At daybreak the next day, Zhang Yu awoke from meditation. Leaving the quiet chamber, he came to the main hall. Through the open doorway, he watched the flowering trees outside sway their branches and leaves in the wind, soft petals falling one by one before drifting away into the distant sky.
After watching for a while, he returned to sit behind the desk in the hall.
The desk held official documents and letters from the past several months. Most had been sent by the Military Office, and were reports meant only for a patrol guardian such as himself to read, so their seals remained intact.
There were more than forty such reports, far exceeding what he had received before. This alone showed that much had been happening within the Military Office during the days he had been away.
He opened and read them one by one in chronological order, discovering that Kui Lodge had indeed changed greatly over these past few months.
Although Hong Yuanqiu had continually tried to suppress the calls within the army to outfit the entire force with constructed military garments and medicinal oil, he had ultimately been unable to stop it.
Of course, this was not because he had mishandled matters, but because the war situation had changed.
The fighting at Lou Lodge on the front lines had been fierce, requiring vast numbers of reinforcements to be drawn from Kui Lodge. And since those soldiers were being sent to stake their lives against the enemy, it was impossible not to provide them with the finest equipment.
This was the tide of the times, beyond any one person's power to resist. Hong Yuanqiu had specifically written Zhang Yu a letter explaining the matter.
After reading through all the reports, Zhang Yu found that the war was far