Chapter Thirteen: The Record of Training Soldiers

  Inside the camp, more than 200 wounded soldiers had recovered, but tens of seriously injured soldiers had died. However, to Li Qing's surprise, two severely wounded soldiers who he thought would surely die under current medical conditions managed to survive against all odds. One was Tang Hu, who lost an eye and became known as "One-eyed Dragon". The other was Yang Yidao, who suffered a slash to the abdomen that spilled out his intestines. When Li Qing first heard the name "Yang Yidao", he couldn't help but burst out laughing - it turned out that this guy used to be a butcher before joining the army, and his nickname came from his skill in killing pigs with one swift knife stroke. These two severely wounded soldiers not only survived but grew stronger by the day, like a nine-lived cat, leaving Li Qing in awe of the resilience of human life.

  "This wound of mine would have been finished off by the reinforcement team in other camps, but it was Commander Li who brought me back to life. From now on, my life belongs to Commander Li." Tang Hu said solemnly.

  "Not bad, not bad!" Yang Yidao nodded in agreement. "If it weren't for General Li inviting Huan Shen Yi, I wouldn't have been able to save my life. From now on, whoever is rude to General Li will get a knife from me."

  Li Qing burst out laughing, "Alright, once you two have recovered from your injuries, come serve as my personal bodyguards!" Since they could survive such severe injuries, they must be exceptional individuals. As exceptional individuals, it was only natural to keep them by his side.

  The two second-generation people were overjoyed, although the injury had not yet healed, but they still insisted on standing behind Li Qing, and this personal soldier was considered to be on duty.

  The reorganization within the camp has basically ended, with only about 300 men left. Wang Qinyuan's Left Guard occupies more than half of them, which makes this bearded man so happy that he is scratching his ears and cheeks. He is delighted, but naturally, someone else is worried. Jiang Kui got less than 50 people, while Feng Guo has only about 30 men under him, and the rest are still lying in the heavy injury ward.

  "Jiang Kui, what's with the long face? Wanting more people? What are you going to do? You're a cavalryman, take a look, do we have warhorses now? The hundred or so men I've given you, they all know how to ride horses. Those who don't know how to ride, what are you going to do with them? Wait until we get our hands on some warhorses, will you still be afraid of not having enough people?" Li Qing scolded.

  "And you, Feng Guo, who are you putting on a face for? Don't think that just because you have only thirty or so men, they're not the most elite troops in our Left Wing of the Invincible Battalion. On horseback, they're cavalry; on foot, they're soldiers. We've even given you all ten of our warhorses. Haven't you seen that I, the majestic Eagle General, now have to ask you for horses when I go out? You're holding onto them like it's nighttime and won't return them, do you know that?"

  After scolding the two of them and painting a picture of their future, Li Qing stopped paying attention to them and focused on Wang Qinyan instead. Jiang Kui and Feng Guo were temporarily not reliable, so they could only focus on training the 200 or so people under Wang Qinyan's command.

  Wang Qiniann was delighted for less than a day, and then he was confused. Because Li Qing's method of training soldiers was completely incomprehensible to him. As far as he knew, infantry training was about training individual martial arts skills, and that's how his superiors had trained him when he was a soldier. But now Li Qing first wanted to practice formation drills. First, they had to stand in line, know the direction, then turn left and right, forward and backward, until people were dizzy.

  "Company commander, what's the point of having soldiers practice this? Standing in line can't fill our bellies! We're not the royal guard, we need to practice martial arts, martial arts!" Wang Qiniang waved his arms excitedly and shouted loudly at Li Qing.

  Li Qing was too lazy to explain, knowing that it would be pointless anyway. He simply muttered a single word under his breath: "Fart!" and took matters into his own hands. In the era of cold weapons, discipline was the most important thing for infantrymen. With one command, they charged forward bravely. Think about it - even if you had incredible martial arts skills on the battlefield, what could you do against thousands of long spears thrusting at you and hundreds of long swords swinging back and forth? Even a god descending from heaven would be poked full of holes and chopped into pieces.

  The troops, first of all, must be trained in discipline. The soldiers should form a subconscious reaction, so that when they are on the battlefield and an officer gives an order, they will naturally perform the corresponding action. As for martial arts skills, it's good to have them, but only if they are based on discipline. Now, I don't have the resources, let those with martial arts skills go be night watchmen. My infantry doesn't need any martial arts skills, as long as they have discipline, that's enough.

