The Empress's Gigolo
The Empress's Gigolo - Chapter 605: Captive Camp

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Three days later, Ren Baqian took his men out of the city and headed toward the captive camp to have a look. However, after seeing the situation at the site, he couldn’t help but frowned.

It was dirty, chaotic, and the atmosphere was heavily morbid.

Almost 100,000 people were locked up in three captive camps with over 30,000 people in each camp. Furthermore, they had to sleep directly on the ground. Ren Baqian had no idea what happened to the plans that Tong Zhenye made some time ago. In these three captive camps, other than a fence around the perimeter, there was basically nothing else.

Every person in the captive camps was so filthy that he couldn’t even see their faces clearly. They looked as if they had rolled in mud, and there was no telling how long it had been since they last showered.

At the thought of it, they probably hadn’t showered after being taken captive.

When they raised their heads occasionally, Ren Baqian could tell from their eyes that they were still terrified.

“Is this how you settled these people?” Ren Baqian knitted his eyebrows. Everyone was piled together all over the place with their bodies curled up. It was very disorderly and a complete mess. The most inappropriate thing was that there were actually two ladies among these people.

One could easily imagine how terrible things were with two ladies and a bunch of men all crammed together.

The captives urinated and defecated everywhere as well. As soon as Ren Baqian entered the camp, he could smell a combination of that irremovable stench and that rancid smell on the captives’ bodies, which was almost enough to make someone faint.

Heaps of housefly-like bugs flew about in the camp, making people fed up.

However, even when the bugs landed on many of the captives’ bodies, they couldn’t be bothered to chase them away.

“Are there any problems, Sir?” Alongside Ren Baqian was a captain and a few of his officers. They were all transferred over from the Protectorate of the Center to serve as the backbone of these auxiliary soldiers. They were astonished when they heard Ren Baqian’s words. The captives looked very well behaved because they had already killed the troublemakers.

“Do you know the purpose of these people?” Ren Baqian countered with a question.

“No idea, Sir,” the captain answered earnestly.

“We need them to mend the roads, repair the bridges, restore the cities, mine the ores, and many other things. In order to make them do these things, we first have to keep them alive and well. Only living people are able to work. You guys didn’t painstakingly escort them here from the Yun Nation just to let them die, bury their bodies in the soil, and have them become fertilizer.”

“Oh, I really thought that we were going to bury them! It’s said that crops grow exceptionally well when planted on soil with corpses buried underneath!” That captain had a simple and honest look. They had buried hundreds of thousands of corpses in the north last year, and the crops there grew extremely well.

“If they die, shall I use you to dig the ores and mend the roads?” Ren Baqian really wanted someone to dig a hole and bury him.

“Sir, how do we go about doing that?” That captain scratched his head and looked at the camp. Even though it was slightly dirtier, it was still a pretty stable place. These captives wouldn’t die as long as they were given food to eat.

“Continue to observe!” Ren Baqian answered with a stiff face. He continued walking around the captive camp and discovered more problems.

There were many captives who were injured and lay there groaning. Yet, they had no one to attend to them and no doctors to treat them. Many of their wounds had rotted and become repulsive. It was already considered lucky to still be alive. Ren Baqian supposed that there were many wounded people like these who had died along the journey

Furthermore, the majority of the wounds that these people had were inflicted during the journey.

One would know how they got these wounds without even asking.

During this period of time, Ren Baqian actually saw them having a meal and discovered that their food was surprisingly good. They had meat broth that was filled with fragrant fatty meat and spare pieces. Mealtime was another round of chaos. People were pushing, trampling, and even fighting with each other.

Those militiamen were still seemingly calm in the face of the unexpected. When the commotion got out of hand, they simply went in with truncheons, smashed a few dozen heads, and broke the limbs of two men. This was just to make the captives tone down and behave themselves—the militiamen didn’t care about anything else.

After roughly looking around the three captive camps, Ren Baqian gave an order to build some public baths to allow the captives to wash. He then went back to the palace with a frown on his face and began to write very quickly.

The situation in the captive camps had to improve. The captives couldn’t be allowed to lie on the ground. There was a need to build simple housing for them and improve their living conditions.

Otherwise, apart from being exposed to the dew every day and night, one round of heavy rain would make many of them ill. If those who were weak still didn’t receive treatment without delay, their lives would be a ticking time bomb.

Ren Baqian then allocated some ordinary doctors and apprentices to attend to the captives so that at the very least, they wouldn’t die from minor illnesses that could be cured simply by taking pills.

The most important issue would be the various systems. These systems needed to be implemented in the captive camps first.

There wouldn’t be structure without regulations Once there were regulations, there would be order. Once there was order, those captives would then be able to live orderly lives.

The first regulation that Ren Baqian wrote was the organization of the captives into groups. The captives were to be divided into ten big groups of around 10,000 people.

Each big group would then be subdivided into ten medium groups that each had around 1,000 people. Medium groups would then be further subdivided into ten small groups with around 100 individuals per group. These would again be further subdivided into even smaller teams of around ten people per team.

At the same time, certain captives would be selected to become team leaders for the smallest team subdivision, whereas the aboriginal militiamen would become small group leaders. Captives with high aspirations would later be appointed as assistant group leaders.

For all future activities, these captives would operate as a single unit in their small teams. Regardless of work or dwelling, the small teams would still operate as one.

Also, males and females weren’t allowed to be in the same small team. They were to be separated even if they were family members.

The most important thing would be to practice a system of guilt by association.

If someone from a small team escaped, the entire team would treated as guilty. If an entire small team escaped, the entire small group would be treated as guilty and so on and so forth.

At the same time, if someone from a small team caused trouble, everyone in the team would be punished. If work done by the small team had been overlooked and negligent, the entire team would be punished as well.

Next, Ren Baqian flowingly wrote down dozens of further regulations, noting down everything that he had seen or could think of.

Rules and regulations were set in place for the daily activities of the captives, such as leaving for work in the morning, mealtimes, leaving from work, bedtime, and hygiene. The rules were multi-faceted and covered all aspects. With these systems in place, the captive camps would become more decent looking.

When additional problems arose in the future, Ren Baqian could simply add more rules to the list.

However, there was a very important rule that he noted on another piece of paper. As a modern person, he wasn’t very used to using a group of people as slaves for the rest of their lives. He also understood that humans needed to have hope to be able to continue living. Furthermore, he realized the significance of what a tiny bit of hope would mean to these captives.

They would struggle to grab ahold of that small, firefly-sized brilliance in the darkness.

Ren Baqian needed to give them hope so that they would constantly work toward that glimmer of hope and hold it closely.

It was actually very easy to give them this hope, which would be to give them back their freedom after a fixed number of years. As long as they could live to that age, they would be able to reunite with their families and live like a normal person in this world.

In order to reach this goal, these captives would strive to stay alive and would simultaneously feel that their lives were more stable.

If they didn’t have any hope to hold on to, then these people would either always be thinking of escaping or would act like walking corpses. It was obvious what their work efficiency would be like then.

The efficiency of doing something while bearing hope and doing something while living one moment at a time was completely different.

Even though road mending wasn’t a very delicate job, it wasn’t an easy job either, especially when they needed to cross mountains and rivers.

When working without a glimmer of hope, if anything happened at work, these people definitely wouldn’t report it because it had nothing to do with them.

However, coupled with a system of rewards and penalties, if the captives could be a little more subjective and show more initiative, then they would point out the problem areas of their own accord.

Even thinking with their toes, one would be able to tell what the work efficiency of the captives would be like when provided with hope compared to without it.