Communication and Conversion

Wei Keng had just finished the battle, and Bai Linglu had already reported the results. She emphasized two points: no casualties and the enemy completely wiped out. It had been a stunning victory. Bai Linglu had believed Wei Keng would win, but even she was surprised by how well things had gone.

As the saying went: if you scored ninety-nine on a test, it showed you had the ability to score ninety-nine. But if you scored a hundred, then perhaps your upper limit hadn't been measured yet.

Now the prisoners were lining up in the valley. They had already thrown down their weapons and steel helmets.

Wei Keng separated the soldiers from the officers.

There was one thing giving Wei Keng a terrible headache. All the prisoners spoke Minnan, and not just Minnan, but one of its dialects. To Wei Keng, it all sounded like Martian. Only some of the officers could understand his Standard Speech. Oh, they called it the Northern Official Accent.

Since they couldn't communicate by speaking, they could pick up a pen and communicate in writing. But Wei Keng soon discovered that only thirty percent of them could read, and they knew only simple, commonly used characters like "red," "orange," "yellow," "green," "car," "person," "bird," and "fish." Write anything a little more complicated, such as "drive" or "sweep"—characters with two radicals—and they couldn't understand it.

Wei Keng needed to give orders, such as telling the drivers to move the horse carriages and having everyone collect food. For now, those things still had to go through the mid-level officers.

That made separating the officers from the soldiers among the prisoners rather troublesome.

When you captured an army, you had to confiscate its weapons and then break up its organization. Sometimes breaking up the organization was more important than taking away the weapons. The unit hadn't shown much organizational ability even when it was being defeated, but Wei Keng was still very cautious. He provided each soldier with food and water, while doing his best to memorize some of their simpler words from the system's language records.

Two hundred people guarding one hundred and fifty might have been more than enough, but Wei Keng was still scaring himself. He made every possible preparation and added several extra safeguards. Three teams on Wei Keng's side kept heavy sniper rifles trained on the bio-beast's head, in case it suddenly went berserk and caused unnecessary casualties.

But if Wei Keng was afraid, how could the prisoners not be? As they lined up, they all kept sneaking glances at him. Whenever Wei Keng's gaze swept over them, they immediately lowered their heads, like students in class when their teacher looked their way.

Zeng He and Fang Hong had been put in an emptied horse carriage at the front of the road. Their war beasts were in the last carriage.

Zeng He stared out the window at Wei Keng, her face deathly pale. She murmured, "They're all—they're all exactly the same."

Fang Hong put down the document about Wei Keng's Redemption Policy for prisoners and took her hand. "Don't worry. From what we can tell, we're not in danger yet."

He carefully folded the document and tucked it against his chest. It contained important information.

At that moment, Fang Hong was focused on one thing: Wei Keng's Unified Script was flawless. It contained none of the writing habits associated with Complex Script, so there was no way to tell what region he came from.

Unified Script was simplified Chinese; Complex Script was what Wei Keng thought of as traditional Chinese.

Simplified characters were Chinese characters pared down to their purest form. They couldn't be simplified any further and had remained stable as they spread. They were used across all the regions in the present day, which was why they were called Unified Script.

Traditional characters still had plenty of room for variation in their structure, which had led to differences from place to place. For instance, Hong Kong Traditional and Taiwan Traditional in the 21st Century were quite different. Now, it wasn't just Hong Kong and Taiwan. As the upper classes grew increasingly aristocratic, the regions of East Asia that had once been Jiang, Zhe, and Ji provinces had begun developing their own traditional-character systems to keep the transmission of knowledge within their own circles. These were the various systems of Complex Script.

In other words, it was hard for someone from one city to blend into another without giving themselves away, because their Complex Script writing habits were different. And in some regions, certain Complex Script characters weren't necessarily more complicated than their Unified Script counterparts. Some might even have developed characters resembling Japanese kana. So when writing formal Unified Script, people might still reveal where they came from.

Wei Keng's group now spoke the orthodox Northern Standard Speech—that is, Standard Mandarin—and wrote in standard Unified Script.

In Fang Hong's eyes, that was highly suspicious.

Jian City now regarded Wei Keng as some kind of Gene Colony. But even if this Gene Colony had originated locally, why was its language and writing system so at odds with the local culture? What was the secret behind it?

In Jian City, the homing pigeon had flown back overnight.

But by the time the letter arrived, the City Lord still didn't know that the exploration force he had sent out had already been wiped out.

