The officers and soldiers of the Thousand-Household Battalion patrolling here saw the appearance of these several thousand soldiers—the filth covering them, and the killing intent that rushed straight at them.
All of it left them shaken to the core, their hearts trembling.
"What... what kind of war did they go through?"
"Did they fight their way out of the netherworld itself?"
Nearly every soldier had such thoughts at this moment.
To them, the victories Zhu Ying had led his troops to achieve against the Jianzhou Tatars had previously only been things they had heard about, passed down through battle reports.
But now, they were truly seeing it with their own eyes.
It was as if they could see, upon Zhu Ying and these three thousand soldiers, the traces of more than two months of bloody battle.
"Brothers, we're going home!"
Zhu Ying shouted again, his voice brimming with fervor.
"We're going home!"
"The Garrison Commander is taking us home!"
"Ming Dynasty, we've finally returned!"
"Zhao Si, did you see that? We're going home!"
"Wang Wu."
"You brat took a blade for me and let me live, but you were the one who left. Today, the Garrison Commander is taking us home. Rest in peace—we're going home."
"Waaah... Chen Lin, we're going home. You lucky brat, becoming a heroic spirit and making me shed tears for you."
"Return, souls of the fallen! Brothers, we're going home..."
At the words "going home,"
the soldiers who had returned alive from the foreign lands of the Northern Frontier could no longer hold back their sobs.
Their grief was especially heartrending.
Perhaps they wept because they had returned alive from those foreign lands of the Northern Frontier. More than that, they wept for the comrades who had died there.
They had come home.
But many