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

Chawu's tent was not far from the main tent, separated only by two rows of felt tents and a snow track that had been trampled down.

A fire was burning inside the tent, a mixture of sheep dung and dry branches. The flames were small but steady, leaving a ring of charred marks on the smoke vents at the top of the tent.

Several captains sat cross-legged around a half-charred lamb leg, its fat dripping and sizzling on the fire, but no one touched it.

Outside, the wind and snow were fierce, but inside the tent it was warm, though the atmosphere was as heavy as if it had been soaked in ice water, so oppressive that it wouldn't melt away.

Some people held wine bowls but didn't drink, while others drew their daggers and then put them back in, the blades scraping against the edge of the leather sheaths with a soft, rustling sound, as if keeping time for the silence.

Chawu sat closest to the fire, the blade of the short knife in his hand still stained with half-dried oil.

That was left over from when he was cutting the meat; he hadn't wiped it off.

He poked at the lamb leg with the tip of his knife, flipped it over, and turned it so that the charred side was facing down.

Then he suddenly spoke, his voice low, as if talking to the fire: "The sheep is still the same sheep, and the meat hasn't changed."

He sheathed the knife, rubbed the oil off the blade on his boot, and said, "It just has an added stench of corpses."

A commander named Wule was tilting his head back and chugging wine.

He was burly, with two eyebrows that met in one line, like a strip of black felt pasted across the middle of his forehead.

Upon hearing Chawu's words, his wine bowl stopped in mid-air, and his tilted neck did not immediately lower. He swallowed the wine in his mouth.

Then he slammed the bowl down on the felt mat in front of his knees, wiped his mouth, and said in a muffled voice, like a pile of damp firewood pressed together: "We're people who grew up on horseback, following our fathers since childhood to chase gazelles, intercept caravans, and seize pastures. When did a bunch of inhuman bastards get the right to point fingers at us?"

He slapped his thigh, the palm hitting his leather pants with a dull thud. "Three hundred living people today, what do you want tomorrow? A blood sacrifice of our people?"

As he finished speaking, his gaze unconsciously shifted slightly towards the direction of the tent flap, as if to confirm that no one was standing in that direction.

Wuliang, who was next to him, picked up the conversation.

Wuliang was the youngest commander of ten thousand men in the entire Xiutu tribe, only twenty-six years old, his face roughened by the north wind.

But his eyes hadn't been dulled yet; they held a unique youthful gleam, as if something was slowly crushing them.

He drew his scimitar from its sheath, not pointing it at anyone, but simply planting the tip in the ground, making the blade stand upright in front of him like a silent landmark.

His voice wasn't loud, but every word was laced with the force of broken teeth: "The king has changed. Before, he led us to seize pastures; now he leads us..."

He paused, as if searching for a way to articulate the feeling, "Serving as a follower of ghosts... Last time I patrolled the border, a newly recruited Tiele cavalryman asked me, 'Are we fighting alongside the king, or are we raising ghosts with those robed men?' I couldn't answer."

Chawu remained silent.

He listened to what Wule and Wuliang were saying, and watched as the surface of the half-lamb leg in the fire shrank slightly in the heat.

He picked up the knife, cut off a slice from the thickest part of the lamb leg, and put it in his mouth to chew slowly.

The meat was overcooked, with coarse and tough fibers, and he chewed it for a while before swallowing it.

Then he looked up and scanned the crowd, his gaze moving from Wule's face to Wuliang's face, and then to the faces of the other commanders.

Looking at them one by one, it was like taking stock of a squad of soldiers that one knew one would eventually lead out.

"What's the point of saying all this?" His voice lowered, so low that only those sitting around the fire could hear him. "Those three thousand ghosts outside the tent aren't for us to see, they're for everyone to see."

"The king placed those things in the most open area of ​​the camp, and did not cover them with black cloth during the day, leaving them standing there."

"We can see it when we go out on patrol, the herders transporting grain can see it, and the newly recruited soldiers can see it too. It's for all of us to see."

He put down the knife, wiped the grease from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, "You all heard it in the tent today: three hundred prisoners will be our food in three days, and after that..."

He paused, letting that pause make his next words even more weighty, "Then it's our turn."

