Section Two (Part One)

After a few days of trailing along with the main force, Lin Feng finally pieced things together: the current year was the thirteenth of Emperor Kangxi's reign. Fortunately, Lin Feng had a background in the humanities and had devoted himself to his studies during the college entrance examination. He hadn’t been out of school for long, so he could draw on the dim outlines of historical facts in his memory. By connecting key events—like the Qing dynasty’s recovery of Taiwan and the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk—he calculated that it was roughly the year 1674.

Anyone who’s played "Uncharted Waters" knows that this was the era when Western powers had just begun to bare their fangs. The British were tussling with Dutch windmills for territory, and all manner of seafarers were busy smuggling, trading slaves, dodging taxes, and running contraband. China, too, was embroiled in ceaseless warfare. To the north, the Russian Tsar was up to secretive mischief. To the west, the Mongols of the northern and southern deserts—Dzungars, Tüsheet Khanate, and others—were locked in fierce civil wars. The Kangxi Emperor was overwhelmed, dispatching troops and clashing head-on with Wu Sangui. In short, this was nothing like the so-called Golden Age of Kangxi and Qianlong; the world was in utter chaos.

To be honest, Lin Feng was under no illusions about the situation. He understood the gravity of things, even if those around him remained optimistic about the future. Wu Sangui and Geng Jingzhong's faction were doomed—sooner or later, their fate was sealed. The Qing army had already begun to stabilize the situation and launch counterattacks. A string of defeats was coming, and that was terrifying. As far as Lin Feng knew, the Qing army had a nasty habit: after every victory, they would massacre without restraint. Events like "The Ten Days of Yangzhou" and "The Three Massacres of Jiading" were infamous for good reason. So, the predicament before Lin Feng was dire; never mind lofty ambitions or future prospects—just staying alive was a challenge.

After several days on the march, Lin Feng abandoned any thought of escaping. In the twenty-first century, Fujian was a well-off place, but by seventeenth-century standards, it was nothing but barren mountains and treacherous waters. To Lin Feng, there was little here but endless mountains. Day in and day out, they climbed and trekked over peaks. People told him they were following the main road—he could scarcely imagine what the side paths might be like.

Because they were so close to the battlefield, the local populace had long since fled. As Lin Feng gazed at the unbroken chain of mountains stretching for miles, not a single sign of human habitation in sight, he was nearly certain that if he slipped away into the wilderness, he would be as good as dead.

Fortunately, things weren't going too badly for him at the moment. Thanks to generations of great emperors, the masses had been kept uneducated and docile. Lin Feng found, after a bit of scholarly banter with Li Qingliu, that the robust fellows around him began to regard him with a peculiar sort of respect—some even with awe. Even the fierce-looking soldiers now looked at him with deference. At first, Lin Feng was puzzled by this, but after asking Li Qingliu, he learned that among the thousands in the force, only two and a half people could be considered literate: Li Qingliu, Lin Feng himself, and one other who could just about write his name with a brush.

This created a fundamental class divide. As soon as Lin Feng joined, Li Qingliu generously gifted him a mule. That very evening at camp, Lin Feng was assigned the task of managing accounts for Li Qingliu. Luckily, his younger sister was much favored by Geng Jingzhong, so Lin Feng gained a bit of face as well. Geng Jingzhong, knowing his relative wasn’t particularly capable but appreciated his caution, agreed. To be safe, he assigned nearly two thousand seasoned veterans from Liaodong as escorts. With Commander Xu Shangchao’s fifty thousand troops stationed at the Zhejiang front, nothing major was expected to go wrong.

In fact, this force wasn’t transporting grain or fodder. The dozen carts carried eight hundred thousand taels of silver, and the thousands of laborers were press-ganged into military service on the way.

Contrary to popular imagination, Lin Feng found that military management in this era was, if nothing else, somewhat systematic. This detachment numbered over four thousand: two hundred fifty cavalry, about fifteen hundred infantrymen divided into two battalions, over three thousand laborers, and a considerable number of mules and horses. Feeding all these people and animals was no small matter, but this was nothing to a well-educated man like Lin Feng. That night, he put on a little display—scratching figures in the dirt with a stick for a while, he calculated everything precisely, much to Li Qingliu’s delight. Though Li counted as learned, his grasp of mathematics was poor. Seeing Lin Feng solve his headache in a few swift strokes, Li immediately ordered wine and dishes to reward his new strategist.

Li Qingliu was not much to look at, perhaps, but he had a decent character—better than Lin Feng expected. Over drinks, he didn’t demand poetry or song, nor any literary contests. Lin Feng soon realized that Master Li was mostly for show; he’d probably read only the Analects and was clueless about the rest of the classics. He was, however, passionate about tales like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," "Water Margin," and "The Investiture of the Gods." After a few cups, he would enthusiastically recount the exploits of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and others, gesticulating wildly—skills, Lin Feng suspected, picked up from storytellers in tea houses.

Lin Feng, naturally, was more than familiar with these classics. He bantered with Li Qingliu without missing a beat, often outshining him. After all, in his previous life, Lin Feng had played the entire "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series by Koei, from version 2 through 10, and had studied the history in depth since high school. He knew every general, battlefield, and the territories of Cao Cao and Liu Bei inside out. Li Qingliu, who had only read the novels and heard stories, couldn’t compare.

What was truly fascinating was learning from Li Qingliu just how influential "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was in this era. There was a popular saying: in the Song dynasty, “half the Analects could govern the world,” but in the Qing, “one copy of the Three Kingdoms could win the empire.” While many scholars scoffed at turning a novel into a military manual, it was all the rage among Li Qingliu and the officers. As the wine flowed, Lin Feng played the storyteller, weaving tales with wit and flair, winning the admiration of the assembled military men.