A Night in the Grid
Chapter 146 Don't Guess
Tan Weishi’s expression dimmed. She said casually, “Chi Lei is out of the question. He should be getting married this winter, his family has already arranged it. There are so many weddings of acquaintances this year. Lu Dan is marrying Huang Wan, and who else? Oh right, the Zeng family has also arranged a marriage for Zeng Zining. After all, that guy isn’t a pawnshop apprentice anymore, he’s putting on quite a show.”
Dai Qiuyan put down her pen, examined the painting for a moment, and turned her head to say, “Thinking that once you marry, it won’t be so convenient for us to play together anymore. Heaven knows where the young man you fancy will be stationed in the future. You can’t possibly come see your sister for half the year, can you? You’d probably be kicked out by your husband’s family.”
Tan Weishi shook her head gently, as if trying to shake off these messy thoughts. “Forget it, anyway, Father has promised that I will definitely marry someone I’m satisfied with. I’ll just be a spinster for a few more years. What about you? Even if it’s later, you’ll marry your Ye-gege next year as you wish. By then, you won’t have time to play with me.”
Tan Weishi thought, although Father allows her to choose someone she’s satisfied with to marry, this question is really hard to say. Besides Tan Weixin, probably no one can truly understand her thoughts, and this is really an extremely thorny issue.
“Qiūqiū, can you paint a picture for me… Remember the first military chess competition, when your Ye-gege explained that match? I’ve thought about it many times, if I were really that princess on the grassland, how wonderful that would be… Can you help me paint a picture based on that scene?”
Dai Qiuyan’s brow furrowed slightly, then relaxed. She had known Tan Weishi for so long and knew that her good friend had always been thinking about that story, that scene, even though such a painting would be quite difficult. But she still agreed, "Okay, but we'll have to wait until we return to Danyang. We'll have to paint it in the studio."
Dai Qiuyan added, "...But, I haven't seen the grassland before. I don't know what that place should look like. If Ye-gege has time, I'll have him paint it."
Tan Weishi scoffed, “Brother-in-law will only get busier and busier. He’s enjoying a comfortable rest now, but there will be plenty of things to do later. Asking a second-class governor to paint for me? I don’t have that much face. …Speaking of which, in terms of identity, Dai Yun could be considered a princess on the grassland. Listening to her stories of traveling around, it’s really wonderful. I really want to go to the grassland myself.”
“Or… um, or we can talk to Sister Dai Yun and have her arrange a trip for us?” Dai Qiuyan hesitated a bit. About a third of this hesitation was because, as far as she could remember, she had never been away from Ye Tao for a long time. The thought made her a little uneasy.
“Yunzhou is not our own territory after all. It would be great if we could go secretly. It's okay for you. If Dai Yun agrees to arrange it for you, you can just go along. ...It's not that simple for me. I can do without the princess's paraphernalia normally, but going to Yunzhou won't be so easy. Taking the paraphernalia will get us criticized by enemy countries, not taking the paraphernalia will get us criticized by the censors. Once I get to Yunzhou, how many audiences do you think I'll have to receive before I have time to go out and play? ...It's really so painful.” Born into royalty, Tan Weishi understood her identity and the various responsibilities and obligations that came with it. It wasn’t a question of whether she liked it or not, nor whether she was enthusiastic about it or not, but something innate.
“Don’t they all say that Yunzhou will eventually be incorporated into Dongping?” Dai Qiuyan asked innocently.
Tan Weishi glared at Dai Qiuyan and said, “It’s not that easy… It’s said that a group of women and children from the Dai family are coming to settle in the Dai family’s mansion in Danyang. The situation in Yunzhou is very bad, and there might be another war. After the war, who Yunzhou will belong to is really anyone's guess.”
The content that Tan Weishi discussed already involved some of the court’s decision-making, which was something that Dai Qiuyan didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. Her back straightened, and she skillfully finished the last bit of the sketch in her hand, then said to Tan Weishi with satisfaction, “Okay. Let’s go back. There should be another messenger coming from Danyang today, let’s see if there’s any news. …Also, Zhou Zhi said he’d go hunt wild boar today for us to eat, I wonder if he was just bragging.”
Zhou Zhi’s promise to hunt wild boar was not in vain. With his superb hunting skills, hunting wild boar was not even considered a challenge. At least it was much simpler than the task Ye Tao had given him and Wu Ping’an to select twenty-four people from the many young martial artists to supplement the guard team.
The news sent from Danyang was somewhat unexpected. The women and children from the Dai family that Tan Weishi mentioned had already arrived in Danyang, and the news they brought was unsettling. The situation in Yunzhou was said to be on the verge of breaking out. Not to mention the Western Ling's northern army was ready to move, it seemed that the barbarians further north also showed signs of gathering, and the Northern Liao, which had been hurt by Yunzhou a few years ago, seemed to also have the intention of getting involved in this situation. The important military town of Northern Liao, the Liaoxi Camp, had already gathered nearly 100,000 troops.
