The explosion sounded like thunder crashing down from the Ninth Heaven.
The brazier on the carpet was knocked over by the shock. Scarlet coals scattered across the floor.
Chen Changfeng stood frozen, with nothing left in his ears but a piercing ringing.
The deadly trap he had spent five years laying—
In the face of this utterly senseless blast of fire, it had become a complete and utter joke.
In his panic, Chen Changfeng did not even stop to put on his outer robe. He stumbled out of the command tent.
The cold wind rushing toward him reeked of pungent gunpowder and tung oil.
In the direction of the right-wing siege-engine camp, the night sky had already been burned a strange, dark red.
The load-bearing pillars of the nine Huihui trebuchets he had prepared to breach the pass had snapped.
The crossbeams continued collapsing amid the flames, while the barrels of gunpowder piled around them exploded one after another.
Fireballs rolled and soared into the sky.
“Save the trebuchets! Put out the fire!” Chen Changfeng seized the stunned soldier beside him and roared, “Mobilize the cavalry from the left camp! Send them to fight the flames! Now!”
Seeing him in such a state, the soldier stumbled backward in terror. “My lord, the fire is too fierce. No one can get close…”
“Useless trash! Get out of my way!”
Chen Changfeng kicked the soldier to the ground.
He had long since lost the composed air of the strategist who always had everything calculated. He staggered forward for more than a dozen steps, only to be forced back by the scorching wave of heat.
Ashina Dubi and a group of Hu generals also burst out of their felt tents.
These usually arrogant, hard-bitten warriors of the steppe stared at the inferno rising from the right wing, all of them struck speechless.
“What happened?” Ashina Dubi kicked over the chevaux-de-frise outside the tent. “Who did this?”
Unfortunately, no one answered.
The chain of explosions on the right wing continued.
The fire oil caught the dry grass on the northern slope and turned it into several blinding rivers of flame, rapidly devouring everything around them.
Less than a hundred paces behind the trebuchet emplacement lay a stretch of open ground where several hundred flatbed carts had been parked.
Every cart was loaded with horses that had died of disease and the corpses of Hu soldiers. Each body had been smeared with the corpse paste Chen Changfeng had ordered his men to boil down.
The rivers of fire rushed straight toward the heap of corpses.
The intense heat instantly ignited the cowhide sacks wrapped around the bodies.
Chen Changfeng abruptly halted.
He turned toward the carts, and his entire body seemed to plunge into an icy pit.
No!
With such tremendous force and such extreme heat, the corpses carrying the deadly poison would be ripped apart and blasted into fragments.
And just as he feared—
The corpse paste, mixed with rotting flesh, shattered bones, and poisonous fluid, was flung high into the air.
Chen Changfeng had calculated that the wind tonight would blow from the north.
But the towering inferno in the siege-engine camp forcefully sucked the air from that area, changing the direction of the wind.
A chaotic gust swept up from the open ground on the right wing.
Toxic yellow fluid, rotting flesh, and splintered bone rode the wind over the defensive line and came hurtling straight toward the central command tent!
Chen Changfeng watched the scene unfold, his knees nearly giving way.
He had personally brewed this deadly poison trap.
And now it was falling into the central camp.
“Retreat! The entire army must withdraw!”
By then, Ashina Dubi had also caught the pungent stench of decay. It was exactly the same as the odor on the corpses they had smeared during the day.
But the poisonous rain came far too quickly.
Hu soldiers who could not dodge were drenched from head to toe.
The moment the poison touched the tiny cuts left on their skin by blades of grass during the day—or entered their eyes, mouths, or noses—
Their shrill screams rang out at once.
On a high ridge beyond the fire, Xu Zhan held the reins of his black horse with one hand and quietly surveyed the chaos below.
The soaring flames illuminated his face, streaked with blood and grime. He said nothing.
Cao Kuo emerged from the darkness, carrying a saber.
“General, everything is burning,” Cao Kuo reported as he approached. “The wooden pillars have been burned through, and all the gunpowder has exploded. Not a single trebuchet remains.”
Xu Zhan watched the poisonous rain billowing through the sky and nodded slightly.
“Go.”
Xu Zhan pulled on the reins.
He did not grow greedy, linger, or seek further glory. The instant the strike succeeded, he withdrew.
At the edge of the camp below, one of the Hu generals who still had his wits about him finally reacted.
A chiliarch assembled more than two hundred mounted scouts. Skirting the fiercest flames, they charged toward the high ridge.
“Kill these southerners!” the chiliarch shouted, raising his curved saber.
Xu Zhan ignored him completely. He did not even turn his head.
In the grass on both sides of the ridge, Xu Chengguang raised a hand.
One hundred elite crossbowmen of the Pingqiang Army had long since taken a half-kneeling stance, their repeating crossbows fully loaded.
“Fire.” Xu Chengguang’s voice was cold.
The mechanisms clicked in unison.
A hundred steel bolts tore through the air and descended upon the Hu cavalry like a curtain.
The several dozen riders at the front were instantly turned into pincushions. Their horses pitched forward and crashed to the ground.
