The Left Luli King, Ashina Dubi, sat high on his horse, staring at the unflappable Chen Changfeng below. He could not suppress the suspicion gnawing at him:
“What heinous scheme?”
Ashina Dubi's tone grew heavier.
“At a time like this, Lord Chen, do not play riddles with me any longer.”
The moment those words fell, every Hu chieftain who had been hurling curses before the central army tent fell silent and turned in unison to look at Chen Changfeng.
They had lost two thousand of their finest warriors. If there was no plan that would draw blood, the fury burning through this camp tonight would not be easy to quench.
Chen Changfeng did not rush to answer.
He undid the cord binding his left sleeve and drew something out from within it.
The crowd squinted—what was this?
It was a clay jar the size of two fists.
It was wrapped in three layers of hemp cloth soaked through with tung oil, the fabric dark and stained. The opening was sealed with a thick lump of crimson beeswax, with a few strips of yellow paper talismans, their script already blurred, pressed firmly into the hardened seal.
Ashina Dubi narrowed his eyes and reined in his blood-sweat steed, which had been pacing restlessly for no apparent reason.
“What in the hell is that?”
“Some medicine brewed in a southern Daoist temple?”
One of the generals from the Zhishi tribe lurched forward, reaching out to grab at the oiled cloth.
“This broken jar—are we supposed to smash the bricks of Zhenbei Pass with it?”
“Don't touch.”
Chen Changfeng took a half-step back, his voice sharp with warning.
“The death aura on this thing weighs heavier than all the curved sabers in your entire army combined.”
The general's hand froze mid-air, driven back by those cold, lifeless eyes.
Chen Changfeng stared at the red wax seal on the jar and spat out two words.
“Plague Mother.”
The night wind cut through the felt tent, howling as it carried those two words into the crowd.
The rough men around exchanged bewildered glances.
“Mother what?”
“Over the hundred years of the Great Qian Dynasty, there were seven great plagues spanning north and south. What you see here is the residue of bone and blood scraped from the dead.”
Chen Changfeng held up the jar, showing it to the Helian men around him.
“With great hardship, it was scraped off corpses, mixed with ten thousand kinds of miasma from the southern wilds, then buried underground for thirty years—only then did we get this single small jar.”
“A piece the size of a fingernail, dropped into water, dissolves on contact.”
“Man or beast, if they drink it, or get it into an open wound—within seven days, their organs will liquefy into a pool of pus inside their belly.”
“Even if the entire Imperial Medical Academy of Great Qian crawled out of their graves, they couldn't save half a life.”
A dead silence fell over the camp, nothing but the wind threading through the tents.
The Zhishi general's face went sheet-white. He stumbled back four or five steps, not daring to stop even as his heel sent a felt table crashing over.
Several chiliarchs who had crowded in close frantically covered their noses and mouths, the murderous glint in their eyes shattering into sheer terror.
Grassland men did not fear blade or axe. But they feared two things.
One was the white blizzard that froze their herds dead. The other was the invisible, untouchable epidemic that could wipe out an entire tribe within days!
“You dare bring this poison into camp!”
An old chieftain whose face was wrinkled like walnut shells charged out like a madman.
He pointed at Chen Changfeng, his whole body shaking, his gray beard quivering in the wind.
“This is a cursed thing that angers the Eternal Sky!”
“Have you thought about it? If the wind shifts and this poison spreads, all our tens of thousands—the Great King included—will rot on this grassland!”
The old chieftain yanked out a dagger, the tip aimed straight at Chen Changfeng's chest.
“Great King! We cannot keep him! This Han dog is hiding malice in his heart—he wants to wipe out every last Helian man, woman, and child!”
“Burn it! Use fire to burn this evil thing!”
Someone echoed the shout, and two more chieftains reached for their blades.
The tension snapped tight as a drawn bowstring.
Dagger tips swayed wildly, yet Chen Changfeng did not blink.
“Burn it?”
He curled the corner of his mouth, his laugh colder than a blizzard wind from beyond the Great Wall.
