The clamor from the wounded soldiers' camp in the south of the city had finally subsided.
The miserable wails of the past few days were gone, replaced by the sounds of soldiers heartily chewing and swallowing from their rice bowls, along with the relieved chatter of those who had survived a catastrophe.
These sounds couldn't reach the West Ward across half the city, but Xu Qinghuan could see the numbers in the daily military reports.
Xu Qinghuan sat in the shadows beneath the eaves, several stacks of account books piled on the stone table in front of her.
These were the border market tax ledgers that Qian Fugui had just delivered last night.
The densely packed numbers on the pages recorded the income and expenses of Zhenbei City over the past few years.
Xu Qinghuan read them very slowly, running every single entry through her mind.
Zhenbei City's foundation was too weak. One hundred thousand taels of silver and five thousand shi of provisions could only solve the immediate crisis; they could not fill the border army's massive deficit.
The courtyard door was pushed open from the outside, and Li Sheng strode in, carrying a large, coarse porcelain bowl.
The bowl was filled with a dark brown broth—a freshly brewed bowl of sheep kidney soup.
Li Sheng walked over to the stone table and set the large bowl down.
Steam rose from the bowl, bringing with it a sour, gamey odor that pierced straight into the nostrils.
Li Sheng raised the back of his hand, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and sighed as he looked at the soup.
"Miss, it is a blessing that the wailing at the wounded soldiers' camp in the south has stopped."
"A one-armed fellow named Wang Daniu ate more than half a millet flatbread this morning without his gums bleeding at all. Lao Sun checked their pulses and said that the brothers' vitalities have all stabilized."
"The soldiers are all praising your grace, saying you are a living Bodhisattva descended to earth. It reminds me of our days back in Taoyuan."
Li Sheng pulled over a round stool, sat down, and let out a sigh.
Xu Qinghuan did not look up. Her eyes remained fixed on the ledger as her fingers turned a page. "A living Bodhisattva cannot save thirty thousand border troops. This sheep kidney soup is just drinking poison to quench a thirst; it treats the symptoms but not the root cause. Once this batch of sheep is eaten, finding such medicinal primers again will be difficult."
Li Sheng looked at the murky broth in the bowl, frowned, and complained, "It's just that the taste of this soup is truly hard to swallow. The brothers are cured of their illness after drinking this medicine, but every time they pick up the bowl, it's like being tortured. That sour, gamey stench can be smelled three streets away. When the army cooks boil this soup, even the military dogs in the camp hide far away."
Xu Qinghuan turned another page of the ledger and said, "Good medicine tastes bitter. Being able to save their lives is already a great fortune. Do you think these sheep kidneys and fat are common items? It took over a hundred sheep to gather enough for these few pots of soup."
Li Sheng sighed and casually joked, "If only the green vegetables transported from the rear could last for over half a year without spoiling like dry rations, the brothers would be spared the suffering of boiling this soup."
"Chewing a few bites of greens is always better than drinking this sour water. Our Great Qian is vast and abundant in resources. Jiangnan has green vegetables all year round. If they could be transported to the northern border, how could there be such a strange disease?"
Xu Qinghuan's hand paused in flipping through the ledger.
These words... hit right on the difficult problem she had been pondering for days.
Xu Qinghuan stared at Li Sheng.
"Li Sheng, do you really think that preserving green vegetables can solve the deadly predicament of the border army?"
Li Sheng was taken aback, not expecting his careless remark to draw such a formal inquiry. He replied hesitantly:
"Don't ordinary households just pickle their vegetables? Pickled vegetables last a long time, and they are convenient to carry when marching and fighting. It's always better than gnawing on dry rations every day, right?"
Xu Qinghuan closed the ledger in her hand and pushed it aside.
"When ordinary households pickle vegetables, how much salt does one catty of vegetables require?" Xu Qinghuan threw out the first question.
Li Sheng opened his mouth but couldn't come up with an answer.
Xu Qinghuan didn't wait for him to answer and continued, "In Great Qian, salt and iron are both state-monopolized. The border is already short of salt, and the market price of salt is absurdly high."
"Thirty thousand men in the Zhenbei Army—how many vegetables do they eat in a year? If all of it were replaced with pickled vegetables, where would the silver to buy the salt come from? The Commander's Office can't even pay military salaries. Where do you expect them to get so much salt for pickling? Even if we raided He Minghu's estate all over again, it wouldn't fill the hole needed to buy that much salt."
Li Sheng frowned, understanding the difficulty involved. He had only thought about the vegetables but forgot about the salt.
"That is only the first point." Xu Qinghuan extended a finger and tapped it on the stone table. "During a march, if the soldiers eat salty pickled vegetables every meal, they will get thirsty."
"When thirsty, they must find water to drink. On the Gobi Desert of Mobei, water sources are already scarce. Carrying an extra waterskin means carrying one less liter of grain. The carts and horses for logistical supplies are strictly limited. On the front lines, will the soldiers drink water or eat food?"
Li Sheng's expression turned serious, realizing how difficult it was to find water in the Gobi Desert.
For a few mouthfuls of water, scouts from opposing armies would fight to the death. If the entire army consumed massive amounts of water because of eating pickled vegetables, the logistical pressure would multiply and drag down the entire army.
Xu Qinghuan looked at Li Sheng and threw out the final point: "Third, and the most fatal point of all."
"The reason green vegetables can cure this strange disease of bleeding gums lies entirely in the vital medicinal properties within the leaves. If they are pickled with salt, those medicinal properties will be completely destroyed by soaking in the brine."
"Eating any amount of pickled vegetables won't cure this disease. In the end, they would still have to rely on this sour, gamey sheep kidney soup to sustain their lives."
Hearing this, Li Sheng fell silent.
He had originally thought it was just a joke, not expecting it to involve such a complex logistical fatal flaw. This concerned the lifeblood of the great army.
The consumption of salt, the replenishment of water sources, and the loss of medicinal properties—these three points trapped the border army's logistics.
The courtyard fell completely silent.
Xu Qinghuan withdrew her gaze, reached out to take the writing brush on the table, dipped it into the nearly dried ink in the inkstone, and wrote two characters on a blank sheet of Xuan paper.
The tip of the brush danced across the paper, and the ink spread.
Dehydration.
Xu Qinghuan looked at these two words, falling into deep thought.
In her knowledge, vegetables could be stripped of moisture through high-temperature dehydration or freeze-drying. This would make them easy to preserve long-term while also locking in their vitamins to a certain extent.
But in the current Great Qian Dynasty, where even iron tools were poorly forged, achieving this step was extremely difficult.
Xu Qinghuan deduced various methods in her mind.
Sun-drying? The sun at the border was fierce, making it easy to dry things out. But under severe sun exposure, the medicinal properties in the vegetable leaves would largely be lost. They would be hard to swallow and wouldn't cure the illness.
Shade-drying? The northern border in May was hot, but if they encountered rainy days, the green vegetables would easily rot and mold. If the army ate moldy vegetables and triggered a plague, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Baking? The heat was extremely difficult to control. The slightest carelessness would result in burning them, and it required a massive amount of firewood. The border lacked firewood, so this wouldn't work either.
Every method had its flaws.
After pondering for a long while, she couldn't come up with a foolproof solution.
Xu Qinghuan put down the brush, reached out to grab the Xuan paper with the writing on it, and crumpled it tightly into a ball.
She casually tossed the paper ball into the wastebasket. It rolled twice and stopped in the corner, leaving behind an unsolved puzzle.
