The common people were completely thrown off balance, the kind of confusion that did not come from ignorance but from witnessing too many contradictions stacked on top of each other in too short a time, because just moments ago one group claiming to be the Shared Governance faction had swept through and stripped them clean down to bare bones, and before the dust even settled another group arrived under the same banner, calmly declaring the previous one a counterfeit, then proceeded to hand out money and grain as if reality itself could be rewritten on demand.
What kind of operation was this.
No one could make sense of it, but then again, understanding had never been a requirement for survival.
In the end, the logic of the common folk remained brutally simple and stubbornly effective, whoever bullied me is the villain, whoever helps me is a good person, and everything else can go argue with the wind.
Ma Shouying raised a hand and pointed at the banner fluttering within his ranks, his tone carrying the kind of certainty that did not invite debate.
"Remember this clearly. That five-colored Dao Xuan Tianzun banner. Only those who carry this are the good ones. If you see anything else, stay as far away as you can."
The villagers nodded with surprising speed, not because they fully understood, but because they needed something solid to believe in, and a piece of cloth was far easier to trust than abstract ideology.
With a sharp whistle, Ma Shouying turned his horse, and the Armored Cavalry Unit surged forward like a released bowstring, pulling away from the village in a matter of breaths.
The banner drifted farther and farther into the distance, until it became nothing more than a small flicker of color against the horizon, and the villagers stood there watching, quietly reaching a conclusion that would shape their behavior from that moment on.
That flag is good.
Every other flag is trouble.
Ma Shouying continued his march, and along the way he passed several more villages, each one bearing the same hollowed-out look, the unmistakable aftermath of Wu Sangui's handiwork, houses looted, granaries emptied, people reduced to thin, wary shadows of themselves.
He stopped at each one.
He distributed grain.
He reassured them.
He stabilized what little remained of their faith.
If one were to strip away the rhetoric and look only at the actions, what he was doing did not differ all that much from what the old bandits used to do, except for one crucial distinction, he did not drag the villagers along with him as unwilling followers, and perhaps in this era, that single difference was enough to redraw the moral boundary.
Ma Shouying frowned as he rode, the thought forming slowly but insistently in his mind, whether he should chase down Wu Sangui and give him a proper beating before things spiraled any further.
At that moment, the embedded reporter caught up from behind.
She was also a disciple of Dao Xuan Tianzun, but unlike the soft-spoken Zhou Daya, this woman carried herself with a sharp, athletic edge, riding a red horse that cut through the wind with clean precision, her posture straight, her presence bright without being loud.
She reined in beside him and gave a brief salute.
"General Ma, I may need to leave your unit for a while."
Ma Shouying turned, his brows knitting together almost immediately.
"Where are you going? It's chaos out there. Don't wander off recklessly. If something happens to you, I won't be able to answer to Dao Xuan Tianzun."
The reporter smiled, not dismissively, but with a kind of calm confidence that suggested she had already weighed the risks.
"My safety is my own responsibility. If anything happens, it won't be your burden to carry."
Ma Shouying shook his head.
"That's not how it works. You are a disciple of Dao Xuan Tianzun."
Her smile softened slightly.
"Being a disciple of Dao Xuan Tianzun isn't meant to grant us privileges or special protection. It's supposed to mean something else."
Ma Shouying blinked.
"Something else?"
She nodded, choosing her words carefully, as if repeating something she herself was still trying to fully grasp.
"Dao Xuan Tianzun personally arranged for the entire news division to become his disciples, not so that we would be treated better, but so that we would hold a distinct position, one that allows us to supervise the village committees in the future."
Ma Shouying stared at her.
"Supervise… the village committees?"
The reporter let out a small sigh.
"To be honest, I don't really understand it either. The village committees are already doing quite well, aren't they."
They both fell silent.
Some ideas did not reveal their purpose immediately, and some systems were not built for the present, but for a future that had yet to arrive, a future where power would begin to rot from the inside, where privilege would quietly grow teeth, and only then would people like her, carrying the title of Dao Xuan Tianzun's disciple, step forward and finally make sense of the role they had been given.
Ma Shouying exhaled and waved a hand.
