Around midnight, a light rain fell in Zizhou, and the gray rain covered the land.

The group of people who inspected the garrison site went up to the city wall, and did not come down for a while, Ning Yi looked out through the window on the city tower, and only a few small points of light were still lit on the city wall in the rainy night.

A little bit of light every few tens of meters outlines the faint outline of the city. The soldiers who had changed their guards wore their robes and walked along the city wall into the distance, gradually drowning in the darkness of the rain, and occasionally the sound of small human voices could be heard.

The inner perimeter of the high wall, the city's architectural shadows extend into the distance, and the blue tile gray walls, large and small courtyards in the daytime are gradually dissolved into one piece at this moment. In order to garrison and defend the city, the city wall should not have been built within dozens of zhang, but the Wu Dynasty Chengping more than two hundred years, located in the southwest of Zizhou has never had a military disaster, coupled with the location of the main road, the business is developed, the dwellings gradually occupy everything in the field of vision, first the houses of the poor, and then there are also the courtyards of the rich.

The coming war has scared away thirty percent of the people in the city, and the residents living near the northern city wall are given priority to persuade them to leave, but among the large and small courtyards, you can see sparse lamp points, and I don't know if the owner is up at night or what, if you look carefully, there are traces of items left by the master in the small courtyard nearby.

Two givers carried lanterns and took refuge under the eaves outside the uninhabited courtyard.

More than ten years have passed since the first Jurchen people went south, blood, battle arrays, life and death...... Scenes of drama are staged in turn, but for most people in this world, everyone's life is still an ordinary continuation, even if the war is coming, what bothers people is still tomorrow's firewood, rice, oil and salt.

Before rushing to Zizhou, Ning Yi received a message of failure from Jiangnan.

Since the Huaxia Army fought out of the Liangshan range and entered the Chengdu Plain, the Sword Pavilion has always been the key point in the next strategy, and the struggle and lobbying for the Sword Pavilion guard Si Zhongxian has always been ongoing.

Si Zhongxian is loyal to the Wu Dynasty, he is wise and benevolent and flexible, in the past, the Huaxia Army communicated with the outside world, sold weapons, and most of the business was going through the line of the Sword Pavilion. Si Zhongxian has always given convenience to the list supplied to the regular troops of the Wu Dynasty, and he has dealt a very severe blow to the private goods that some families, gentry, and local forces want. And the ability to distinguish and pick between these two types of business proves that this general has a considerable overall view in his mind.

The overall perception of Si Zhongxian by the General Staff of the Huaxia Army is positive, and because of this, Ning Xi and Ning Ji will also think that this is a good general worth fighting for. But at the practical level, the division of good and evil will naturally not be so simple, and whether Si Zhongxian is loyal to the people of the world or to the orthodoxy of the Wu Dynasty is a matter worth discussing.

In short, in the first half of this year, it was still a logical thing to leave Sichuan Silu to attack the Jurchens through Si Zhongxian's excuse, and Liu Chengzong's 10,000 people also went to Xuzhou with Si Zhongxian's cooperation - this was in line with the fundamental interests of the Wu Dynasty. However, in the second half of the year, the Wu Dynasty declined, Zhou Yong died, and the orthodox court was still divided into two, and Si Zhongxian's attitude was obviously shaken.

There are more complications in between.

Si Zhongxian is originally from Xiuzhou, Zhejiang, and his father Si Wenzhong once served as a squire in the military department more than ten years ago, and the whole family has been living in Pingjiang Mansion - that is, Suzhou in later generations. The Jurchens broke through the capital, and Si Wenzhong returned to the countryside of Xiuzhou with his family.

In July, Wanyan Xiyin led the Jurchen army to attack Xiuzhou, and after the city was broken, he invited Si Wenzhong to come out and grant him the post of secretary of the Ministry of Rites, and then sent Si Wenzhong to the Sword Pavilion to persuade him to surrender. At that time, the Chinese army in the south of the Yangtze River was no longer manpowered, Ning Yi ordered the front line to react, and dealt with it as appropriate after cautious investigation, he repeated the caution required for this matter in the order, and he could even give up the action if he was not sure, but the front-line personnel finally decided to rescue people.

In this operation, the Huaxia Army lost five people, and the Si family also suffered casualties. After the front-line action report and review were sent back, Ning Yi knew that the balance of the Sword Pavilion negotiations was already tilting towards the Jurchens.

At this time, Ning Yi couldn't help but review his shortcomings in organizational construction. The construction of the Huaxia Army imitated the Chinese army in later generations in some outlines, but there were a lot of differences in specific links.

In essence, the main axis of the Huaxia Army comes from the management system of the modern army, strict military law, strict supervision system up and down, and ideological management in place, which is more similar to the modern US army or the modern flower army, as for the original Red Army, Ning Yi could not simulate its unswerving belief system.

