130: Chapter 130 A Generous Reward for the Army Wins the Commander's Hearts (1)

Su Qingli finished drawing the final stroke.

After finishing, she flipped over the rubbing paper—there was still a blank space on the back.

She used the tip of her brush to write a line of text in the blank space: 'Bone Fish schools rising—three months. Black Fish schools exiting the abyss—three days. Fissures expanding—silt slurry melting.'

Then, she looked up toward the east side of the Pier.

There were fewer lights in the direction of the shanty area tonight—wartime regulations, every household extinguished their lights after the curfew.

Only a row of spiritual light lamps on the perimeter of the shanty area remained lit—those were the new lamps that Leng Feng had just requisitioned from the public treasury that afternoon to provide illumination for the night watch sentries.

The ginger soup was ready.

A wave of spicy, hot steam drifted from the large iron pot on the Pier, colliding in mid-air with the green poisonous miasma from the direction of Gu He's shack in the reef area—the hot steam of the ginger soup descended, the poisonous miasma floated upward, separated by a height of one zhang in between.

The next morning, the Pier was wrapped in a thin, grayish-white layer of sea mist.

The mist wasn't thick—it just happened to obscure half of the berth at the end of the jetty.

The sun had not yet fully risen, and a faint layer of gold floated on the surface of the Outer Port—the second phase of the Geng Metal Sword Intent Killing Array had been laid out to the middle section of the berth last night.

The spiritual light of the array pillars underwater shone through the surface, mingling with the morning light, dyeing the seawater by the Pier into a color that was hard to define as either gold or cyan.

Leng Feng was the first to arrive at the Pier.

The abrasion on his left hand had been wrapped in a new linen cloth—Gu He had re-wrapped it for him last night using fine linen soaked in medicinal juice, with a layer of dark green medicinal paste applied beneath the cloth.

The medicinal paste had been concocted by Gu He overnight—it was made by mashing up rotten bone grass roots, mixing them with a type of dark red seaweed scraped from the crevices of the reefs, and adding half a spoonful of dark brown powder poured from a black iron medicine gourd.

Gu He called this "Muscle-Regenerating and Blood-Stasis-Dissipating Powder," a name he had made up on the spot— "Anyway, it just keeps the wound from swelling by tomorrow morning."

Ten Sword Ray Cavalry followed behind him.

The cavalryman whose left shoulder had been bitten through had his left arm slung across his chest—Gu He had stitched him up with seventeen stitches last night.

He used curved needles ground from the tips of Bone Fish teeth and a fine thread extracted from seaweed—the thread was thinner than a hair, yet possessed excellent toughness.

After the seventeen stitches were finished, the edges of the wound were perfectly aligned—Gu He said that after the stitches were removed, it would only leave a scar the width of a fingernail.

The cavalryman whose right arm had been scratched no longer needed to sling his arm—after Gu He's medicinal powder had been applied for one night, a thin, pale yellow scab had formed on the surface of the wound.

The cavalryman with the bruised calf still walked with a slight limp—but he didn't need anyone to support him.

There were many more people on the Pier than usual.

Old miners from the shanty area, spiritual farmers from the spiritual fields, apprentices from the Trial Workshop—last night, Su Qingli had someone post a notice on the shanty area bulletin board: Merit to be rewarded at the Pier at the hour of Chen today.

The notice didn't say what the reward was, but the people on the Pier remembered the scene from when Su Qingli last announced the wartime allowance policy—this time, no one organized a queue, and before dawn, they had spontaneously crowded both sides of the jetty.

When Lu Changyuan walked down from the stone path, the people on the Pier automatically cleared a path to both sides.

He held in his hand the rubbing Jade Slip that Leng Feng had returned yesterday—the surface of the Jade Slip shimmered with a faint spiritual light in the morning sun; Su Qingli had already transcribed all the contents onto paper last night.

He walked to the front of the cargo receiving shed on the Pier.

On the small table at the entrance of the shed lay the underwater map that Su Qingli had drawn last night—from the Abyss Mouth to the bottom of the Dragon Burial Trench, a distance of two thousand five hundred zhang, every section's water temperature, flow direction, fish school distribution, and danger markings were drawn clearly.

