The Warmth of the Dead Remains
The Warmth of the Dead Remains
Government troops were closing in fast.
Unlike the Yellow Turbans, their ranks were perfectly aligned and they advanced in good order.
Even the refugees—who knew nothing of soldiering—could tell at a glance that these were trained elite troops.
But,
what bloomed in the onlookers' hearts was not relief so much as fear.
"H-how are government troops here?"
"You don't think... they've come to suppress the Yellow Turbans?"
"I-I don't know... Maybe they're coming to drive us off or attack us."
Honestly, before the Yellow Turbans appeared, the people who had been tormenting them were none other than the government troops.
The very same men who acted as the corrupt officials' enforcers, the ones who plundered and used violence.
The approach of what had to be several thousand government soldiers, at the very least, filled the utterly exhausted refugees with deep unease.
"Wh-what do we do? Sh-should we run?"
"Ugh..."
Even if they ran, they had already reached their limit from starvation and fatigue.
In the end, the only thing they could do was beg for mercy from these men while clinging to a sliver of hope.
Still, the troops were government soldiers—they held on to the threadbare hope that they wouldn't carry out a merciless slaughter like the Yellow Turbans.
"Halt."
The female commander riding at the army's head.
Her golden hair and brown skin were striking. At her order, the soldiers stopped right in front of the refugees.
Then a single man slowly emerged from behind her.
A young man mounted on a jet-black horse, clad in a black surcoat and fine armor.
Even at a glance his features were handsome, and he gave off an air of noble dignity entirely unlike their own low birth.
A figure anyone would recognize as the general leading these troops.
He looked their way and asked in a calm voice,
"Who are you people? Where have you come from?"
No threat or hostility could be felt in his voice. Even so, the old man at the very front of the refugees answered in a voice thick with terror.
"W-we... we are people from the southern part of this Hedong region. We've fled here in a panic after being chased by the Y-Yellow Turbans."
"The Yellow Turbans? Where are they now?"
"Th-they should be somewhere beyond that mountain over yonder. We... we haven't seen them since we briefly ran into them two days ago, but..."
The old man pointed toward the mountain they had barely managed to escape.
The general nodded slowly, then turned to the commanders beside him.
"For now we'll set up camp nearby. Ji Ling, select a few soldiers and send them into the mountain to scout. We move once we've confirmed the enemy's location."
"Understood, General."
"Got it, my lord."
"And..."
As he spoke, the general turned his gaze back toward them again. A heavy dread settled into the refugees' hearts.
A lofty man who moved thousands of soldiers with a single word.
Put another way, their lives hung on his next word.
If you considered how highly-placed men of the realm usually behaved, there was every chance he'd order them driven out at once for being a nuisance while the camp was being built, or—worst case—simply butcher them all.
So they trembled,
ready to force their exhausted bodies to move and somehow flee this place if it came to it, clutching tightly to the hands of the children and parents beside them.
That was when.
"Give those people something to eat. They'll be worn out from the long journey—if we have spare blankets, bring them some as well."
"Yes, General."
"And I'll say it once more: I will never forgive any man who lays a hand on the common people. Any wretch who wears the name of a government soldier while committing banditry will be executed on the spot."
"We will bear it in mind, General."
"!"
The general had said the last thing they expected.
Far from driving them out as they had feared, he had ordered them given food and protection. On the refugees' faces, surprise and relief—and deep gratitude—began to settle.
It was the first kindness they had ever received from a powerful man.
Officials and generals had always been figures who came only to take their grain;
they had never once seen them give anything.
A general who showed such mercy to people like them, in a moment of such hardship, made them wonder whether a sage straight out of legend had manifested before their eyes.
"Th-thank you!"
"We are truly... truly grateful, General!"
People bowed their heads, some even weeping.
Leaving behind those who had begun to kneel and offer salutes,
the general vanished impassively among his soldiers.
*
Our army had started marching southeast based on the scouts' reports.
We had a rough direction, but the enemy's exact location hadn't yet been confirmed, so we were moving at a measured pace, still scouting constantly to find where they were.
It was during that march that we came across a crowd.
They were trembling with fear,
all of them in worn, threadbare clothes and in a state of utter wretchedness.
I asked just to be sure, but even without their explanation, I knew who they were.
Refugees who had fled the Yellow Turbans.
Every one of them was starving and exhausted from the long journey. Right this moment, they were wolfing down the rations I had ordered distributed.
"Sniff... sniff..."
"How long has it been since we ate rice..."
Some had tears running down their faces as they pushed grains of rice into their mouths.
Watching this, Ji Ling, standing beside me, asked in a low voice,
"Hey, my lord. Is there really a need to go this far?"
"Hm?"
Ji Ling had poked my ribs while asking.
She looked puzzled, but also like she'd been chewing over something for a while—more precisely, she wore the expression of someone who'd tried thinking and gotten an error message. She went on.
"I mean, you know. With refugees like these, you could just leave them be or tell them to move along somewhere else, and that would be the end of it. Is there a reason you're going so far as to give out rations and show goodwill?"
"A reason...? What does it look like to you, Ji Ling?"
"Hmmm... The first thing that comes to mind is... what's it called... winning the people's hearts...? I remember Sister Cao Aman saying something like that before. That the Changshui Colonel work was all part of it too..."
"That's right. And helping people in deep trouble like this makes the effect that much greater. It's the same principle as a single rice ball to a starving man inspiring far more gratitude than a lavish feast spread before a man who's already full."
"Hmm... I can sort of see that, now you mention it. But what's so good about winning the people's hearts? Most of them are too weak to be any use even if you conscripted them."
