"Don't mention it. My third boy, sixteen, entered the ranks a few days ago. This morning, I felt the kang bed—it was stone cold. I threw back the quilt and saw he was gone. No need to think about it; he headed north with that bunch of little bastards."
"Ah? Then you must be furious."
"Furious about what? If I were ten years younger, I'd have gone with them. Better a miserable life than a good death—why didn't we let them go before? Because going meant dying. But now? The Idle Prince truly treats people like people, and every one of them cultivates the Idle Prince Cultivation Method. Even if they die, they'll die fighting openly and honorably, not like before, getting stabbed again and again by the people behind them with dull knives. Why didn't we go to the Great River before? Was it because we feared death? No. It was because when we looked up at that pitch-black sky at night, we couldn't see a thing. Now, we can see hope!"
"That's true enough. Our neighbors made a fuss this morning too. Once we asked around, it turned out all the children had run off. If this had happened before, they'd have wept to heaven and earth, but today, sure, there was a commotion, but it wasn't that big."
"No one's a fool. These days, Worthy Prince City is far more stable than the Divine Capital. Who knows? Maybe one day the Divine Capital will turn into the Dead Devil Lands."
"Don't talk nonsense. How could it be that frightening?"
"How do you all know so much?"
"Heh. News travels through the Divine Capital a hundred times faster than a flying sword."
"Hey, Brother Zheng, do you have any inside news?"
Zheng Hui smiled faintly and said slowly,