Traveling through time and space and becoming a deposed prince, he just wants to survive!

Chapter 173 What happened next?

The border of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

Qingshui County.

In a relatively flat jungle, a cavalry patrol of a hundred men, armed with bows and crossbows or spears, with sabers slung around their waists, looked leisurely, as if waiting for the day to end.

"Don't be nervous. We have the Great Wall here to protect us. Unless they come by boat, they are just passing robbers and will not fight with our soldiers."

The centurion's voice came from the team. It was inevitable that some new recruits would feel timid during border patrol, so he spoke out to encourage them.

"Captain Qin, you've been a soldier for so long. Have you ever fought against the Xiongnu?"

A recruit shouted from behind.

Qin Zichuan, the captain of the Qin army, looked at the young man with a pale face and said proudly, "It's said that I have been a soldier for three years. If I haven't killed any Xiongnu, how can I have any military merit? How can I become a centurion?"

The young man smiled with envy, looking towards the north from time to time, and changed the direction of the spear in his hand to relax his other hand.

"Captain Qin, how many people have you killed?"

The young man withdrew his gaze and continued to ask Qin Zichuan.

"Sun Yue, you're just a rookie, but you love asking questions. What's in the porridge? Hahahaha..."

The boy's name was Sun Yue. When his squad leader saw him asking questions, he laughed at him.

"Old Wang, don't laugh at the newcomers like that. Everyone has their own curiosity when they first arrive. Xiao Yueyue, how long have you been in the army?" Qin Zichuan asked Sun Yue with a kind look.

"Haha~ little brother, I, Wang Tieniu, am a rough guy. How rough is he? All men know after getting to know him for a long time!" After being taught a lesson by Qin Zichuan, the sergeant clasped his fists towards Sun Yue to apologize.

"Brother Wang, even Widow Zhang from the village next to our camp knows how thick you are, hahahaha..."

"Hahahahaha..."

An old soldier in the team made a joke and the others laughed along.

"Are you looking for a fight, kid? Widow Zhang and I have a deep brother-sister relationship. It's just a simple matter of chopping wood and carrying water. Why are you making fun of it?"

Wang Tieniu's face was black and his ears were red with anxiety. He shouted at the crowd.

Qin Zichuan also laughed when he heard this, but did not stop them.

Rather than calling it a patrol inside the pass, it would be more accurate to say that it is a walk for the horses to graze. War horses need to be let out to run in order to grow fast. They cannot gain weight if they stay in the stable.

When Sun Yue saw Wang Tieniu being humiliated, he secretly laughed in his heart and inadvertently raised his eyes to look towards the north again.

"There were almost no large-scale border violations the year before last and last year. As the saying goes, three times the risk of a catastrophe is a sure thing. They will definitely come this year, but it's only August now, so they'll usually come after next month."

Qin Zichuan is a veteran with three years of service. He participated in a battle in his first year of service, and this year marks his third year.

"Now, everyone, practice your riding and martial arts. When the time comes to fight, you can get more military merits. If you are smart now, you may be promoted faster than me."

Everyone nodded when they heard this, and then the team returned to calm and continued on their horses.

Sun Yue looked towards the north out of habit, feeling as if someone was coming from the north.

"Is my eyes blurring out?" Sun Yue muttered to himself.

"What do you mean your eyes are blurry? What did you see?" Qin Zichuan happened to be next to Sun Yue, and he walked up to him and asked with concern.

It is normal for many new recruits on the border to experience occasional hallucinations due to mental stress.

"Captain Qin, I keep having hallucinations of seeing Huns in the jungles of the northern border." Sun Yue said sheepishly with an embarrassed look on his face.

"Oh, north, where are you talking about?" Qin Zichuan did not laugh at him, but asked him where he saw the location.

"Look! It's right there..." Sun Yue pointed in the direction.

"Captain, that place is a mass grave. Few people go there normally." Wang Tieniu came over to watch the fun and said after hearing the conversation.

"Mass grave? Who's going to be buried here in this desolate place?"

"Don't be nervous. There were often wars here in the past. A lot of the surrounding areas were fertile fields. Later, the barbarians who died in the battles were buried there. It is said that there were more than 100,000 people buried there. There are only bones underneath."

Qin Zichuan carefully explained the situation there, fearing that he would scare Sun Yue.

"It's true, no one dares to come here at night. There have been cases of ghosts getting in the way and ghost lights appearing on the body."

Wang Tieniu said nonchalantly.

"Tie Niu, you just like to scare the newcomers. Remember one year there was a new recruit who was so scared that he didn't dare to leave here anymore."

"That's because he has low eyebrows. He went crazy after walking through this place twice."

Wang Tieniu seemed a little dissatisfied with Qin Zichuan's scolding, and pointed to the location of the mass grave with his thumb.

"Hey, did I encounter a ghost today? I actually saw someone in the mass grave."

Wang Tieniu pointed in a direction and suddenly said with a startled look.

"You're not seeing a ghost. There are really people there, about the same number as us."

Qin Zichuan lowered his voice and said, "Everyone dismount. The people over there are definitely not from inside the pass. They might be the Huns."

Upon hearing this, the accompanying soldiers dismounted, hid in the sparse grass, and looked at the mass grave.

"Everyone here knows that it's a mass grave. Ghosts and monsters are most likely to appear during this season. Even in broad daylight, there have been a few strange sightings."

Qin Zichuan explained his thoughts to the people around him.

Sun Yue was participating in this kind of patrol for the first time, and he felt a little nervous facing foreign enemies, but he calmed himself down and asked Qin Zichuan, "You mean to say these are outsiders, but how can you be sure they are from the grassland?"

"They ride horses, and they are tall, fine horses unique to the grasslands. Even the military horses we use for patrols cannot compare to them."

The meaning is already obvious.

Not only are the people coming from outside the area, but they are also people riding grassland warhorses. Who else could it be?

"Captain Qin, stop looking! They've already spotted us, so they're hiding in the mass grave. It looks like they're here to gather intelligence."

Although Wang Tieniu was a rough man, he had several years of battlefield experience. Seeing this situation, he said with disdain.

"So, let's chase after them?"

What Qin Zichuan said seemed inconsistent with his identity. How could a centurion ask questions?

"We can't catch up. The distance looks like two miles, but their horses run faster."

In fact, Qin Zichuan knew that he could not catch up, so he asked this question deliberately. On the one hand, he wanted to pass on his experience to the soldiers around him in the form of a test and train these people to grow.

Secondly, to see if anyone is afraid of fighting.

"I suggest half of them leave and the other half stay here. Since they're here to gather intelligence, there obviously won't be many of them."

Although Sun Yue was a new recruit, what he said made Qin Zichuan look at him with admiration.

Is this the quality a new recruit should have?

"Do you know military books?" Qin Zichuan asked.

"When our village hunts wolves in the mountains, we usually have one or two of them hide in the trees, and then three or four wolves will watch from below."

"What happened next?" Wang Tieniu asked.

"Later, more than 20 wolves surrounded three or four trees. Suddenly, half of them were gone, and we defeated them one by one with bows and arrows."

"Oh, so hunting can be done this way." Wang Tieniu nodded thoughtfully.

Qin Zichuan felt that this was not what Sun Yue meant. Rather, it was true that one group of people would leave and another group would remain to attack the enemy. However, the evacuation route must be able to encircle and suppress the enemy.

So he called the remaining squad leaders, gave them some instructions, and then Wang Tieniu took a small number of people away.