Outside the city.
The north wind whipped yellow sand and frozen snow against the thick felt yurts.
At the center of the Helian camp, inside the tent of the Left Luli King.
Three waist-high bronze braziers blazed fiercely.
The heat from the coals roasted an entire fat sheep on a spit, golden drips of oil falling one by one into the fire, sending up bursts of scorched fragrance.
After Zuo Bamu's death, his replacement deputy commander Batu could no longer sit still.
He yanked the short knife from his belt, stabbed it hard into the sheep's hind leg, tore off a large chunk of meat, and flung it onto a plate.
Batu rose to his feet, took a swaggering step forward, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Great King! Our fine lads died in that black pit, not even a whole corpse left behind."
"Yesterday, Military Advisor Chen laid out the plan—we tossed those corpses smeared with rotting flesh paste into the southerners' city. A day and a night have passed. The southerners are half dead, and no one even guards the gates anymore."
Batu slammed the knife hard on the table:
"Great King, give me five thousand iron riders. I'll smash open their gates right now and chop off Tie Lanshan's head to use as a piss pot!"
Across from him, the old chieftain grabbed the hilt of his own blade and banged it on the table.
"Fool. Are you going to break the city, or go throw your life away?"
The old chieftain jabbed a finger at Batu's nose.
"Everyone saw how vicious that poison water is. It rots even stone into yellow pulp where it touches the ground."
"You charge in with your men—if so much as a speck gets on your weapons, before you can even draw blades, our own five thousand riders will have their guts rotted through first!"
Batu's eyes bulged as he shot back: "So we just sit out here in the freezing cold and wait? If the southerners find a cure, then all our effort last night was for nothing!"
"Cure, my ass!" The old chieftain would not back down.
"That rotting-flesh method is a plague sent from heaven. What could the southerners possibly cure it with? You sit tight. Once there's no one left breathing inside the city, then let the craftsmen tear down the walls."
Chen Changfeng stood with his hands clasped behind his back.
He pretended not to hear the two men squabbling, pacing slowly and deliberately in front of a massive sand table built from yellow clay and wood scraps.
On the sand table, the layout of Zhenbei Pass was clearly visible.
His eyes swept over the models marked in red sand: the city walls, the streets, the wells.
Ashina Dubi, the Left Luli King, sat upright on his tiger-skin throne.
He did not stop his subordinates' argument, his palm resting on the leather of the armrest, his gaze following Chen Changfeng's every step.
An army could not stay camped in the snow indefinitely. The daily consumption of men and horses was enormous. He needed a definitive answer.
Ashina Dubi raised his hand, palm pressing downward. The tent fell silent.
"Chen, Batu makes a fair point, and the chieftain has his concerns too," Ashina Dubi said. "Give us a straight answer. This scourge of poisoned water—when exactly will it dissolve every bone inside the city?"
Chen Changfeng stopped walking, turned, and faced the men in the tent.
"Great King, all you chieftains. This game we're playing has come to the point where patience is everything."
Chen Changfeng walked to the center of the sand table and tapped his bamboo stick on the model of the north carriage road.
"Tie Lanshan is a veteran of the battlefield. The more silent he remains, the more it proves the poison has already spread beyond his control. If we rashly charge the gates, that woman Xu Qinghuan is full of tricks. Who knows—she might have piled the corpses of the plague-stricken in the gate tunnel, just waiting for us to walk in."
"Right now, the southerners are probably boiling bitter herbal broths, scrambling to find quicklime to fill the pits."
Chen Changfeng tapped the edge of the sand table with his bamboo stick:
"But the poison gas, seeping through the cracks in the earth, has long since reached the hidden water channels beneath Zhenbei Pass. Tie Lanshan can issue as many death orders as he likes—he cannot stop living men from needing to drink."
Just as he finished speaking, the heavy felt door curtain was yanked open from outside.
A blast of cold wind rushed in, and the flames in the braziers bent to one side.
The General of the Zhishi Tribe strode in.
His face, thick with flesh, was crusted in frost. His voice boomed with arrogance: "Report, Great King! The southerners' spy has returned word!"
Ashina Dubi straightened, both hands gripping the armrests of his chair: "What is the situation inside the southerners' city?"
