He Minghu’s right foot had barely crossed the threshold.
Bang!
Ma Jin’an charged up from behind and slammed his foot hard into the two carved wooden doors.
The doors crashed shut, nearly snapping He Minghu’s nose.
“He Tiger’s gone mad!” Ma Jin’an cursed loudly. “If you’re tired of living, don’t drag me down with you!”
That stunt lit a real fire in He Minghu.
He thrust the big cleaver in his hand forward, the blade pressing straight against Ma Jin’an’s throat.
The cold steel bit into Ma Jin’an’s skin, leaving a bloody line.
“Ma, stop singing the enemy’s praises!”
He Minghu craned his neck, the slabs of flesh on his face twitching.
“I’ve got a thousand personal troops under me! I’ll muster them now, charge into the headquarters, and chop that Xu Qinghuan into minced meat. This Northern Pass will still be ours!”
Ma Jin’an didn’t flinch. He let out a cold laugh.
“Personal troops?” Ma Jin’an used his folding fan to nudge the blade aside bit by bit. “He Minghu, piss in a pot and take a long look at those worthless dogs you command!”
“They spend every day soaking in brothels and tossing back wine; they can’t even lift their own swords anymore!”
“You expect those limp-legged losers to fight the killers under Xu Zhan?”
The more Ma Jin’an ranted, the hotter his temper flared, spraying spittle all over He Minghu’s face.
“Xu Zhan’s three-hundred-man Assault Camp just carved out a Huren chieftain’s heart in White Wolf Valley. Those men are living hell-demons who’ve seen blood and tasted murder!”
“How many of your trash are left standing after a single volley from their repeating crossbows?”
He Minghu was left speechless.
His face spasmed, and the hand gripping the cleaver couldn’t muster an ounce of strength left.
Clang.
He Minghu swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing painfully.
“Then... then what do we do?” his voice had gone completely soft, thick with despair. “Since Xu Qinghuan set this trap, she’s already got us dead to rights.”
“If we don’t fight now, by the time she springs her net, we won’t even have whole corpses to bury!”
Ma Jin’an didn’t answer.
Slap! He hurled his official’s cap to the ground.
“What else can we do?” Ma Jin’an ground his teeth, forcing words through clenched jaws. “We bolt!”
He Minghu froze.
“Bolt?” His eyes bulged. “I’ve spent ten years building my power in the Northern Pass! Ten bloody years!”
He Minghu’s eyes were bloodshot; he stomped his feet in anguish.
“I fed those personal troops off the rations I scraped from my own teeth! Their weapons, leather armor—every last bit was bought with my own hard cash!”
“Without soldiers, I’m a general with no army! How the hell am I supposed to survive in the Northern frontier?”
Ma Jin’an was so angry he laughed.
He stepped forward, grabbed He Minghu by the collar, and yanked him close.
“Investment? If you lose your life, what good are your investments—buying you a coffin?”
“Flee with your troops? Are you packing horse shit between your ears?”
Ma Jin’an let go and shoved He Minghu hard.
“A thousand men moving together—how much noise do you think that makes? Do you think Xu Qinghuan is blind or deaf?”
“The moment you muster your forces, Xu Zhan’s cavalry will encircle you like dumplings in a pot!”
“Fleeing with the troops is the same as shouting to Xu Qinghuan, ‘Come on, chop my head off!’”
He Minghu staggered back two steps.
Both men had weathered years of scheming in the officialdom and military. They were foxes through and through.
Right then, both felt a cold wind creeping up the backs of their necks.
Xu Qinghuan was uncanny.
From the day she entered the Northern Pass, every move she made had calculated them to the bone.
The trap at Wu’s Teahouse had dug right into their very marrow.
Ma Jin’an paced the room, growing more alarmed with each step.
“She’s using us as bait to hook old Chen Changfeng, that fat fish!”
Ma Jin’an stopped in his tracks, staring at the map of the Northern frontier pinned to the wall.
“Chen Changfeng thinks he’s got spies inside the city, so he’ll get cocky and rush in. Xu Qinghuan just needs to set an ambush at the gate. Once the Huren vanguard rolls in, she slams the gates shut—and it’s a rat in a trap!”
He Minghu broke out in a cold sweat.
“That woman has a black heart! She’s not just screwing the Huren—she’s using them to wipe out our troops on the side!”
