Chinese Generals Summoning System

Chapter 26: A Second-Rank General Among the Displaced

Chen Baocai felt quite puzzled when he saw the several generals clad in fine iron armor standing beside Liu Ji. He was fairly familiar with the Liu family—after all, he had visited them once before. Given the Liu family’s status as minor landowners, they shouldn’t have been able to afford so many household guards. Moreover, judging by the aura of those guards, their martial arts skills were certainly no mean feat. the Liu family likely couldn’t afford to support them—especially since Wan Prefecture, where they lived, had suffered three consecutive years of severe drought. Liu Ji offered no further explanation, and Chen Baocai did not press the matter. However, Chen Baocai calculated in his mind that since Liu Ji was, after all, the grandson of Chen Ta, the head of the Chen family, and had now come to seek refuge with the Chens, he could later have Liu Ji contribute these retainers to bolster the strength of the Chen family’s military forces. Of course, these matters were not yet Chen Baocai’s concern; at that moment, he was more worried about food. In the end, Chen Baocai gathered his men and carried away nearly 700 jin of grain and over 100 jin of dried wild vegetables from Liu Ji’s courtyard. Additionally, Liu Ji shared several dozen jin of fresh beef with Chen Baocai. Afterward, Liu Ji and Chen Baocai agreed to set out together the next day for Qi County. After Chen Baocai and his men had cheerfully left Liu Ji’s courtyard, carrying their belongings, Liu Ji instructed the military officers standing nearby: “Although they’re from my uncle’s family, everyone should still be cautious tonight. You can never truly know what’s in someone’s heart, and I’ve only met that steward Chen once.” That night, when Liu Ji went to sleep, he naturally could not share a room with the twin sisters, Lin Xiya and Lin Xiwen. He and Liu Niuniu stayed in another room, while the twins, Lin Xiya and Lin Xiwen, shared a room with their maidservant. Although the room had wooden beds, there were no blankets or bedding, and since Liu Ji and his group hadn’t brought any with them, they had no choice but to spread some dry straw on the beds and sleep fully clothed—the twin sisters included. Fortunately, a brazier had been lit in the room, so it wasn’t cold inside; it was much better than spending the night out in the open. Liu Ji lay on the bed and checked his soul points. Thanks to the contributions from two bands of bandits along the way, they had long since exceeded 100 points, reaching 120—more than enough to summon a third-rate general once. However, Liu Ji did not proceed with the summoning. He was still shaken by the experience of using 500 points to summon You Tong not long ago. Although his martial prowess had reached 17 points, the success rate for summoning a third-rate general was still only one in thirty-two—meaning that under normal circumstances, he would have to attempt the summoning thirty-two times to succeed just once. By comparison, summoning You Tong after just five attempts was already incredibly lucky, and his luck in summoning Liu Pi and Gong Du earlier had been nothing short of miraculous. Liu Ji decided it would be best to accumulate more soul points before summoning any more generals. Including Chen Hao, he now had six generals at his side, two of whom had martial prowess on par with top-tier generals, so his need for new generals wasn’t quite as urgent. Just then, Liu Niuniu, who was lying in Liu Ji’s arms, suddenly asked in a soft, childish voice, “Big Brother, when we get to Uncle’s house, will we get to see Dad and Uncle Tie? Niuniu misses them!” “Don’t worry, Niuniu. Even if we get to Uncle’s house and Dad and Uncle Tie haven’t arrived yet, if we stay there for a few days, they’ll show up!” Liu Ji spoke with absolute certainty, though deep down he wasn’t entirely confident. He could only hope that the gods would watch over his father and Uncle Tie, ensuring their safe arrival in Qi County. The next morning, after breakfast, Liu Ji and his group made their way to the town’s main street, where Chen Baocai, along with twenty Chen family retainers and over six hundred disaster victims, were already waiting for them. Only then did Chen Baocai notice that Liu Ji’s group actually had five warhorses—and were even so extravagant as to use two of them to pull a cart. It was nothing short of a waste of precious resources. After all, the price of warhorses had been soaring as the situation in the Great Jin Dynasty grew increasingly chaotic, especially in the northern provinces where they were bred, which had suffered raids by nomadic tribes from the grasslands. The