Chapter 65: Killing a Chicken

Should Li Chuan not be killed?

"No, no, no. This man's crimes are too numerous to record, and a myriad deaths would not suffice to atone for them. I only ask you..."

Su Yao stepped on Li Chuan's head and smiled with a sinister air.

"Is your enemy truly nothing more than this pathetic waste? Will you be satisfied just by killing him?"

"This..."

Tu Chuan fell silent. He looked at Li Chuan, who was pissing and shitting himself, unable to utter a word and trembling uncontrollably, and for some reason, that sense of powerlessness and emptiness grew even heavier.

Would he be satisfied just by killing him?

He had known the answer all along.

"Tu is incompetent. I beg the General to instruct me!"

Tu Chuan stood up and bowed deeply.

Su Yao did not reply immediately. Instead, he kicked away the incessantly howling Li Chuan and instructed his subordinates:

"Drag this piece of trash away first. Hang him from the city gate later tonight as a warning to others."

Tu Chuan watched blankly as his enemy was dragged away, and in a daze, felt a heavy weight on his shoulder.

"Since you are a literate man, you should understand that your true enemy is not him. This good-for-nothing is merely one among countless rebel soldiers. This world is sick, and the realm is in chaos. Even without him on that day, some rebel army of a Zhang Chuan or Wang Chuan would still have burned down your village. As long as this world remains unhealed and the realm stays in such turmoil, you will never hope to live a peaceful life."

The world is sick?

Not to mention Tu Chuan, even the others were hearing this concept for the first time. They understood that the realm was in chaos, but...

"Yet who can possibly cure the sickness of this world..."

What Tu Chuan spoke of was precisely the common doubt shared by all.

Which of the grand excellencies in the court did not know that the Han Dynasty was sick? Which of them had not racked their brains for a solution? But what was the result?

And that former General of Heaven, Zhang Jiao, must have thought the same way, setting out to do it in a grand and thunderous fashion, but in the end, did he not turn himself into a laughingstock?

Could this general before them also...

Su Yao glanced at the silent Xu Huang, pointed his saber at Tu Chuan, and declared:

"Since our generation was born in troubled times, we should harbor the ambitions of a swan. Lift the three-foot-long blade, achieve peerless merit, sweep away the chaos of the four directions, and establish eternal peace for ten thousand generations!"

"Establish eternal peace for ten thousand generations..."

***

"What do you all think of the Company Commander's words from last night?"

In the morning, upon the gate tower of Jiexiu City, Cheng Lian asked the others with an excited expression on his face.

"What do I think? I look at it with my eyes wide open," Song Xian replied without looking back, crossing his arms as he watched the Bibo rebels outside the city wall obediently following orders and preparing to break camp.

No matter how stubborn his tongue was, he had to admit that their absurd superior had pulled off another stunt.

Using a traitor to provoke and escalate the conflict, he had wiped out all the officers and die-hard elements of the Bibo army in one fell swoop.

He had not expected someone so young to act with such ruthless efficiency.

Facing Li Chuan's corpse hanging at the city gate and the news that not a single rebel survivor remained, the Bibo soldiers no longer dared to harbor any thoughts of resistance.

"Hey, Old Song, why do you always have to be such a wet blanket?" Hou Cheng gave Song Xian a heavy pat on the shoulder.

"I saw those two fellows, the one surnamed Tu and the one surnamed Xu, brimming with emotion yesterday. They knelt on the ground and wept bitterly, declaring that they would follow the commander to sweep, sweep what directions was it again?"

Song Xian shook his shoulders and rolled his eyes.

"Are you kidding me? If I had a blood-dripping blade pointed right at the tip of my nose like that, I'd weep bitterly and swear to follow them to the death too, and I guarantee my performance would be even better than theirs."

"This... are you saying they were just acting?"

Cheng Lian felt a jolt in his heart.

Those two men had been let go! If they were just acting, wouldn't the commander's grand plan be ruined?

Let go? Yes, Su Yao had released Tu Chuan and Xu Huang the previous night.

This was part of Su Yao's southern campaign strategy.

He was going to use these two men as secret agents to infiltrate the Bibo army and gather intelligence for him.

Gathering intelligence, scouting deployments, warning of military movements, and delaying enemy actions were secondary; Su Yao's primary concern was to unearth the strength of various generals within the Bibo army and see if there were any individuals with extraordinary martial prowess that set them apart from ordinary mortals.

