Chapter 352: Idea (1)

On the way here to the north, they had been bored stiff while sitting in the carriage all day, so Wenqing and Wenlan had started doing some sewing and embroidery while travelling.
The guard siblings that Princess Wei had sent followed Chu Lian all the time. Since Li Yue was female, Chu Lian would regularly invite her into the carriage to pass some time together.
Li Yue had been training in martial arts ever since she was young, so her martial arts skills were even stronger than some of the generals out there. However, when it came to the more womanly arts, she was a complete stranger to them.
She had already gotten engaged to her childhood sweetheart, so when she saw that Wenqing and Wenlan were so good at the womanly arts, she had gotten the urge to try her own hand at them. Chu Lian had then told Wenqing to give her one of He Changdi’s tunics to practise on.
Although Li Yue was very earnest at learning, her skills weren’t very good still. It was just a simple square pattern, but she had somehow made it all crooked.
Later on, she had completely given up on fighting against her natural ‘talents’ and abandoned the art of the needle.
Back then, Chu Lian had been absolutely stoked by the whole chain of events. She couldn’t have expected that Li Yue’s embroidery practice would inadvertently have been sent to He Changdi.
With how the mind of her lunatic husband worked, he couldn’t possibly have thought that that crooked embroidery was done by her, right?
Chu Lian resisted the urge to sigh as she thought. If that really happened, He Sanlang would still be overestimating her. She didn’t even know how to make a tunc, let alone embroidering some patterns… Hehe…
After Chu Lian reminded her about the incident, Wenqing recalled what had happened and slapped her own forehead. “Third Young Madam, what should we do?”
She had been the one to teach Li Yue embroidery in the first place. To be honest, Li Yue’s embroidery was a little ugly.
In contrast to Wenqing’s regret about the mistake, Chu Lian was calm.
“It’s okay, forget about it. It’s just some embroidery. Anyway, your young master is a man and he’s in the army. Who would look at the embroidery on his undershirts? It’s good enough as long as he has clothes to wear.”
That indigo tunic had been ready-made anyway. It was just a simple piece of clothing with some loose threads. Although Li Yue’s embroidery wasn’t that good-looking, it didn’t affect the undershirt’s usability in any way.
Wenqing was comforted by Chu Lian’s words and stopped thinking about the mistake.
After soaking her feet, Chu Lian laid down on the warm hearth bed. Wenqing blew out the lights for her and shut the door.
However, Chu Lian stared at the dark ceiling above her head without any hint of sleepiness.
Her head was filled with thoughts about the border army’s supply problem. The original story had only briefly mentioned how fierce the battles had been in the northern border war. Of the fifty thousand soldiers in the border troops, less than ten percent of them had managed to survive the war.
Since that was all that was mentioned, Chu Lian had no way of finding out more information.
Right now, the biggest problem was the snow blocking the paths to the north. As long as the paths were clear, they would be able to bring supplies into the northern border and there would be no more problems.
However, there was no way they could control the weather. The Great Wu Dynasty wasn’t like a technologically advanced civilisation, unlike the modern world where they would still have the option of air freight if the routes on land and water were blocked…
Up till her sleepiness got the better of her, Chu Lian still hadn’t thought of any practical and useful methods to solve the issue.
Back at the capital, the officials gathered for court were already arguing furiously over the situation at the northern border. Xiao Bojian had been appointed as secretary for the reinforcements marching towards the north and was now following the troops stationed at Chongzhou Prefecture as they made haste towards Su City. They were to make camp next to Lake Qianshan outside Su City and act as the first line of defence in the case that the fortress at Liangzhou City were to fall.