Just how many suits of heavy armor had Amur acquired? A hundred? Two hundred?
No wonder they had been able to overrun Baiyin Pasture in a single night!
The fear of the unknown crawled up Tuoba Ying’s spine like a bone-deep parasite, freezing every limb.
The minor chieftains below were all men who had lived by the blade.
When the suit of Great Qian forged-steel lamellar armor hit the ground, several of them cried out in shock, their eyes nearly bulging from their sockets.
They had assumed the Qiyan Clan possessed nothing more than a few captured sabers. Who could have imagined that these madmen had even gotten their hands on the standard heavy armor of Great Qian’s main army?
A single suit could be exchanged for dozens of fine horses!
If a hundred men from the Qiyan Clan wore such armor, they could punch straight through a light cavalry formation of over a thousand men when charging across the plains.
The chieftains looked at Amur with not the slightest trace of contempt left in their eyes.
Beside them, those subordinates who had already pledged themselves to Amur made no effort to hide the mockery in their eyes.
A bunch of ignorant fools. If they had sworn allegiance sooner, they would have known that this wealth was nothing more than a drop in their master’s vast reserves.
Amur leaned forward slightly.
He reached out and picked up a short blade from the table. With its tip, he gestured toward the suit of heavy armor on the ground.
“Fifty thousand Golden Tent soldiers.”
“They all died outside Great Qian’s Poisoned Corpse Camp.”
“Left Gully King Ashina Dubi didn’t even leave a complete corpse behind. Fifty thousand elite warriors of the royal court were turned into pools of pus by a single rain of poison.”
Amur let out a cold laugh, colder than the wintry wind outside the tent.
“The royal court’s undergarments have long since rotted away! And you still think you can come here with an empty shell that can’t even cross the border passes and strip the skin from my Qiyan Clan?”
Tuoba Ying felt as though he had been struck by lightning, his entire body going rigid.
So that was it! So this was the truth!
The news that the Left Division’s army had been annihilated had been tightly sealed off by the royal court’s upper ranks.
The reason the Right Wise King had sent him so hastily to recruit the Qiyan Clan—and had even demanded eighty percent of their weapons—was not out of some sudden act of mercy.
It was because the royal court’s military strength had been depleted to the point of desperation. They urgently needed weapons and troops to suppress the unrest among the various factions!
“Lies!”
Tuoba Ying had no time to think. His eyes instantly reddened as he roared in a fit of rage, “You lowly slave! How dare you insult the royal court! I’ll kill you!”
He grabbed the gold-inlaid saber at his waist and wrenched it from its sheath, intending to take Amur’s head.
The gleaming blade flashed through the tent.
But before he could complete the motion, Amur remained seated in his high-backed chair. He did not even raise his eyelids, continuing to toy with the short blade in his hand.
Arslan had already been waiting for the opportunity. He twisted to the side, and his right leg shot out like an iron whip, kicking Tuoba Ying with tremendous force.
Tuoba Ying let out a terrible howl and dropped to his knees.
At the same time, several Qiyan warriors stationed on either side rushed forward.
His wrist bones snapped on the spot.
The gold-inlaid saber flew from his hand and clattered to the ground.
Tuoba Ying’s cheek was pressed against the suit of Great Qian heavy armor. The cold steel plates tore his skin until blood ran freely.
The guards who had accompanied him did not even have time to draw their weapons before the Qiyan warriors surged forward and pinned them all to the ground.
One after another, crisp cracks rang out as their joints were dislocated. The men collapsed like piles of mud, reduced to nothing but wails of agony.
Amur rose and walked down the steps one measured pace at a time, stopping before the restrained Tuoba Ying.
He bent down and picked up the fallen gold-inlaid saber. After a single glance, he could not help admiring it.
“What a fine blade.”
Amur examined the edge, murmuring the two words as if to himself.
Then he looked at Tuoba Ying, who was struggling desperately, his eyes filled with venom, and his tone turned cold.
“A pity the hand wielding it was too soft.”
Before the words had even faded, Amur swung the saber backhanded.
Tuoba Ying’s throat was cut cleanly. Hot, bloody spray burst from the wound.
