Yes, it feels like a "Chinese chess version of 'shotgun king' ". （It was also one of my initial sources of inspiration.）
The bottom number is the number of turns the player has survived. At present, there are no winning conditions, so the number of surviving turns is a kind of existence similar to the highest score. And yes, the advantage of using the soldier is that it's cheaper than to move with the King itself. (Currently, I haven't carefully adjusted the game values, so the advantages of using soldiers may not be obvious.)