Chapter 78: Aftermath (Part 2)
"They won't kill us. Surely they won't."
"My mother must be worried sick." Ma Peng began wiping at his tears.
Fu Bu'er felt a pang of irritation. You have one old mother—I have an entire household to think of! His wife was one thing, but he couldn't bear to lose his concubines, especially his third concubine, the one he'd brought from Guangzhou. Though somewhat older, she came from a courtesan-house background and knew how to dress with elegance. She could sing ditties in that honeyed voice of hers. Far superior to the country girls of Lingao, she had utterly captivated Master Fu.
His thoughts turned to his young sons and his unmarried daughter—none of them capable of managing the household on their own. If he couldn't return, his accumulated wealth would be devoured by clansmen, uncles, and brothers. Those vultures had been circling for years, their covetous eyes fixed on everything he'd built. The more he dwelled on it, the deeper his regret cut. When he noticed the guards weren't watching closely—just two young pirates with their strange weapons—he began fumbling through his robes. He found some loose silver, perhaps two taels in total. Fearing it wasn't enough, he also removed his gilded silver net-scarf ring, worth another two or three qian. He examined the offering for a moment, calculating that over two taels should suffice to buy one man's freedom. These low-ranking guards couldn't possibly have large appetites.
Summoning his courage, Fu Bu'er sidled toward the young pirate holding the bird-gun, his legs trembling beneath him. He extended the silver with both hands. He knew some Cantonese, but the youth clearly didn't understand. Fu Bu'er resorted to gestures—pointing first at himself, then toward the outside, miming the act of running.
But the youth showed no interest. He simply gestured with that peculiar bayoneted rifle of his. Terrified, Fu Bu'er fell silent, yet he didn't dare withdraw his outstretched hand. Might as well give it up, he thought desperately. Once they search us, it won't be mine anyway. Better to trade it now for some small consideration. But the youth refused the money entirely. Instead, he indicated that Fu Bu'er should keep it, then pointed at the injured leg, then at the large tent. The meaning was clear: wait here for treatment.
The medical team worked until evening before finishing with all the wounded. Fu Bu'er's leg received over a dozen stitches. To the doctor, this man was lucky—the bullet had passed cleanly through muscle without lodging in his body, and it had missed both bone and major blood vessels. To Fu Bu'er, however, it was a completely novel experience. He had never imagined that flesh could be sewn up like a tailor stitching fabric, though he screamed himself hoarse during the procedure.
Of the thirty-odd severely wounded, two-thirds died while waiting their turn. After examining the survivors, the doctors exchanged grim looks. Their chances weren't good. Without blood plasma, without enough qualified nurses, these men would likely not survive surgery.
"Let the Military Group give them quick ends," Hippo said quietly. With resources so desperately scarce, they couldn't justify expending limited medical supplies on hopeless cases.
Shi Niaoren considered for a moment, then shook his head. "Forget it—let's try desperate measures. They've lasted from noon until now. That's strong life force. We have to try."
"But there's no blood plasma. We'd need donors, blood typing—"
"We'll use saline." Shi Niaoren's voice was firm. "No anesthetics either. Whether they survive depends on their luck."
"But... but..." The medical team stood stunned. No anesthetics? No blood plasma? Operating on severely injured men who had already lost dangerous amounts of blood, some already slipping into unconsciousness—wasn't that essentially killing them?
"I said desperate measures. Whether they live is fate." What Shi Niaoren left unspoken was simpler: Rather than watching them die slowly, better they die on the operating table. At least that soothes my conscience. And there was another thought, one he could never voice aloud: good surgical practice for everyone.
"Let's go." At his call, the exhausted medical team rose and got back to work. But they were short-staffed, especially nurses. Doctors had to assist doctors. Finally, even Dr. Yang the veterinarian was summoned—he had just finished examining the three captured horses, treating their injuries and diseases.
"Old Yang, can you operate on humans?"
"I can operate on horses..." Yang Baogui said with a wry grin. "Wound cleaning, disinfection, suturing—give those to me. It's all similar enough. Oh, and amputations—I can do those too."
"Then let's go."
The evening's post-battle review meeting identified five major problems exposed during combat.
First was insufficient military training and poor fighting spirit. Most people remained unfamiliar with firearms, resulting in excessive wasted ammunition. At the slightest sign of danger, they abandoned their positions. Even behind defensive fortifications, routs had occurred. In the open, there was no telling what might happen.
Second was extremely poor organization. Beyond Military Group members who could follow their leaders' orders and fight as a unit, they had proven essentially incapable of commanding hastily organized civilians. "Rabble," He Ming declared bluntly during the review.
