Qin State, Xianyang.
Countless defeated Qin troops passed through Xiao-Han and returned to Qin State. It had been a devastating defeat.
Han, Wei, and Chu had all begun recovering the territory they had lost not long before.
The lands lost to Bai Qi were ultimately wrested back from him by Luo Zai.
The ever-victorious Qin Army had never been so bedraggled. Their armor hung in scattered pieces, covered in blood and mud.
Those soldiers who were truly wounded had long since been abandoned along the way and had probably already been killed.
Everyone stared blankly, calculating whether their ranks of nobility would suffice to offset their offenses.
Fortunately, Bai Qi favored battles of annihilation.
This brought enormous benefits to the Qin soldiers, who needed severed heads to record their merits. Most could still bear the punishment.
"General, are you going to see the king?"
The soldiers gathered around Bai Qi, their eyes full of concern, afraid that the enraged King of Qin would simply kill him for commanding a defeated army.
After that, earning military merit and noble ranks would become very difficult.
Since Wei Yang's reforms, several generations had passed. The Qin people loved to speak of profit, settling accounts clearly even between parents and children, husbands and wives.
Bai Qi could spare these soldiers all manner of corvée levies and even secure additional rewards for them.
These soldiers all but wished to enshrine Bai Qi as an ancestor.
To these soldiers, if they had to choose whether Bai Qi or the King of Qin would survive, they would certainly choose Bai Qi.
What was the King of Qin worth? This was probably what the Qin people truly thought.
The King of Qin's Palace.
The King of Qin's Palace was crudely built. Its halls bore no exquisite ornamentation, only