"Dragonhead Li, let's go out to welcome him!" Chief Huang Junhan suggested inside Jiyin's granary city.
"Indeed." Zhai Kuan frowned beside him, trying hard to persuade him as well. "At this point, harmony should come first. We mustn't let anything go wrong."
"Li Shu, we're all fighting Wei. Neither Jiangdu nor the Eastern Capital has fallen yet!" Meng Ghost-Eater also looked deeply troubled. "We have to put the larger picture first."
Li Shu's expression remained unchanged. He said nothing, merely sweeping his gaze over the three of them before looking at the others who had not spoken, including Fang Yanlang, Chang Fu, Ding Shengying, Liang Jiading, and Cui Silang, whom he had recently taken into his confidence. Inwardly, however, he could not help reflecting.
Some of these men were here because they had been sidelined and had turned to him in search of a future. Others had their roots around Jiyin and were under his immediate authority by geography, with nowhere else to go. Some had arrived too late or came from unconventional backgrounds; unable to kindle a fire on the other side, they had turned to him instead. Still others had no connection to him whatsoever and had merely been sent to make a show of support by people who could not conveniently come themselves.
These men, together with Fang Yanshi and Zu Cheny an, who were currently in Hebei, and several administrators, constituted his present support and core following.
Yet Zu Cheny an had effectively been discarded and was now merely writing proclamations, supposedly having returned to administrative work. Fang Yanshi, previously the only one with troops under his command, had been reduced through two rounds of military reorganization in Hebei to deputy supervisor of Ban County's military farming troops, losing his military authority. The administrators, meanwhile, were