In that era, the West was developing rapidly with science and technology, and China was a backward thinking and political system, and more than a hundred years of humiliation and pain that went deep into the bone marrow, and countless people constantly encountered walls and looked for a way, and finally forged such an army with firm proletarian beliefs.

The humiliation experienced by the Wu Dynasty is still too little, and more than ten years of hitting a wall have not yet made people realize the urgency of taking another path, nor can they allow several ideas to collide and finally come to a result—even the time for the first phase of consensus is not enough. On the other hand, Ning Yi could not give up the industrial revolution and the budding capitalism that he had been cultivating.

Because of these reasons, the Huaxia Army broke with the old bull head, and it is also because of these reasons that the Huaxia Army is more like a large company and large enterprise in later generations in some directions, although Ning Yi also carried out a lot of propaganda of the "Huaxia" concept, but what really supports everything is the professional system that transcends the times, the professional way of doing things, after experiencing victory after victory, the staff in the army have high morale, and also have a spirit of optimism that is almost proud.

For such a spirit, Ning Yi has carried out a lot of rectification, but the effect is of course limited. There is no century of humiliation, no countless failures, no April 12 massacre, no embarrassment that has always been at a disadvantage and conviction in this embarrassment, and there is no cultivation of that kind of persistence and seriousness that goes deep into the bone marrow. After defeating Luqiaoshan and easily taking most of the Chengdu Plain, some Chinese soldiers even had contempt for the Jurchens.

In the past year's external work, the casualty rate has been higher than Ning Yi's expectations. In such a situation, generosity and heroism are no longer something worth promoting. Every kind of ism has its pros and cons, and each kind of thought will also lead to different directions and contradictions, and in the past few years, what has really troubled Ning Yi's thinking has always been the correlation and turning point of these things.

How to make people understand and deeply accept the necessity of the study of things and society, how to make the germ of capitalism come into being, how to let go of the thinking of "democracy" and "equality" at the same time as this germination, so that when capitalism moves to the extreme of ruthless profit-seeking, there can still be another relatively warm order to check and balance......

And Si Zhongxian's matter will also determine the direction of the general trend of the entire world.

The saints are unkind and use the people as dogs. It wasn't until he came to Zizhou on this day that Ning Yi found that what bothered and worried him the most was not all those major events in the world.

When the news about Ning Ji came, what he was worried about was that his second son saw the chaos in the world and began to become murderous, Ning Xi was willing to pass the news back, and the vague worry was probably this. After the meeting, the child's confession made Ning Yi understand what happened.

As a warrior, after seeing the confusion of this world, the child has become keenly aware of the way to become powerful, and the subconscious wildness is growing out of the safe range that his father and brother have compiled for him. I want to go through battle, I want to be strong, I want to accept equal challenges when the other person risks his life.

This is a commendable thought.

Ning Yi has also fought all the way this way.

He's not really an outlaw.

From the dock outside Jiangning City, to the present day after the murder of the king, he has confronted the Jurchens head-on, and fought for his life countless times, not because he was born an outlaw who did not put his life in his eyes. On the contrary, he not only spared his life, but also cherished everything in front of him.

However, countless past experiences have taught him that it is only a basic condition to really fight with people in this murderous world and risk his life. People who don't have this condition will have a higher probability of losing and less likely to win. He was just calmly pushing up the probability of victory with every point, using cruel reason to suppress the fear of danger, an instinct that had been repeatedly exercised in the experience of the previous life. If he doesn't give up his life, he will only lose more.

Whether in prosperous times or troubled times, the essence of the operation of this world has always been a selection competition that focuses on rankings, although it has continuity and complexity in actual operation, but the fundamental nature is actually unchanged.

In this world, there is a rich second generation and a second generation of power, which is a manifestation of continuity.

To get things done well in this world, you must not only think hard and act hard, but also have the right direction and the right method, which is the embodiment of complexity.

For mediocrity, many things in this world seem to depend on luck, so-and-so chose a certain direction, so he succeeded, and his timing and luck were problematic...... But in fact, what really determines people's choices is their careful observation of the world and careful thinking about the laws again and again.

At the top of this world, there are smart people who think hard, choose the right direction, and then risk their lives to overdraw themselves. Even in Ning Yi's previous contact with the world, which is relatively peaceful, every successful person, capitalist, and leader has the characteristics of a certain mental illness: perfectionism, paranoia, consistent self-confidence, and even a certain anti-human tendency......

Mental health, as defined by ordinary people, is nothing more than the empathy and weakness of the masses towards pets. In the prosperous world, people raise the bottom line through order, so that people will not be overly embarrassed even if they fail, and the corresponding is the lowering of the ceiling and the solidification of the upward path, and the public sells the "possibility" that they do not urgently need in exchange for understandable stability and steadfastness. The world is so magical, its essence never changes, people just make adjustments after understanding the rules.