The General of the Zhishi Tribe shouted: "The spy crouched half the night in the mass graves on the western slope, and he saw it clearly with his own eyes! Inside Zhenbei, columns of white smoke from burning mugwort are rising everywhere! The haze has blotted out the sun!"
"Chaos has broken out inside. Wailing and mourning from every direction. Rats are fleeing the city in droves!"
Every Hu general in the tent craned their necks forward. Even Batu stopped chewing his meat.
The General of the Zhishi Tribe's fleshy face flushed red, and he burst into laughter:
"Our trick is working wonders! The spy saw with his own eyes—the southern laborers pushing carts along the base of the wall were dropping to the ground mid-step."
"The blisters on their bellies burst open, pus spilling everywhere like a living thing stuffed into a coffin too small for it!"
"The rats that lapped up the ditch water died before they could run three steps, feet in the air. Tie Lanshan panicked—he sealed off the streets, rounded up everyone covered in sores, and locked them inside a few old compounds. They're boiling vats of medicine on the walls, but nothing can stop it!"
"At this rate, the houses of Zhenbei won't be enough to hold the dead!"
Ashina Dubi leaned back into his chair and picked up his bowl of cold fermented mare's milk.
"We don't even need to draw a blade. Tie Lanshan will finish off his own people all by himself." Ashina Dubi turned his gaze past the braziers and settled it on Chen Changfeng.
From his seat, the Hu generals burst into crude, raucous cheers at the tale of such misery.
Chen Changfeng turned around, picked up a single black stone from the wooden go stone basket at the corner of the sand table.
He held it between his fingers, suspended in midair.
Before placing the stone, Chen Changfeng clapped his hands and laughed heartily. The sound drowned out the whistling of the wind outside.
"Tie Lanshan and Xu Qinghuan—for all their skill, they are still flesh and bone! Right now, they are fish in a pot. No matter how they thrash, they cannot escape this cauldron of flesh-melting poison water!"
Chen Changfeng swept his gaze over the Hu generals below and tore apart the southerners' countermeasures with gloriously arrogant words.
"Xu Qinghuan wants to play savior to the whole city—calling for quicklime to fill the pits, herbal washes to cleanse the wounds, even sealing off streets and locking people inside their homes."
"That is locking the living in with the source of the plague, breeding a nest of poison! They burn mugwort in the city to 'purify' it—what they're really doing is burning incense to send themselves off to the afterlife. When the wells fill with yellow pus, and the bellies of every soul in the city burst open, Zhenbei Pass will become a dead grave!"
"All the so-called wisdom of the southern court, all their vaunted military strategy, is worth less than a rag for wiping one's boots in the face of this supreme, bone-rotting pestilence sent by heaven! I will not spend a single soldier, and I will make Xu Qinghuan—who fancies herself a flawless schemer—watch with her own eyes as every hand under her command rots into a puddle of filth."
"Within three days, the people of Zhenbei will be cutting each other down at the well for a sip of clean water. Tie Lanshan's soldiers will turn on their own commander, murdering him to escape through the gates!"
These words pierced to the very bone, and paired with Chen Changfeng's casual demeanor, they stirred the bloodthirst in every Hu general's heart.
Ashina Dubi sat upon his tiger-skin throne, his eyes fixed on the profile of Chen Changfeng's face.
He was shocked inwardly—this Chen Changfeng was being so arrogant at this moment! Though calling him arrogant might be saying too much, given that Zhenbei was indeed in such dire straits!
After a pause of three breaths, he clapped his hands together with a resounding smack and threw his head back in laughter.
"Excellent!" Ashina Dubi raised the wine bowl in his hand. "From this, it seems those southerners are nothing special after all! In the end, they still can't hold back our Helian advance!"
"The breach of the pass happens today! Pass down my royal command—have the army slaughter sheep and prepare wine, to warm themselves well. When Zhenbei is finally dead to the last man, we'll ride into the city to collect the corpses of those soft-shelled shrimp!"
"Long live the Great King's wisdom!"
All the foreign generals inside the royal tent raised the wine vessels before them, their harsh, grating voices of assent booming through the tent.
The generals gulped down their wine in great swallows, already starting to scheme among themselves about how they would divide up the intact weapons and armor once they entered the city—and seize the not-yet-fully-rotted plunder as well.