His eyes bulged. His limbs convulsed several times before his body abruptly stiffened and all life left him.
The sudden slaughter left the dozen or so minor chieftains below utterly terrified.
They threw themselves facedown on the ground, trembling like sieves.
The more timid among them had already wet themselves. Everyone feared that if they provoked this killing god, the next stroke might wipe across their own throats.
Amur casually tossed the bloodstained gold-inlaid saber beside Tuoba Ying’s corpse.
He accepted a coarse cloth from Arslan and wiped the blood from his hands, his gaze sweeping across the kneeling men below.
“The royal court’s bones have rotted through.”
Amur’s voice was not loud, yet it struck every chieftain’s heart like a heavy hammer.
“Those old nobles are so weak they can’t even protect this pasture! From this day forward, there will be no royal court’s laws in the Qiyan Clan, and no more of their worthless favors.”
He threw the bloodied cloth into the brazier beside him. The flames curled around it like tongues, releasing the foul stench of scorched flesh.
“Tengri protects only the sharpest blade. Here, whoever holds the hardest iron gets to decide.”
Amur looked down at them from above as waves of heat rolled through the tent.
“The Right Wise King wants to strip away eighty percent of your troops and fodder, using your blood to fill the hole in his own coffers. But I, Amur, will not do such a thing.”
He pointed toward the silver-bone charcoal glowing red-hot in the brazier.
“Follow me, and you may graze freely on the richest pastures of Baiyin. Great Qian’s white salt, brick tea, even forged-steel armor plates—I’ll supply them to you without limit.”
The promise of such generous rewards made the atmosphere inside the tent suddenly grow tense and heated. Yet not everyone had been blinded by profit.
Among those kneeling below, an old chieftain with graying hair and an old saber scar across his cheek swallowed hard and cautiously straightened his back.
“Chief Amur...” the old chieftain said, his voice trembling, though there was a shrewdness in it born from the instinct to survive on the edge of death.
“No matter how fine Great Qian’s heavy armor is, can you outfit every one of our warriors? If the royal court’s army truly marches south, our small clans could throw every man and horse we have into the fight and still not be enough to fill the gaps between the Golden Tent cavalry’s teeth...”
The old chieftain had voiced what everyone else was thinking.
They were not afraid of dying. What they feared was being used as expendable cannon fodder.
Amur did not become angry. Instead, he smiled.
He walked slowly down the steps and stopped before the old chieftain.
“Batu, your clan has four hundred bow-bearing warriors, but they belong to three different lineages.”
“Whenever you’re fighting over pasture, every one of them is fierce. But whenever a real battle comes, none of them is willing to send his own retainers to die first. Am I right?”
Old Batu’s face went pale, and sweat poured down his forehead.
This was an illness that had plagued the grasslands for centuries. At its core, a tribal alliance was nothing more than a heap of loose sand.
“So what I’m giving you is order.”
Amur slowly drew the dagger tucked into his boot and patted Batu’s sweat-covered cheek with the flat of the blade.
“From today onward, there will be no Batu Clan on this pasture, nor any of your other chaotic family names.”
“All your people and slaves will be broken up and reorganized into military units of ten households, a hundred households, and a thousand households.”
The moment he said this, the dozen or so chieftains were struck as if by lightning.
Break up their people? He intended to uproot them completely and strip them of their military power!
Someone could no longer restrain himself and tried to raise his head in protest, but Amur’s cold gaze swept across the entire gathering as he said icily:
“Not only that! Every one of your eldest sons and brothers who can draw a hundred-jin war bow will be drafted and sent to my command tent!”
“I’ll outfit them in the finest Daqian lamellar armor, feed them the finest grain from the Central Plains, and give them the strongest liquor!”
“They will become the sharpest fangs of the Qiyan Clan!”
As his words fell, Amur paused.
His deep-set eyes swept over the assembled men like a hawk’s. Then he uttered something that left every steppe warrior staring in stunned disbelief.
“And your children—I’ll have them taught to read and write!”
The moment he said this, the oppressive silence inside the tent shattered. Several incredulous gasps rang out.
