As expected, when the scouts sent to reconnoiter in the direction of Guanhai Commandery returned two days later, they once again reported similar news to Blood Butcher. In the narrow coastal region directly south of Bamboo Island—that is, within the territory of Guanhai Commandery designated by the Han Tribe—large numbers of commoners were also migrating.
However, unlike the situation in Xianfeng Commandery, the Scorched Earth Tactics there had not been carried out as thoroughly. Besides moving away large numbers of able-bodied adults and children, cattle, sheep, livestock, grain, and dried meat, the Xin Tribe had also left behind quite a number of the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled.
Of course, calling them elderly might not have been entirely accurate. Most of them were around forty years old, but for this era, they were already extremely old. Of the few people in their thirties, some were afflicted with illness, while others suffered from various disabilities. In short, as the scouts put it, of those over thirty, anyone who was still in good health had already migrated with the others.
"When we went there, all we saw in the villages were the old, the disabled, and the sick, sitting alone in their courtyards without a shred of vitality. They did no work and barely moved, merely wasting away their days as though waiting to die. We checked the stored grain of several elderly households, and they—they barely had enough food left. They must have already been abandoned."
This situation seemed even worse than the one in Xianfeng Commandery. If they were migrating, couldn't they at least take everyone with them? What were they trying to accomplish by leaving behind this group of elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people? Yet the facts were right there, and the Han Tribe could not simply pretend