“You think this is ordinary herb, that a single flame will burn it clean?”
“Expose this thing to open fire, and the poison rises with the smoke. Whatever tent the wind carries it into—that family dies to the last soul.”
The old chieftain's hands trembled so badly he could barely hold his dagger. The tip swayed in the air, but he dared not push it a single inch further.
“Besides,” Chen Changfeng drew his sleeves together, turning his gaze to Ashina Dubi on horseback. “Who said anything about putting this in flowing water?"
“Luli King.”
“Wasn't it just said that most of the elite soldiers Zuo Bamu took with him died in the tunnels of the mule-and-horse market?”
Ashina Dubi's expression soured. He nodded.
“Besides the stragglers who made it back, the rest were sealed in that pit and killed by the southerners with Greek fire and a storm of arrows.”
“Isn't that a ready-made lure?”
Chen Changfeng pointed north, straight at the beast-like hulk of Zhenbei Pass crouching in the darkness.
“Outside the walls, there are two thousand plague-ridden horses and dead sheep killed by crossbow fire or trampled to death. Add to that the Hu corpses that were never carried away and have already begun to stink.”
“Dissolve the contents of this jar into water.”
“Use a brush to smear it onto that rotting flesh, work it into those festering wounds and bone cracks.”
The men around listened with their scalps crawling, each breath feeling like jagged glass.
“And then?”
Ashina Dubi's voice had gone hoarse.
“Didn't the Luli King just bring in nine trebuchets?”
Chen Changfeng's tone was calm.
“Those machines can hurl a three-hundred-pound boulder onto the battlements.”
“But what if, instead of stones, we load them with corpses?”
"What, in exchange for those plague-tainted corpses and sick horses with yellow pus already oozing from their bellies?"
"No need to hurl stones."
"Bundle these poisoned corpses in leather skins, and with the power of the trebuchets, lob them one after another over the parapets of Zhenbei Pass! Let them rain down into their inner city! Smash into their streets, their horse paths, and beside their wells!"
"These Southerners like to defend their walls, don't they?"
"Didn't they seal their gates so tight not even a fly could slip through?"
"Then let them defend."
Chen Changfeng gazed at the darkness to the north, his eyes utterly indifferent.
"Corpses falling from the sky will splatter into pools of venomous rot on impact."
"Within three days."
"Inside Zhenbei Pass—whether it's Tie Lanshan or Xu Qinghuan, whether it's the crossbow-wielding elite guards or the laborers hauling earth—"
"Drink the water, breathe the air, and they'll all fall sick."
"After seven days."
"Of every ten people still standing and breathing in that pass, not half a one will remain."
"By then, the Li King won't even need to ram the gates, let alone sacrifice his warriors to fill the breach. Once the walls fall silent, just push open the thousand-jin gate and march in over the Southerners' festering blood."
Before the great tent, the only sound was the snorting of war-horses.
Every Hu chieftain stood frozen, stunned.
They looked at Chen Changfeng as if staring at a living King of Hell clawed up from the underworld.
Taking the corpses of their own men, smearing them with lethal poison, and hurling them into the enemy's nest with siege engines.
This kind of scorched-earth, boundariless cruelty—even the old wolves of the grassland who had fought wars all their lives had never dared dream of it in their worst nightmares.
"Lord Chen..."
The general of the Zhishi tribe, who had always prided himself on ruthlessness, swallowed hard.
"What about... the fallen brothers under Zuo Bamu's command..."
"Dead men are dead men."
Chen Changfeng cut him off without mercy.
"If they couldn't open the gates for the Li King while alive, that was their failure."
"Now that they're dead, if their rotting flesh can still pave the way for the living, that's a worthy end."
"If we don't use this method—" Chen Changfeng swept his gaze across the assembled men, "—which of you is willing to lead the remaining three thousand to tread the Southerners' crossbows and boiling oil?"
No one answered.
The same tribal leaders who had just been howling to borrow elite cavalry for a suicidal charge had all turned into mute gourds, staring at their own feet.
Charge?! Are you insane?
