The guards hurried to stop him. “General, it’s dangerous inside. Why not let us go in and scout it out first?”
Hu Zuo shook his head. “It’s fine. I won’t go too far in.”
The guards had no choice. Several of them immediately raised their torches and led the way inside.
Hu Zuo followed behind them.
Just as the soldiers had reported, breathing became more difficult the farther they went. Even Hu Zuo, with his exceptionally strong constitution, began to feel short of breath.
The group pressed on a little farther. At last, they saw a faint light in the distance—a torch that had fallen to the ground, its flames mingling with the fire on the floor as it slowly burned and illuminated the passage.
The light was too dim to make out much. They could only vaguely see several bodies lying on the ground.
Hu Zuo was about to continue forward when one of the guards stopped him, gasping for breath. “General, we can’t go any farther. If we keep going, we may not make it back out.”
Hu Zuo was panting as well. A powerful feeling of suffocation made his chest heave continuously.
He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, his expression had returned to calm. Though unwilling, he quickly ordered, “Fall back!”
After leaving the tunnel, Hu Zuo gulped down fresh air. It took quite some time before his breathing finally steadied and he felt as though he had come back to life.
At that moment, his deputy hurried over to report. “General, only a little over four thousand men made it out of the passage.”
Hu Zuo’s vision went dark. Although he had roughly estimated the number when the soldiers first emerged from the tunnel, he still found it difficult to bear once he heard the exact figure.
Twenty thousand soldiers had entered the tunnel, and they had lost fifteen or sixteen thousand of them without accomplishing anything at all?!
The deputy continued, “General Ji Cang didn’t make it out. We don’t know whether he’s still in the tunnel or was killed after entering Wenxia City.”
This time, Hu Zuo not only felt his vision darken, but also suffered a splitting headache. His breathing, which had only just become smooth again, grew labored once more.
After a long while, he finally gave the order in a hoarse voice. “Leave five thousand men here to guard the place. The rest will return with me.”
“Everyone who came out of the tunnel will return with me,” he added.
The deputy acknowledged the order. “Yes, General!”
Hu Zuo glanced at him and reminded him, “Remember, no one is to enter the tunnel again without my orders.”
Inside the tent, Bian Huai sat with his eyes closed, lightly tapping his fingers against the table.
After a while, he rose and walked out of the tent. Looking toward Wenxia City, which remained utterly still in the distance, he felt a vague sense of unease.
“Have we received any news from the tunnel?”
Shi Ju followed at his side, wearing an equally worried expression. “No.”
“Report! General Hu Zuo has returned!” a soldier hurried over to announce.
Bian Huai’s heart tightened. “Quickly, bring him here.”
Before long, Hu Zuo strode over. “Great General.”
Seeing the look on his face, Bian Huai felt an even stronger sense of foreboding. “How did it go?”
Hu Zuo lowered his voice. “There was a trap in the tunnel. We lost more than ten thousand soldiers.”
Bian Huai nearly choked. “What about the Jinyang Army? How many of them did you kill? Why hasn’t Ji Cang returned?”
Hu Zuo pressed his lips together, his voice filled with unwillingness and helplessness. “General Ji didn’t make it back. We have no idea what the situation is like farther inside the tunnel.”
In other words, they had lost more than ten thousand men and one of their generals, yet had learned nothing at all about the Jinyang Army’s situation?
The Jinyang Army had occupied Wenxia City only a day ago, yet the Ji army had already lost nearly forty thousand soldiers!
“What exactly happened?” Shi Ju demanded.
Bian Huai led the way into the tent. “Come in and tell us.”
Not long afterward, a cry of alarm rang out from inside the tent.
“Divine punishment!”
Shi Ju stared at Hu Zuo in disbelief. “You’re saying it was divine punishment?”
Hu Zuo’s expression was solemn. “According to the soldiers who escaped, the people inside died in extreme agony, their bodies twisted into grotesque shapes.”
“As for what happened farther in, no one knows, because no one made it back out.”
As he spoke, he couldn’t help recalling what he had seen and experienced after entering the tunnel himself. “I went in to investigate as well. The farther in I went, the harder it became to breathe, as if someone were strangling me.”
Shi Ju frowned. “Could the ventilation shafts have been blocked?”