"... W-well, they might not be any direct military use, but they're helpful indirectly. The people who receive help like this are going to keep fleeing and spread our name in every direction they go, aren't they? Once that happens, even people nursing resentment against the Han court will start to reconsider a little, and in the end the Yellow Turbans—who rose up on the back of that resentment—will lose their momentum too."
"Ohhh... so there was an angle like that."
In war and in everything else, those who held the people's hearts were always the ones who won.
The reason Liu Bang had been able to defeat Xiang Yu in the past was precisely that she had governed the people's hearts so well,
and the reason the Yellow Turbans of the Original Timeline ultimately collapsed so spectacularly was the same.
As she watched me offer my somewhat reasonable explanation, Ji Ling's eyes began to sparkle.
"That's my lord for you. You pull off the kind of thing someone like me couldn't easily even think of—so naturally it's almost like a lie."
"Haha..."
Faced with Ji Ling's admiring tone, I gave a strained smile.
The truth was different.
'I spun a decent excuse... but that isn't the real reason.'
I was sorry to disappoint her, but that whole story just now really was a lie—not almost like one.
Never mind all those grandiose reasons I'd rattled off.
When I made the decision to help those people, I hadn't made that kind of calculation at all.
What moved me was something else.
A deeper reason I could never explain to anyone else: a fundamental factor rooted in who I am.
Before my eyes were refugees collapsed on the ground, exhausted and starving.
Looking at them, I felt an emotion far stronger than what an ordinary person of this world would feel.
Over the years since I'd become Yuan Shu, I had seen scenes like this many times already.
Even in Luoyang, the Imperial Capital, if you stepped just a little ways outside and walked around, it was easy to see people lying sprawled on the ground in a wretched state.
A scene that showed the Han Dynasty exactly as it was—rotting inside and out from Imperial Family corruption and the tyranny of wicked ministers.
And such scenes stirred a compassion in me that was several times stronger than what others felt, because I carried the sensibilities of a modern person.
A world where high and low birth were taken for granted, and taking a life or two of a lowborn person presented no problem at all.
But human beings are fundamentally equal, and they possess the right to enjoy the minimum rights of a person.
That belief had been natural in the modern era, and I still held it after transmigrating. Whenever I saw people reduced to such misery, compassion hit me harder than it might most others.
A philosophy akin to the "virtue" that exists even in the Three Kingdoms world, but situated on a deeper plane.
I had no intention of forcing it on anyone else or openly declaring it.
But, for my own self at least...
I didn't want to do the thing where I turned away from those feelings.
Changing the world might be impossible,
but at least one person—me—could choose.
Hiding my true feelings, I gave Ji Ling a curt order.
"Enough chatter. Go check on the soldiers one more time. Our own direct troops should be fine, but honestly, there's a lot to watch with these new replacements we've been given."
"You don't need to worry about that. I've placed the sharpest ones among the officers in command. They're short on training, but I'll make sure discipline is solid."
"Then I'm glad to hear it."
After one more instruction to ensure military discipline was strictly maintained,
I moved to rest a while until the scouts returned.
That was when.
"General."
A soldier was approaching.
He had brought a woman with him. Puzzled, I looked at her and asked,
"Who is this?"
"Well... this woman begged and pleaded to be granted a single audience with you, sir. She kept entreating and imploring, even when I told her it couldn't be done."
"Is that so? Well, I have a moment right now, so let's hear it."
"Understood. Here—this is the general you so desperately wanted to meet. If you have something to say, make it as quick as you can."
The woman still had tear tracks around her eyes.
At a glance, her overall state looked poor. She dropped straight to the ground, prostrating herself, and spoke in a voice thick with desperation.
"G-General... please... I beg of you. Please save my child... my daughter! Please, save my daughter Seon-i—the one who saved us!"
"!..."
"Why, what is this wench suddenly blathering about..."
Ji Ling scowled at the woman's abrupt plea.
I gestured to stop her, then asked the prostrate woman before me in a calm voice,
"First, calm yourself and tell me the story from the beginning. You say she saved you. What happened?"
"Th-that is..."
*
The scouts pushed carefully through the forest, advancing forward.
Every whisper of wind made them prick up their ears as they strained to find traces of the enemy.
But.
"Anything?"
"No, there doesn't seem to be anyone here..."
"Where the blazes are they? We've come this far and still can't find a single trace..."
According to the refugees, up until two days ago the Yellow Turbans had been pressing hard on their heels.
Two days' travel it might have been, but considering the slowness of refugee movement, a party on army horses could cover the distance in an hour or two.
Yet even after coming far enough, there was no trace of the Yellow Turbans at all.
"You don't suppose... those refugees were playing with us, do you?"
"... No, I don't think that's it. Unless they had a death wish, what reason would they have to do something like that?"
"True... you're right about that, but."
With the enemy's trail utterly invisible, the scouts' thoughts had begun straying even to that suspicion.
Even allowing for a somewhat relaxed speed of pursuit, given how slowly the refugees moved, some trace of them should have turned up long before now.
That was when something caught my attention.
"Huh?"
"What is it? Did you find something...!"
"N-no... what in the world is this..."
Soldiers and officers stared at the scene before them, their faces full of shock.
It was... the bodies of Yellow Turbans, strewn everywhere and gruesomely dead.
Several dozen at least.
The trail of corpses, possibly even more, led toward a mountain path deeper inside.
"They don't look to have been dead long. They're still warm."
"And look—spear and blade wounds are lodged in their bodies. It probably means someone is engaged in battle with them..."
"L-let's report this first. If they're fighting somewhere nearby, shouldn't we hurry and inform the general?"
"Right, you're correct. We move at once."
The scouts moved quickly to report the matter first and foremost, their unanswered questions still lingering.