When there's a genocidal scheme like this that costs not a single soldier, who in hell would volunteer their own clan's young men to fill the enemy's ditch?
Ashina Dubi sat on his horse for a long time.
His gaze traveled back and forth three times between Chen Changfeng's face and that clay jar.
Finally, he let out a long breath.
His weariness vanished in an instant, replaced by a fanatical glint of iron determination.
"Good!"
Ashina Dubi slapped his saddle with a thunderclap of his palm.
"What a utterly ruthless plan!"
"Chen Changfeng, the old Han saying goes you're as cunning as a demon. I say you're more venomous than the iron whip in the Eternal Tengri's hand!"
The Left Luli King tore open the wolf-pelt cloak at his collar and roared at the dumbstruck generals around him:
"Are you all standing around waiting to drop pups?!"
"Didn't you hear the strategist's words?!"
"Pass the order! Drag every corpse and diseased horse we captured but couldn't haul away—every last one—to the trebuchet positions!"
"Zhishi tribe! Pick three hundred nimble slaves, wrap their faces in cloth, and follow the strategist's instructions: dissolve the medicine water and smear it over the dead!"
"At dawn tomorrow, no test shots!"
"All nine trebuchets—load them with corpses!"
"I'll turn Zhenbei Pass into a city of the dead from tomorrow onward!"
The old chieftain who had been gripping his knife looked at the frenzied Left King, then at Chen Changfeng, his lips trembling twice. In the end, he silently sheathed his short blade and retreated back into the crowd.
When it came to the temptation of not losing their own men, divine punishment and respect for fallen warriors didn't amount to a pile of shit.
As long as they could win, these men would fling their own kin's bones into the breach without a second thought.
"The Li King is wise!"
The Zhishi tribe's general dropped to one knee with a thud.
"Lord Chen is truly a divine oracle!"
"This plan is genius! Not a drop of our blood spilled, and the Southerners die to the last man!"
The generals snapped back to their senses. Their earlier despair and dread evaporated into smoke.
"Quick! Bring the wine skins!"
A tribal leader scurried into the central command tent and emerged with several heavy bags of fierce milk liquor.
"A toast to the strategist!"
"Lord Chen, we rough men used to think you just talked clever. After today's gambit, we're convinced!"
"Once we breach the pass, the Southern women in the city—the strategist picks first!"
Bowl after bowl of frothing, pale liquor was thrust before Chen Changfeng.
Crude laughter surrounded him on all sides. The entire camp, past midnight, had fallen into a bizarre, fevered frenzy.
Chen Changfeng didn't refuse either.
He raised his bowl in a distant salute to Ashina Dubi on his tall horse, and also to the Hu tribesmen around him dreaming of conquest.
"To the Li King—may we flatten Zhenbei within three days."
He tipped his head back, and the liquor burned down his throat.
Setting down the bowl, Chen Changfeng wiped the wine from his lips with his sleeve. His gaze drifted past the reveling barbarians, back toward that pitch-black fortress.
An utterly cutthroat ploy?
Chen Changfeng let out a silent, mocking laugh in the depths of his heart.
In the mule-and-horse market tunnels, Zuo Bamu's men were dead. The commotion had stirred up enough noise.
Now throw the corpse smeared with the plague mother into the fray.
Tie Lanshan, Xu Qinghuan.
This chain of schemes, one after another — can you even catch them all?
As for the tens of thousands still left in this camp...
Chen Changfeng lowered his gaze, feeling through the fabric of his sleeve the biting, bone-deep chill.
The medicine dissolves, smeared onto the corpses — the slaves hauling the bodies will touch it, the Hu soldiers overseeing the work will smell it.
When the trebuchets launch, and the wind blows mid-air, could that sky-full of deathly miasma really not drift a single speck back into the camp?
In this world, there’s no such thing as borrowing a blade to kill and walking away with clean hands!
When you gamble for chips at Yama’s table, no one gets to leave that table unstained.
Let them all die...
The more that die, the more satisfying this game of chess becomes.
