As dawn broke, a thick layer of white frost formed on the cliffs of the Yanshan trail.
The cold wind pierced through the gaps in the canyon straight into their bones. Wang Meng rubbed his freezing cheeks, his eyes already bloodshot. He stared at the empty valley entrance, grinding his back teeth.
"Boss, it's already dawn," Skinny Monkey huddled into a ball, his voice trembling. "If that venomous woman doesn't show up, didn't we freeze all night for nothing?"
Wang Meng slapped Skinny Monkey on the back of his head so hard that Skinny Monkey ended up with a mouthful of dead grass.
"Shut up. I said we wait, so we wait."
However, before his voice faded, a faint sound of snapping twigs came from the dense forest behind the cliff top.
Wang Meng turned his head, immediately holding his machete across his chest. The four hundred freezing death warriors also drew their swords, the blades gleaming coldly in the morning light.
The newcomer wore a raven-black martial outfit covered by a dark cloak. He was rolling two iron balls in his hand, making a dull clinking sound.
Seeing the newcomer's face clearly, Wang Meng relaxed his grip on the knife and dropped heavily to one knee.
"Young Master Jingcong."
Wang Jingcong was the eldest legitimate grandson of the Wang family of Jiangning. When the Wang family's estate was raided and the family exterminated, he happened to be in the capital and escaped the disaster. He was the true master of these four hundred death warriors.
Wang Jingcong walked to the edge of the cliff and looked at Wang Meng, the iron balls spinning rapidly in his palm.
"Rest assured! Calculating the time, they will definitely arrive at the valley entrance within the time it takes an incense stick to burn."
Wang Meng looked up, the dejection on his face disappearing.
"The Young Master is wise! Brothers, cheer up, the fat sheep are entering the pen!"
...
The wind in the canyon stopped.
In the silence, a muffled rumbling sound came from the direction of the valley entrance. It was very light at first, but gradually grew louder, even shaking the loose stones on the cliff face so that they began to fall.
It was the sound of heavy carriages crushing the ground.
Wang Jingcong walked to the edge of the cliff and leaned out half his body.
In the morning mist, a huge convoy slowly entered the Yanshan pass. Thirty large carts moved forward nose to tail along the narrow valley floor.
The Liaodong horses pulling the carts were sturdy and snorting heavily. On the shafts of each cart sat a driver wearing the grey-black uniform of the Xu family. The drivers wore wide bamboo hats pulled down low, hiding their faces.
"Young Master! It's the Xu family's convoy," Wang Meng lowered his voice, his hand holding the knife trembling slightly. "Thirty large carts, not one missing. Looking at the wheel ruts, they are definitely carrying heavy cargo."
Wang Jingcong narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping over the drivers.
It was too quiet.
Thirty large carts and dozens of people, yet apart from the sound of hooves and wheels, there was not a single word of conversation. The drivers sat on the shafts, their figures stiff, swaying with the bumps of the carriages.
"Young Master, give the order," Wang Meng was impatient. "Once they all enter the pass, we will release the rolling logs and crush these Xu family bastards to death."
Wang Jingcong raised his hand to stop Wang Meng.
"Wait a bit longer."
The convoy continued deeper. The leading cart had already passed the middle section of the pass, and the rear carriages had all entered this area. With sheer cliffs on both sides, there was no retreat.
The doubt in Wang Jingcong's eyes was replaced by murderous intent. No matter what tricks Xu Qinghuan played, all schemes were futile here.
He smashed the iron balls in his hand against the cliff face, making a crisp sound.
"Kill them all. Leave no one alive."
Wang Meng, unable to hold back any longer, roared wildly, "Brothers, today is the day we make our mark! Kill!"
The four hundred death warriors grabbed the thick, long ropes prepared in advance and slid down the steep cliff face.
Without the prelude of rolling logs and falling rocks, Wang Jingcong wanted a quick battle. He opted for direct hand-to-hand combat to ensure Xu Qinghuan was completely dead.
Battle cries shook the heavens within the canyon. After landing, the death warriors rolled on the ground to absorb the impact, then raised their long swords and surged toward the convoy.
Rushing at the front, Wang Meng aimed straight for the driver of the leading cart.
He pushed off his feet and leaped, the machete in his hand whistling through the air as he cleaved straight down at the driver's head.
"Die for me."
The blade split the bamboo hat without any resistance and sliced smoothly into the driver's neck.
The feel was wrong.
There was no crisp sound of breaking bones, nor any warm blood splashing. The blade chopped into a ruined mass of cotton wadding, soft and yielding.
"Huh?!"
Wang Meng froze.
He tore off the bamboo hat that had been split in two.
There was no face under the hat, only a tightly bound bundle of dry grass wrapped in coarse cloth. The Xu family uniform hung loosely on the straw man, swaying in the night wind.
"It's a straw man!" Wang Meng's voice changed pitch in shock.
The surrounding death warriors also struck their targets, their long swords piercing the chests of the drivers on the other carriages. But when they flicked away the bamboo hats, they found that they were all straw men!
Standing on the cliff face, Wang Jingcong saw the sudden change in the valley clearly.
He turned his head and stared at the Liaodong horses pulling the carts.
The eyes of the horses on the leading cart were all blindfolded with thick red silk, and their ears were stuffed with white cotton. They could not see the slaughter around them, nor hear the roars of the death warriors; they just charged forward on momentum.
