The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

The people from the Left Wise King's tribe arrived at dusk.

As they rolled down the north slope, the horses' hooves pounded the frozen ground with a dull thud, like rows of drumsticks taking turns striking the same old drum.

The scout walked at the front, dismounted, squatted on the ridge and glanced towards the valley, then turned back and gestured to those behind him.

Pressing down with the palm facing down means "stop".

The group behind immediately reined in their horses.

Hundreds of people stood quietly on the ridge, neither moving nor snorting, only the wind making the corners of the flags flutter gently.

The scout sniffed the valley again, his brow furrowing.

Another scout beside him leaned over, and the two whispered something. Then the one in front stood up, trotted to Altan's horse, and said in a low voice, "Commander, the smell of blood in the wind is wrong, it's too strong."

He paused, as if searching for a less horrifying way to put it, "It's as thick as if the whole river is soaked in blood."

Altan did not speak.

He straightened up from his horse, raised his chin to signal the scout to lead the way, and then urged his horse to follow, slowly making his way down the slope.

A dozen or so guards followed behind him, their hooves making a very soft sound.

After walking about a mile further, they saw the first corpse.

It was a boy, half a child, lying face up in the snow, with a deep gash torn in his chest, the skin and flesh rolled up, and the edges showing an abnormal grayish-white color.

His eyes were still staring at the sky, his pupils dilated, as if he had seen something he could not understand at all in his last moments before death.

A thin layer of snow had settled on his face, covering his eyebrows and lips, but his eyes were still visible, like two old lenses frozen in snow, reflecting the last bit of gray light in the twilight.

Altan glanced at the child from his horse and reined in his horse.

He didn't get down; he just looked down for a few moments, then looked away and continued forward.

The horse's eyes were open, just like the child's.

Then, the entire valley.

The ground was littered with corpses lying haphazardly.

Some of them still maintained the posture of releasing arrows.

The bow was still clutched in his hand, his arm half-raised, the arrow nocked on the string, but the bowstring was loose, and the arrow tip was stuck in the snow.

Some huddled together, their backs arched high, their hands covering their heads and faces, as if they were trying to protect something in their last moments before death.

Looking deeper into the valley, several felt tents were still emitting wisps of smoke, the smoke as thin as a censer burning to its end, half-submerged in the night sky and disappearing.

The yurt was surrounded by the carcasses of sheep, a vast expanse of white, each one frozen into a small white mound in the snow, either in a running or curled-up position.

Altan rode slowly, making his way through the piles of corpses.

His horse was steady, its hooves swerving around the outstretched arms and scattered weapons as if it knew the way.

Altan remained seated on his horse in the same position, but as he looked around, the expression on his face grew colder and colder.

From the initial solemnity, to a suppressed tremor along the way, to finally, when he reined in his horse and stopped in front of the ruins of the felt tent, only a very thin layer of cold hardness remained on his face, worn by the wind for a long time.

He was in his early forties, which was neither old nor young on the grasslands.

He was one of the few nomadic grassland nobles who would carry books with him at all times.

His saddlebag always contained a worn-out scroll of the "Book of the Earth," along with a few pages of agricultural books copied from the border of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

In his youth, he had been to the border of the Great Zhou Dynasty and seen the cities and documents of the Han people. He had studied Chinese characters for several months with an old Confucian scholar outside Yanmen Pass. Although his writing was crooked, it was enough for him to understand the notices on the customs documents.

He knew better than most people on the grassland which way the wind would blow, and he could also sense a different flavor in tonight's massacre.

He dismounted, tossed the reins to his personal guards, and walked slowly through the pile of corpses.

The soles of the boots crunched on the frozen snow, a sound that was particularly clear in the silent valley, as if counting something step by step.

He walked to the body of a young Qiyan warrior, squatted down and looked at him—the man was lying on his side, still clutching half a broken sword in his hand, the blood on the sword frozen into icicles, which gleamed with a dark red matte light in the twilight.

Altan reached out and gently pulled the broken knife from his hand, set it aside, and continued walking.

After walking a dozen steps, he suddenly stopped.

He saw an arm.

An arm, torn off at the shoulder joint, lay stuck in the frozen ground, like a withered branch carelessly planted.

The fingertips of that arm pointed upwards, clutching a small handful of arrows, with sections of the shafts peeking out from between the fingers, like a bundle of undelivered messages.