His voice wasn't loud, but it made everyone in the tent simultaneously grit their teeth.

Some people put the small knife they were holding back into its sheath, some straightened their crooked backs, and some stared at the lamb leg that was being turned over and over in the fire, as if waiting for it to give an answer.

The fire crackled a few times, as if trying to catch their breath.

Meanwhile, at the Longevity Cult altar on the other side of the camp, the atmosphere was completely different.

The altar was twice as wide as an ordinary tent, and its four sides were covered with dark banners embroidered with twisted runes in silver thread, resembling clumps of withered branches disturbed by the wind.

In the center stood a bronze mirror, its surface polished to a shine, reflecting the dark gray light filtering through the tent ceiling.

The Yin Protector changed into a dark robe, without any silver thread, so plain it was almost solemn.

He was sitting in front of a bronze mirror, with two obsequious disciples wiping his hands.

Those two hands were as white as ice, with long, slender fingers and neatly trimmed nails, like carefully maintained utensils.

One disciple carried warm water, while another dipped a fine linen cloth in the water and began wiping the area inch by inch, starting from the fingertips, with extremely light movements, as if wiping something fragile.

The ghost protector huddled on a prayer mat to the side, his dark green robe piled on the ground like a heap of old clothes.

He coughed twice inside his robe, the sound muffled and broken, like a bird trapped in a wooden box fluttering about.

He suddenly spoke in a hoarse voice, without looking up, his voice from under his hood like sandpaper slowly scraping against sheet metal: "Those Chagwu men, they drank tonight."

Yin Protector didn't even raise his eyes.

His gaze remained fixed on his reflection in the bronze mirror, watching the two pale and thin faces mirror each other.

His voice was unhurried, as if he were discussing something he had long anticipated: "Let them drink, a few stray dogs on the riverbank..."

He tilted his head slightly, as if seeing something interesting in a mirror, and said, "You dare talk about the grasslands?"

His hands, after being wiped with fine linen, gleamed with a warm, white light, like two pieces of jade that had been nurtured in water for a long time.

The Ghost Protector chuckled softly.

The laughter came from inside the robe, short and hoarse, like the sound of air being squeezed out from the crack of a broken bellows: "Among them, Chawu is at the peak of the seventh rank, that Wule is just barely at the seventh rank, and the rest are nothing more than footholds among the seventh rank."

He paused, then coughed halfway through, "If things really come to a head, the royal guards in the king's tent can keep them in check. But the problem isn't today; the problem is that the fire in their hearts hasn't been extinguished. It's been suppressed, but things that have been suppressed for too long will eventually boil over."

Protector Yin raised his hand, signaling his disciple to stop.

The two disciples bowed and stepped back two paces, standing to the side with their hands at their sides.

He stood up, slowly walked to the entrance of the altar, and raised his hand to lift the curtain.

It was pitch black outside, with only a few gas lamps flickering in the snow in the distance. Thin ice had formed on the lampshades, and the light shining through was refracted by the ice into blurry orange halos.

Most of the tents in the camp were already dark, with only the main tent still lit up by a sliver of light, like an eye that hadn't yet fallen asleep.

He stared into the darkness, then suddenly spoke, his voice soft, as if talking to himself: "I remember those two palm strikes from Guo Pu and Li Chunfeng in Yunzhou last year."

His voice carried a chill, like a stream of water that hadn't quite frozen solid beneath the ice, slowly flowing in the shadows.

The ghost protector's laughter stopped.

He shifted slightly inside his robe, like a startled animal turning over.

Protector Yin continued, his voice still low: "That was the first time I stepped into the border of the Great Zhou. I wanted to explore the ways of the literary cultivators there, but I ran into two people."

"When Guo Pu's palm struck down, I took three steps back. When Li Chunfeng struck again, I used seventy percent of my strength to deflect it. At that time, I was a seventh-rank cultivator."

He lowered the tent flap, turned around, and looked at his reflection in the bronze mirror inside the tent. A slight, almost imperceptible smile curved his lips. "Now, if I were to encounter them again, an eighth-rank versus a seventh-rank, I'd like to see if they could escape unscathed like last time."

