The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

The soldiers brought over hundreds of people who had fought for Xiang Yan's body, and they knelt one by one in front of Wang Jian's chariot!

"Military Law Officer."

Wang Jian wore a helmet, and the bronze emitted a dim light under the torch, casting a shadow, covering his eyes that were staring at these people.

But his face was as gloomy as water, and he said coldly: "What's the crime of drawing swords and fighting each other during the war?"

The military law officer immediately responded: "Report to the great general, it is the same crime as fighting for the head and fighting privately!"

"Behead the leading military officer, and the rest will be flogged thirty times and stripped of their titles!"

"General Wang, we have made great contributions in charging into the battle!"

Those generals and captains stood up and shouted that they were wronged, and some even tore off their armor. In the light of the fire, Hei Fu also tiptoed in the crowd and found that the man's back was full of blade wounds.

"I have followed General Wang for many years!" He shouted, "I shed blood in Yanyu!"

"I remember you." Wang Jian said lightly, "But merits are merits, faults are faults, merits must be rewarded, faults must be punished!"

At this time, shouting is useless. Qin's military law has severe punishments, and merits cannot offset faults. With the order of the military law officer, including this person, more than ten military officers were pinned to the ground. Wang Jian's short-soldier guards raised their weapons that had never had the opportunity to stain blood and cut off their heads one by one!

Wang Jian asked the messenger to hold a head and ride to various departments within a radius of dozens of miles to publicize it, and ordered the soldiers not to fight for the head privately, otherwise this would be the end.

After finishing this matter, he ordered people to bring Xiang Yan's body over.

In the fight just now, Xiang Yan was almost dismembered. Everyone had a hard time putting his hands, feet and body together again and sent them to Wang Jian.

Wang Jian got off the chariot and walked over to look at him personally, his expression solemn.

He and Xiang Yan had only met briefly, thirty years ago, when Xiang Yan escorted Chunshen Jun to Xianyang to attend the funeral of King Zhao of Qin, and Wang Jian happened to be a palace guard.

In the Xianyang Palace, which was full of black and white and solemn mourning, two young military lieutenants stood outside the palace, one on the left and one on the right, discussing military affairs in a low voice. They talked from night to dawn, and felt that they had met too late. When they said goodbye, they felt that the other party would become their enemy in the future.

After that, they never met again, but kept hearing about each other's glorious achievements. Who would have thought that when they met again, it would be like this.

Not only was it bloody and miserable to be dismembered after death, but from these messy corpses, Wang Jian also smelled death and destruction.

"No matter how heroic he was during his lifetime, how powerful he was, and how he could command hundreds of thousands of troops, in the end he was just a pile of rotten meat."

Wang Jian felt a sense of grief, but when he heard that the head had not been found, he asked cautiously: "Is this really Xiang Yan? Did you really see him commit suicide with your own eyes?"

The military officers said that at that time they only saw the Chu army crying, and when they approached, those Chu people fought desperately, trying to stop them from approaching the headless body...

Wang Jian was silent. The current situation was a bit troublesome. Almost all of Xiang Yan's personal guards died in the battle, and no one among the captured prisoners saw Xiang Yan commit suicide with their own eyes. Some thought he was dead, and some thought he was dead.

Although the military judge who had been a clerk swore that the age of the body was almost the same as Xiang Yan, the identity could not be fully confirmed without seeing the head.

"Disguise and flee, this is not Xiang Yan's style."

Wang Jian finally made a judgment and asked the whole army to inform the news that Xiang Yan had committed suicide. But secretly, he decided to let the troops sent to pursue the enemy continue to track down Xiang Yan's whereabouts. It's better to be safe than sorry...

Fortunately, he also seized Xiang Yan's flag, which can prove this.

"Where are Li You, the commander of Nanjun, and Heifu, the commander?"

Heifu was startled and immediately followed Li You step by step, and stepped forward to present the flag...

Xiang Yan's flag was not made of silk, but of bright feathers. The flagpole was as thick as a calf and three feet long. The flag could cover a chariot.

Dongmen Bao said that when they rushed to the front, everyone just swarmed to grab Xiang Yan's body and fought. The scene was very chaotic. Seeing that he couldn't squeeze in, he was getting impatient, but he saw the big flag stuck on the car, so he asked someone to cut it down and carry it out. Who would have thought that it would be a good thing.

Wang Jian smiled and said: "Captain Li, you ordered your troops to rush to the rescue with light equipment and captured Xiang Yan's flag. This is also the merit of your command and dispatch!"

