In Xuanyuan Hao's rage, no one except him was willing or dared to collect the body of the former Duke of the State, so he had to at least collect his remains.

But now He Qing has changed his mind.

After coming out, He Qing went straight back to the border. As expected, no one came to collect the body of the Duke of Fuguo. After being exposed for three days, the body was dragged into the wilderness and eaten by wild dogs.

Zhao Er didn't even have a proper name. His parents had four children, and they named them Zhao Da, Zhao Er, Zhao San, and Zhao Si respectively. They asked someone to give them names, and the cheapest place charged five cents for each name. It would cost twenty cents for four children. What was the point of spending that money?

But later his parents gritted their teeth and sent him and Zhao Da to school, because knowing how to read is a good thing, and giving them a name can be charged five cents, which is the cheapest.

Zhao Er could read and write. After joining the army, his job was to collect corpses, or to be more precise, to record the suicide notes or items placed on the bodies of soldiers who died in battle.

Although he wanted to go into battle and kill the enemy, the job he did was not even as good as that of a fireman, and he always felt that he could not hold his head up in the army.

But he still worked diligently and honestly. After the Labagou incident, he was called in as usual. Twenty of them began to work, each carrying a large bamboo basket filled with paper, ink, and brushes, mainly coarse hemp paper.

The more he did, the faster he worked. He was no longer as timid as he was at the beginning, with a confused mind and no clue what to do.

Now he can quickly pick out important information, extract concise sentences, and record them quickly according to the unit numbers and the numbers and names on the soldiers.

The names on the soldiers' clothes were written by the military clerk with special ink when they received the clothes, and they were extremely difficult to wash off.

Generally speaking, Zhao Er could collect the last words and relics from the remains of about 120 soldiers in a day. After he finished recording them, he would make a mark, and the brothers who carried and buried the bodies would move the bones away.

There were also some corpses with nothing on them except their names. At this time, Zhao Er always felt extremely regretful and wrote "no word" behind them.

This job is not easy to do in winter or summer. The corpses can be preserved longer in winter, but the weather is too cold. My hands become cold and stiff after recording for a while, and the ink is too solid to write. In addition, the days are short in winter, and the working time is also short, so I have to speed up.

Summer weather is good, with longer days, but corpses decompose quickly, and the smell is truly unpleasant. Once a body begins to rot, it's difficult to sort out and identify the remains, so we have to hurry up.

The twenty of them worked in Labagou for almost four days, then went back and sorted things out overnight. Next, they waited to send the soldiers' last words and belongings, along with their pensions, to their relatives.

But what is strange is that among these 8,000 people, only a few could have their names and addresses verified and their relics delivered, and the names and addresses of most people could not be matched.

It was unlikely that these twenty people could make such a huge mistake, but what could they do? No matter how many times they reported it, it was rejected.

There was no way to send these relics, so they had to find a place to store them in the military warehouse. For more than ten years, apart from Zhao Er who would sort out the decayed and dilapidated debris, not even thieves or rats would patronize this corner of the warehouse. After all, these things were neither food nor drink, nor gold or silver, and they would offend the souls of the dead.

There has been no war for at least ten years. As a veteran, Zhao Er was unwilling to leave and stubbornly guarded the batch of suicide notes that had never been sent out.

The army had left him to look after the warehouse. His old companions had all left, and now he was the only one left guarding these unclaimed relics, which were rotting away year by year. He could only do his best to clean and record them.