Hu Zuo shook his head. “No. Besides, there wasn’t just one ventilation shaft. The tunnel stretches a great distance, so there must be countless shafts along the way. It would be impossible for all of them to have been blocked.”
“Moreover, nothing happened when our men first entered. The phenomenon only began later.”
The military commander Chong Weng hesitantly asked, “Could the Jinyang Army have used some kind of poison?”
Hu Zuo shook his head. “It wasn’t poison. When I entered the tunnel, apart from the smoke, all I could smell was burning cloth.”
There had also been the smell of roasted meat, but he didn’t mention that.
Shi Ju fell into thought. “The tunnel is so long. It would be difficult to use poison there.”
Bian Huai remained silent. After a long while, he sighed. “Have Bao Yi return.”
In Wenxia City, inside the courtyard where the tunnel entrance was located, Nan Wen and several others sat beneath the eaves, talking.
“I really want to go down there and see how the Ji army is doing!” Nan Wen said excitedly.
Chu Qing tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Our lord said to wait until dawn. Otherwise, we might not be able to come back up.”
Nan Wen was only talking. If he were actually told to go down there now, he wouldn’t dare do it. He might not have been particularly clever, but he had one great virtue: he listened.
He glanced at Chu Qing and Wei Tai. “I’ll stay here and keep watch. You two go back and rest.”
Wei Tai had injured his arm, and they had originally forbidden him from taking part in tonight’s operation. However, he had been adamant, insisting that he had to participate in every operation in Wenxia City.
Everyone understood how he felt, so they had agreed.
Chu Qing shook his head. “I’ve had enough rest. You two go back.”
Nan Wen was helpless. “Your constitution has been badly depleted. You should rest more. Otherwise, how will you accompany our lord on campaigns to conquer the world in the future?”
Chu Qing frowned. “Have you misunderstood something? These days, I don’t necessarily need a bed to sleep. I can sleep standing up, sitting down, or squatting. So as long as you stop talking, I can fall asleep immediately.”
Nan Wen fell silent.
So it was all his fault, was it?
The following morning, as the sky began to brighten, Jiang Jin was having breakfast with her eldest nephew while Dongzhi reported nearby.
“Last night, we wiped out more than fifteen thousand soldiers from the Ji army. About eleven thousand of them were in the tunnel.”
Jiang Jin sounded somewhat regretful. “That’s fewer than I expected.”
The tunnel stretched for more than ten li in total and could conceal tens of thousands of soldiers.
They had only killed a little over ten thousand, which meant the Ji army had entered in sparse numbers and had been relatively cautious.
Dongzhi, however, gazed at Jiang Jin with boundless admiration. With just over a dozen barrels of oil, she had trapped and killed more than ten thousand soldiers from the Ji army, as well as one of its generals. Such a feat was unmatched!
“My lord, can these corpses be sold for money too? Should we haul them back into the city?”
Jiang Jin smiled. “Naturally. Let them come and haul away their own dead. We only need to load the corpses from inside the city onto carts. And remember to recover the arrows.”
Dongzhi acknowledged the order. “Don’t worry, my lord. We’ve already pulled out all the arrows. As for the clothes, armor, weapons, and other equipment worn by the Ji soldiers, Young General Chu said to send them away stark naked. We shouldn’t even leave them their loincloths.”
Jiang Jin was speechless for a moment. “…That’s a good idea.”
Young General Chu, the man credited with such a good idea, was extremely excited at that moment. Although Nan Wen said the loincloths were completely unnecessary, Chu Qing insisted.
“They can still be worn after washing. They’re made of cloth, after all. If nothing else, they can be burned as torches.”
Then he added regretfully, “We were in too much of a hurry yesterday. We should have taken the loincloths off the corpses too. There were twenty or thirty thousand of them.”
Nan Wen was speechless.
As someone who had once been desperately poor, he thought he was already frugal enough. Compared with Chu Qing, however, he still had a long way to go.
Wei Tai didn’t care much about that. He looked toward the slowly rising dawn, his face full of anticipation. “What do you think our lord will do with the Ji army today?”
Nan Wen secretly rolled his eyes. “Our lord is kindhearted. How could he possibly do anything to the Ji army? He always wins people over with virtue.”