In the letter, Fang Hong emphasized that there were many sharpshooters in the mountains who kept killing their pack animals. They seemed determined to stop his advance by any means, so Jian City should send more forces, and so on.

At the end of the letter, Fang Hong also included the results of his latest discussion with Zeng He about the situation. They planned to make a rapid push under cover of darkness and hoped Jian City would send air support in the morning.

The City Lord read the letter carefully.

Fang Hong and Zeng He had been away for a full fifteen days. Now that they were finally asking for aerial reconnaissance, they must have reached the end of their patience.

So, under the unsteady light of an electric lamp, he signed the order.

Ten minutes later, the order was delivered to the Flying Dragon breeding tower two hundred meters away. The Flying Dragons, with their thirty-meter wingspans, had a little bat in their ancestry, so their four-hundred-kilogram bodies were suspended from steel poles. When the lights came on, the handlers pushed hoses into the Flying Dragons' mouths. Glug, glug—the thick, porridge-like fermented mixture flowed through the hoses and into their bellies.

The flying monsters opened their eyes, brimming with excitement.

As the tower doors opened, the steel poles in the tower extended outside, driven by mechanical gears, reaching fifty meters above the ground. The Flying Dragons hanging from the poles felt the cold air outside, released their grip, and spread their wings as they fell. At thirty meters above the ground, they adjusted their flight posture and shot into the air.

The City Lord stood atop the tower. In the late-night breeze of the fourth watch, he pulled an Iron Candy Box from a nearby cabinet and took out a betel nut wrapped in a leaf, tucking it into his cheek. As he watched the three Flying Dragons depart, he began to chew.

He was still wondering what Fang Hong meant by the enemy's many sharpshooters and their blocking tactics. Two minutes later, he didn't have to wonder anymore. When several shots rang out, all three Flying Dragons had already crashed into the mountainside.

The scene shifted to a hill south of Jian City.

As soon as those huge, dark creatures flew out of the city, Wei Keng spotted them. They weren't very fast, and they weren't flying hundreds of meters up. Never mind the sniper rifle in Wei Keng's hands; even an ordinary rifle could have brought them down.

Sure enough, as the Flying Dragons flew straight toward the hills beyond the city, the system marked their positions with red dots. Wei Keng's four teams opened fire at once. The three creatures trying to fly away spiraled down through the dark blue sky before dawn.

That "Black Dragon Fall" played out before the audience at the top of Jian City's highest tower.

Mayor Zeng, seated in the front row of the "audience," spat out a mouthful of reddish-brown saliva mixed with betel nut scraps. It landed below the tower like a pool of blood.

Eight days had passed since the Pocket Battle.

Wei Keng had made thorough preparations for a counter-encirclement campaign, but he found that Jian City's "hot pot" wasn't nearly as spicy as he'd expected. The Reconnaissance Team in Jian City had discovered that the other side no longer sent out troops. The only people coming and going through the city gates were merchants.

"Is that really it?" Wei Keng asked himself again and again.

"The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." Wei Keng recited the principles of Guerrilla Warfare once more. But in reality, he had followed the formula by making a small, proper "harassing" attack—just a little skirmish—and wiped out a force of one hundred and fifty. The battle was over.

Wei Keng and the Technical Team were now adjusting a Heavy Machine Gun.

It was a traditional water-cooled Maxim gun. A classic was a classic.

Unfortunately, he couldn't make one himself yet.

The system laid out the equipment needed to build a Heavy Machine Gun: rows of forging presses, drills, and boring machines, enough to fill a large auditorium. Looking at the models, Wei Keng couldn't help thinking of the Machinery Manufacturing Bureau during the Self-Strengthening Movement.

For now, he could only make grenade launchers, cannonballs, Rail Steel rifles, and bayonets. So he treasured the several Heavy Machine Guns they'd captured, along with as many as two hundred thousand rounds of ammunition.

Of course, the most valuable spoils from this battle might have been the prisoners. They had now been divided into seven or eight groups. After a certain amount of Education and Reform, they had begun working.

They couldn't be put to work making machinery or mixing acids and alkalis in the small chemical workshops. But they could carry salt, haul bricks from the ruins, and pick through scrap.

Wei Keng worked hard to manage them, hoping to bring the prisoners into his rhythm as quickly as possible.

At the Small Square, Wei Keng stood on the platform, doing ideological reform work with a Tuning Rod in his hand. "Everyone, sing along with me.

