Chapter 349 - 289, Rabbit and Sheep
The sun had just risen, and Chen Ji walked in the thin morning mist.
He stepped closer, then farther, avoiding the bodies strewn on the ground, sometimes even dodging the mixture of blood and mud. Eventually, he stopped trying, as there was simply too much blood—there was no way to avoid it.
The night is gentle; it hides blood and corpses where they can’t be seen. Only when daylight comes will you see the brutality of war.
On the dirt road, border army infantry weaved through the corpses. They stacked the bodies—of civilians, border soldiers, and Heavenly Strategy Army soldiers—onto carts and hauled them away.
As the bodies piled high on the carts, limbs dangled lifelessly, heads slumped weakly, devoid of breath, devoid of dignity.
An old border soldier spotted a decent pair of boots, immediately sat down beside the corpse with glee, peeled off the boots neatly, and swiftly put them on.
The old soldier exclaimed in delight, "Fits perfectly! These Jing Dynasty scoundrels aren’t so bad—coming all this way just to bring me some boots. Comfy!"
Someone laughed and cursed, "You idiot, wearing them without washing first?"
The old soldier grumbled, "If I wash them and hang them outside the camp, who knows which son of a bitch will sneak off with them? Back in the twenty-fifth year of Jianing, I worked hard to swipe a pair of boots from Quwu Mountain, and after washing them, before they’d even dried, Old Yao was wearing them..."
As he spoke, the soldier suddenly remembered: Old Yao was gone, just taken away by another cart.
In the silence, someone patted his shoulder, "Find another pair and burn them for Old Yao as an offering."