"We're getting off track. Reporter, what exactly are you planning to do after leaving my unit?"
She straightened slightly.
"I'm going to catch up to Wu Sangui's forces and secretly record him looting the civilians."
Ma Shouying paused, then nodded slowly.
"I see."
"He's currently operating under the banner of the Shared Governance faction. If we move against him directly, it will only confuse the people and give the conservative faction an excuse to attack us. But if we have clear footage of his crimes, everything changes."
Ma Shouying's expression tightened.
"That's extremely dangerous. Wu Sangui is a seasoned general. His forces will have scouts spread out everywhere. Getting close enough to record anything won't be easy."
The reporter's lips curved slightly.
"There's always a way. My special operations team came from Gao Family Village as well."
Ma Shouying held her gaze for a moment before finally nodding.
"Be careful."
She acknowledged with a short response, then turned her horse and sped forward, her team following close behind, disappearing into the distance with practiced efficiency.
Ma Shouying did not let the matter rest.
He urged his horse forward as well, keeping a distance, trailing behind just enough to intervene if things went wrong, though whether he would arrive in time if they truly did was another question entirely.
---
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the Imperial Capital had taken on a strange and uneasy texture.
The Shared Governance forces were advancing toward the city from multiple directions, and at the same time, refugees were flooding in from every possible route, turning the capital into a crowded, restless mass almost overnight, a scene eerily reminiscent of the previous incursions from the Liaodong Front.
The streets were packed.
Noise filled the air.
Even within the palace walls, the distant clamor seeped through, a constant reminder that control was slipping, not with a bang, but with a slow, grinding erosion.
And yet, strangely enough, there were barely any proper troops stationed in the city.
Eunuch Cao Huachun stood atop the city walls with a collection of guards and palace eunuchs, joined by members of the conservative faction who had brought their own household retainers to bolster the defense, though "defense" might have been too generous a word for what was essentially a loose gathering of men with uneven discipline and even less unity of purpose.
No one truly wanted to fight.
Each man was calculating something of his own.
And then, without warning, the tension began to loosen.
After a few days of noise and panic, the common people started leaving the capital in small but steady waves.
Cao Huachun stood by the city gate, overhearing fragments of conversation drifting up from below.
"Have you heard? The Shared Governance army doesn't harm civilians at all. We don't need to hide in the capital. We can just go home."
"Not just that. I heard if you go back now, they even give out grain. They call it 'disturbance compensation.'"
"What the hell? Something that good actually exists? Don't lie to me. If this turns out to be fake and we get robbed instead, I'm coming back to settle accounts with you."
"Well… I only heard about it too."
"Don't be scared," a man wearing a yellow helmet cut in, his tone confident in a way that only firsthand information could support. "I just got word from my village. It's completely safe to go back now. Plenty of workers from our fertilizer plant already received the 'disturbance compensation.' Big bags of grain. If you go back too late, you won't get anything."
The moment he finished speaking, he took off running toward the city gate with startling speed.
At this point, the rebel forces had not yet fully reached the city, and the officials and nobles were still in the middle of their so-called strategic withdrawal, so the gates had not been completely sealed, only left partially closed with a narrow opening.
The man in the yellow helmet darted through that gap with a movement so quick it resembled a flash of light, vanishing onto the southern road before anyone could properly react.
The others froze for a fraction of a second, then one phrase echoed in their minds like a warning bell.
If you go back too late, you won't get anything.
It was terrifying in a way that swords and arrows could never quite match.
In an instant, the crowd surged toward the gate.
The eunuch guards panicked, shouting at the top of their lungs.
"What are you doing? Stop pushing! Keep order! If you keep this up, I'll kill every one of you!"
The threat worked, at least on the surface.
The people slowed down, straightened themselves, and filed out in something resembling order.
But once they had passed through the gate and put some distance between themselves and the walls, they turned back as one, their fear evaporating into something far more familiar.
Anger.
"You damn eunuch, and you dare call yourself 'your father'? Do you even have the parts for that? Can you produce a son? You'll never be anyone's 'father' in this lifetime. Damn you!"
"Yeah, we used to be afraid of you, but what is there to fear now? When the Shared Governance army arrives, all of you eunuchs are finished!"