Nan Wen turned sideways to avoid the attack, then thrust his long saber forward. A scream rang out as blood sprayed through the air.
Almost at the same time, Chu Qing and the others behind him engaged the remaining Ji Army soldiers.
Within just a few breaths, every Ji Army soldier inside the house had been killed.
Several Jinyang Army soldiers entered with torches, illuminating the entire room.
Looking at the stove opening, which had been dug into a chaotic, pitch-black mess, Nan Wen shouted down into it, “Have the rats below gone? How about coming up for a chat?”
Ji Cang and the others had indeed not yet managed to retreat. Huddled in the tunnel, they listened to the voice above, gnashing their teeth in fury while forcing themselves to remain silent.
When he received no answer, Nan Wen did not mind. He continued, “Rats, are you really not coming up? I’m going to piss and shit on you if you don’t!”
There was still no response. Nan Wen was about to say more when Chu Qing stopped him. “Why waste your breath? Do it.”
Nan Wen shrugged. “All right.”
Ji Cang’s heart tightened at the exchange.
Do it?
What did that mean?
Could the Jinyang Army really be planning to come down into the tunnel and capture them?
As he thought this, he gripped the saber in his hand more tightly, his eyes turning vicious.
He secretly prayed that one of the Jinyang Army’s commanders would come down. He would kill them and vent all the humiliation he had suffered that night!
Just then, he heard a series of clangs from above, followed by the sound of some liquid being poured down.
Ji Cang’s heart clenched. Could the Jinyang Army really be pouring urine into the tunnel?
His expression turned ugly. This was nothing less than naked humiliation of the Ji Army. They had gone too far!
The Han Chinese truly deserved to die!
He was just about to cover his nose and mouth when the drifting scent made him freeze.
It wasn’t urine.
It was oil!
His pupils contracted. Was the Jinyang Army planning to attack them with fire?
How was that possible?!
The passage was made entirely of dirt. How could they possibly burn them to death?
Ji Cang frowned slightly. Remembering something, he sniffed hard, but with oil continuously being poured down, he could no longer detect anything else.
Lowering his voice, he asked the young officer beside him, “There’s been a smell along the entire tunnel, something like oil. Did you notice it earlier?”
The young officer nodded. “We did. We inspected it as well. It is indeed oil, probably spread throughout the tunnel by the Jinyang Army. It isn’t poisonous.”
“General, rest assured. The ground is all dirt, so it won’t burn. I also told everyone to be careful with their torches. There won’t be any problems.”
In the time it took to say those two sentences, the oil poured down from above had already flowed to where they stood, soaking Ji Cang’s feet.
A terrible premonition surged through his heart. He shouted, “The Jinyang Army is going to use fire! Quick, retreat!”
His shout drowned out Nan Wen’s cry from above:
“Release!”
The torches fell, and the pitch-black passage instantly lit up.
Bang!
A torch struck the ground. To Ji Cang, it was as though it had landed directly on his heart, nearly stopping it.
The moment the fire touched the oil on the ground, flames roared to life. They raced along the oil and reached the place where Ji Cang and the others stood in an instant.
The firelight illuminated Ji Cang’s horrified face. Pain shot through his body, and he realized that his feet were already burning.
The flames did not stop. They leapt over him and continued deeper into the tunnel, following the trail of oil.
Screams rang out, and the tunnel descended into utter chaos.
Ji Cang reacted quickly. He stamped his feet against sections of the tunnel wall that were not yet burning, but the flames did not go out. Instead, the wall itself caught fire.
“General, go!”
His deputy and the young officer shoved aside the soldiers ahead of them, tearing open a path for him.
Faced with the threat of death, Ji Cang ran on instinct. He shoved aside one screaming, burning soldier after another and raced toward the tunnel’s exit.
Others made the same choice, including the soldiers and the various commanders. At that moment, no one cared about rank or seniority anymore. They only wanted to escape with their lives.
It was not that they feared death. They did not fear fighting and killing on the battlefield.
But now, they were trapped in a narrow passage filled with fire!