When things go wrong, it's hard not to complain (ji xi xi ji em mian wan tan),

When times are tough, it's hard not to feel afraid (ji xi lo pie em mian dan han),

Even if hope is gone and every day is bleak (na pa xi ki hi mang wei li zui mang mang),

A soulless body, like a scarecrow (mo hun wu te qi qiu diu cao lang),

Life is like the waves upon the sea (lin xing hou bi xi hai xiong ei bou long)..."

Wei Keng sang a line, and the people below followed. After three or four rounds, they were more or less in sync.

Singing was an ancient and effective group activity.

When a group of strangers could follow your lead in a chorus, they had already accepted that you could give them some orders as part of the group.

After they had sung together, Wei Keng began registering everyone and selecting a leader for the Captive Squad. His selection criteria were simple: the ones who had sung loudest along with him were the ones he picked. That was all there was to it.

Then, based on each team's assigned work, he handed out tools and gave each team leader and vice-captain a rifle and a crossbow. The rifles were single-shot rifles Wei Keng had made himself.

Standing on the chorus platform, Wei Keng watched one person after another take a gun from him. He silently encouraged himself: As an ordinary person, I have social phobia—that is, a tendency to shut people out. But as someone of average ability, I ought to be able to overcome that mindset and join society.

Wei Keng handed the guns over to the leaders he had chosen.

A future had begun to take shape.

These people had only just been defeated and captured, and after just one week of interaction, they were being given weapons. Even Wei Keng thought he was taking a huge risk. But every Wei Keng in the group had logically accepted that this was the way to do things.

As a matter of social psychology, once a battle ended and the victors set the rules, the defeated would usually obey in silence, trying to draw closer to the victors and integrate into their society. But if the victors acted as though they rejected integration, the defeated would become less and less obedient over time.

Perhaps Wei Keng should have worried that giving weapons to the captive team leaders would invite a bullet in the back.

But if he put himself in their shoes, the people who had sung loudest along with him had been chosen as team leaders. Now that they had weapons, they had risen above their former status as prisoners. Their best course was probably to prove themselves by following the victor's orders and consolidating their newly acquired status.

To spread his control among all one hundred and fifty people,

Wei Keng felt it was worth taking this small risk. People were more stable than animals. As long as they had a reliable supply of food and their internal organization was broken up, apart from his own, that was enough.

After selecting the team leaders, Wei Keng soon got the results he wanted, in just two or three days.

The prisoners worked extremely hard carrying salt. The brick haulers were quick, too, driving the Dragon Horse carriages as if they were racing little steam engines. It was like young people full of ambition when they first started a new job. Wei Keng had to print special Pottery Coins so they could exchange them for fresh fish. That's right: Wei Keng hadn't eaten any of the things they'd caught over the past few days. He had given it all to his newly hired laborers.

Wei Keng couldn't help sighing. Treat people with trust, and you'll get sincerity in return.

Originally, he would have needed fifty people to watch over these one hundred and fifty. Now he only needed ten, working alongside the ten newly appointed team leaders.

And every night, as Wei Keng taught them Pinyin, basic mathematics, geography and maps, and the ancient history of the Human Civilization beneath their feet by lamplight, he found his control over them growing stronger.

Some of the prisoners gradually began to feel bold enough to ask him questions. Their attitude had shifted from fearful obedience to respectful obedience.

The prisoners had begun moving steadily along the track he'd set for them. After winning the battle, Wei Keng finally felt the last weight lift from his heart. A group that still talks to you is much safer than one that doesn't. (Except on social media.)

September 28.

Two weeks after the prisoners had been captured, Zeng He still found the situation absurd. The people who had defeated her had taken her to a camp, where she discovered over a thousand Same-faced People. The shock had left her too afraid to speak for several days.

But that fear gradually faded.

These Same-faced People really had arrived only recently, but they had already built sturdy trenches and earthen fortifications. And they all seemed to be chatterboxes.

Over the past few days, about ten of them had come over to talk with her. They chatted about astronomy and geography, sketching and drawing, and before long, she had gotten used to them.

Fang Hong, meanwhile, seemed to have made a friend. The two of them were debating when Betelgeuse would explode, arguing so fiercely about events tens of thousands of years in the past and future that their faces had turned red.

Oh, right. These people also liked Big Chorus.

Sure enough, someone outside was howling again: "The great river flows east, the stars in the sky point to the Big Dipper—"