The army marched onward. At first, some people still came near Fang Yun's carriage at mealtimes, but gradually they appeared less and less.
That was because whenever mealtime came, Fang Yun could bring out all sorts of delicacies from Jingzhou City-braised and sauce-marinated, smoked and fried, stir-fried and boiled, everything one could want. With just a little heating, their fragrance drifted dozens of yards, far surpassing the army's rations.
Only then did everyone realize that this Pearl River Marquis firmly upheld the venerable Confucius's fine tradition of "never finding rice too refined or sliced meat too finely cut." Even for a journey, he had prepared a great stock of delicacies well in advance.
And so, some began accusing Fang Yun of extravagant indulgence.
Yet when word of this reached those with high literary ranks, they picked up on something unusual: Zhang Longxiang had actually recovered his ancestral Lake-Containing Shell.
The Chu Kingdom lay in the south of Sage Kong's Literary World, and the weather warmed rapidly after the beginning of spring.
Even before the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, green had already appeared in many places, just as the poem said: grass looked green from afar, yet vanished up close.
With the blessing of the Expedition Poem, what affected the soldiers most on the long march was not physical exhaustion, but mental fatigue.
Every day, scholars in the army played cheerful tunes on the qin, se, or pipa, or held activities when they camped at night, such as wrestling and martial contests, constantly easing the monotony of the journey.
Throughout the journey, not a single general from the Deer Gate Army came to pay his respects to Fang Yun. The Deer Gate Marquis remained at the very front of the column, as though he had completely forgotten there