Altan crouched down and carefully scratched between the fingers of that hand with his fingernails.

His fingers were frozen stiff, as hard as wood. He pried one, two, three apart and took the small handful of arrows out of his palm.

The arrows were the triangular iron arrows commonly used by the Qiyan tribe, with several strands of wolf skin wrapped around the shaft and a thin mark engraved near the arrowhead.

That was a mark of the Qiyan tribe, indicating that the arrow had been used to hunt wolves.

Altan held it in his hand, his fingertips slowly tracing the engravings, as if touching the palm lines of someone who would never have the chance to speak.

He held the arrow for a long time before straightening up, tucking it into his belt, and muttering softly, almost to himself, "Too late."

Behind him, the generals and several tribal chiefs also dismounted.

Some people began to count the corpses, turning over those bodies that were half-buried in the snow, and estimating the number of people who died in battle.

Some people went into the smoldering felt tents to rummage for anything usable, and came out carrying several blankets that were half-burnt and an iron pot that hadn't been completely burned.

A scout came running back from the depths of the valley, panting heavily. Before even reining in his horse, he shouted from his saddle, "Commander! The only survivors in the ravine are women and children, piled up behind several carts. Most are still breathing, but they're terribly frozen, and a few have already fainted!"

Altan immediately turned around: "Have someone take the dry rations and fur coats from the cart over there, and make some fires. Don't move them yet. Old Wuzhu, take two people to check on the wounds."

Old Wuzhu responded, took a leather bag off his horse containing several rolls of herbs and a roll of bandage, and led two young soldiers quickly toward the depths of the valley.

His legs were a little lame, and he walked with an uneven gait, but his steps were not slow.

A while later, another scout returned from the other side of the battlefield.

His expression was even uglier than before. When he walked up to Altan, he didn't even bother to clasp his hands in greeting, and went straight to saying, "Commander, some of our men have recognized several strange corpses."

"take me."

The scout led him around several burnt-down felt tents and to a corner of the battlefield.

The bodies there were clearly different from those elsewhere.

A dozen or so corpses, all wrapped in black, lay scattered on the ground. Some were lying face down, some were lying on their backs, and some were curled up in strange arcs on their sides.

They were wrapped from head to toe in blood-soaked burlap, the surface of which had been frozen into a hard shell. The exposed flesh at the cracks was not the normal grayish-blue color, but rather the almost pitch-black color of something that had been soaked for a long time.

Some of the bodies still had talisman ash sealed around their mouths and noses. The talisman paper was sewn between the lips and nostrils with coarse thread, and some of it had already fallen off halfway, revealing the dark holes in the mouths underneath.

They lay quietly in the snow, motionless, but their stillness was different from that of the other corpses around them.

Even in death, the bodies of those soldiers still retained the relaxed and limp form of human figures. Yet, even when these things lay on the ground, they seemed ready to stand up again at any moment, their body lines taut and every joint taut.

Altan crouched down and looked at the chest of one of the bodies.

Beneath the burlap, a faint pattern was visible, like a mark left on the skin by something. He used the tip of his knife to pry open a piece of burlap, and there was indeed a dark pattern on the exposed skin, like a curled vine, or some kind of simplified totem.

He put the burlap back on, stood up, patted the snow and mud off his hands, his brow still furrowed.

That very night, after returning to the camp, Altan convened a meeting of the high-ranking officials of the Left Wise King's tribe.

The large tent was pitched behind a sheltered slope, its roof secured with several thick wooden stakes. The wind seeped in through the gaps in the tent flaps, carrying snowflakes and the lingering stench of blood.

The fire in the hearth burned fiercely, and the pine wood occasionally crackled and popped, casting a warm yellow light on everyone's faces, but the people sitting around did not look too good.

Altan sat in the main seat.

He drew the three-edged arrows from his belt, slammed them on the low table in front of him, and spoke without any preamble, cutting through all formalities like a knife: "You've all seen what happened in the valley."

His gaze swept across the room from left to right, pausing briefly on each face: "The Xiutu tribe swallowed the Qiyan tribe; there are traitors mixed in with Agula's people."

He's always been straightforward, and he was even more so now.

An elderly chieftain stood nearby.

It was that limping old man from earlier who had returned after examining the wounded. He was sitting by the fire pit and picked up the conversation: "Commander, I saw that thing once when I was young."

