The firearms army had its own way of recording merit. Although modern firearms armies also had systems somewhat resembling counting enemy heads for military merit, that method was unsuitable for this war against the Shence Guard.
For example, modern armies could calculate merit based on how many levels of distinction a soldier earned by killing enemy officers. But the Shence Guard's enemies were the Cannibal Tribe, whose people had no proper officer system at all. Even if there were a few minor chieftains, the Han Tribe could not distinguish them. How, then, could they determine who had killed an enemy officer?
Besides that, the most important method of recording merit was based on mission completion. A superior would assign a combat mission to a designated unit, and the unit's merit would be calculated according to how well it completed that mission. If it failed the mission, or even caused major losses to the battle, then even if the entire designated unit died, it might not receive any merit at all. It could even be penalized for its failure.
The reason this was called a mission-completion system was that modern firearms armies had all kinds of missions. They could not be judged as simply as ancient armies had been, by counting severed heads.
Take an interception mission, for example. A unit might be required to hold off the enemy at a designated location for a certain length of time. This was not an active attack but a defensive mission. As long as the unit allowed not a single enemy to pass through its defensive position within the allotted time, then even if it killed only a few enemies, it would still have completed the task assigned by its superiors. Naturally, it would receive military merit.
Another example was the scout-sentry raid,