"Heifu, you are the first batch of reinforcements to arrive. You first raised a big flag to confuse the Chu army, and then broke several formations of the Chu rear army and captured Xiang Yan's flag. This is also a great achievement."

"Those who win the victory and get the flag will be rewarded according to their titles to show their intention of rewarding and persuading. The merits of you two will be recorded by the military judges!"

In addition, Wang Jian also praised the performance of each army today. They all made contributions in luring the enemy, holding on, assaulting, and pretending to be defeated. Even Meng Wu, who had just defeated Jing's army and was still more than ten miles away, would not be forgotten by Wang Jian.

In this battle, the Qin army won a great victory and the Chu army was defeated. It was a happy battle, but Wang Jian changed his tone and said seriously: "Tens of thousands of Chu soldiers were annihilated or captured, but there are still many scattered and fled. To prevent them from regrouping, you should chase them overnight! Destroy them all!"

Wang Jian was already preparing to attack Shouchun and take all the cities of Chu. As long as these resistance forces were cleared, it would be easy to destroy Chu!

The Nanjun Corps led by Li You was ordered to pursue northward. Seeing that his men did not suffer heavy casualties, Hei Fu asked Li Xian to take some of the more tired people to stay and clean up the battlefield, and he himself followed Li You with 500 people.

"Captain."

After leaving Wang Jian's command post, Hei Fu asked in a low voice: "What reward will I get for my achievements today?"

Because Hei Fu's performance was excellent, it was equivalent to a "collective merit" for the Nanjun soldiers, so Li You was very happy. In his heart, he had already regarded Hei Fu as his lucky general. Last time, he helped him stand out in the defeated army, and this time he made a great contribution without doing anything.

So Li You smiled and said:

"The merit of capturing the flag is second only to killing the general. The 1,500 soldiers you led are one level of military officers and soldiers. Dongmen Bao, who captured the flag, can get two levels of nobility. As for you, the nobility of Gongcheng is already in your pocket! If you show some performance before the destruction of Chu, you can also expect to be a five-rank official!"

...

From that night until the next day, more than 100,000 Qin soldiers were divided into 20 to 30 groups and began to disperse from the battlefield to chase and kill the defeated Chu soldiers.

As far as Hei Fu knows, there were two major defeated armies: Zuo Sima Zhaohua gathered 20,000 people and fled into Qicheng, where they fought stubbornly. Wang Jian had already led the main force of the Qin army to besiege the city.

In addition, Jing Rui, a soldier of the Jing clan sent by Xiang Yan to stop Meng Wu that day, was killed by Meng Wu, and Jing Ju fled eastward with thousands of people, probably to Xiapi.

Apart from these two armies, the rest of the Chu army was scattered in panic, most of them lost their organization, with more than a thousand people and dozens of people. Without Xiang Yan, they lost the backbone of unity and were beaten by the Qin army. They all abandoned their armor and fled.

Some fled to nearby Chu cities, such as Shiri Zhou Wen, who took some people and fled into the mountains, and the Qin army was too lazy to chase them.

But Heifu's good luck seemed to have been exhausted in the battle to capture the flag. After he dispersed and chased northward, he didn't catch any big fish. He only cut off the heads of more than a hundred Chu soldiers. In the evening of the next day, he encountered a sudden heavy rain...

The wind was strong, lightning broke through the gloomy sky, and the rain poured down. The ground suddenly became a swamp. Heifu and his men had to stop chasing a team of more than a hundred Chu soldiers. When they were looking for a place to shelter from the rain, they found that there was a small town in front of them that was not even marked on the map...

"This map is too sloppy. It only draws to the county level. Some roads are wrong. This small town is not marked. Fortunately, the war is over."

Mu no longer carried the flag, but held up an umbrella for Heifu. Heifu also asked Ji Ying to put away the map and asked everyone to speed up and occupy this small town to avoid the rain.

"If there are defeated soldiers of the Chu army inside, it would be a good opportunity to get more heads."

However, after entering this small town with only a hundred households and a wall only ten feet high, they found that there was not even a single person here, let alone the Chu army...

When Hei Fu and his men drove into the largest house here to take shelter from the rain, they found that the people here had evacuated in a hurry and did not even have time to collect the clothes that were drying outside.

