Chapter 1499: Chapter 1416: The Truth Can No Longer Be Hidden

A Qin Country officer rushed into Chen Li’s command headquarters rest area, waking up the just-asleep Northern Qin Army Supreme Commander Chen Li.

“What is it? What happened?” Chen Li knew that if it wasn’t an urgent situation, his subordinates wouldn’t easily wake up a resting commander.

Because the commander’s sleep is very important, the more intense the battle situation, the more important the commander’s mental state is. Being able to calmly maintain a regular rest pattern is also a trait that a competent commander should possess.

Chen Li had actually been doing quite well recently, at least the defense problems he was most worried about had been addressed to a certain extent.

The Tang Empire chose a truce in the muddy February. The other side did not attack with urgency but maintained a relatively gentle probing harassment state.

This greatly reduced Chen Li’s defensive pressure, allowing him to save some troops, training them diligently so they could better adapt to the harsh combat conditions on the front lines.

Unfortunately, recently his military supplies weren’t very sufficient, requiring him to continuously urge the rear to transport them. But compared to the Tang Army’s attack, the food issue was a minor problem.

The officer delivering the message reported with his head down: “General! There has been a riot in a military camp at the back of the Western Pass, a regiment of soldiers killed their commanding officer, seized weapons… and attacked the nearby camp?”

“What?” Chen Li was startled by this news, he truly hadn’t expected the troops’ food situation to be this dire.

In his statistical figures, although there was a shortage of food, the situation should not be dire enough to force rebellion.

“What happened?” So, he immediately realized that there might be a serious issue somewhere: “Even though there is a food shortage, it shouldn’t make soldiers starve to rebellion, right?”

“The issue hasn’t been fully investigated, but… I heard that the 93rd Army’s food supplies… may have had a problem…” The officer delivering the message was not very clear on the specifics and could only give a rough answer.

The time was too tight, and there was no time for an investigation. He had only confirmed there was unrest at a division of the 93rd Army, with a regiment seemingly rebelling, so he rushed to report it.

In fact, what he didn’t know was that the regiment that killed its own officer, by the time he woke Chen Li, had already rushed into the neighboring regiment’s station, pulling in those hungry soldiers, and headed straight for the division headquarters.

“Order the 93rd Army to suppress the rebellion! Kill those riotous soldiers! To serve as a warning!” Chen Li knew that this was not the time to question right or wrong; he had to handle the situation immediately to prevent things from slipping out of his control.

In his view, those rebellious soldiers were no longer usable and must be used as a deterrent to those daring enough to rebel. As for right or wrong… figuring out why these soldiers were starving is a subsequent problem.

“Yes!” The officer immediately turned and left; only then did Chen Li begin to think about which part went wrong.

He had already distributed the available food to all the troops. Although the 93rd Army’s food supply was minimal, it shouldn’t have driven soldiers to the point of rebellion.

So, he quickly realized that this could be a major case… potentially implicating many people! So he immediately called his adjutant: “Adjutant! Go to the 93rd Army’s station and find out what’s going on! Do not act on your own in any situation, just report to me.”

“Yes!” The adjutant, after hearing the entire incident, nodded immediately and turned to leave Chen Li’s rest room.

…

On the other side, at the 93rd Army Headquarters, the military commander was as anxious as ants on a hot pan. His anxiety was because he actually knew that he had never received the amount of food recorded in the accounts.

The food that was supposed to be transferred to him simply didn’t exist! It existed only in the accounts, not in actual form!

Where did the food go? The food was sent to the Shu Territory for sale! Yes, for sale! At the time, nobody realized that the loss of Shu and Chu territories would happen so quickly. The idea was to make a profit by transporting the food there during Shu Territory’s grain shortage under Qin Country’s occupation.

Then, when Shu Territory’s grain harvest was ample, the plan was to buy back the food at a lower cost to refill the warehouses and discreetly make a fortune. But the result was that Shu Territory was lost quickly, and the grain couldn’t be retrieved, leaving the gap unfillable.

The embezzled food was originally reserve supplies, generally unnecessary, so the deficit was accepted. But who would have thought the frontline would be defeated, Qin Army ran out of food, and reserve grain had to be used for emergencies.

This exposed a large-scale grain smuggling case involving royal relatives and external relatives, and even several military officers.

The more unfortunate part was that they only found out now that the embezzled grain was actually only one-third; the other third had been embezzled over the years.

The original total in the Qin Country’s reserve grain silos couldn’t match the accounts; if thoroughly investigated, there would probably be a “fire dragon burning warehouse” incident. Now the people involved in the grain smuggling case ended up unwittingly as the scapegoats for embezzlement.

In the end, no one dared to ignite the storerooms, because such a common tactic in normal times, if attempted during wartime, might get traced back to the culprit and executed directly by Emperor Qin Ying Duo.

Everyone, having no alternative, could only pretend to transport the grain out and deliver it to the front line. Who knew they would perform all sorts of tricks along the way?

Originally, inadequate transport capacity in Qin’s rear was pressed by Emperor Qin and other high officials to expand quickly. These departments couldn’t meet the demand and secretly worried. Now there was a large amount of non-existent grain needing to be transported to the front… just by adjusting the accounts, their transport capacity could be increased, right?

Thus, after the railway department’s intensive efforts, these invisible grain supplies were invisibly transported to the front line, and the railway department filed a report on its transportation achievements, pleasing Emperor Qin Ying Duo.

Unfortunately, this non-existent grain reached the front line, but the soldiers couldn’t eat it. Originally allocated ten tons of rice and flour, it eventually ended up only being just one ton.

This ton of emergency food would be further deducted within the military, and more pressures placed by superiors on subordinates… what reached the ordinary soldiers’ hands was just so-called rice congee diluted to resemble plain water.

If these soldiers starved to death, perhaps the officers could siphon more false accounts, possibly spawning a new business. Unfortunately, these soldiers finally rebelled, and everyone involved understood that the paper couldn’t cover the fire anymore.