The army made camp inside the city.

Ning Chen sent men to set up porridge stalls and others to search the city for survivors.

The bodies in the city had to be dealt with too, of course, and the walls and houses repaired. That was where the sixty-odd thousand Xiliang prisoners came in.

The gongs rang out, again and again!

The soldiers beat the gongs as they shouted, "Neighbors of Xiguan City! We serve the Great Xuan's Prince Regent! The prince has come to save you! There are porridge stalls at all four city gates—come and get your porridge!"

To Ning Chen's surprise, Yuan Long came that evening to report more than three thousand survivors found.

The next day, they counted more than six thousand people coming for porridge.

After years of war, the high officials and notables had all fled. Only the poor had stayed behind to wait for death.

Short of food and clothing, they'd also had to keep hiding wherever they could so the Xiliang soldiers wouldn't kill them... What a miserable way to live!

Over the next few days, the number of survivors kept climbing.

The Xiliang soldiers had brutalized them so badly that they were like birds that had heard a bowstring, diving for cover at the slightest sound.

For days, Great Xuan soldiers patrolled the city beating gongs.

They told everyone that the men in the city this time weren't the Xiliang army. It was the Great Xuan's Prince Regent, Ning Chen.

Little by little, people let their guard down and came out of cellars and tottering houses.

Five days later, the count stood at just over twenty thousand survivors in Xiguan City.

Ning Chen's eyes went red.

A hundred thousand people, and only twenty thousand had lived.

He could hardly imagine how those twenty thousand had survived.

Ning Chen looked at Yuan Long. His voice was low. "Starting tomorrow, dock half of those prisoners' rations. Make sure every commoner gets a bowl of porridge and a coarse-grain cake every day.

The prisoners get only five hours of rest a day. First have them…