"Did anyone try to talk him out of it?" Lin Taichu asked.
"Of course they did." The old soldier shook his head. "Several veteran officials tried to persuade him, saying that if this went on, the country would collapse. And what happened? The king had them all beheaded and displayed on the city walls. After that, no one dared say another word."
As they spoke, the officer came over again and roared, "What are you muttering about? Get back to work!"
The old soldier hurriedly fell silent and lowered his head to chop firewood. Lin Taichu and Gao Yang did not dare ask anything else either, and they quickened their work.
Around noon, the porridge was ready. The Jin soldiers lined up to receive it, each holding a chipped bowl. Lin Taichu and Gao Yang joined the line and received half a bowl of black slop.
Besides wild vegetables and bran, the porridge contained plenty of sand that scraped their throats as it went down. Lin Taichu barely managed not to spit it out, but the Jin soldiers beside him drank it as though it were a delicacy, finishing it in a few gulps and even licking the bottoms of their bowls.
"They can drink this?" Gao Yang asked quietly.
"It's already good enough to have something to drink." A Jin soldier beside them heard him and gave a bitter smile. "Last month, our camp ran out of food for a day. We could only boil horse feed to eat."
Lin Taichu felt a weight in his chest. He had thought that since the Jin Kingdom dared launch such a massive invasion, it must have been prosperous at home. He had not expected it to be this poor. Even if such a country truly occupied the Central Plains, how long