Ning Yi knew all this, so he risked his life.

Now, it's his baby's turn.

Thirteen-year-old Xiao Ningji wants to choose "possibility" and give up steadiness and steadfastness, this kind of thinking is not reflected in reckless death, but it will definitely determine his choice in the face of danger countless times in the future, just as he chose to fight the enemy instead of being protected. Ning Yi knew that he could also choose to kill his idea here-that way, naturally, also existed.

That night, under the ginkgo tree in the medical hall, he chatted with Ning Ji for a long time, talking about Zhou Dong, talking about Hongti's master, talking about Watermelon's father, and talking about such and such things. But until the end, Ning Yi didn't try to stifle his thoughts, he just made an appointment with the child for three chapters, hoping that he would take into account the mother at home, study medicine until he was sixteen years old, and before that, he would retreat a little in the face of danger, and after that, he would support Ning Ji's decision.

"I hope that in two years, your younger brother will find out that practicing martial arts can't save China, and he should become a doctor or write."

After chatting with Ning Ji that night, Ning Yi once made such a joke with his eldest son. But in fact, even if they would rather not be doctors or write essays, the many dangers they will face in the future are not less than at all. As Ning Yi's son and family, they faced the greatest risk from the very beginning.

A few years ago, Ning Xi was more or less ready to move in his heart, but as his eldest son, the public opinion and atmosphere of his parents and people around him since he was a child set the direction for him, and Ning Xi also accepted this direction.

In the end, with the assistance of Chen Huozi and others, Ning Xi became a relatively safe trader, although he did not face the danger and bloodshed on the front line like Ning Yi, which would make his ability not comprehensive, but there would be a way to make up for it after all. On the other hand, one day when he faces the greatest danger, he may also pay the price for it.

In the past few years, Ning Yi has been frank and straightforward to the outside world, such as Li Pin, Song Yongping and others when they talk about these things, but in fact, whenever such imagination arises, of course he can't help but feel painful. If something happens to these children, what will happen to their mothers?

Tan'er has always been strong, and maybe she will fall because of this, what will happen to Xiaochan, who has always been gentle? To this day, Ning Yi can still clearly remember how little maids walked with him on the streets of Jiangning when he first arrived more than ten years ago......

In a few years, I'm afraid that children like Wenwen and Ning Ke will gradually give him a headache.

No matter how big the world is, children will walk through their own trajectory, grow up slowly, and gradually experience wind and rain. That night, Ning Yi looked at Zizhou in the dark from the city tower and was silent for a long time.

At the other end of the head, beyond the open space outside the city of Zizhou, in the far hill sentry tower, there was still the slightest light, and the construction sites of the fortifications were lurking in the rain of the night......

*******************

No matter how big the world is, children will go through their own trajectory, grow up slowly, and gradually experience ups and downs......

When the young man named Ning Ji in the southwest made the decision to face the wind and rain, another child thousands of miles away in this world had already been carried by the wind and rain and walked on the bumpy road.

Mu Anping, who was born in the third year of Wu Jianshuo, is eight and a half years old this year, and more than two years have passed since the night he lost his parents. He was renamed Ping'an by Lin Zongwu, shaved his little bald head, and walked alone in the troubled times of Jindi for more than a year.

In September of the 11th year of Jianshuo, Ping An returned to Vaud, where he had lived for several years, in ragged clothes, but he could no longer find the house where his parents once lived. In the Jurchen attack, the division of the Jin land, and the continuous military disaster, Vaud has completely changed, half of the city has been burned down, and the scrawny beggar-like people live in this city.

The little monk in ragged clothes searched for two days in the city, but he could not find the memory of his parents in the past, and when he ran out of food, he secretly shed tears in the dilapidated house in the city, slept for a day, and wandered the streets again in a daze. At this time, he wanted to see the only monk master he could rely on in this world, but the master never appeared.

On the street dozens of feet away from him, Lin Zongwu, who was wearing a wide monk's robe, was handing a small bag of coarse grain steamed buns to the scrawny martial artist in front of him.

Soon after, the warrior followed behind the little monk, and when he reached no one's place, he drew the sword on his body.

Ping An turned his head, tears still hanging on his face, and the light of the knife shook his eyes. The thin wicked man stopped in his footsteps, and the bag on his side suddenly broke, and some food fell to the ground, and both adults and children couldn't help but be stunned......

On the corner of the street, Lin Zongwu clasped his hands together and smiled.

In order to hunt, tigers and leopards have to grow claws; In order to protect themselves, crocodiles have to grow scales; The apes came out of the woods and built clubs......

In the wind and rain, human blood will be shed, and before dying, people can only strive to change themselves into stronger.

Natural selection, survival of the fittest.