A row of Spirit Stone bags was stacked by the table—each bag containing one hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones, which Su Qingli had requisitioned from the public treasury overnight.

There was less than two thousand Spirit Stones in working capital left in the public treasury—but she had stacked all one thousand one hundred Spirit Stones on the table without holding back a single one.

Lu Changyuan did not look at the Spirit Stone bags on the table first.

He walked up to the most severely injured cavalryman—the one whose left shoulder had been bitten through.

The cavalryman was named Deng Yue—a name Su Qingli had written down when registering the wounded last night.

Deng Yue was twenty-two years old this year and had been in the Sword Ray Cavalry for less than half a year.

He used to be a cargo porter on the Pier—he was the first to sign up when Leng Feng was recruiting cavalry.

"Can you move your shoulder?"

"I can move it." Deng Yue used his right hand to lift his left arm, which was slung across his chest, slightly—he frowned halfway through the motion and put it back down, "Mr. Gu said I shouldn't exert force until the stitches are removed—but I can move my fingers now."

Lu Changyuan nodded.

He turned around, picked up the first bag of Spirit Stones from the table, and placed it in Deng Yue's uninjured right hand.

"One hundred Spirit Stones—yours. Who else do you have at home?"

"My mother. She's in the old miners' shanty area—the room furthest in the third row on the east side."

"Move to the Inner Harbor shanty area tomorrow. The houses in the Inner Harbor shanty area have brick walls—they don't leak wind in the winter."

Lu Changyuan looked into Deng Yue's eyes, "It's not because you were bitten—it's because you didn't cry out after being bitten.

Leng Feng wrote on the Jade Slip—you had your shoulder bitten through by a Bone Fish underwater, and you didn't make a sound.

You knew why you couldn't cry out—opening your mouth to shout underwater would cause you to choke on water, and choking on water would make you sink.

You endured it—your calmness saved your own life."

He placed the remaining nine bags of Spirit Stones into each cavalryman's hand one by one.

With each bag he placed, he spoke a sentence—no two sentences were the same.

He remembered what every single person had done underwater.

The cavalryman whose right arm was scratched was named Ma Yuan—when a Bone Fish squeezed in through the gap in the shield, he used his right arm to block it.

He was holding his sword in his right hand at the time—he switched the sword to his left hand and used his right forearm to take the brunt of the Bone Fish's first bite.

The Bone Fish's teeth bit through his arm armor—but that momentary obstruction gave the cavalrymen behind him enough time to draw their swords.

The cavalryman with the bruised calf was named Tian Qi—when the entire team shifted sideways to avoid the scattered Bone Fish, his right leg stepped on a loose reef first.

The reef slid downward—he sank three zhang along with it.

But he didn't let go while he was sinking—his left hand was still gripping the ankle of the teammate in front of him.

The teammate was tugged downward by him, and used the force of that tug to stabilize their own position.

Tian Qi's right calf slammed against the reef wall—it didn't break, but it swelled up.

He kicked off the reef wall himself and relied on the strength of his left leg to catch up with the team again.

The other seven uninjured cavalrymen—Lu Changyuan called out their names one by one: Wei Chuan, Jiang Shi, Pan Haisheng, He Laosi, Fang Yan, Duan Xiaoshi, Meng Dazhu.

He had memorized the names of the seven people after reading Leng Feng's Jade Slip last night.

At the end of the Jade Slip, Leng Feng had left a separate record—'List of the ten men and their performance underwater.'

Each name was followed by one or two lines of notes: Wei Chuan helped Leng Feng clear the path at the very front; Jiang Shi did not retreat a single step when the Bone Fish school charged over; Pan Haisheng shared half of his Bone-Repelling Paste with his teammate on the right flank; He Laosi vomited three times underwater but kept following without falling behind; Fang Yan's shield never left the front of the wounded; Duan Xiaoshi's hands were so steady while hovering to observe above the altar that it was impossible to tell he was moving on the water mirror; Meng Dazhu swam backward the entire time while passing through the Black Fish school on the return trip—back facing the direction of travel, facing the rear to cover the retreat.

Every time a name was called, someone on the Pier would gasp.

The cavalrymen whose names were called stood on the jetty with their backs straight—there was something in their chests pushing them, making them stand tall.