However, the situation in Yunzhou was not so good. The Dai family had come to realize that the conflict between Western Ling and Dongping over who could unify the continent was becoming increasingly acute, and Yunzhou’s long-standing independence was becoming increasingly unrealistic. Although Northern Liao's strength was much weaker, it also had the intention of swallowing Yunzhou to strengthen itself, so that it could have a place in the overall trend of vying for hegemony. Although the cross-border trade between the three countries was still supporting Yunzhou’s economic situation and supplementing Yunzhou’s daily needs, the intermediary trade status of Yunzhou was becoming increasingly unimportant to Dongping and Western Ling, as the two countries fought each other while spying and assassinating each other, but at the same time allowed and protected the normal exchanges of merchants.
In the past two years, the tax revenue from horse trade in Yunzhou accounted for an increasing proportion. Under the condition that the total volume of horse trade did not increase much, this was a change worth vigilance. As Dongping and Yunzhou had always been relatively close, the call to simply incorporate Yunzhou into the prosperous Dongping within Yunzhou became more and more fierce. Under the enormous pressure of the simultaneous movements of Western Ling, the barbarians, and Northern Liao, a considerable number of people within the Dai family proposed to borrow troops from Dongping, and then, after the war, Yunzhou would be incorporated into Dongping. They knew that after the war, the Iron Cloud Cavalry, which the Dai family was proud of, might be wiped out, and the strength of the many major families that had maintained Yunzhou's stability and independence for hundreds of years might be greatly damaged, but only in this way could Dongping accept Yunzhou with peace of mind, could they use sacrifice as the Dai family's *tou ming zhuang*, could they use the friendship of fighting side by side with the Dongping army in blood and fire, could they use the courage that the people of Yunzhou never lacked to win respect and attention, could they let Yunzhou become a chess piece that Dongping could value and rely on to compete for hegemony. And the power that the Dai family most hoped to be able to rely on was the Blood Kirin Army, currently under the command of Dai Yun, which was known as the number one army in the world.
All the horses of the Blood Kirin Army’s cavalry units were the same as those of the Dai family’s Iron Cloud Cavalry. And even the horses used to pull carts in the Blood Kirin Army were stronger than the cavalry of Yunzhou’s second-line troops. Originally, when the Dai family sold so many good horses to the wealthy Blood Kirin Army in batches, they were worried that due to the water and grass problems, these horses might degenerate slightly in Dongping compared to Yunzhou, and the Blood Kirin Army, which had many descendants of aristocratic families, might not be able to fully develop the abilities of some good horses. What they didn’t expect was that the Blood Kirin Army indeed didn’t have the conditions to find natural water and grass pastures suitable for so many warhorses in Dongping, but they had the money to prepare good bean feed. The horses cherished by the important generals in the Blood Kirin Army, such as Chi Lei’s mount “Benlei,” could even occasionally eat sugar cubes. Although Yunzhou never worried about the problem of salt because Dongping spared no effort to ensure the supply of salt even if it reduced the supply of salt in some areas of the country, sugar cubes? That was a bit too extravagant.
The Blood Kirin Army’s training was meticulous and scientific, the training volume was large, and the training methods were diverse, which greatly promoted the relevant disciplines of the army. Dai Yun herself had long admitted that when the Blood Kirin Army was formed for one year, the combat effectiveness in terms of comprehensive equipment, training, morale, and command art had already exceeded that of the Iron Cloud Cavalry. And after actual battle experience, after increasingly targeted and increasingly scientifically strict training, and with the consistent attention and importance of the Dongping court and the public, the combat effectiveness of this most money-burning army in history was much stronger than that of the Iron Cloud Cavalry. The Blood Kirin Army’s goal was no longer to conquer every attack and defend every defense, but to reduce casualties as much as possible while achieving the same results.
What made the several core generals of the Dai family who were now in charge of the army particularly happy was that even in such a “number one army in the world,” from the beginning of its formation until now, Dai Yun, an outstanding member of the Dai family, had been sitting firmly in the position of the highest commander with the identity of a woman, without the slightest shake.
Along with the various situation briefings and documents sent by the messenger, there was also a private letter from Dai Yun. Dai Yun did not shy away from the fact that the situation in Yunzhou was bad, so bad that the family had actually added her youngest brother, Dai Ji, who was only fifteen years old, to this batch of women and children. This younger brother was already fighting in the Iron Cloud Cavalry when Dai Yun came to Danyang, at that time he was only twelve years old, but now he was kicked out and unwillingly came to Danyang under the restraint of two experienced family guards. The Dai family's intention to save a bit of bone and blood for the family was obvious. From northern Yunzhou all the way to Danyang, Dai Ji did not know how many times he wanted to escape back to the Iron Cloud Cavalry, fortunately the two family guards were really alert and strong in martial arts, so that Dai Ji did not succeed.
