Chapter 21: Enjoying the Emotions of Righteousness

  In the next two days, the guests of the Gong Sun family still stayed at the Zu Family Village.

  According to the advance notice, the Gong family will stay in Zujia Village for three to five days. On the surface, it is just a trip to play around here. As for the actual serious matters about the alliance, it was also discussed by the elders of the clan and Gong Sun privately, without any rumors outside. During the day, the Zu family would arrange people to take the guests from the Gong family on a tour of the county and countryside, and in the evening, they would hold a grand banquet, with drums, zithers, flutes, lanterns, red wine and green wine.

  Although this time the arrival of the Gong Sun family, Zu Chao is an indispensable protagonist, but he is not always accompanying the guests of the Gong Sun family. Except for the first time when he went out with the guests of the Gong Sun family for a short while, at other times he was still doing his own things, getting up early to read books or design horse equipment, and after lunch he would lead the idle clan members to practice horse riding on the West River Bridge, every time Gong Long would also follow along, and even "played" very enthusiastically.

  Recently, the horse training content has been casual and playful as usual. However, Zu Chao started designing some "new games" from two days ago. He would randomly divide everyone into two teams and ask them to compete in various ways such as racing, horse racing, and group wrestling. He even arranged for some rewards, where the winning team could go to the town's winery for a big meal, with all expenses paid by themselves.

  The wandering warriors value generosity the most, and they can't wait to have a big feast with plenty of wine and meat every day. Although most of the wandering warriors who responded to Zhang Yuan and Zhang Yu's call are from families with some wealth, even a wealthy family like Zu Zhao's wouldn't be able to afford meat at every meal, let alone these people. Therefore, they were extremely excited about this and actively responded one after another.

  As for the young masters of noble families, they don't care about a single meal of wine and meat, but most of them have a strong sense of self-respect, how can they bear to lose to these commoners in a competition? Therefore, they also go all out, fighting for every inch.

  The events of the competition are diverse, and the single running event can be divided into several types.

  Zu Zhaohopefully step by step to improve the physique of these young and strong men, currently mainly focusing on short sprints of several hundred meters, later will gradually increase the distance of the race, as well as adopt back-and-forth running, obstacle running and other ways to temper everyone's willpower and reaction. As for the northerners being good at riding, truly becoming a combat-effective cavalry still requires training, especially since the Han Dynasty did not develop a mature heavy cavalry, mostly light cavalry, which is even more focused on testing the combat skills of the knights.

  Even if Zhang Yuan and Zhang Yu, two brothers, understood some riding and shooting with their ancestral family, it was far from enough.

  He envisioned the training outcome to enable these men to reach the level of array charging. Only knights with the ability to launch active attacks are considered true cavalrymen. After that, it is entirely possible to make further adjustments based on actual situations, dividing them into types such as scouts, rangers, raiders and pursuit troops.

  In addition, personal combat skills are also not to be underestimated. In ancient battlefield close combat, most of the time it was a contest of physical strength and power, training in group wrestling can improve everyone's teamwork awareness, and at the same time exercise physical strength and power. Moreover, combat techniques on the battlefield are not all useless, knowing some boxing and kicking skills is better than just being reckless.

  All who came to the Western River Bridge to participate in the "training" had to go through these competitions. After running, horse racing and wrestling, the whole afternoon was almost over. Whether they were wandering knights or young masters from noble families, they were all sweaty and dusty, with some slightly injured, but none of them were not exhilarated.

  To avoid the two teams from competing with each other and bearing grudges, Zu Zhao had thought of reassigning the teams every day, with everyone drawing lots to decide. The wandering children and the young masters of the Zu family were scattered and mixed together. Even as more and more people participated in the training, it was all done in this way. Until they fully mobilized the enthusiasm of the participants or received official support from the prefecture and county governments, allowing everyone to immerse themselves in a regular and disciplined atmosphere.

  The day after the match, Zu Zhao invited the winning side to drink in the town's wine house. He asked the wine house to only provide a fixed amount of wine and water, as for meat and vegetables, they would be charged according to how much they ate. He didn't bring any money with him, but promised the wine house that he would come back to settle the bill after noon the next day. The wine house had already heard of Zu Zhao's reputation as "Dragon City's Flying General" and knew that the Zu family was extremely wealthy, so they readily agreed.

  Gongsun Long lost two rounds in the competition that day and scolded all the way back to Zu's village, feeling resentful. After all, he was young and vigorous, and didn't have the mind to summarize the specific reasons for his failure, but just kept complaining that his teammates were not clever enough. Some of the younger generation of the Zu family who followed behind him were full of resentment, and if they hadn't considered Gongsun Long a guest, they would have retorted long ago.

  Zu Chao rode on horseback, smiled lightly and said in a very serious tone: "Fist and footwork are small skills, but tolerance is the greatest skill for men. The trial is just a formality, what's important is to cultivate everyone's tacit understanding. If we can't even do this, how can we win in the future? Gong Sun brother, don't you think so?"

