War is cruel, and on the battlefield, there are only two kinds of people: the enemy and our own. Those innocent herders walking in front, in a sense, are helping the enemy. Even if forced, they are doing the enemy's work, and thus count as enemies. Facing the enemy, Luo Zheng refraining from ordering indiscriminate attacks is already commendable.
Faced with this dilemma, Luo Zheng chose to protect the lives of his brothers. Although it's quite ruthless to the ordinary herders, as Zhou Gang said, these ordinary herders are from a third-party country and not our own people. Luo Zheng couldn't possibly sacrifice his own for the sake of people from a third-party country and could only protect them as much as possible from a moral standpoint.