An arrow struck the chiliarch in the throat. He toppled from his horse and was trampled to pieces beneath the hooves of those behind him.
The pursuing formation fell into chaos.
“Withdraw!”
At Xu Chengguang’s command, the crossbowmen rose swiftly.
They followed behind Xu Zhan’s horsemen and vanished into the dense darkness.
The wind continued to rage across the wasteland.
Xu Zhan and the others galloped through the night, circling southwest in preparation to avoid the main body of the Hu army and return to North Suppression Pass.
After covering three li, Xu Chengguang suddenly reined in his horse. His long saber pointed toward a hollow filled with withered grass ahead.
“There’s movement!” Xu Chengguang called in a low voice.
Heavy, ragged breathing came from within the pile of dead grass.
Two ordinary Hu soldiers without armor lay in the nest of grass, rolling about in agony.
Cao Kuo dismounted and stepped forward, using the tip of his saber to lift one man’s sheepskin coat.
After seeing clearly in the moonlight, Cao Kuo took two steps back.
“Young General, leave your blade where it is. These two men are already dead.”
Cao Kuo sheathed his saber.
Xu Chengguang rode closer.
The two men on the ground were covered from head to face and neck in sores of every size.
Yellow-green pus seeped from the ruptured lesions, exposing even the bones beneath.
They were more than three li from the main camp. Clearly, they had not been caught by the poisonous rain just now.
They had contracted the plague earlier.
“It’s corpse paste!” Xu Chengguang clenched his long saber. “During the day, they smeared the poison onto the corpses. Those low-ranking Hu soldiers sent to move the bodies were infected with the source of the disease long ago!”
Xu Zhan looked at the Hu soldiers writhing in agony on the ground, his expression unchanged.
“The men at the top thought they could manipulate this exterminating stratagem as they pleased.”
Xu Zhan turned his horse around with one hand.
“But they never realized that once such a poison enters the bloodstream, it makes no distinction between a Daqian man and a Helian.”
“The foundation of those fifty thousand Royal Tent troops had already become one enormous nest of poison. Tonight’s fire merely tore the lid off ahead of time.”
With that, Xu Zhan gave the reins a light tug.
Xu Chengguang looked back at the distant sky glowing red.
Those fifty thousand soldiers were finished.
“Back to the pass,” Xu Zhan ordered.
The warhorses neighed as one, and more than two hundred riders charged toward North Suppression Pass.
At the same time, the Helian army’s central camp had become a living hell.
Driven by the howling wind, the poisonous rain spread across half the camp.
With dozens of guards risking their lives to protect him, Ashina Dubi pressed a wet strip of cloth tightly over his mouth and nose and desperately fled toward the windward side.
Everywhere he looked, routed soldiers lay scattered across the ground.
Any soldier struck by the poisonous fluid and flesh, then unlucky enough to have it touch a wound, threw aside his curved saber and clawed frantically at his head and face.
The instant his fingers dug in, he ripped away a chunk of bloody flesh.
Poisoned blood and yellow fluid streamed across the snow, creating a horrifying sight.
“My king! Save me!”
Countless soldiers, their bodies rotting and their minds crazed, stretched out their hands, trying to seize Ashina Dubi’s horse.
The guards showed no mercy. Their blades rose and fell, severing the arms of their fellow tribesmen at the shoulder.
The pungent poison gas and thunderous explosions completely panicked the warhorses in the camp.
Tens of thousands of horses tore free of their reins and stampeded wildly through the encampment.
Their hooves trampled indiscriminately over wailing soldiers, overturning countless braziers and tents.
More fires erupted in rapid succession.
Without a single Great Qian army bearing down on them or launching an assault, this elite royal encampment—boasting fifty thousand men—collapsed entirely amid the chaos of its own stampede.
Ashina Dubi finally broke out of the area shrouded in poisonous rain.
He tore away the cloth covering his mouth and coughed violently, spitting up a mouthful of bloody phlegm.
As he stared at the hellscape of carnage, the Left Luli King’s hands trembled. Just moments ago, he had received a death order: crush Zhenbei Pass within three days.
But now his army was in full rout. How could he possibly attack?
Chen Changfeng was also dragged out by two Han guards, each holding one of his arms.
His hair was disheveled, and the refined scholar’s robe he usually wore was now caked with mud and soot.
“Gully King…” Chen Changfeng panted, just about to speak.
Clang!
Ashina Dubi drew the curved saber from his waist, strode forward, and kicked Chen Changfeng hard onto his back in the snow.
The blade pressed directly against Chen Changfeng’s throat.
“Chen Changfeng!” Ashina Dubi snarled, no longer bothering to conceal the killing intent in his eyes. “What a brilliant scheme you offered! You’ve ruined the foundation of my entire left wing!”
Feeling the sting of the blade against his neck, Chen Changfeng made no attempt to struggle.
He merely turned his head and stared fixedly at the flames reaching into the sky, his mind filled with the image of the Great Qian remnants withdrawing at their leisure moments before.
“They even calculated this…” Chen Changfeng muttered deliriously, his face twisted by manic despair.
