Breaking Camp and Setting Out on Campaign (Two-in-One)

The reason Luo Chong had chosen to strike when the other side was harvesting its grain was to preserve this batch of grain—or more precisely, to preserve it for himself, rather than give the Xin Tribe more capital with which to resist.

He had received the messages from Beast Tooth and You Zhi on the same day. Both letters said that the Xin Tribe had begun harvesting its final crop. Yet sending a message from their location to Hanyang City took two or three days even with a Flying Eagle Message. That meant that when Luo Chong learned of it, the other side had already been harvesting for three days.

By the time Luo Chong's orders returned to them, the other side would already have been harvesting for five or six days. Even if Blood Butcher and the others set out on the very day they received the orders, it would take at least a week to reach Bamboo Island by ship.

Adding everything together, Bamboo Island's harvest would have had roughly twelve or thirteen days. Harvesting, threshing, drying, transport, and storage—at the Xin Tribe's speed, thirteen days were nowhere near enough. If the Han Tribe suddenly sent troops to attack at that point, they would have no time to move the grain away. In the end, there would be only two possible outcomes: either they burned it on the spot, or they left it all to the Han Tribe.

Luo Chong could accept either outcome. In short, if he sent troops now, the grain would absolutely not fall into the Xin Tribe's hands, and that was enough. It would save him from letting the other side accumulate more grain than they could eat, then hide away in some remote corner and wage a war of attrition against him. Luo