148: Chapter 148 The Madman Donates Medicine, Supplies Land (2)

Lu Changyuan took the animal skin from Gu He's hand—he didn't look at the text, but first at the scorched marks on the edge.

The scorch marks spread from the right side of the skin toward the center, burning through three small holes.

He folded the skin and tucked it into his sleeve.

"You can demonstrate this at the Pier." He said.

Gu He looked up at him.

"The fortress Pier—it has many people." Lu Changyuan placed the porcelain bottle back into Gu He's hand. "Let more people see it."

Gu He's eyes brightened.

It was the look of someone who, after squatting in the Military Medical Bureau for eleven years, was finally being allowed by someone to put his work on display for the first time.

Supplies were being unloaded from the ships at the Pier—two thousand stones of spirit rice were stacked in the dry storage shed by the trestle bridge, one hundred and twenty bottles of purification liquid were packed in three iron-skinned boxes sealed with Array Patterns, and eighty sets of standard military armor plates were bundled on wooden racks.

Duan Xiaoshi held the filing list from the Logistics Supervision Department and checked them off item by item—pressing a blue seal onto the list after each item was verified.

The ink of the blue seal reflected a faint gleam in the morning light.

Lu Changyuan stood at the entrance of the dry storage shed.

He took the filing list from Duan Xiaoshi's hand and looked at it for a breath—then he drew out a pen and wrote four characters after the "Allocated Quantity" column for the spirit rice: "Sixty percent, Sin Battalion."

The same went for the purification liquid column.

And the same for the armor plates column.

Duan Xiaoshi looked at the characters on the list—his mouth opened and then closed.

A sixty percent allocation of spirit rice to a battalion that had previously eaten the lowest-grade military rations—there was no precedent for this in the fortress logistics system.

But Duan Xiaoshi said nothing—he had learned one thing during his few days at the Logistics Supervision Department: Lu Changyuan did not change what he had written.

The people of the Sin Battalion began lining up to collect supplies at noon that day.

The queue extended from the entrance of the supply shed into the camp—those at the back of the line had trampled a new path into the mud.

Walking at the very front of the line were those who had done the first round of drills in the morning—the spirit rice in their bowls was piled higher than usual.

When some received the spirit rice, their hands were trembling—the trembling was not due to the cold, but because of the weight of the bag of spirit rice in their hands.

The people of the Sin Battalion used to eat the worst military rations in the fortress—rice cakes that were steamed after scraping off the mold, and even then, they still tasted sour.

Xue Mingyuan was in the middle of the line.

He was wearing the old gray uniform of the Sin Battalion that had been issued yesterday—the sleeves of the gray uniform were a bit too short, leaving his wrists exposed.

The Old Veteran in front of him turned his head to glance at him—the Old Veteran had an old scar from a blunt weapon on his cheekbone—then the Old Veteran turned his head back.

Xue Mingyuan walked to the front of the supply shed.

Duan Xiaoshi took a new set of armor plates from the rack and handed it to him—the Array Patterns on the new armor were drawn by a Formation Master from Blue Moon Island, the lines denser and shallower than standard military armor.

Duan Xiaoshi then took a standard military sword from the sword rack—the scabbard was old, but the blade was new.

Xue Mingyuan cradled the armor plates in his arms.

The weight of the plates in his arms caused the fabric of the chest of his old gray uniform to sag by two inches.

He walked about three steps while holding the armor—then stopped—lowered his head—and pressed his forehead against the uppermost heart-protecting plate.

No one looked at him.

Everyone in line was pushing forward—everyone was watching how many bags of spirit rice were left in the supply shed.

At night, campfires were lit in the camp—the Sin Battalion's campfires were for boiling porridge, with iron pots set over the flames, and spirit rice porridge was boiling inside.

The aroma of the spirit rice porridge drifted out from the camp—drifting past the boundary of the station, and drifting toward the direction of the Logistics Supervision Department's station area.

On the outskirts of the camp, there was a patch of gravel that had not been trampled on—a row of low sea rocks crouched at the edge of the gravel.

Extremely fine seaweed grew in the gaps between the sea rocks—the seaweed bowed in the same direction in the night wind.

Lu Changyuan walked along the perimeter of the camp.

Lu Hu followed three steps behind him—Wei Chuan was further away, walking along the camp fence, carrying a very dim windproof oil lamp in his hand.

When Lu Changyuan walked over, he did not deliberately soften his footsteps—the gravel made a faint sound of being crushed under his shoe soles.

A person sat by the campfire.

A young man—looking to be under thirty, with a thin face, his cheekbones slightly higher than his cheeks.

He was wearing a very ordinary military officer's robe—gray-blue, the cuffs without trim, the collar worn and frayed.

He sat on a sea rock by the campfire—on his knees lay a worn-out military ledger, the characters on the cover half-blurred by oil stains.

He was coughing.

The sound of the cough was not loud—it was that kind of muffled sound of coughing while suppressing one's throat.

After coughing, he removed the military ledger from his knees—there was a small, dark red damp stain on the cover of the ledger.

He wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.

A very thin, pale golden thread of fire smeared onto his sleeve—the fire thread flickered in the night wind and then extinguished.

Lu Changyuan stood on the gravel ground.

The spot he was looking at was not the sleeve the young man used to wipe his mouth—it was opposite the campfire.

About five zhang away on the opposite side of the campfire—in the darkness between two sea rocks sat two people.

Both were dressed in casual clothes—ordinary gray short shirts.

But their seating positions perfectly sealed off all angles from which a surprise attack could be launched against the campfire.

The first person sat on the left side of the sea rock directly opposite the campfire—the second person sat on the high ground of the gravel to the right and slightly behind the campfire.

The distance between the two and their distance from the campfire formed a triangle that just happened to protect the young man by the campfire.

Golden Core Stage guards.

The young man looked up.

The firelight cut a line of light and shadow across his face—from the middle of his forehead down across the bridge of his nose, stopping at the tip of his chin.

He moved his sleeve away from the corner of his mouth—the pale golden fire thread on his sleeve had already been extinguished.

"Excuse the unseemly sight—" He tossed a piece of dried seaweed into the campfire.

The dried seaweed curled in the flames and burned into ash.

"An old ailment."