Meanwhile, within the tranquil confines of Genyue Pavilion, Guo Jing and his companions found themselves vexed by a group of clamorous and unruly "temporary hires."
"…Unbelievable… Even after traversing to the Northern Song era, we still end up dealing with a mob of disgruntled temp workers demanding back pay…"
Watching the so-called "Liujia Divine Troops" waving their fists and protest banners, Guo Jing could not help but rub his forehead in distress.
"…Professor Guo, you must not go soft on this!" Wang Qiu fumed indignantly. "These scoundrels have devoured countless free meals under your roof and done virtually nothing in return. We've already been lenient enough not to charge them for food—how dare they now demand military wages?"
"…Well, it's not entirely unfair… After all, we did detain them here for quite a few days, disrupting their ability to earn a living…" Guo Jing replied, somewhat reluctantly. "…This whole situation is truly beyond anything I could have anticipated…"
Back when Guo Jing, the so-called Immortal Guo, had first received his official mandate from the imperial court, he had begun recruiting 7,777 "Liujia Divine Troops" to aid in his magical campaign against the enemy. By the time the modern-day Commissar Guo arrived in this era, most of the recruitment was already complete and even officially recorded with the Ministry of War and the Privy Council. Halting it abruptly would only have aroused suspicion—so he had no choice but to carry on.
But in all honesty, neither Guo Jing, Doraemon, nor Wang Qiu had ever placed much faith in this rabble's combat prowess.
Indeed, these so-called Divine Troops had never once engaged the Jurchen army in genuine combat.
And now, with over a hundred thousand Jin soldiers obliterated by interstellar weaponry, the troops found themselves thoroughly obsolete. Some hoped to continue following the Immortal, but many others clamored to be released and return home. After all, this was the Song Dynasty—a time when warriors were held in low esteem and it was common wisdom that "the finest iron should not be made into nails, nor the finest men turned into soldiers." Unless pressed by extreme need, few peasants were eager to enlist and stake their lives on the battlefield.
Had these men simply wished to retire and go home, Guo Jing would have gladly agreed—spared the trouble of feeding a horde of good-for-nothings. But these shrewd commoners believed that, though they had not fought in battle, they had at least endured days of drills and training. "If not for merit, then for hardship; if not for hardship, then at least for fatigue"—surely Immortal Guo ought to offer some parting gratuity.
Thus, they gathered outside Guo Jing's residence, raising a din and demanding severance pay.
Unfortunately, Guo Jing was genuinely short of funds to meet their demands.
The Jin encampment outside Bianjing had been utterly leveled by futuristic plasma cannons, leaving behind only ash and cinders—no spoils to be claimed. The gold and silver bestowed by Emperor Qinzong, along with gifts from the nobles, had all been pawned by Doraemon to repay a colossal debt of 300 billion yen.
After all that, Guo Jing's coffers were nearly bare. Aside from non-liquid assets like fabric and tents, he had only a little over a thousand strings of copper coins—hardly enough to give each man even three hundred wen.
"...We'll be stuck in the Northern Song timeline a while longer. There are still many expenses to come—we can't squander our last copper coins now… I say we find something cheap in our time but considered valuable here to placate this mob of disgruntled temps."
Seeing that neither Guo Jing nor Doraemon supported using force to disperse the crowd, Wang Qiu relented. "...How about giving each of them a bag of refined salt?"
Guo Jing and Doraemon agreed it was a clever idea. However, with only yen on hand, converting to renminbi proved troublesome. So Doraemon instructed Nobita to take a stack of yen and accompany Wang Qiu out of the time stream to procure thousands of salt packets.
To everyone's surprise, Nobita—usually scatterbrained—showed rare prudence.
"...No way, Doraemon! If I show up at a convenience store buying thousands of salt packets… Forget the weight, I'd need a truck just to carry it. And the clerk will probably think I've gone insane!"
After some deliberation, they ultimately adopted Nobita's more practical plan to resolve the crisis.
At the gates of Guo Jing's mansion—still besieged by the protesting "temps"—a group of heavily armored imperial guards suddenly emerged, blades flashing. The officer leading them, fierce and intimidating, brandished a sabre in one hand and a bulging sack in the other, bellowing at the crowd:
"...You greedy scoundrels, useless in every way, fed and sheltered by the Immortal's grace and yet now so ungrateful as to clamor for coin? You ought to be driven off with cudgels! But the Immortal, in his boundless compassion, recalls our shared fate and desires peaceable parting. He has thus commanded me to distribute to each of you a Persian glass bead. Form an orderly line, take your token, and be gone at once!"
Though the officer's words were harsh, the glimmering, multicolored beads peeking from the sack dazzled the eyes of the onlookers. In ancient China, such clear and radiant glass was often a rare and precious import—not mere trinkets like the cheap toys of the modern era.
Sensing rising excitement in the crowd, the officer barked one final warning:
"...Silence! Know your place! Or prepare to taste cold steel!"
Thus, with a combination of military intimidation and Nobita's gleaming glass beads, the incident of "malicious back-pay demands" was temporarily resolved.
Yet for Guo Jing and Doraemon, far more troubles still lay ahead.
First and foremost—money remained in short supply.
Though they had already scoured Genyue for valuables and received imperial rewards, followed by a steady stream of gifts from terrified court officials—everything from Hetian jade and ancient incense wood to luminous pearls and silk finery—these offerings, too, had been fed into the \[Automatic Pawn Machine], yielding only about 30 billion yen.
This sum, while substantial, was still a far cry from the 300 billion yen debt that weighed upon Doraemon's conscience like a millstone. The thought of being sent to a scrapyard haunted him with unrelenting dread.
But to Wang Qiu, expecting to raise such an astronomical amount all at once was simply unrealistic.
"...Let's not get greedy, friends. Given where we are—in this fusion of Tokyo and Bianjing—raising this much money is nearly the limit. If we keep squeezing the people, Immortal Guo might go from revered sage to reviled oppressor."
He sighed as he spoke to Doraemon. "...One must know when to stop. I trust you understand that principle."
The second issue was more existential: how to gather the 50,000 reward points required for Guo Jing, the time traveler, to exit this timeline.
Indeed, the annihilation of the Jin army had earned him over 30,000 points in one fell swoop—but that was a one-time windfall. With the Jurchen forces decimated, where could they possibly find another trove of points? Were they truly expected to lead the ragtag Divine Troops on an expedition to Yinshan or even launch an assault on the Khitan court?
Just as Wang Qiu and the others were fretting over their dwindling prospects… a new opportunity to harvest points quietly loomed on the horizon.