In the middle of the night, a fleeing human army walked from east to west on the muddy path away from the Void Ancestor, the soldiers looked numb, one by one like walking corpses, even the war horses looked weak, hunger had tormented this team for a long time.

In the course of the journey, it is not uncommon for someone to fall down while walking, and at first, his companions will stop and try to wake him up.

But as more and more people fall, they have no time to care about others.

They looked at the endless darkness of the night, and felt a sense of confusion in their hearts, and even they didn't know where to go next.

At a fork in the road, the lead officer waved his hand and signaled the team to stop.

"Are there any pursuers following?" the officer asked.

The adjutant put his ear close to the ground, looked up after a while, and said, "They should go back, after all, we are far away from the Void Ancestor." ”

The officer looked back at the surrounding scene, and in the darkness of the night, there was a dark mountain forest in front of him, and he said with a wry smile: "Yes, we have all fled to the border of the Void Ancestors, and we can no longer pose a threat to them. ”

"Order the team to rest in place. ”

In fact, the team no longer needed to be commanded by officers, and the soldiers, after stopping, did not even set up tents, and simply chose to fall behind the haystack or the hill, they were so tired that it was difficult to even stand.

Most soldiers chose to close their eyes and prepare themselves to fall asleep, not just because of exertion, but because the feeling of hunger was much stronger when awake than when they were dormant.

The officer, seeing the tragic condition of his troops, endured the grief in his heart, and ordered the sentry to lead a group of men and horses to patrol the neighborhood to see if he could find something to eat.

The soldiers set up pots and stoves, lit fires, but there was nothing in the pots to cook, and the cooks, with their hands covered in dirt, put into the soup a bunch of unknown plant rhizomes, on which they had been sustaining themselves for three days.

"My lord, I counted the number of people, and with the addition of you and me, there are two hundred and thirty-seven surviving soldiers in the Third Brigade. The adjutant stood next to the officer and whispered.

Two hundred and thirty-seven people.

The officer's heart was sad, and he couldn't help but want to cry bitterly, not long ago, his brigade still had 5,000 men and horses, but in just one month, less than one-tenth of them survived.

And that number is shrinking.

Thinking of the decisive battle that decided the fate of the kingdom, the officer's heart was still full of doubts, the speed of the army's rout made him have no time to react at all, the crusaders broke through the defenses of the Void Ancestor like a sharp sword piercing into a cake, and the commander of the army, the marshal of the empire, did not show his face from beginning to end.

The officers even doubted whether the marshal had been assassinated by the Holy See before the war began.

As for the other possibility, there have been rumors in the kingdom that the marshal had served as a priest in a church in a remote town before joining the army.

The officer shook his head, and threw out all the mess in his mind, it was pointless to think about it now, and the problem before him now was how to lead the soldiers out of danger and do their best to reduce the number of deaths.

"All units pay attention, stay vigilant, arrange sentry posts alternately in squads, and blow the alarm as soon as the enemy is discovered!"

When the officer calmly gave the order, the soldiers who had been dead and silent insisted on getting up, supporting their bodies with weapons or canes, and except for the cooks, the other soldiers began to choose suitable camps to set up tents, find dry firewood, and find nearby water sources and turf to feed the horses.

What should I do?

An officer must remain calm and assertive in front of the soldiers in any difficult situation, the officer is the backbone of the troops, and if even he falls, then the team will collapse completely.

But in fact, the officer's heart is also extremely low and hesitant, with the fear of the future and the heavy responsibility on his shoulders, the heavy pressure is on his shoulders alone, and he still pretends to never give up, no one knows how tired he is these days.

It's better to disband the team just like that, anyway, even the Void Ancestor Kingdom has become a thing of the past, the king is dead, why bother with a small brigade commander?

Wouldn't it be better to let everyone find their own way to survive, and maybe after leaving the team, the soldiers will be able to find their own way out.

But when he looked back at the exhausted soldiers, remembering their steadfast expressions as they carried out their orders, the order to "disband" could not be spoken.

Perhaps it was because this unit had condensed its own efforts, or perhaps it could not bear to abandon the memories of fighting bloody battles and fighting the enemy side by side, but when the officer raised his head again, the hesitant look on his face had completely disappeared, replaced by fortitude and calm.

"Sir, let's have something to eat. The adjutant handed the officer the steaming "grassroots soup" with an iron helmet, "You must not fall." ”

The officer sighed, took the iron helmet from the adjutant's hand, and filled it with soup mixed with boiled grass roots and a few wild vegetable leaves, and then the faint starlight, he could even see his own reflection in the soup.

In the beginning, some food was boiled in the wild vegetable soup, but because there was no supply, when the last food was eaten, it was difficult to swallow to satisfy the hunger.

"Sir, eat more. The adjutant put the root of his share into the officer's helmet, "I have a small appetite, just drink some soup." ”

The officer simply rejected the adjutant's kindness.

How could he not have known that the adjutant was equally hungry.

The trick to satisfying hunger with wild vegetable soup is to gulp down the tasteless soup until your stomach is full, and then start to hold your urine, taking care to hold it.

Otherwise, if you soak the pee, the meal will be in vain.

"It can't go on like this. The officer pinched the whiskers under the helmet with his fingers and put them in his mouth and chewed, "If the situation does not improve, within three days, everyone will starve to death." ”

"But the Crusaders searched the kingdom for our traces, and if they showed up, they would be hunted down endlessly, and we had no way to sneak into the city to get food. The adjutant replied honestly.

The Crusaders' offensive was very fierce, and the way to deal with these remnants was to kill them all.

"Report!" At this time, the patrolling sentry ran from the end of the road, with the joy of Jedi life on his face: "My lord, great discovery!

"Less than a kilometer to the east, we found the village!"