With over 200,000 martyred soldiers laid to rest under the copper bell at the memorial square, probably no one could have expected such a situation.
The stronghold residents who came to pay their respects to the martyred soldiers could not have expected the dead to actually be able to hear what they were saying.
But Ren Xiaosu did not care about that now. He only thought that if he could convince all these martyred spirits to enter his Martyr’s Palace, he could probably do anything he wanted across the entire Alliance of Strongholds.
Even the Wang Consortium, which had launched an all-out war and recalled their veterans, only had about 200,000 troops now.
However, just as Luo Lan had mentioned before, the contract between the user and those who resided in the Martyr’s Palace was an equal one. Even if you summoned the other party, there was nothing you could do if they did not accept your summon.
Amid the commotion, a martyred spirit suddenly said, “What’s with that kid Zhang Jinglin? He actually chose such a dishonest boy to be the next commander?”
When Ren Xiaosu heard this, he said unhappily, “Who’re you calling dishonest? How can you speak to your elder like that?”
When the martyred spirits heard Ren Xiaosu say that, they nearly vomited on the spot. “You even believe your own lies now? Can you be any more shameless than that?”
The martyred spirits’ form of address for Zhang Jinglin had always been “that kid,” so who could tolerate it now that someone was suddenly trying to pass off as their elder?
“Kid, I can tell at a glance that you’re extremely devious!”
“That’s right, this kid is full of tricks. He even tricked us into telling our age to him first!”
Ren Xiaosu said with a dark expression, “Are y’all serious? I heard everything you were saying among yourselves earlier. Tell me, how are y’all more serious than me? The one who said that there was a pretty young lady on the street, come forward! You’re already resting in the ground, yet you’re still checking out young women all day long. Perverts! Out with it! Have y’all also peeped on someone taking a shower?!”
The martyred spirits flew into a rage. “We only looked at her when she passed by. Do you think we’re that dirty? Would we do something like that?! Besides, we can’t leave this square at all!”
“Who knows if that’s true?” Ren Xiaosu curled his lips.
Ren Xiaosu did not want to keep bickering with these martyred spirits. Instead, he said patiently, “Who can you protect by staying here? If the enemy really attacks, y’all can only watch the fight from the sidelines. If those fucking sorcerers become much stronger and Fortress 178 gets razed to the ground, no one will come and commemorate you anymore, and y’all will vanish forever, understand?”
The martyred spirits gradually fell silent. Ren Xiaosu continued, “Look, back then, all y’all used to fight that group of sorcerers from beyond the Northwest. If y’all settle down in my Martyr’s Palace instead, I’ll lead y’all in eliminating them. Isn’t that much more satisfying?”
However, the martyred spirits did not buy it. “We’ve already had our fair share of battles, so stop trying to bullshit us. Once we go into your Martyr’s Palace, we’ll be under your control. Even if it were the old fortress commanders saying that to us, we wouldn’t agree, much less you, a candidate to be fortress commander!”
When Ren Xiaosu realized he could not convince the martyred spirits, he gave up.
Seeing that these over 200,000 martyred spirits were unwilling to join him, Ren Xiaosu’s heart ached a little.
However, he could not force them either. Ren Xiaosu said, “Alright, gentlemen, rest up. I’ll be leaving then!”
“Wait.” The deep voice from before said, “Kid, come back here.”
Ren Xiaosu turned around and wondered, “Anything else the matter?!”
“Um… tell us in detail what’s been happening in the Northwest recently,” the deep voice said.
The martyred spirits had been cooped up under the copper bell for too long. Although the 200,000-odd of them could chat among themselves to relieve their boredom, they were getting tired of talking to each other after nearly 200 years.
Moreover, they could not get out from under the copper bell. Some of the people who came to pay their respects would talk about the latest happenings in the Northwest, but the problem was that no one would tell them about the events in detail.
Sometimes, when a major event occurred in the Northwest, such as the destruction of the Zong Consortium, which had always annoyed them, people would even come over with the day’s newspaper to show them how powerful Fortress 178’s Northwest Army was.
During such times, all of the 200,000-odd martyred spirits would squeeze together to read the newspaper. But before they could finish reading, the people who came to pay their respects would start burning the papers.
In the minds of those who came to pay their respects, the dead would get their hands on the newspapers if they burned them. Therefore, burning the newspapers was done out of goodwill for the dead.
But the martyred spirits were very angry. Once the newspapers were burnt, they could not read them anymore.
They felt especially peeved when they were halfway through reading the newspaper and it got burnt by the people who came to pay respects to them. It was simply too maddening.
Whenever this happened, everyone would start quarreling for as long as a month over what might have been written in the latter half of the newspaper.
To prevent such incidents from happening all the time, everyone purposely split the workload. One group would read the first half of the first page, while another group would read the second half. After that, yet another group would read the second page, then the third page, and so on.
Only by doing so could they piece together all the contents of a newspaper.
Although the process sounded very interesting, they often made mistakes when piecing together the newspaper’s content. Once there were any errors, they would start blaming each other and argue endlessly.
If they could buy their own newspapers, they would definitely not want to go through such a tiring process!
And the problem was that it wasn’t every day that people came to burn newspapers for them to “read.” Such events would only occur once every couple weeks.
Therefore, the martyred spirits were particularly curious to know about what was happening in the rest of the world.
“Kid, tell us about what happened in the Northwest recently,” the deep voice said again.
Ren Xiaosu grunted an affirmation and smirked.
He turned around and sat down at the copper bell. “There’s still four or five hours until dawn. I’ll tell y’all all about it.”
When the martyred spirits saw this, they immediately perked up. It had to be known that they had not interacted with “outsiders” in a long time. Now that someone who could talk to them had appeared, it was equivalent to them suddenly gaining an additional channel to communicate with the outside world!
Ren Xiaosu said, “If we’re talking about changes in the Northwest, we’ll have to start with the Zong Consortium. One day, Wang Shengzhi, the current head of the Wang Consortium, personally came to the Northwest to pay a visit to Mr. Zhang Jinglin in hopes of reopening the trade route. However, the Zong Consortium tried to mess with the plans by allowing bandits in the valley to cut off Fortress 178’s path and isolate them from the rest of the world. It’s been 16 years since the last war happened in the Northwest. Mr. Zhang is worried that the foreign enemies beyond the Northwest have grown stronger. If Fortress 178 does not seek further development, they might not be able to stop them anymore. So he made up his mind and decided to eradicate the Zong Consortium, that cancerous tumor of the Northwest….”
“We already know about that. So what happened afterwards?” the deep voice asked.
Ren Xiaosu thought for a moment and said, “Then I’ll tell y’all about the chaos going on in the Central Plains. When I first got to the Central Plains, they were suddenly invaded by barbarians from the Far North, and Stronghold 176 crumbled like a house of cards under their attacks.”
The martyred spirits said in unison, “Yes, yes! Tell us about that! Previously, a kid came to offer us newspapers and burnt it too fucking quickly. He burned the newspapers before we could even get to read the contents, so we don’t know the details of that incident.”
“Details?” Ren Xiaosu smiled. “If y’all want to hear the details, please join me for the next session. Alright, it’s getting late. I’ll be heading back to sleep.”
Then Ren Xiaosu left.
The angry roars of the martyred spirits could be heard coming from behind him. “You fucking asshole! And I was wondering why you were suddenly kind enough to share stories with us. So you were deliberately trying to pique our curiosity and leave us hanging!”
“How fucking mean! How did such an asshole suddenly become a choice for the commander of the Northwest Army?!”