After a while, Dongmen Bao, who was ordered to search for people in the town, caught a limping fifty-year-old man. The old man was wearing brown clothes, which showed that he was very poor. He was holding a young girl, about three or four years old. She was very afraid of the ferocious Qin army and hid in the old man's arms and sobbed non-stop.

"Old man, let me ask you."

Hei Fu asked everyone not to scare them, and asked kindly: "Where did all the people in this town go?"

The old man from Chu had never thought that the black-faced Qin official in front of him would speak authentic Jingchu dialect. He was stunned for a moment, and after a while he said: "I heard that there was a big war in Qinan, and the lord of the town was afraid of being affected, so he took the people in the town to escape to the swamp..."

The swamp he mentioned should be the swamp in Qinbei. The mountain forest swamp is usually a natural shelter for people to avoid war. After all, where the army is, thorns grow. When the army passes by, every grain of food will be searched away in order to get food from the enemy, which is no different from locusts passing through.

"Why don't you hide?" Hei Fu continued to ask.

"My legs are inconvenient and I can't walk far. Besides, I have a granddaughter to take care of." His legs were indeed limping, and he must have been injured.

"Did any Chu soldiers escape into this place yesterday and today?"

The old man hugged his granddaughter, as if he wanted to hide her as much as possible, and lowered his head and said, "No..."

"Captain, look what I found!"

As he spoke, Ji Ying ran over excitedly. They found several bloody armors hidden in the bushes in the old man's house. There was no doubt that they were Chu armors! Obviously, the old man lied. Not only did the defeated soldiers enter the small town, but he also took them in and rescued them!

"How do you explain this?"

The old man looked ashen, and murmured, "Those are the sons of this town. They fled back here after retreating. I can't just watch and let them throw away their armor and go into the swamp..."

At this time, Hei Fu discovered that the old man's eyes had been glancing at the terrifying heads hanging on the waists of the Qin soldiers from beginning to end.

"This is your granddaughter, where is your son?"

The old man hugged his granddaughter tightly, and said in a low, trembling voice, but with a hint of anger suppressed: "She is going on a long journey!"

"Oh, isn't she also joining Xiang Yan's army to fight against the Qin army!?"

As soon as Hei Fu finished speaking, the Qin soldiers showed fierce looks on their faces and drew out their swords, scaring the little girl to burst into tears!

"My son is indeed in the Chu army, but his companions came back and said that he was trapped in the army and most likely dead."

The old man knelt down in despair and kowtowed repeatedly, saying: "I heard you talk, you are also from Jing! I hope you will have pity on me. If you want to kill me, kill me, spare my granddaughter, let her stay in this town, and wait for her mother to return. She was afraid of being captured and insulted by the Qin army, so she followed everyone to the marsh..."

It was just an ordinary Chu family. The son was conscripted into the army and died in the war. Only the lame old man was left at home. Looking at his leg injury, he might have been injured by the Qin army in the war many years ago.

In this war, Chu mobilized one-tenth of its population. Although most of the civilians stayed in various places when Xiang Yan evacuated, or fled in advance, there were no less than 100,000 casualties, so there were many such families in Chu.

Those who survived can only live, and those who died will die! There was no one in the room except the grandson...

Unfortunately, they played the role of invaders.

"From now on, you are also Qin people."

After a long silence, Heifu said this, gestured, and asked his men to put away their weapons: "Forget it, lock the grandfather and grandson in the house and let them out when we leave."

That night, the rain kept falling. As the night deepened, the voices of the Qin soldiers gradually disappeared. Only faint and intermittent crying could be heard in the room where the grandfather and grandson were locked up. I don't know if they were crying for their deceased son or father, or for something else?

The next day, the weather cleared up, and Heifu led his men to leave the small town, ready to return to the main force with more than a hundred heads.

Before leaving, he spread out the inaccurate map on his carriage, marked the path he passed yesterday and this inconspicuous town, and wrote the name he had asked from the old man in Chu in tiny words next to it:

"Daze Township!"

Daze Township is only thirty or forty miles away from Qinan, where the Chu army was destroyed and Xiang Yan died in battle!

This is where everything ends and where everything begins.

In history, the fire of Chu was extinguished here, but the sparks in the ashes still rekindled here?

Hei Fu turned around and looked at Daze Township, which was getting farther and farther away, and the grandfather and grandson who looked at them from afar after they came out, and their eyes were no longer fearful or hostile.

He seemed to see that a ghost, a ghost called national hatred and family hatred, had been wandering in the land of Jingchu for a long time!