Read and write? On this frozen wasteland, where curved blades and warhorses were revered above all else, learning had always been regarded as the weakness of soft-handed scholars from the Central Plains.
Old Batu opened and closed his mouth in astonishment, having even forgotten the blade pressed against his neck.
“What? You think it’s useless?” Amur gave a derisive snort, his eyes filled with contempt and ambition.
“You fools think Daqian can forge all this heavy steel armor for no reason? You think they can build impregnable fortresses and strongholds that we cannot smash through for no reason?”
“It’s because they have craftsmen who understand mathematics, officials who know how to govern, and laws written down on paper!”
Amur suddenly kicked Tuoba Ying’s mangled corpse aside. His voice boomed like thunder, cleaving through the oppressive air of the felt tent.
“Our ancestors have torn at one another like wild dogs in the wind and snow for generations, all because we know nothing except robbery and murder! Why did the royal court rot away? Because all they knew how to do was lie on the grass and dream!”
“I will invite teachers from Daqian to come to the steppe! I will have your sons learn the characters of the Central Plains, read their books, and study their military strategies!”
Silence descended over the tent.
The chieftains were no fools. How could they fail to understand the political calculation behind his words?
Drafting the sons of the clans’ kinsmen under the lofty name of “the chief’s personal guard” was, in truth, taking hostages.
Breaking up the tribes was meant to centralize royal authority.
“Surrender your military power and become my subjects.”
Amur drove his dagger into the carpet before Batu with a sharp thunk.
“I guarantee that not one person in your tribes will die this winter. I guarantee that every pasture you conquer will be distributed among you according to merit and the number of heads you bring back!”
“One day, you’ll be able to burn the same silver-bone charcoal in your tents that only the nobles of the Central Plains can afford!”
“Or you can take your respective household troops and meet the royal court’s army of thirty thousand on the snowy plains—and become fertilizer for the Helian family.”
“Choose. Will you become founding chiliarchs of the Qiyan Clan, or nameless ghosts in the wind and snow?”
Inside the great tent, the men clenched their teeth, their hearts burning with anxiety.
Batu glanced at Tuoba Ying’s corpse, its eyes still wide with unfulfilled death. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and shouted:
“Batu… is willing to send his eldest son to the chief’s command tent! I am willing to hold the chief’s stirrup and serve at his side!”
With someone taking the lead, the other chieftains no longer entertained any thought of escape.
They all fell prostrate in unison, their voices carrying the fervor of men who had surrendered their fates completely.
“Honor to the Qiyan Clan!”
“We swear to follow Chief Amur to the death!”
Their synchronized cries echoed throughout the command tent.
At last, a smile appeared on Amur’s face. He turned to Arslan.
“Arslan.”
“Here!”
“Cut off the heads of these envoys and preserve them thoroughly in coarse green salt. Pack them together with this bloodstained armor in a wooden chest, and send them back to the Right Wise King at full gallop.”
Arslan answered cheerfully and hurriedly called to his men, “By your command!”
The death squads swiftly dragged the corpses out of the great tent. Someone else brought in a basin of water and used a thick hemp cloth to scrub the blood from the ground.
The chieftains of the various tribes withdrew in trembling silence.
Before long, the once noisy and oppressive command tent held nothing but the crackle of burning charcoal.
Amur leaned back in his snow-leopard-hide chair and closed his eyes, massaging his throbbing temples with his thumb.
The savage ferocity in him gradually receded, leaving behind exhaustion and wariness.
Just then—
In the shadowed corner of the tent, a heavy windbreak tapestry was lifted without a sound.
A figure wrapped in a gray-black cloak stepped out like a ghost.
None of the layers of guards stationed outside noticed a thing.
The man walked to the center of the great tent. He did not kneel, merely inclined his head slightly.
The hood fell back, revealing an utterly unremarkable face from the Central Plains.
Amur opened his eyes and straightened in his seat.
“Magistrate Xu, what are your orders?” Amur asked in a low voice.
The spy drew a copper tube sealed with black wax from his sleeve and presented it with both hands.
“The master has issued an order,” he said. “It’s time to begin the game.”
“This game is moving south.”
