The Banquet

Lü Jinshan clearly had no interest in hearing any more of Chen Hongtao's advice. Setting the tone, he stated, "Besides, Lu Zhao can't stay pinned to the position of platoon leader handling flood defense his entire life. We have to train new blood eventually." Watching Lü Jinshan put on a display of righteousness, Chen Hongtao saw right through him. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Lü Jinshan cut him off. "Adjutant Chen, say no more. I have already made my decision." At that, Chen Hongtao had nothing left to say. Though he held comparable rank to Lü Jinshan in leadership, the man had powerful backers, and Chen could not stand against him alone. He had no choice but to offer a salute and take his leave. Inside the station chief's office, only the rhythmic tapping of Lü Jinshan's fingers on the desktop remained. His beady eyes glinted with shrewd calculation. What he wanted was precisely to pull Lu Zhao away from the front line and sever his ties with Zhang Like. If they dared to collude with all the frontline junior officers yesterday, tomorrow they would dare to undermine him completely and render him a mere figurehead! Zhang Like was different from Lu Zhao. As a field officer commanding a detachment, his formal appointments, dismissals, promotions, or transfers across units required final approval from higher authorities. Lü Jinshan only had the power to make recommendations; he could not laterally reassign Zhang Like on a whim the way he could with Lu Zhao. Even if it meant risking minor hiccups during the flood season, Lü Jinshan was determined to drive Lu Zhao away from the front line immediately. Even dumping him onto a special investigation team wouldn't be out of the question. Severing Lu Zhao from the border defense station would not necessarily offend the Chen family. After all, he had labored here for four years; even if he lacked glorious achievements, his painstaking efforts counted for something. Faced with an imminent challenge to his authority, everything else was insignificant. ----- The evening afterglow slanted through the window, coating Lu Zhao's office in a layer of warm gold. Zhang Like pushed the door open, giving a perfunctory double tap on the open doorframe before strolling in uninvited. Lu Zhao looked up from a stack of paperwork, his dark gray eyes glancing at him for a passing instant before lowering his head again to concentrate on the documents. It seemed to be the border defense station's training regimen. To throw himself into the work on the very day he took office—such execution was truly daunting. Zhang Like sat down on the nearby sofa and crossed his legs. "Tsk, tsk. Staff Officer Lu is really rising in the world, sitting in an office enjoying the air conditioning." His teasing tone carried a hint of scrutiny. Sitting composed behind the desk, Lu Zhao indeed carried an air of authority between his brows. This kid really was like a brick—useful wherever he was placed. Turning a deaf ear to his ribbing, Lu Zhao simply picked up a form and said, "Commander Zhang, the assessment standards for our station have been rather lax over the past two years. They basically hover at the bare minimum set by the Circuit Politics Bureau just to pass. I think it's necessary to improve the quality of our troops." Zhang Like's expression stiffened slightly. He patted the sofa armrest with a chuckle. "You learn fast, don't you? Picking up Liang Fei's tricks in no time flat. "At the celebration banquet later, do you want them to come toast you, and anyone who doesn't gets their performance pay docked? That would really show off your majesty as Staff Officer, wouldn't it?" The post of operations and training staff officer carried little inherent power, but with Lü Jinshan's backing, that authority could balloon enough to govern the performance evaluations of all the troops. Lü Jinshan's move to use this position to drive a wedge between him and Lu Zhao was clever—perhaps he even harbored ambitions of taming Lu Zhao into a loyal hound. Yet knowing Lu Zhao, Zhang Like knew that the fact he hadn't put a bullet through Lü Jinshan's head was already proof of his unwavering loyalty to the Federation. However, Lu Zhao's face remained impassive. "I am not joking," he said in all seriousness. "..." Zhang Like froze for several seconds. He had assumed Lu Zhao had learned to crack jokes, but looking at his face, there wasn't a trace of jest. Given Lu Zhao's temperament, this was indeed something he might actually do. "Hold on, hold on. Don't you actually pull something like that. We went through all that trouble to win over the frontline officers; if you pull this stunt, aren't you raising a banner against yourself?" Lu Zhao replied earnestly, "If troops aren't trained, they go dull. You cannot train soldiers with a mindset of merely scraping by. Look at my reinforced platoon. While they might not rival Special Counter-Terrorism or the regular army, they aren't half bad." "Is training fifty men the same as training a thousand?" Zhang Like said, exasperated. "Those fifty of yours were promising saplings I handpicked for you back then. The remaining nine hundred-plus soldiers are just here to get by. For most people, this is just a job." The Federation's border defense system was divided into military and police branches. Ant Ridge fell under the police jurisdiction, where alien beasts appeared a dozen times a year at the absolute most. The people stationed here were half-laborers, incapable of enduring the high-pressure lifestyle of the military. The reinforced platoon had to garrison the first line and directly face the threat of Miye Sanjiang, which was why they needed standards rivaling the regular army. "If nothing else, the wages and life supplement quotas for your reinforced platoon are double those of regular soldiers. Can you convince the brass to pay double wages and allocate double supplements to all thousand-plus men in the station?" Zhang Like's own base pay was a thousand yuan lower than that of a soldier in the reinforced platoon. "That is indeed a problem." Just as Zhang Like thought he had finally abandoned the impractical idea, Lu Zhao abruptly changed the subject: "So, to resolve this problem, I have decided to submit a proposal to the Organization Department tomorrow, recommending a five-hundred-yuan subsidy for all officers and men who meet the benchmarks." A subtle curve touched the corner of his mouth. "Our station even has air conditioning now; there's no reason not to give the brothers a raise. I hope Commander Zhang can help me sound out the opinions of the frontline officers and men." With that, he signed a proposal sheet and slid it over to Zhang Like. Zhang Like mulled it over, and sudden realization dawned on him. No one would welcome additional drills on their own, but adding money to the table was a completely different story. This fell squarely within the authority of an operations and training staff officer, crossing no lines and causing no disorder. Whether Lü Jinshan agreed or not didn't matter; all that counted was that Lu Zhao could win people's hearts. *This kid thoroughly digested what I told him before.* Zhang Like was genuinely surprised. Lu Zhao wasn't as rigid as he appeared; when he decided to play his cards, he could be remarkably shrewd. He asked, "You're giving Lü Jinshan grief right out of the gate. What if he strikes back? As an operations and training staff officer, it'll be tough to beat an executive chief like him." As always, Lu Zhao spoke in a calm, resolute tone: "There is never any harm in throwing the punches you can throw. Even if I lose, it doesn't matter. The road ahead is long; consider it gaining experience." Night fell, and the open-air food stalls in the small town near the border defense station were brightly lit and buzzing with noise. This was the venue for tonight's celebration banquet. The frontline border officers from the Duty Company, Mobile Company, Support Company, and others were nearly all present. As battalion commander, Zhang Like had spent over a decade at the border defense station, and virtually all the frontline officers had been promoted under his watch. Much like Martial Marquis Chen, who held a similar network of connections across Nanhai West Circuit, Zhang Like had his own here. The atmosphere was somewhat stiff at first, but soon Zhang Like began pulling people over to toast Lu Zhao. "Liao Lang, Liang Chao." Brooking no argument, he hauled Liao Lang and Liang Chao to their feet. "What are you two standing around for? Everyone sitting here tonight owes it to Lu Zhao. Don't you two always love leading by example? Take the lead today—raise a toast!"