Across the Great Marsh Plain, the peaceful rhythm of post-battle logistics hummed with comforting familiarity.
Under the watchful eyes of Su Ling’er and the Twelve Obsidian Golems, two hundred thousand royal soldiers were setting up temporary bivouacs in the warm spring meadows. Students from the Floating Mountain distributed dry wool blankets, wooden water casks, and cooking pots of soothing stomach tea. The former instruments of war—hundreds of thousands of iron spears, composite crossbows, and cavalry sabers—lay neatly gathered in gleaming pyres along the outer edge, guarded not by sentries, but by drowsy badger beastfolk happily dozing in the afternoon sun.
With the vanguard pacified and the soldiers well-fed, Lin Xiao stood at the edge of the clearing, gazing westward toward the jagged snowcapped peaks dividing the forest from the central plains of the Golden Sun Empire.
“Ling’er,” Lin Xiao called out over his shoulder, his hands tucked comfortably into his azure scholar sleeves. “Keep an eye on the soup cooking pots while we’re gone. If they run out of noodles, have Old Tie unpack the spare flour barrels from vault four. Nobody leaves the encampment with an empty belly.”
“Don’t worry in the slightest, Master Lin,” Su Ling’er replied with a bright, playful curtsy, her nine snowy fox tails fluttering gracefully behind her like silk banners. “No soldier under heaven shall go hungry on our watch. Bring back the old emperor in one piece, and don’t let Gu Qingfeng drink all the road wine before you reach the capital.”