Ma Jin’an nodded.
“Exactly! Then, you and I are dead men on charges of treason. Xu Qinghuan takes the credit for driving off the enemy and steaks her glory on top of our bones!”
The more He Minghu thought about it, the more terrified he became. His fear of Xu Qinghuan peaked.
He remembered her methods from when she first arrived at the Northern Pass.
In just half a month, she’d audited the accounts, reassigned the garrisons, and reduced him, a deputy commander, to a nobody.
All those officers who used to call him brother had been tamed by Xu Qinghuan without a peep.
This woman played no by the book, and she killed without blinking.
If they dallied any longer, they’d be butchered.
“Ma Jin’an,” He Minghu wiped the cold sweat off his forehead, “are we running empty-handed? Will the Huren take us in?”
Ma Jin’an bent down and picked up his tarnished official hat, brushing off the dust.
“Who says we’re empty-handed?”
Ma Jin’an narrowed his eyes, a venomous glint deep within them.
“The intelligence Lao Gou brought back—even though it was Xu Qinghuan’s trap—that trap itself is a heaven-sized merit!”
Ma Jin’an leaned close to He Minghu’s ear, lowering his voice.
“Chen Changfeng must think right now that we’re his inside men in the Northern Pass, that his army’s southern march is bulletproof.”
“We slip out of the pass now and tell Chen Changfeng about Xu Qinghuan’s setup.”
“What does that make us? We just saved the entire Huren army!”
He Minghu frowned.
“Chen Changfeng’s paranoid as they come. If we show up empty-mouthed, saying, ‘Xu Qinghuan’s laid a trap,’ will he believe us?”
Ma Jin’an sneered.
He walked to the writing desk and ripped the frontier defense map off the wall.
“Of course he won’t believe a word without proof. But what if we add this?”
Ma Jin’an slapped the map onto the table.
“This is the latest city defense and deployment map of the Northern Pass. Where the defenses are weakest, where the hidden tunnels are—every detail is marked clearly right here.”
Ma Jin’an pointed at several red circles on the map.
“Hand this to Chen Changfeng, and he’ll have no choice but to believe us.”
He Minghu’s eyes lit up.
“Brilliant! With this map, the Huren army can pick and choose where to strike. The Northern Pass will be like a sieve!”
The frustration and dread that had coiled in He Minghu’s gut melted away.
“Xu Qinghuan wanted to use us as live bait to ambush the Huren.”
“Instead, we flip the script, run to them with this betrayal, and the full defense map to boot. The Huren Khan will treat us like fucking royalty!”
He dropped his cleaver, walked to a corner of the room, pried up a brick, and pulled a heavy bundle from a hidden compartment inside.
It was stuffed with gold bars he had looted over the years.
He Minghu grabbed fistfuls of gold and crammed them into the bundle, packing it so full the cloth bulged at the seams.
Ma Jin’an watched coldly.
“Hauling all that gold, can you even run? Take banknotes instead!”
He Minghu clenched his teeth.
“Banknotes are scrap paper on Huren land! Only real gold and silver count!”
Ma Jin’an couldn’t be bothered to argue. He pulled several large-denomination banknotes from his sleeve and tucked them next to his skin.
Then he carefully folded the city defense map and stuffed it into his robe.
Ma Jin’an walked over to a brazier, picked up a fire striker, and set a stack of secret letters on the desk ablaze.
The flames leaped up, devouring the paper and reducing everything to a pile of black ash.
Ma Jin'an stamped out the embers with his foot, making sure no traces of writing remained.
“What about that fool, Lao Gou?” He Minghu asked casually while shouldering his bundle.
Ma Jin'an let out a cold laugh.
“Just leave him in the city! Xu Qinghuan’s people will definitely make an example of him first.”
Ma Jin'an straightened his collar.
“That idiot is still dreaming of becoming a chiliarch. Let him be our scapegoat—it’ll buy us some time to escape.”
He Minghu grinned, a savage expression spreading across his face.
“Let that bastard have his pipe dream of being a chiliarch!”
Ma Jin'an nodded.
“We can’t ride horses—too conspicuous. We’ll take the secret passage and find horses once we’re outside the city.”
The two settled the plan, exchanged glances, and smiled at each other.
“Let’s move!”