Those thirty carriages were not strictly following nose to tail at all, but were linked together by thick iron chains. As long as the leading cart did not fall, the rear carts would be dragged by the chains, rampaging through this narrow pass.
An old horse knows the way!
This was a convoy with no living drivers, impossible to stop.
At the bottom of the valley, Wang Meng had not yet recovered his wits.
He angrily kicked over the straw man in front of him. The straw man's abdomen had been slashed open by the blade, scattering dry grass all over the ground.
A piece of white rice paper fluttered out from the pile of dry grass and landed at Wang Meng's feet.
Wang Meng picked up the piece of paper.
There were only a few words on the paper, the dripping ink and brushstrokes revealing a sense of mockery.
"Everyone from the Wang family, you've worked hard."
Wang Meng stared at those words, his mind buzzing.
He had been played, completely played. These four hundred men had blown in the cold wind on the cliff face all night, only to wait for a pile of broken wood stuffed with dry grass?!
Wang Jingcong slid down the cliff face along the rope and snatched the note from Wang Meng's hand.
After seeing the words clearly, Wang Jingcong's face instantly turned ashen. He crumpled the paper into a ball and smashed it onto the ground.
"Xu Qinghuan! I swear I will kill you!"
On the cliff top on the other side of the Yanshan trail.
The dense pine forest obscured the daylight. Xu Wuyou, wearing a short martial outfit suited for action, stood on the canopy of a century-old pine tree, watching the chaotic death warriors at the bottom of the valley through the gaps in the branches and leaves.
Behind him stood thirty real Xu family drivers.
These drivers were all tied with thick hemp ropes. The other end of the hemp ropes was connected to an exquisite set of pulleys, which were fixed to several thick tree trunks, and the ropes extended all the way to the bottom of the valley.
This was exactly Jenny Huang's invention.
Half an hour ago, the convoy had arrived a few miles ahead of the valley entrance.
Following Xu Qinghuan's arrangements, Xu Wuyou had the drivers blindfold and plug the ears of the horses, and link the carriages with iron chains. Then, the drivers fastened the ropes to the iron rings at their waists.
As the convoy drove into the pass, the guards on the cliff top turned the winches. With the pulling force of the pulleys, the thirty drivers swung up to the cliff top and vanished into the dense forest.
The only things left on the carts were those straw men dressed in uniforms.
His little sister had indeed calculated correctly. This bunch from the Wang family loved to act smart, thinking they had seen through the Xu family's diversionary tactics, but in reality, they had plunged into the grave tailor-made for them by Xu Qinghuan.
At the bottom of the valley.
Wang Jingcong's reason finally returned.
There were no living people, only straw dummies. Xu Qinghuan had gone to such great lengths to set up this massive spectacle; it could not possibly be just to mock them.
The thirty carriages were definitely not carrying military supplies.
"Retreat! Retreat to the top of the cliff immediately!" Wang Jingcong roared, his voice laced with unconcealed terror.
The death warriors awakened as if from a dream. They threw down the hacked straw dummies, turned, and lunged toward the cliff face, grabbing the hanging ropes to climb up desperately.
Four hundred men crowded beneath the narrow cliff, shoving and trampling one another. Some even swung their swords at their comrades just to snatch a sturdy rope.
The scene spiraled completely out of control.
Up in the tree canopy at the top of the cliff.
Xu Wuyou watched the death warriors scaling the cliff face and raised his right hand.
In the dense forest behind him, over a dozen Xu family scouts were already standing by. They held fire starters in their hands, the sparks flickering in the dim woods.
Xu Wuyou's hand swept down.
The scouts blew on their fire starters to make them glow and brought them close to the thick fuse at their feet.
With a hiss.
The fuse ignited instantly, orange flames devouring the oil-soaked hemp rope.
The sparks spread downward along a thin string hanging from the edge of the cliff.
That thin string was hidden among the chaotic tangle of ropes, entirely inconspicuous as it headed straight for the bottom of the valley.
Wang Jingcong had just climbed less than ten feet up the cliff when he caught a glimpse of a bizarre, bright flash.
He turned his head.
A line of fire was rapidly plummeting down the cliff face. Its target was the thirty carriages chained together at the bottom of the valley.
To be exact, the carriage cabins.
Wang Jingcong finally understood what Xu Qinghuan was trying to do.
"Quick! Climb faster!" Wang Jingcong urged frantically, scrambling with both hands and feet, completely oblivious to his nails scraping blood against the jagged rocks.
The line of fire moved too fast.
It was so fast that Wang Jingcong simply had no time to react.
With a snap.
A piece of the fuse, burning to its very end, landed precisely inside the cabin of the lead carriage.
Wang Jingcong looked down in that direction.
The tarpaulin on top of the carriage had long been torn open by the death warriors, revealing the contents inside.
There was no grain, no fabric, no gold or silver.
Only bamboo tubes.
Densely packed, mountain-like piles of thick bamboo tubes. The top of each tube was sealed with thick yellow mud, and a very short fuse poked out from the center of the mud.
That falling spark landed right on the fuse of a bamboo tube.
The firelight flared.
The faint light magnified in Wang Jingcong's eyes. The glow illuminated the rough texture of the bamboo tubes, and it also illuminated Wang Jingcong's terrified face.
With a hiss.
The fuse on the bamboo tube ignited.