  Gongsun Long continued to argue, "It was clear that I was running in the front earlier, but those few people were holding me back. And as for wrestling, I alone could take down several of them! How infuriating, too infuriating!"

  Zu Chao still smiled and said, "Brother Gong Sun, you are truly disappointing. I know your strength is extraordinary, but in the end, one fist can't defeat four hands. Anyone can master the skills to defeat ten people, but if you want to defeat hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of people, that's what I call real skill."

  Gongsun Long's face was puzzled, and he furrowed his brow in thought for a while.

  The other young masters of the ancestral house also heard the strange sound and gathered around to listen.

  A moment later, Gong Sunlong still couldn't help but ask Zu Zhao: "Brother Zu, why can't I quite understand what you're saying? This... defeating a hundred people, defeating a thousand people, or even defeating ten thousand people, isn't that just too arrogant?"

  Zu Zhao said: "Brother Gong Sun, have you ever thought that when wrestling, the reason why Brother Gong Sun can defeat multiple people alone is not because there are teammates on the side to restrain the opponent, thereby having the opportunity to win? Whether it's a trial or actually going to battle, there has never been a precedent for one person defeating an entire army. Only by understanding the power of unity can there be a possibility of winning with fewer numbers. My words have no other meaning, I just hope Brother Gong Sun will not push responsibility onto others, why not think deeply about how to unite with teammates?"

  Gongsun Long slightly understood, although he was still unhappy in his heart, but he no longer had such a fierce reaction as just now.

  After a pause, Zu Zhao smiled and said: "Anyway, the trial is just a game, losing one round doesn't matter much. We can summarize our experience of failure later and have another match tomorrow."

  Gongsun Long heard this and immediately clapped his hands and burst out laughing, repeatedly saying: "Really, really."

  In the evening, they returned to Zu's house and everyone rushed to clean themselves up first, so they were late for the dinner party that night. However, several elders did not blame them, since Zu Zhao had explained the reason to Zu Ju last time, everyone in the Zu family and the guests from the Gong Sun family knew the purpose of these young people going out. It was a good thing to see the young men in the clan being so enthusiastic. At the dinner table, Zu Ju and Gong Sun Zhi even asked about the scene in the afternoon.

  Zu Jie just gave a brief summary, but Gong Sun Long elaborated on the arrangement of the opposing trials one by one, and even added some embellishments to what Zu Zhao said on the way back.

  The two elders heard the so-called "Enemy of Ten People, Enemy of Hundred People, Enemy of Thousand People, Enemy of Ten Thousand People" remarks, and they all had different degrees of astonishment, looking at each other with a hint of enlightenment.

  The next morning, Zu Zhaowu had just gotten up and washed his face when Gong Sunlong hurriedly came to ask for an audience, asking about some matters regarding the competition this afternoon.

  Zu Chao was surprised that Gong Sunlong was so enthusiastic to such an extent. He didn't have much to say, on the one hand, Gong Sunlong wouldn't normally live in Xuwu County, let alone participate in Xuwu County's bandit suppression. On the other hand, the competition method had just begun, and many things needed to be persisted in order to understand each other from it.

  Gongsun Long was still able to listen to Zuozhao's words, after all, in the past few days of getting along with him, he admired Zuozhao's gentle and elegant, humble and reserved, yet also having a heroic image. Not only that, but these days were also personally witnessed by Zuozhao's skills, and self-admittedly had no match for them.

  However, he still refused to leave for the entire morning, so much so that Zu Chao didn't even have time to study his scriptures.

  After a simple breakfast, Zu Zhao had to take Gong Sunlong to the courtyard to adjust the horse's harness. Gong Sunlong found Zu Zhao's design of the horse's harness very peculiar and then focused his attention on this aspect, constantly asking questions from the side. Zu Zhao was still patient enough to answer every question concisely. Fortunately, Gong Sunlong was also a skilled horseman in Xuan Tu County, and after listening to Zu Zhao's introduction, he also made some suggestions about riding techniques, which helped to some extent.

  At noon, Zu Zhao had lunch with Gong Sun Long. Gong Sun Long was eager to go to the West River Bridge.

  Zu Zhao could only smile helplessly, he didn't expect that his training to prepare for the theft this year would actually attract an outsider with such enthusiasm.

  Upon arrival at the backyard horse farm, a group of young men from the ancestral home were already prepared as usual. Today's turnout was not small, with everyone rubbing their fists and palms, looking fierce and eager to try out yesterday's arrangement, which had sparked the interest of many people. After returning, they couldn't help but talk about it repeatedly, causing even more people to feel restless and eager to give it a try.

  Zu Chao was preparing the reins when Zu Ji led his horse over. His team had won a complete victory yesterday, and at this moment he still wore the proud smile of a winner on his face.

  "Master Da Gong Zi, Uncle Hong should be back this afternoon. Let's see if we can get some good horses this year." He said casually.

  "Even the best horse needs good skills to be useful, you must practice well during this period of time." Zu Zhao reminded him.

  "Of course!" Zu Ji said with a cheerful smile.