Dai Yun requested that Ye Tao be able to allow Dai Ji, who was not qualified in terms of age, to be admitted to the Blood Kirin Army, to stay in the new recruits camp now under Ye Tao's responsibility, and to let Ye Tao help manage him. Dai Yun also revealed her intention to go back to Yunzhou to take a look. She would take one hundred cavalry guards to Yunzhou, and during the time she was away, the Blood Kirin Army would be temporarily under the command of the Crown Prince Tan Weiming, with Qiu Haohui, who had been transferred from the Blood Kirin Army to the Imperial Guards, as the supervisor.
Ye Tao was not very interested in helping Dai Yun educate her younger brother, but he still agreed, replying to the letter and asking Dai Yun to send Dai Ji directly to Zou Shuangwen's department, and he would go to inspect the Blood Kirin Army's new recruits camp in the near future. For Dai Yun, this was also a request for Ye Tao to help the Dai family. Although Dai Yun commanded the Blood Kirin Army, her heart was always concerned about the Dai family's relatives far away in Yunzhou. In Dongping, she could not ask the Lord of the Nation, Tan Xiaopei, to take care of the Dai family, because she knew that such a promise was impossible for a Lord of the Nation to make. Although she was also on good terms with the children of various aristocratic families, these people had limited status after all, and it was still debatable whether the families behind them regarded the Dai family, which was known for its outstanding children, as friends or as threats. And Ye Tao, who was already a Governor-General, soon to be a prince consort, and without the consideration of family power, was the best choice.
Dai Yun hurriedly left Danyang, while the problem teenager Dai Ji was sent to Zou Shuangwen's camp. On the first day that Dai Ji entered the Blood Kirin Army's new recruits camp, he spoke wildly in front of Zou Shuangwen, and as a result, he was put in confinement for two days. The day the confinement ended happened to be a martial arts competition between the Imperial Guards and the City Guards, and it happened to be his turn to compete in archery skills. Dai Ji shone brightly, but after the competition, he again said nonsense that the Blood Kirin Army was nothing more than that, and he was put in confinement by Zou Shuangwen again for two days...
Dai Ji was certainly indignant, and Zou Shuangwen, who had already been very restrained for Dai Yun's sake, also had a headache. He wrote a letter to Ye Tao asking for instructions on how to deal with this matter.
Originally, Ye Tao thought that with the Blood Kirin Army’s environment and system, even the most arrogant children of aristocratic families would obediently listen to orders, and after a period of training, they would naturally understand the uniqueness of the Blood Kirin Army, but he didn’t expect to encounter a guy like Dai Ji who had prejudice from the beginning. Ye Tao’s body had recovered well, and it wouldn’t hurt to go out for a while, so he asked Bi Xiaoqing to arrange the itinerary. However, Ye Tao didn’t make it too difficult for Zou Shuangwen. He knew that with the current level of the new recruits camp, he definitely couldn’t convince Dai Ji. He asked Zou Shuangwen to take Dai Ji, and also called Zhuo Xianchen from the Imperial Guards and Zhang Xunyong from the Su Feng Town City Guards to go to the Blood Kirin Army’s headquarters together. This time of year happened to coincide with the Blood Kirin Army’s spring joint training and grand competition. It would be a pity to miss such a grand occasion.
"Drill Manual? What the hell am I supposed to learn from the Drill Manual? It's bullshit." Not long after entering the long-awaited Blood Kirin Army camp, he could hear Dai Ji's energetic voice. Ye Tao frowned, but didn't say anything. In the Blood Kirin Army's camp, daring to say such a thing, if he wasn't Dai Yun's younger brother, he would probably be dragged out and beaten directly.
"Ye Tao, you're here. Is your body better?" The one who came to meet him was Crown Prince Tan Weiming. He immediately stopped Ye Tao from performing the etiquette of seeing the Crown Prince, and supported Ye Tao, saying, "Brother-in-law... don't do that, hahaha, I know you don't like that."
Ye Tao didn't refuse, and said with a smile, "There's nothing seriously wrong with my body."
Again, there was a burst of cursing from the barracks. Tan Weiming smiled and said, "His spirit is really good. He's been arguing for an hour. As expected of someone who joined the army at the age of twelve, he's at least trained his voice."
Ye Tao smiled and said, "Now that he's in the Blood Kirin Army, are you still afraid of his temper?"
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After resting for a day, I feel much better. Thank you for your understanding, and thank you to someone who helped me share the resentment, haha.