To put it bluntly, he wanted to scout whether there were any other players in hiding.

Now that this game concerned life and death, confident as he was in his own strength, he still had to exercise caution, making preliminary intelligence gathering essential.

This was why, upon witnessing Tu Chuan's exceptional acting talent last night, he had acted on a whim and recruited this generic-looking face.

As for that Xu Huang, given his background of having served as a government official, he clearly didn't seem easy to fool—no, rather, he didn't seem easy to reform.

However, with Tu Chuan by his side and the two acting as mutual inside contacts, the mission's success rate should be considerably higher.

Naturally, Su Yao's deeper calculations were not something to be shared with outsiders.

"Kid, don't listen to Old Song's nonsense. He's just stubborn," Hou Cheng said, wrapping his arms around the shoulders of the two, breathing heavily with the stench of alcohol.

"That bandit leader named Xu might have some reservations, after all, his elderly mother is still in the hands of the Yellow Turbans. But the one surnamed Tu was clearly sincere and heartfelt. The Company Commander even specifically let him personally hang that what's-his-name bandit chief. If he dares to forget our Company Commander's kindness, see if I, Old Hou, don't beat him to death!"

"Go on, go on, who's being stubborn? Who's being stubborn? Your mother told you to drink less, can't you remember?"

Song Xian shook off his alcoholic fellow townsman, his face slightly flushed.

"I'm just being realistic. Young Cheng and that fellow surnamed Tu are young and don't understand, but you and I are the same age. At our age, how can you still be so hot-blooded? You need to understand that what you hold in your hand and put in your pocket is what's real. What's the use of pretty words? Peerless merit, eternal peace for ten thousand generations? It's great for young people to have dreams, but which of those is easy to achieve?"

Cheng Lian, who had been lectured, suddenly lit up and chimed in:

"Wasn't wiping out the barbarians earlier enough to count as peerless merit? Didn't Clerk Zhang say this is an opportunity to win merit and become a general in one leap?!"

"That's exactly what I'm talking about! Clearly we've already achieved merit, instead of hurrying back to Jinyang to collect our rewards, he dragged the few of us to Jiexiu, the farthest place from Jinyang!"

Song Xian was exasperated.

"It's completely redundant. If we really miss the deadline, it'll turn into a crime of disobeying military orders. And what's the result? Look at him, he's still sleeping soundly right now, and you can't even wake him up!"

The more Song Xian talked, the angrier he became.

"Besides, do you think the court's rewards are so easy to claim? Just look at his reckless and untamed behavior—which high-ranking court official is going to look favorably upon him wherever he goes? Let's hope we don't fail to collect our rewards and instead bring trouble upon ourselves, dragging us down with him."

"Ah, this..."

Cheng Lian wanted to retort, but for a moment he didn't know what to say. At that exact moment, a thunderclap suddenly sounded in his ear:

"Discussing a superior behind his back! You have quite the nerve, Song Xian. Do you want to taste the military cudgel?!"

"L-Lord Lu!"

The feeling of a corporate slave complaining about their direct supervisor to colleagues in the office, only to be overheard by another manager with close ties to that supervisor, was pretty much what Song Xian was experiencing right now.

No, it was even worse. After all, a corporate slave at most gets assigned trivial tasks, but in the military, they could genuinely give you twenty strikes of the cudgel that would leave your backside flowering or even cost you your life.

"This subordinate spoke wildly after drinking. Commander, please forgive me..."

"You're not enthusiastic about fighting, but you have the most gossip. If I catch you again, and Company Commander Su won't discipline you, I'll do it for him!"

Not to mention that in the military, a higher rank completely suppresses a lower one, Lü Fengxian was not someone who had risen to prominence overnight like Su Yao; he was a long-renowned figure in Bingzhou, and many people simply respected his name.

With Lü Bu angered, Song Xian immediately shrank like a chick, meekly not daring to let out a single fart.

Seeing that he had suppressed Song Xian, Lü Bu asked about Su Yao's situation. Upon learning that he was still asleep, he furrowed his brow.

"Still not up? Take me to see him."

How could this kid sleep so much? This had delayed them by yet another day; if they didn't head back now, they really wouldn't make the deadline.