  Li Qing deeply understood that in this era, a crack troop was formed after spending several years or even over a decade. However, the Dingzhou army had been defeated and scattered all over the place. If he were to go there to build such a troop, he feared that even if his left wing was replenished, most of them would still be farmers. But even if they were farmers, after being trained by him, they wouldn't be any worse than those so-called crack troops, Li Qing thought smugly, feeling that he had an advantage.

  The left sentinel's captain, newly appointed Cloud Banner Lieutenant Wang Qiyuan, stood in the first row with a look of grievance. Li Qing walked back and forth, holding his whip, and whenever he saw someone standing crookedly, he would lash out with it; whoever was standing slackly would also get a lash. The soldiers who had previously not taken things seriously finally realized their mistake after seeing even Captain Wang Qiyuan take two lashes, and they all stood up straight, eyes front, looking quite proper.

  Jiang Kui had only about fifty men under his command, barely enough to form a square formation. Feng Guo relaxed and led his thirty or so men to practice their boxing and footwork in another corner, coming and going, shouting and laughing, occasionally casting sympathetic glances this way.

  After more than a dozen days of drilling, the formation of this team of over 200 people finally took shape. Li Qing began to give orders for left and right turns. Unfortunately, these soldiers had never heard such commands before, so at first they turned in all directions, bumping into each other, sometimes even facing each other head-on. As a result, the whip fell mercilessly on their bodies once again. Now Tang Hu and Yang Yidao were also getting tired, so they too picked up whips and joined the ranks of those being flogged for making mistakes.

  After a day like this, it's even more exhausting than practicing martial arts in the army before. All the soldiers finished their training and ate quickly, then fell asleep as soon as they lay down, the snoring sounds filling the military camp like thunder. Now it was Li Qing's turn to suffer, he couldn't sleep at all.

  A month later, Li Qing said with satisfaction to Wang Qinyan and Jiang Kui: "Now it's a bit like this. You choose the leader from your subordinates, let the leader lead the team to practice, you come out to supervise, hum, now we can practice with weapons."

  After suffering for a month, Wang Qinyan carefully asked: "Sir, what are we going to practice?" He thought that this instructor would definitely come up with some kind of weird trick again and create some new move.

  "What is the most abundant weapon in our camp now?" Li Qing asked.

  "Mostly long guns, long guns are cheap, and then there's the waist knife." said Wang Qiniang.

  "Hmm, then the gunner will practice one move, thrust. The knife soldier will practice one move, chop!" Li Qing said without thinking.

  "What?" Wang Qinyan and Jiang Kui looked at each other in dismay.

  "That's right, thrust and chop!" Li Qing said, "However, while thrusting and chopping, the formation must be neat, it cannot be chaotic!"

  Alas! Wang Qinyan and Jiang Kui let out a sigh at the same time. They thought they had escaped the sea of suffering, but unexpectedly there was an even deeper one ahead. It's hard to keep their hands empty and tidy, it took them a month to get a little better, now they have to hold weapons, the difficulty has increased by more than just a bit.

  "By the way, can any of you three read?" Li Qing suddenly remembered something and asked. The three immediately blushed, Wang Qiannian directly said: "Sir, I can recognize words, but I don't know what they mean." Jiang Kui said: "I only know how to write my own name." Feng Guoqin hesitated and said: "Sir, when I was a bandit before, I kidnapped a scholar who taught me to recognize dozens of characters."

  Li Qing shook his head. Is this what his own men had become? "You three, train during the day and roll over here at night, I'll teach you to recognize characters."

  "Sir!" The three exclaimed in unison, "Sir, why do we soldiers need to learn characters?"

  "You three idiots!" Li Qing rolled his eyes, "In the past, you were just foot soldiers, it didn't matter if you couldn't read or write. But now you're officers, officers! Do you know what that means? Following me, who knows, maybe one day you'll become generals. What will you do if you can't even recognize characters? Am I supposed to give you orders through drawings?"

  Wang Qiniann laughed: "Become a general? Never thought of it!"

  "No future!" Li Qing bluntly knocked on his head, "You must have ideals, Huzi, you must have ideals."

  Jiang Kui seemed lost in thought, while Feng Guo had a look of yearning on his face. "General! Can I also do it?"

  Three chapters presented today, bowing out, going offline.