as horse breeders in North Mountain, guard tents in Blackwater, or watch the road at Langya River receive an additional grain ration.

The old woman then took the reins.

She did not thank her.

He simply hung the three military license plates around his grandson's neck.

The weight of the card was so heavy that the child was forced to bend over.

The old woman held it for him.

"Remember that."

"It's not three pieces of iron."

The child nodded.

The second and third families followed suit.

Someone wants silver.

Some people don't want silver, they just want a house near the medical shed.

A rickety rider who had lost both legs had his wife drag him to the side of the vehicle. His younger brother was dead, and his sister-in-law was pregnant.

"Give her my horse."

Su Wan asked, "And you?"

"I have no legs, so I'll leave the horse to eat?"

Ma Sanque cursed from the side.

"Can't you raise horses if they don't have legs?"

He brought out the calmest mare and had a low cart carried out.

"From now on, you'll be in charge of the injured horses in Xima Warehouse."

"Let's see it by car."

The heavy cavalryman was stunned for a moment, then reached out and touched the mare's nose.

"Then I'll go."

The goods from 146 households were distributed from dawn until afternoon.

There was only one argument in between.

A minor chieftain of the Red Sheep tribe took a liking to the blue horse left behind by the deceased, saying that according to the custom of the grasslands, when a person dies, the horse belongs to the tribe. He reached out to take it, but the deceased's wife neither cried nor cursed; she simply stood in front of the horse, holding her newborn child.

"Before he died, he said, 'Give the horse to my son.'"

The little leader said, "The child can't walk yet."

"So Ma waits for him first."

More and more people gathered on both sides. Wu Lie rushed over, intending to take the horse back according to the old rules, but Su Wan showed him the wooden plaque that Langya River had sent back.

There was only one sentence on the sign.

The spoils of those who died in battle shall first be returned to their families.

Wu Lie watched for a long time, then personally handed the reins to the woman and took the knife from the tribal chief.

"If you want a horse, go to the west and earn it yourself."

From then on, no one touched anything belonging to the deceased's family.

More than 300 wounded soldiers did not only receive medicine. Those who could use one hand separated arrows, those who could sit repaired saddles, those with good eyesight identified armor plates, and those who could not do anything guarded the name tags and remembered who had received rations for their illiterate family members.

An old rider whose back had been broken asked what he could still do. Su Wan placed the general accounts from the four locations in front of him.

"Do you remember the markings on each horse?"

"I recognized it at first glance."

"From now on, you'll be in charge of the old seals for captured horses. Whoever passes off a wounded horse as a warhorse, or takes an extra horse from the dead, you'll be the first to shout it out."

Old Qi lay sprawled on the tatami mat, feeling for the first time that he wasn't just waiting to die.

There was no registrar to loudly announce the names.

No one knelt down to express their gratitude.

The military license plate was put down, the horse was led away, and the grain sack was hoisted onto the shoulder.

Empty spaces left by the dead were filled on the spot.

There is a shortage of 23 guards at the north gate. We will first select those who are willing to guard the gate from the families of those who are lightly wounded.

The ten carts at Langya River were short of drivers, so the brothers of the deceased and the surrendered riders drove them together.

Four women who were brewing medicine in Blackwater were gone, and the women who were rescued from the iron cage and were willing to stay stepped forward on their own.

A woman with a white fox brand on her face rolled up her sleeves.

"I can't write."

Lin Qinghe asked, "Do you know how to boil water?"

"meeting."

"Can you tell if someone is breathing heavily?"

The woman nodded.

"Then let's learn how to save people first."

The medical tent was already packed with more than 300 wounded soldiers.

Less than half of them actually manage to walk in on their own.

Some had broken shoulder bones, some had their abdomens ripped open by horses' hooves, and seventeen others had been suffering from high fevers since returning from the Langya River. Batu had eighty jars of wine on his cart; forty jars were left at the three camps, and the remaining forty jars were all moved into the medical tent.

No alcohol allowed.

If anyone steals a drink, Lin Qinghe will sew their mouth shut with a needle.

She didn't sleep all night.

Chen Mu also didn't wake up all night.

The red-felt hearse was parked directly in Han Wanshan's old courtyard. The largest room in the courtyard was not given to the new owner; half a wall was demolished to bring in twelve beds for the wounded.

Chen Mu lay at the very back.

Twenty-three stitches were needed in my right shoulder.

The old wound under his ribs split open again by two inches.

My injured foot was so swollen that I couldn't even put on a boot.

When Lin Qinghe cut the cloth off his right arm, the wound was already stuck to his clothes. She soaked it in warm water little by little to open it, and even though Chen Mu was unconscious, his fingers were clenched in pain.

Anato sat on the edge of the bed.

Her own left shoulder was still oozing pus, and the area between her thumb and forefinger was swollen together, yet she stubbornly refused to leave first.

Lin Qinghe slammed the medicine knife onto the table.

"If you don't sit down, I'll cut your rotten flesh first."

Anato looked at Chen Mu.

"He told me when he woke up."

"You're right next door, you won't die."

I'm talking about him.

"I said that too."

Lin Qinghe pressed her down onto another couch and cut open her shoulder blades.

The wound is red all the way to my collarbone.

Anado cursed three times in her grassland dialect from the pain, but still refused to bite the cloth. After the rotten flesh was scraped away, her face was covered in sweat, and her first words were: "Where's the red cloth?"

Su Wan was carrying the tent box into the room.

