On the twenty-sixth day of the first month, the third day after the Deer Gate Army arrived in Pearl City, the Deer Gate Marquis issued a military order: all units would rest for five days, sharpen their weapons, feed their horses, and put their equipment in order. Five days later, he would dispatch an army to attack the smaller barbarian tribes nearby and display the Chu Kingdom's military might.
The Document Office to the left of the main hall in the Marshal's Office was exceptionally busy. Large numbers of scholarly clerks came and went, many carrying documents of every description.
When the marshal needed to issue orders to the various units and locations, he would draft a document, pass it to his staff, and then send it to the Document Office. Its clerks would take it to the printing workshop and have enough copies printed.
The court sent messages to the various regions every day. Their contents reached the Document Office first, which was responsible for printing them and delivering them wherever they were needed.
Communications between the various armies likewise had to pass through the Document Office.
In the eyes of the Document Office, the army had no secrets. This made it a vital military location; a single leak could bring utter destruction upon the entire army.
The Document Office was also the most exhausting place to work. Its staff essentially fell into two categories: those who constantly wrote documents, and those who constantly ran errands delivering them.
The Document Office's busiest task was writing, sorting, and distributing soldiers' letters home.
With an army of more than four hundred thousand, even if each man wrote only two letters home a year on average, the Document Office would receive over two thousand a day. Moreover, its clerks wrote more than