Third was the matter of protection. The combination of steel helmets and stab-proof vests had proved effective. But the battle had exposed critical coverage gaps—limbs and faces remained vulnerable. Further protective equipment needed development.
Fourth was excessively passive strategy. They had confined themselves to Bairren Rapids, failing to leverage their superiority in firepower, communications, and mobility to seize the initiative. The result was purely reactive defense.
Fifth, Bairren Fortress's defenses were clearly insufficient and required significant strengthening.
But the meeting's true focus lay in determining the next strategic direction.
The Steady Faction argued for maintaining the two-point-one-line as their primary activity center while strengthening base defenses. After establishing facts on the ground, they could focus on industrial and technological development, building a complete urban and agricultural-industrial system. Through material abundance, superior living conditions, and advanced technology, they would create a "beacon effect"—attracting locals into trade and construction, ultimately achieving peaceful evolution.
The Aggressive Faction mocked this as pure turtle tactics. They possessed strength surpassing their opponents by three centuries, yet here they were, fearing the enemy like tigers and cowering behind trenches and barbed wire, too timid to seize the initiative. They reminded the assembly of a crucial point: without proactive attacks to destroy the local Ming ruling center, Lingao's resources would remain forever beyond reach. And that ruling center would organize hostile activities again and again, each time more prepared than the last.
"Lingao County launched this two-pronged attack today. Tomorrow they might send raiders—they've done it before. And we'll certainly need to venture farther from base in the future to collect various materials. Are we going to require Military Group escorts every single time?"
The Aggressive Faction listed the advantages of occupying the county seat: capturing large numbers of people as labor, using seized tax registers to levy taxes and grain, obtaining substantial treasury supplies...
These benefits swayed many listeners. The Steady Faction countered with historical records and present reality—pointing out that the population available to capture for labor was not particularly large, that Ming-era Lingao County annals showed the prefecture had always been impoverished, and that the treasury wouldn't yield much.
At this juncture, Aggressive Faction representative Ma Qianzhu made an unexpected proposal: table the county-seat question entirely and focus instead on the training and organization problems exposed in battle.
Training was indeed a glaring gap. Since landing, ten-plus days of constant labor had left no time for proper drills. Live-fire practice had occurred exactly once, and even then, five rounds per person had made the Planning Committee wince—five hundred people meant 2,500 rounds expended. The transmigrators' biggest loss in this battle was ammunition. In under an hour of fighting, nearly 3,000 rounds had been consumed—a significant figure. Their total stockpile was only one million rounds. If training and minor skirmishes continued devouring ammunition at this rate, how would they fight future battles? When would they finally produce their own metallic cartridges?
The organization problems were directly related to insufficient military training. Xiao Zishan observed that professional groups had performed well in battle—clearly because they worked together daily and knew each other intimately. The problems stemmed mainly from the ad-hoc "basic labor groups" assembled each day. These groups had been designed to be permanent units; in practice, personnel management had redistributed members daily, resulting in unfamiliarity and lack of trust among teammates. Adequate for routine labor, but in emergencies, they couldn't unite effectively.
After extended discussion, the Committee reaffirmed the group system. All transmigrators except those in family units would freely combine into fixed four-person groups, each electing its own group leader. These groups would participate in labor together, eat together, and share the same dormitory quarters. Through living and working side by side, they would forge bonds of friendship—like university dormmates who formed tight relationships over years of proximity.
Each group would be issued one SKS rifle as shared equipment. This arrangement allowed everyone to practice and avoided the dangerous scenario of issuing weapons only during wartime, when unfamiliarity could prove lethal. At the same time, it prevented distributing one rifle per person, which would mean uncontrolled firearms throughout the community.
Using these groups as basic building blocks, weekly time would be allocated for military training to improve coordination. Next, Beiwei introduced a new training plan: "Hunting."
"Each time, the Military Group sends five of its members, plus two to three regular groups." He explained the details carefully. "We break our current pattern of operating only along the Wenlan River. We push reconnaissance into the depths in various directions, correcting our maps, surveying resources—"
Groups would capture isolated individuals or small clusters of natives. When necessary, they would attack local armed personnel. Through actual combat, they would temper the team—fighting while marching was far closer to real warfare than parade-ground drills and target practice back at base. They would spread transmigrator authority to every corner of the county, letting commoners know of their arrival and spreading necessary terror.
This plan obviously reeked of blood. But the Moderate faction decided not to oppose it—after all, twenty-one wounded was cold, hard reality. If they vetoed this proposal, the Aggressive faction would inevitably reintroduce their motion to attack the county seat. Given the current emotional climate, the moderates didn't believe they could win that vote. In the end, the Steady faction agreed to the "Hunting" plan as a compromise, accepting it in exchange for the Aggressive faction dropping its county-seat attack proposal.
(End of Chapter)