"All ten horses are in the North Granary."

"Bring me one."

"What are you doing?"

Anato pointed to the inner courtyard gate.

"Hang it on the door."

Su Wan glanced at the courtyard full of wounded soldiers.

"Today's hanging?"

"Today is just about getting acquainted with the place."

Anato's voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the room heard it.

"Seven days later, after the first sacrifice for the dead, my three hundred sheep entered the pass."

"Wherever the sheep enters, that's the door I'll live in."

Lu Shuangyi stood outside the window, leaning on her broken gun.

She had a piece of wood re-stuck in her left rib, her face was pale, and she didn't leave even after hearing those words.

Su Wan asked, "Should we still lay out the ten-mile stretch of red cloth?"

"The dead have just been buried, and the road is not even ten miles long."

Anato thought about it.

"Spread one li."

Someone chuckled in the shack.

Laughter quickly spread.

An old soldier with a missing hand lay by the door and shouted, "The road must be swept clean at least once, even if it's only a mile long!"

Another wounded soldier chimed in, "I'll sweep it up, just undercharge by half a bag of rice!"

Er Gou cursed from outside the courtyard, "Anyone who dares to shortchange the wounded soldiers on rice, I'll dump the pot on their head!"

After crying all morning, Guancheng finally had some human voices.

Chen Mu woke up at that moment.

He opened his eyes a crack and first saw the red cloth hanging by the bed.

"Who died?"

Anato's face darkened.

"you."

Lin Qinghe pressed down on his left hand, which he was trying to move.

"One hundred and forty-six people died."

"You're not dead."

Chen Mu remained silent for a while.

"Have they all been distributed?"

Su Wan placed the tent box where he could see it.

"The military badge, silver, horse, and rations all ended up at home."

"The actual value of the more than 90,000 taels was 93,460 taels. 46,000 taels were sent to Bailang Pass, and 47,460 taels were distributed according to the number of dead and wounded. The gold was left untouched and was kept to buy iron, medicine, and grain."

The ten carts that entered the pass did not all go into the warehouse together. Two carts of silver were deposited into three public granaries on North Street, so that every household receiving grain could see that the boxes were still there; two carts of medicinal wine were sent to the medical shed; two carts of bows and armor were sent to Iron Horse Fort; one cart of gold was kept as collateral for goods for caravans from the north and south; and the last three carts were left empty to specifically transport wounded soldiers who could not ride horses and the families of the dead.

Su Wan distributed the keys to the ten carts to ten people. None of them were her close associates. The deceased's wife took two keys, the wounded soldier took two keys, the merchant, the blacksmith, the stable boy, and the cook each took one key, and the remaining two keys were rotated between Bailangguan and Beishan.

"From now on, anyone who wants to take ten truckloads of stuff at once will have to snatch the keys from ten different people first."

Three children on North Street stared at the keys for a long time. One of them asked if he could take one too, since his father had died. Su Wan didn't coax him; she simply hung the smallest empty box key on his waist.

"Keep an eye on things for your mother for now."

As the child walked, the brass key kept hitting his leg. He winced in pain, but he never took it off.

He didn't know what the key locked, only that the things his father left behind hadn't been taken by anyone else. The key was light, but it seemed more like the path to survival for the child than a dog tag.

Upon hearing this, Chen Mu gently tapped the blanket with his left hand.

"Ten vehicles entered the pass. Ten vehicles were left at Langya River, Beishan, and Heishui respectively, and the tents have been separated."

Chen Mu asked, "Where's the pot?"

Er Gou heard this from outside the yard and shouted back.

"All twelve mouths are open!"

"The dead eat first, the wounded second, and the laborers third!"

Chen Mu closed his eyes.

"it is good."

Lin Qinghe thought he was going to sleep again, and just as she loosened her grip a little, Chen Mu spoke up.

"I'll give you the east room in the inner courtyard."

Lin Qinghe was taken aback.

"What are you going to do for me?"

"pharmacy."

"What will happen after you recover?"

Chen Mu opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Are you moving out?"

Lin Qinghe's ears turned red instantly.

Anato laughed first.

Lu Shuangyi tapped the wall outside the window with the broken gun.

"He just woke up, don't let him get cocky."

Su Wan had already lowered her head to take notes.

"The East House Returns to the Green Grass."

"Neither the pharmacy nor the people are allowed to leave."

Lin Qinghe wanted to say something, but in the end she just picked up the medicine bowl.

"Drink first."

Chen Mu drank half a bowl, and his face turned pale again.

Suddenly, the sound of rapid hoofbeats came from outside the courtyard.

He Shi rushed straight into the inner courtyard from the north gate, followed by seven old White Fox riders who had removed their armor.

"Something's happened at Langya River!"

"Among the 670 surrendered cavalrymen, some stole horses, intending to take 200 men and escape westward!"

Chen Mu did not sit up.

He only finished the remaining half bowl of medicine.

"Who will lead the way?"

He Shi threw a white fox gold medal in front of the bed.

"Batu's former commander of a thousand men."

He said that since the royal tent was gone, the horses and silver should be divided among them.

The laughter in the courtyard stopped.

One hundred and forty-six families just picked up their military license plates.

Six hundred and seventy knives, still awaiting their fate, were already pointed at the more than one thousand horses.

The seven old White Fox riders behind He Shi looked up at the same time. Outside the courtyard gate, the herd of horses was stirring restlessly towards the Wolf Fang River.