price of an ordinary warhorse had already exceeded 200 taels of silver, and in many places, they were so scarce that money could not buy them. The entire Chen family currently owned only 20 warhorses, each of which was fed with the utmost care. When Chen Baocai led 20 Chen family retainers to Wan Prefecture to recruit soldiers, he traveled in nothing more than a cart pulled by a plodding horse, loaded with some grain—and by now, that very horse had already been eaten by the disaster-stricken refugees. “Young Master, why are you using two warhorses to pull the wagon? That’s such a waste!” “Hehe, Uncle Chen, the passengers in the wagon are members of the Liu family. I don’t have any draft horses—I happened to acquire a few warhorses by chance, so I had no choice but to spare two of them to pull the wagon.” “Ah—using warhorses to pull a cart is simply too extravagant. The county seat of Gong County is just ahead; there should be a livestock market there. Young Master, you’d be better off buying two workhorses to pull the cart. If warhorses are used for pulling for too long, they’ll essentially be ruined.” “Uncle Chen has a point. Then, once we enter Gong County, I’ll buy two workhorses to pull the cart.” “Young Master, with so many of us, it’s impossible for everyone to enter Gong County. We’ll have to send just a few people into town to procure grain and other supplies. Right now, all the counties and prefectures in Yongzhou are on high alert—they won’t let large numbers of disaster refugees enter the city easily. It would be disastrous if marauding bandits were to slip in among them!” “Uncle Chen, once we pass Gong County, will we reach Qi County?” “That’s correct, Young Master. The rest of our journey should be relatively peaceful; you needn’t worry about safety.” Two days later, Liu Ji and his party arrived safely in Qi County. The entire route lay within the territory of Changping Commandery, and the villages and towns they passed through were generally well-populated. It was evident that the famine in Yongzhou had been far less severe than in Wan Zhou in recent years; at the very least, there had been no large-scale exodus of famine refugees, and there were far fewer roving bandits and local outlaws. Liu Ji and his party didn’t encounter a single band of marauders or bandits along the way, so Liu Ji’s soul points hadn’t increased at all over those two days. As Liu Ji passed through the county seat of Gong County, he sent Liu Pi into town to spend 90 taels of silver on two draft horses, effectively replacing the two warhorses that had been pulling the cart. Of the two warhorses that were freed up, one went to Liu Pi and the other to You Tong. As a result, all five generals summoned by Liu Ji were now equipped with warhorses, while only Chen Hao continued to drive the ox cart loaded with grain and other supplies. Chen Hao was simply too large; an ordinary warhorse could not possibly carry his weight. According to Chen Hao himself, he had once owned a fine horse he’d raised since it was a foal, which could carry him without any trouble—but he’d lost it. With Liu Pi and You Tong both mounted, Liu Ji asked Chen Baocai for a disaster victim to serve as the driver of his four-wheeled horse-drawn cart. Moreover, he directly claimed this disaster victim for his own command, meaning the man would no longer have any connection to the Chen family. Although Chen Baocai felt a twinge of regret at parting with a rather sturdy young male disaster victim, Liu Ji had given him so much grain in the past that he had to grant him this favor. Moreover, given their new kinship, the people under Liu Ji’s command might eventually be absorbed into the Chen family’s ranks by his eldest son. Therefore, as soon as Liu Ji made his request, Chen Baocai agreed without hesitation. While traveling with the disaster victims, Liu Ji habitually had the system scan the 3D stats of both the victims and his household servants. The others showed nothing out of the ordinary, but when the scan reached a male disaster victim in his twenties, his 3D stats took Liu Ji by surprise. Cheng Yi: Strength 78, Intelligence 74, Leadership 78. A Strength score exceeding 70 placed him at the level of a second-rate military commander, and with both his Intelligence and Leadership scores also above 70, he was undoubtedly a well-rounded talent. Liu Ji simply couldn’t understand how someone with Cheng Yi’s abilities had ended up as a disaster refugee. Still, Liu Ji wasn’t about to let a second-tier military commander like this slip away. He immediately asked Chen Baocai to hand him over, assigning him to help drive the cart to see if he could recruit this second-tier military commander to his cause.