The next day, after breakfast and after giving instructions to those commoners who had switched sides, it was already past ten by the time they set out again.
The commoners bid farewell to General Wang. Carrying the general's instructions and their hopes for a better future, they all took up weapons. Quite a few even wore armor stripped from the corpses they had dealt with yesterday, and they headed home together.
Most of these people came from Yuyang, Guangyang, Dai Commandery, and Zhuo Commandery. Those places were far away and thus less affected by Liaodong. Mainly, they had not dared to take risks lightly. Even if they had heard all sorts of things about Liaodong, they had not dared to make up their minds and defect. Besides, it was not as though they could simply leave whenever they wished; they all had roots in their home villages.
The Han Dynasty was merely declining at present; it had not yet fallen. Moreover, the village elders, ward chiefs, landlords, and the like at the grassroots level would not allow them to run about freely. It could only be said that the upper levels of governance had nearly collapsed, not that local rule had vanished. Otherwise, how could Liu Yu and his subordinates possibly have raised tens of thousands of men to fight Wang Yan to the death? It was simply because minds had been unified from top to bottom.
This time, once they returned, they would no longer be bullied. In You Province, every able-bodied man between fourteen and forty with the capacity to work had been swept up in this conscription. Another feature was that people from the same village were generally grouped together. So when they returned home, if anyone still dared to spout nonsense and throw their weight around,