Chapter 174: Switching to Experts!

Hua Xiong was quite a peculiar character. During his time with Dong Zhuo, he had committed many misdeeds, but he also had moments of kindness, like helping elderly women cross the street or escorting children home. After joining Liu Bei, Hua Xiong assumed Liu Bei would uphold virtues of benevolence and righteousness. So, when Chen Xi ordered him to find tomb robbers, Hua Xiong didn’t follow through.

“Strategist, desecrating someone’s ancestors’ graves brings bad karma. With your capabilities, why resort to such methods?” Hua Xiong knelt on one knee, trying to dissuade Chen Xi. He couldn’t bear the thought of Chen Xi tarnishing his reputation by doing something as dishonorable as defiling tombs just to capture Pingyu.

“What? What are you talking about, Zijian?” Chen Xi asked, scratching his head in confusion.

“Digging up the Yuan family’s ancestral graves!” Hua Xiong said in a somber tone.

“…” Chen Xi facepalmed. “Zijian, that’s an awfully malicious thought! But actually, it’s not a bad idea. If you were to dig up the Yuan family’s graves and display them outside Pingyu’s walls, even if Qiao Rui knew defeat was inevitable, he’d have no choice but to come out and fight. Heck, you might not even need to dig them up—just the threat alone would force Qiao Rui to make a move. Hm, yes, that’s quite a good plan.”

“... Strategist, please don’t joke about that!” Hua Xiong said, more seriously this time.

“Relax. Respecting the dead is important—I’m not that desperate yet. What I wanted was for you to find some professionals, not to desecrate graves. Haven’t you noticed that even when Yu Jin was asked to build a mound, he ended up digging and hitting water?” Chen Xi shrugged.

Hua Xiong was still puzzled, not quite understanding what Chen Xi was getting at. He stood there, hoping for an explanation. At least he now understood that Chen Xi wasn’t planning on digging up the Yuan family graves.

“Don’t you think digging a tunnel and sending a few hundred men through to open the gates would be easier than a full-on assault? And who better to handle such a job than professionals who do this sort of thing for a living? I had them build a mound to get a good view of the inside. From there, the tomb robbers can eyeball the distance and dig a tunnel. It should be a lot easier than grave robbing—just digging a tunnel, really. It should take about a month, and if Yuan Shu doesn’t send reinforcements by then, we’ll have plenty of time to take the city,” Chen Xi explained. “If it weren’t for giving Liu Biao some face, we could have just built a ramp straight up to Pingyu’s walls. That would’ve taken only three to five months…”

“Huh?” Hua Xiong was stunned for a moment before he quickly realized that this was a strategic blind spot. A plan that no one expects is the best kind of plan. It reminded him of how the Xiongnu were utterly defeated by Li Mu because they never imagined that Li Mu would lay an ambush beneath the grassy plains, resulting in tens of thousands of them being slaughtered.

Now, Chen Xi’s tunnel-digging plan was another unexpected and brilliant strategy. In an instant, Hua Xiong understood what he needed to do.

As for the idea of building a dirt ramp to push straight up to the city walls, Hua Xiong found it quite ingenious. With enough manpower, even the most well-fortified city could be taken in three to five months. You could even pile the dirt higher than the walls, creating an unassailable advantage. It was slow and labor-intensive, but it was an unbeatable tactic. He made a mental note of it, thinking it might come in handy one day.

“Please forgive me, Strategist. I’ll go and round up all the tomb robbers in Runan,” Hua Xiong said, bowing. Realizing that he had delayed this crucial military task by two days, he quickly added, “Work will commence by dusk today!”

“Dusk?” Chen Xi gave Hua Xiong a sidelong glance. “You even know about that?”

“Just a bit… just a bit…” Hua Xiong replied awkwardly. After all, during his time with Dong Zhuo, he had picked up a thing or two about tomb raiding and its associated taboos.

“Once you’ve got the men, take them to the site and supervise the digging. Don’t be like Wen Ze, who started digging and immediately hit water. As for how to cover it up, I’ll leave that to you. If we weren’t in such a hurry, we could’ve just used the simpler method of building a ramp and pushing forward,” Chen Xi said, assigning the task to Hua Xiong and once again referencing Yu Jin’s botched excavation.

It was indeed amusing how Yu Jin had tried to build a mound by chopping down trees and digging soil, only to hit water on the second day, turning the excavation site into a small pond. This was the unfortunate result of not having specialists on hand.

That’s why Chen Xi figured that instead of letting Yu Jin dig and end up with more unintended ponds, they should bring in the professionals. If the tomb robbers couldn’t even manage a simple tunnel, they might as well be buried themselves.

The efficiency of the military’s operations was something Chen Xi had learned back in Qingzhou. When Hua Xiong said he would round up all the tomb robbers in Runan by dusk, he wasn’t kidding. Sure enough, by dusk, Hua Xiong’s men had brought in over two hundred tomb robbers. It seemed that every major family’s ancestral graves were never without these professionals lurking nearby, making their living off such work.

Looking at the group before him—youths, young men, and middle-aged men, all with thin, slightly hunched frames and dull, cloudy eyes—Chen Xi could tell that being a tomb robber in this era wasn’t a glamorous job.

“Please, sir, have mercy on us. We won’t do it again,” someone finally spoke up, and soon the entire group was begging for mercy, some even dropping to their knees. In this era, tomb robbing was a serious crime, punishable by death—unless, of course, you were one of Cao Mengde’s yet-to-be-established ‘Mojin Xiaowei.’

Chen Xi gave Hua Xiong a look, and Hua Xiong responded with a loud shout, “Silence!” The tomb robbers immediately cowered in fear.

Chen Xi then signaled Yu Jin, who quickly brought over a chest of money. Military campaigns typically didn’t involve bringing money along, but as the campaign progressed, they always seemed to acquire some. When Chen Xi’s army left Fan County, they had no money. But by the time they reached Pingyu, they had amassed treasures and over a billion in cash.

Of course, this was inevitable. Passing through various cities and not clearing out their treasuries would be a missed opportunity. Generally, the commanding officer would take at least thirty percent of the spoils. Anything less would raise eyebrows among the troops and staff, so Chen Xi had no qualms about taking his rightful share. It didn’t take long before he realized that there was no business as profitable as war.

As for death benefits, Chen Xi thought it was only fair to distribute some of the wealth among the troops. Each fallen soldier’s family would receive ten guan, with Chen Xi personally overseeing the distribution. Wounded soldiers would receive two to five guan, depending on the severity of their injuries. All in all, it amounted to less than ten thousand guan.

Injured soldiers who survived could continue to serve in non-combat roles, such as overseeing farming operations in the rear, where their battlefield experience would be invaluable. Chen Xi doled out the funds with a calm demeanor, as it was simply a matter of redistributing the wealth they had acquired. A mere ten thousand guan was pocket change at this point.

Overall, the survival rate was significantly better than if no care had been provided. Alcohol for disinfecting wounds and basic bandaging with linen drastically reduced fatalities, although some unscrupulous soldiers did occasionally sneak a drink from the medical supplies.

The sight of money quickly shifted the mood among the tomb robbers. The group that had been trembling and begging for mercy now stared intently at the chest. After all, most tomb robbers were far from wealthy.

Chen Xi turned to Yu Jin with a puzzled expression. He remembered asking for gold ingots, which would have been far less bulky than this chest of copper coins. Why had it been swapped out for something so cheap?