Li Dingguo led the fifteen young Martial Artists in his squad onward and found that there were fewer people on the streets than before the Rebel Army had captured the county town.
Yet the ordinary people hurrying past showed no trace of panic. Instead, they seemed far more composed.
The greatest change in Dingbian City now was that the streets no longer had those richly dressed young masters riding spirited horses, nor did they have the overbearing constables and gang members who ran amok.
People like them had basically been cleared out by the Rebel Army.
Some who had sensed trouble early had already fled far from the county town, while others honestly holed up at home to wait out the storm.
Most of the large and small shops lining the streets had closed their doors.
But some shops were still open for business, and quite a few people were going there to buy things.
The shops with their doors tightly shut had basically been confiscated by the Rebel Army soldiers.
Most of those belonged to local gentry and officials.
The ones still open for business were mostly merchants from elsewhere, the kind who traveled north and south to trade.
Generally speaking, no Rebel Army would casually offend them. On the contrary, they would do their utmost to build good relations with them.
The Rebel Army needed vast quantities of all kinds of resources. There was no good way to spend the large amounts of money seized from ransacked homes, and most supplies could only be procured quickly through those merchants who traveled north and south.
From time to time, small squads of ordinary Rebel Army soldiers passed through the streets. When they saw Li Dingguo and the other youths dressed in fitted Martial Artist uniforms, they hurriedly stepped aside.
Eight Great Kings Zhang Xianzhong had made such grand moves and recently spent countless resources and so much effort raising a Beggar Camp. He would certainly entrust them with great responsibility in the future, making them the backbone of the Rebel Army.
Every soldier who had joined the Rebel Army in the city already knew this, so naturally none of them would rashly offend these young Martial Artists.
To put it bluntly, among the several thousand Rebel Army soldiers Eight Great Kings had recruited so far, the overwhelming majority were no match for the Beggar Camp youths, all of whom were Martial Artists.
It was not that Zhang Xianzhong did not want to train more adult Martial Artist soldiers, nor was it that he could not recruit enough people. There simply were not enough cultivation resources.
This problem did not merely plague Rebel Armies across the land. Officials, gentry, powerful clans, aristocratic families, and even the imperial court were all deeply troubled by it.
There was no other reason: the resources Martial Artists used for cultivation were too precious. Moreover, as the spiritual energy between heaven and earth steadily dwindled, Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, spirit herbs, and spirit roots were becoming fewer and fewer.
Even the sustainable artificial cultivation of spirit herbs and spirit roots was growing more and more difficult. Under normal circumstances, it was hard to train Martial Artists on a large scale.
In all the imperial court's armies, most military households and soldiers were ordinary people. Martial Artists accounted for less than thirty percent.
Such ordinary soldiers could only serve as logistics personnel. They could not truly take the battlefield and fight enemies, Demons and Monsters.
The ratio of Martial Soldiers to ordinary soldiers in Zhang Xianzhong's newly formed Rebel Army was even worse.
Martial Soldiers accounted for only around ten percent of the Rebel Army's personnel. The rest consisted of the Rebel Army's families and logistics soldiers.
The fighting strength of this Rebel Army was supported entirely by these Martial Soldiers.
Those ordinary logistics soldiers were useless in battle. They were not even qualified to become cannon fodder on the battlefield.
This was the greatest difference between this vast world and the Great Ming Empire from Li Dingguo's past-life history.
After striding forward for about a quarter of an hour, they reached the marketplace in East City.
The streets on both sides were exceptionally broad, while the middle resembled a plaza from his past life, spanning roughly thirty to forty zhang in every direction.
A pair of broad avenues crossed through the center of the large square, their surfaces paved with bluestone slabs.
On both sides of every road at the intersection stood marketplaces formed by commoners setting up stalls.
There were not many people setting up stalls in the marketplace before Li Dingguo and the others now.
In the large open area southeast of the marketplace, a huge porridge shed had been set up. Some Rebel Army logistics soldiers were in charge of distributing porridge for disaster relief.
In this regard, the ambitious Zhang Xianzhong did far better than the authorities.
At the very least, the displaced commoners, beggars, and other miserable souls who had come to receive aid were, under the direction of dozens of Rebel Army logistics soldiers, in perfect order, obediently lining up.
Li Dingguo had heard a few days ago that this porridge relief had begun on the second day after Eight Great Kings Zhang Xianzhong captured the county town.
And it continued without pause every day, from morning until dusk.
Having captured a county town and looted and confiscated all the wealthy households, officials, and gentry within it, Zhang Xianzhong was no longer short of money, grain, or supplies.
In any case, when the Rebel Army withdrew and fled, it would be unable to take most of the supplies and grain with it. It was better to use them to aid the people and win their hearts.
In fact, in the history of the Great Ming Empire at the end of Li Dingguo's past life, Zhang Xianzhong had also been the Rebel Army leader who most loved opening granaries and distributing grain to aid the broad masses of suffering people. There was no second.
Even in later generations, many places Zhang Xianzhong's army had passed through still retained ancestral temples that the people of the time had voluntarily built for him, where incense continued to burn.
After the Later Jin barbarians exploited the opening and stole the lands of China, the scholars under their control spared no effort in smearing and slandering Eight Great Kings Zhang Xianzhong, pinning upon him the countless utterly inhuman massacres they had carried out.
The only thing for which Zhang Xianzhong could be criticized was that, after winning countless wars, he was too fond of exterminating his enemies to the last man, then setting fire to their homes. As a result, innumerable ancient buildings were destroyed in blaze after blaze.
But this was a common failing of Rebel Armies throughout every dynasty, not something Zhang Xianzhong alone had done.
Or rather, every Rebel Army that rebelled and sought to change dynasties had done the same throughout China's thousands of years of civilization, without a single exception.
"Boss, look! That's Little Bean Sprout and the others!"
"Those who were eliminated in the Martial Artist selection earlier are also lining up in front of the porridge shed to receive porridge."
"Look at Little Bean Sprout and the others' complexions—they're much better than before!"...
The moment they looked toward the porridge shed, the orphan youths beside Li Dingguo immediately spotted them. One after another, they cried out in delighted surprise.
"Little Bean Sprout?"
The moment Li Dingguo saw the skinny, dark little girl emerging from the crowd with a bowl of thin porridge in her hands, scenes of spending day and night with her involuntarily surfaced in his mind.
The one that left the deepest impression was this: once, after Li Dingguo had eaten spoiled food obtained from begging on the streets, he suddenly broke out in a raging fever. It was that slight figure who had wept as she cared for him day and night without rest.
At the time, he had nearly failed to pull through.
Fortunately, his physical talent was good, and his own recovery and resistance were strong. In the end, danger passed without incident, and he escaped a death trial.
This little girl, who had no name of her own and whom everyone called Little Bean Sprout, was one year older than Li Dingguo.
Little Bean Sprout was not tall. Dark and skinny, she looked so frail that a strong gust of wind seemed capable of blowing her away.
"Little Bean Sprout!"
The deepest memories left behind by his former self erupted uncontrollably at that moment. Calling her name, Li Dingguo strode toward her...
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