"Back then, I was patrolling the northern border with the old commander when we encountered a group of merchants fleeing from the west. They said they had encountered a kind of living corpse on the road that they couldn't kill no matter how hard they tried."

"Later, an old shaman told us that it was called a Yin Corpse, something that emerged at the end of the Great Qian Dynasty along with the incense burner of the Longevity Cult. It could withstand arrows, did not bleed, and became more and more insane the more it was attacked."

He paused, twirled his tuft of white beard, and lowered his voice by half an octave, as if afraid of disturbing something if he spoke too loudly, "The older generation called them 'yin corpses,' an old method of the Longevity Cult, created by raising living people."

"I never expected it to reappear hundreds of years later. I thought that thing had been buried in the ground along with the last emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty."

His voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the room felt a chill run down their spines.

Several people unconsciously moved closer to the fire pit, as if being closer to the fire could drive away some invisible force.

A young general named Yilu could no longer contain himself.

He was only in his early twenties and was the most capable charging rider in the Left Wise King's army. He had several old scars on the back of his hands from his scimitar, and his temperament was as swift as his blade.

He slammed his hand on the low table in front of him, sending two specks of ashes flying from the hearth. His voice boomed like a gong: "So what! Agula is using those demons to devour tribes, are we just going to stand by and watch? On the grasslands, whoever is strong gets to rule first. Today he devours Qiyan, tomorrow it'll be our turn!"

He grew more and more agitated as he spoke, leaning slightly forward, his eyes gleaming like burning resin. "Why don't we strike first and burn those ghosts to the ground!"

He spoke passionately, but someone on the other end sneered.

He was a chieftain in his forties, surnamed Bu, with fair skin. He was in charge of horse administration in the tribe and always spoke slowly and deliberately: "You make it sound so easy. How do we fight it? Our bows and arrows can't penetrate that thing, and our knives feel like they're cutting stone."

"You say burn it, but there are thousands of living riders blocking its way. How are you going to get around those people and deliver the fire to the ghost? If you run a mile through the fire, someone can shoot you off your horse with a single arrow."

He took a sip of his tea and added slowly, "If you're going to burn something, you have to know what it's afraid of first."

Yilu was unconvinced and wanted to argue further, but Altan stopped him by raising his hand.

The hand pressed down in mid-air, as if pressing something back into place.

Yilu glanced at Altan, swallowed the words he was about to say, and sat back down in his seat, but his fingers were still tapping on his knee, revealing his barely suppressed irritation.

Altan stirred the firewood in the hearth.

The pine log was turned over after being moved, revealing the dark red embers underneath. The flames jumped upwards, making his eye sockets appear even deeper.

He put the fire tongs back in their place and shifted his gaze from the fire to Old Wuzhu's face: "Old Wuzhu, what else do you know? Tell me all at once."

Old Wuzhu stroked his gray beard, as if he were going through those old memories again in his mind.

The firelight shone on his face, which was etched with the lines of time and frost, making every wrinkle clearly visible.

He finally sighed, his voice slightly deeper than before: "The things of the Longevity Sect are afraid of extremely yang things, fire, cinnabar, and the righteous energy of scholars. When those things encounter these three things, it's like snow hitting boiling water; they just can't stand up."

"But on our grasslands, who has literary talent? Who has cinnabar? We do have fire, but we need to get close enough to kill it. The corpses are surrounded by living riders, and those riders aren't afraid of fire."

He paused, his cloudy old eyes suddenly brightening in the firelight, like a dusty pebble being wiped clean, revealing a sliver of light: "If we're talking about the appearance of Yin Corpses, it's indeed difficult for our Left Wise King's tribe alone, but the people of the grasslands should never rely solely on themselves."

He raised his eyes and looked at Altan.

His gaze was no longer as clouded as before; instead, it possessed a bright sharpness honed by years of experience: "Commander, what about the Great Zhou?"

After these words were spoken, the tent fell silent.

The wood in the hearth popped with a "crack," sparks flew out and landed on the charcoal ash, and then the fire went dark again.

Some people looked disdainful, while others seemed thoughtful.

Yilu frowned, clearly disapproving of the idea of ​​"finding Han people," but he had already been suppressed by Altan once, so he did not speak up immediately this time.