Some soldiers were burned so badly that they fell to the ground, rolling and twisting in agony. Others charged blindly in every direction, while shrill screams echoed through the cramped tunnel.
Thick, acrid smoke mingled with a strange odor. In an instant, they could no longer tell whether they were in the human world or in hell itself.
Even their souls seemed to tremble.
Such extreme terror robbed them of reason, leaving behind nothing but the instinct to survive.
Ji Cang ran quickly. At some point, the flames around his feet seemed to weaken, and the fire in the tunnel also diminished.
At last, his heart eased slightly.
Then he suddenly remembered that the Jinyang Army had poured only a dozen or so barrels of oil down through the stove opening. That amount should not have been enough to spread all the way here.
And yet there was still fire. It was still burning.
He suddenly recalled what he and the young officer had said earlier: the tunnel had been coated with oil by the Jinyang Army beforehand.
The flames here had not spread from the oil poured down through the stove opening. In the chaos, soldiers had knocked over their own torches, igniting the oil on the ground.
Clearly, the Jinyang Army had anticipated this possibility. The dozen or so barrels of oil poured down through the stove opening had mainly been intended to make the Ji Army panic and throw them into disorder.
And the Jinyang Army had succeeded.
They had panicked. They had fled blindly. They had trampled and killed one another. They had set the tunnel ablaze themselves!
He shouted, “Everyone, don’t panic! Make sure you hold on to the torches behind you. The fire can’t reach this far—”
But his voice was swallowed by the screams. No one paid him any attention.
Feeling the armor on his body grow hotter and hotter beneath the flames, even though the fire itself was not particularly fierce, his breathing became increasingly labored.
He forced himself to run a few more steps, but then he could go no farther. He had no choice but to stop and gasp for breath.
The deputy and the others beside him were all breathing heavily as well, struggling for air.
It seemed they could no longer breathe.
Before long, some began clawing at their own throats. Others painfully dragged their fingers along the tunnel walls, leaving behind deep scratches. Still others rolled and writhed on the ground, their mouths emitting roars like beasts.
Ji Cang felt like a fish thrown onto dry land. No matter how desperately he struggled, he could not breathe. The sensation of suffocation grew stronger and stronger.
With a thud, he collapsed to the ground, where the flames—though not fierce—caught on his clothing and hair.
His vision blurred. He struggled to raise his head and look toward the tunnel exit.
The tunnel was long.
So very long.
It seemed to have no end.
And he truly could not see the exit. All he could see was a long stretch of hellish fire and his companions writhing and wailing in agony on the ground.
He did not understand what was happening.
Why was this happening?
The fire was not that fierce, and the smoke was not that thick. Why, then, could none of them breathe?
Dongzhi was asking herself the same question.
“My lord, we didn’t pour enough oil into the tunnel to burn them all to death.”
Jiang Jin nodded. “That’s true. But once a fire starts, it needs oxygen.”
The tunnel had been designed with ventilation, but its capacity was limited. Air could enter and leave only very slowly.
When she had entered earlier, she had moved with great caution. She had not even dared to light too many torches, afraid of consuming the tunnel’s already limited oxygen.
As for the Ji Army, before the fire started, they had all felt short of breath but assumed it was simply because the tunnel was narrow. None of them had thought much of it.
Once the fire began, it rapidly consumed the oxygen inside the tunnel.
The tiny ventilation holes could not replenish the oxygen quickly enough to keep up with the rate of consumption.
So the death Jiang Jin had arranged for the Ji Army in the tunnel was not burning to death.
It was suffocation.
Dongzhi understood. She had paid close attention during Jiang Jin’s lessons and remembered that her lord had once explained air and oxygen to them.
In the courtyard, the illiterate Chu Qing looked worried. “What a shame. We didn’t spill much oil earlier. I’m afraid it won’t be enough to burn them to death.”
Nan Wen waved a hand. “They’ll die.”
Chu Qing was puzzled. “How so?”
As a poor student, Nan Wen naturally had no idea himself, but he could pretend otherwise. “It’s complicated. I’d rather not explain. Anyway, a great many of them will die.”
