“Why are they avoiding you?” Yang Xiaojin asked in confusion as she walked up the steps of the Great Wall. “What’d you do when you went to get your food just now?”
As Ren Xiaosu went to get food by himself earlier, Yang Xiaojin did not know what he had done.
Ren Xiaosu said with a laugh, “It’s nothing important. You don’t have to worry about the details.”
Yang Xiaojin looked at him curiously and thought to herself, ‘As if nothing important happened!‘ None of the Pyro Company soldiers even dared to make eye contact with Ren Xiaosu anymore!
“By the way, can you really move around in the base freely with that black ID given by P5092?” Yang Xiaojin asked, “You said you were going to test it out…”
Midway through her sentence, Yang Xiaojin guessed why the Pyro Company soldiers did not even dare to look straight at Ren Xiaosu. Her mentioning to him to test it out must have really frightened them.
The two of them walked onto the walls and looked out. What they saw was not the forest in the distance but the sight of barbarian corpses that extended outwards from the bottom of the walls!
They saw that the Pyro Company soldiers had erected several thousand wooden stakes outside the Great Wall and hung all the barbarian corpses on them one by one. Ren Xiaosu gasped. “P5092 is more ruthless than I thought. Is he trying to make the barbarians attack this section of the Great Wall?”
“Looks like it.” Yang Xiaojin nodded.
Ren Xiaosu turned his head and looked at the Pyro Company soldier on duty close by. “Come here for a sec.”
The Pyro Company soldier was nearly driven to despair. “Sir, I really can’t sing…”
Yang Xiaojin chuckled, “Hehe.”
Ren Xiaosu hurriedly said, “I’m not asking you to sing. I just wanted to ask you something. Did the barbarians come and attack this section of the walls during the past few days?”
“Yes.” The Pyro Company soldier explained with a sigh of relief, “At the beginning, they kept launching feint attacks and tried to lure out the 3rd Division’s main forces, but a lot of them were killed. With so many of the barbarians’ corpses hanging under the walls, it greatly affected their morale. Therefore, they attempted multiple times to come and take back the bodies, but they ended up getting beaten back instead.”
Ren Xiaosu nodded. It was no wonder the barbarian corpses at Mt. Dashi had all disappeared. So it turned out they had been transported here by P5092.
Truly, P5092 was also a very ruthless person. Ren Xiaosu noticed no corpses were hanging under the walls where the other divisions were stationed. Once the war fully broke out, this place would most likely come under the heaviest attack.
Ren Xiaosu said, “Since it’s already spring, the weather will only get warmer. If these corpses are left hanging outside the walls, they could cause a plague outbreak. Even with a wall separating us, the germs could still get blown inside by the wind.”
“It’ll be fine.” The Pyro Company soldier said, “We’ve already ‘pickled’ those corpses with slaked lime.”
Even for someone like Ren Xiaosu who was unfazed by many things, he was still left a little speechless when he heard this. Why were all the Pyro Company soldiers so savage? They actually talked about this like they were pickling vegetables?
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But at this moment, a dense group of black dots appeared on the horizon. The Pyro Company soldier said to Ren Xiaosu, “Sir, please get off the walls quickly. The barbarians are here!”
With that, the soldier began reporting the enemy’s disposition on the radio. Within two minutes, the entire 3rd Division sprang into action, and P5092 quickly came on the walls as well.
P5092 did not bother greeting Ren Xiaosu and picked up the binoculars to take a look.
“What’re they doing?” Ren Xiaosu asked.
“Have a look for yourself.” P5092 said with a laugh as he handed the binoculars to Ren Xiaosu, “Those barbarians are just wasting their time with useless attacks.”
When Ren Xiaosu looked through the binoculars, he saw the barbarians bringing out some wooden stakes with them in the distance. Then they hung the corpses of the Central Plains people onto them.
However, their actions did not even faze the cold-blooded Pyro Company soldiers. The words that they liked to utter the most were probably “emotions are useless.”
“Continue to keep your guard up.” After that, P5092 invited Ren Xiaosu to the command center.
After entering the command center, Ren Xiaosu brazenly pulled over two chairs and sat down in front of the deputy commander and the combat staff officers. One of the chairs was for Yang Xiaojin.
As he picked up the newspaper from the table, he asked, “Y’know, y’all hung so many of their comrades’ corpses outside the walls. Aren’t you worried that they’ll concentrate their attacks here when the battle begins?”
“I’m not worried.” P5092 shook his head. “The 3rd Division is the main fire support of the Pyro Company. If the barbarians come here, they’ll only be asking for trouble. Furthermore, they’re very cunning too. They’ve been trying to attack 3rd Division’s base over the past few days, but when they finally launch their full-scale attack, they might unexpectedly attack the other sections of the walls instead.”
“Oh.” Ren Xiaosu finally understood. So it turned out P5092 also had his own considerations. He had dealt the barbarians several defeats over the past few days and deliberately provoked them as well. But when it was time for the barbarians to launch a full-scale attack, this area might not bear the brunt of it. “Aren’t you afraid that your wit might end up ruining you? What if their plan was to make an example out of you? Now that the supplies in the rear have been destroyed, you probably don’t have enough artillery shells to deal with them, right?”
P5092 smiled but did not answer the question. Instead, he asked about Ren Xiaosu’s living conditions. “So are you satisfied with our arrangements here at the front lines? We’ve built a makeshift field hospital, and the dorms that were assigned to you all are also temporary.”
“Yes, I’m very satisfied,” Ren Xiaosu said with a smile. The field hospital was located in a standalone area within the military base, and there were no brick structures around, with the accommodation being all collapsible military tents. Initially, he and Yang Xiaojin should have also stayed in one of the shared dorms with the others. After all, these were the conditions in wartime, so they would just have to make do with whatever there was.
But after P5092 had specifically passed down orders to look after Ren Xiaosu, the people from the field hospital actually set up two individual tents for them to live in. In the entire field hospital, only the two of them and the director enjoyed such treatment.
P5092 said with a smile, “Keep the little black book well, but don’t use it to request the soldiers sing for you anymore.”
“Hahahahaha.” Ren Xiaosu laughed in embarrassment and said, “Can’t you see that I was just trying to help them relax? Alright, you should get back to your work. I’ll leave after reading the paper.”
“Mhm, take your time.” After that, P5092 started gathering his deputy commander and the combat staff officers for a briefing. On one hand, it was to convey the information brought back by the scouts. On the other hand, it was to formulate the next step in the battle plans based on the gathered intelligence.
During this time, P5092 and his men made no attempt to avoid speaking while Ren Xiaosu and Yang Xiaojin were around. Ren Xiaosu was allowed to listen in on everything regarding the barbarians’ movements and the Pyro Company’s plans. It was as though he were really a member of the Pyro Company.
After listening for a while, Ren Xiaosu roughly understood the Pyro Company had very little information about the barbarians, and that both sides were still testing each other out. The most important thing for the 3rd Division now was not to kill as many barbarian troops as they could but to accurately assess the true strength of the expeditionary army.
As the saying goes, if you know your enemy and know yourself, you will win every battle. Only by finding out how many barbarians there were would the Pyro Company know what to do next.
If they assumed there were only a 100,000 barbarians and another 100,000 were to pop out while they were fighting, everything would be over.