The headman surnamed Bu put down his teacup and looked at Old Wuzhu thoughtfully, as if weighing the weight of the suggestion in his mind.

Altan slowly turned the firewood he was using to stir the fire, without answering immediately.

He certainly understood what Lao Wuzhu meant.

The emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty had been using the Northern Army to suppress the grasslands. The beacon towers and sentry towers on the border were like rows of nails, stretching from Yanmen Pass all the way to Yunzhong.

But right now, the ghosts of the Longevity Cult and the Xiu Tu Tribe are the ones who truly devour people.

After they've finished off the Qiyan tribe, it's only a matter of time before the Zuoxianwang tribe or the Hunxiewang tribe comes next.

The Great Zhou Dynasty fought with the grasslands for three hundred years, but in those three hundred years, no monsters that could turn the dead into weapons ever appeared on the grasslands.

He slowly began to speak.

The voice wasn't loud, but every word was like a block of iron pulled from a fire and left to cool; its surface showed no heat, but you could tell it was heavy the moment you touched it: "If the Great Zhou knew about this incident on the grasslands, they would only want to bite us even more."

"All those cities they've built in the North over the years are just waiting for us to descend into chaos first, but if we don't tell them..."

He lifted his gaze from the fire pit and looked into the eyes of everyone in the tent. "Once Agula has swallowed up half the grassland, they might not be able to bite through it even if they wanted to."

"What they will see then is a tidal wave of undead corpses pushing through Yanmen Pass. No matter how high the walls of the Great Zhou are, they cannot stop things that cannot die."

He abruptly changed the subject, placing the piece of firewood back on the edge of the hearth, his voice regaining its decisive and efficient tone: "But don't make a decision tonight. First, send someone to the border of the Great Zhou to sound them out, see if they know anything about the Longevity Sect. Don't tell them too much, just ask one question: 'If the Yin Corpses appear, will you fight them?'"

He then turned to a clerk beside him and said, "Send another letter to the Hunxie King's tribe, telling them that the Qiyan tribe is gone, and where Agula will go next. Let them figure it out themselves, before they regret it when the fire reaches their doorstep."

As he spoke, he stood up. He had been sitting for too long, and his knees bent slightly before he straightened up.

He walked to the tent entrance and lifted a corner of it.

The snow outside had stopped, and moonlight shone through the dispersed clouds, illuminating the open field outside the camp with a blinding white light.

The newly erected felt tents gleamed a warm, greyish-white in the moonlight, and the distant hills were outlined with a slender silver edge by the moonlight.

He gazed at the moonlight, as if looking towards a more distant place.

The bright white snowfield stretched all the way to the horizon, merging with the night sky, making it impossible to distinguish where the ground ended and the sky began.

He stood there for a long time.

It wasn't until someone coughed softly behind him that he snapped out of his daze.

He lowered the curtain, turned around, and walked back to his seat, but did not sit down.

He stood beside the fire pit, the firelight shining down on his face and clearly outlining the lines of his jaw.

"The grasslands are about to change." His voice was very low, so low that it seemed he was talking to himself.

Then he raised his voice slightly, so everyone in the tent could hear him clearly, "Those who want to live, put away your prejudices, Han Chinese or ghosts alike..."

He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping evenly across each face. "We have to talk as long as it prevents our children from dying in the snow."

His voice was low, but every word pierced everyone's heart like a knife.

No one spoke again in the tent.

Yi Lu lowered his head, and finally stopped tapping.

The headman surnamed Bu picked up the bowl of cooled tea, took another sip, and swallowed it. His Adam's apple bobbed as he did so, but he said nothing.

Old Wuzhu sat leaning against the fire pit, his eyes half-closed as if he were dozing off, but the slight downward curve at the corner of his mouth had loosened and become a straight line.

A gust of wind blew in through the gaps in the tent roof, causing the flames to flicker.

The light flickered on everyone's face, like a lamp being slowly turned in a dark room.

Outside the window, the snow on the grassland has stopped.

The snow covered the dark red ice shells, the open eyes, the broken arrows stuck in the frozen soil, and the torn arms, pressing all the traces into a flat white expanse.

But the peace on the grassland never returned.

Altan stood there, watching the last piece of pine wood in the hearth that hadn't yet burned out, watching the flames on it slowly die down.

Finally, it extinguished into a dark red dot of charcoal, lying quietly in the ashes, still emitting a faint light.