When he said the words "eighth rank," his sleeves moved slightly even though there was no wind.

It wasn't a big commotion, like a very light breeze that drifted in through the tent entrance and then dissipated.

But the oil lamps in the tent went out for a moment at the same time.

The flame dipped and then bounced back up, as if an invisible hand had pressed down on the wick and then released it.

The two disciples standing to the side kept their heads down, not daring to look up.

The ghost protector narrowed his eyes from within his robes and did not respond.

The nonchalant expression on his face beneath his hood faded, replaced by a more careful look, as if he were reassessing the person.

In the darkest corner of the altar, the Dharma Protector of the Underworld sat for a long time.

The spot where he sat was almost completely dark, making him look like a rooted stone embedded in the shadows.

Just now, when the Yin Protector's sleeves vibrated, his body also moved slightly, the movement was so small that it was like a mountain moving half an inch deep into the earth's crust.

Then he forced out a sentence from deep in his throat, his voice rough, like gravel being crushed against an iron plate: "After the great sacrifice, I too will need to move around."

These words came out of nowhere, but the Ghost Protector shrank his neck in his robe upon hearing them.

He knew what "making a move" meant to the Underworld Protector.

The last time this person "made a move," he crushed a seventh-rank peak prisoner into a lump of scrap metal on the spot, leaving not even a few intact bones.

Further away, a lamp was still lit in Li Shuo's tent.

His tent was slightly more elaborate than those of the centurions, with a newly laid cashmere carpet and a tea set and a brass oil lamp on the table.

He was writing a letter at his desk, the pen moving steadily across the paper with almost no unnecessary pauses, as if he were copying something he had already prepared in his mind.

The letter was short; he wrote half a page and then stopped, leaving it on the table to dry completely.

He leaned against the cushion, holding the string of black jade beads in his hand, counting them one by one. The beads slid between his fingers, feeling cool to the touch.

The letter was addressed to Jinyang. It was short, just a few lines, but each line seemed to have been weighed repeatedly before being placed down.

After he finished writing, he dried the letter by the candlelight. The flame licked the edge of the paper before he moved it away, without burning the paper, leaving only a very faint scorch mark on the edge.

When he was sealing the paint, his finger paused for a moment at the seal.

The seal was dark red, pressed against the seam of the folded letter, like a half-dried old scab.

He was certainly aware of his family's plans.

Young Master Li Shaoyuan was imprisoned in the Heavenly Prison by Qin Wu. The Li family members who remained in the public eye in the capital were scattered and fled by Zhou Qian's fire. Even the teahouse that delivered messages for the Yang family was sealed off by the Zhenwu Division.

If he didn't ignite an even bigger fire in the northern border, how would his cousin Li Chongxi have had the opportunity to make trouble outside the imperial prison?

Once this fire is lit, everyone in the court will be drawn to the war in the north.

At that time, the imperial prison in the capital, the documents of the Ministry of Justice, and the confession in Qin Wu's hands would all be temporarily set aside.

And setting it aside is exactly what Li Chongxi wants.

Thinking of this, he slowly folded the letter and handed it to the assassin waiting outside the tent.

The assassin stood in the wind and snow, his whole body wrapped in a gray cloak, almost blending into the night.

As Li Shuo handed over the letter, he whispered, "It must be delivered to Jinyang within three days. If it's intercepted on the way..."

He glanced at the assassin, "Leave neither the man nor the message alive."

The assassin didn't answer, but simply nodded slightly, tucked the letter into his pocket, and turned to disappear into the snowstorm.

His footsteps quickly faded into the snow, like a pebble sinking into deep water, leaving only a ripple that soon disappeared.

Li Shuo returned to his desk and sat down, picking up the string of black jade beads again and slowly counting them.

When he counted to the seventh bead, he suddenly paused, held the bead up to his eyes, and examined it in the light of the oil lamp.

Inside the bead is a fine, dark line, as thin as a hair, which, when illuminated, resembles a crack sealed within glass.

He looked at them for a while, then put the beads back in his palm and continued counting.

When he was halfway through counting, he suddenly chuckled softly, as if he were talking to himself: "Agula, the Longevity Cult, a few resentful commanders, and us noble families."

"Everyone is scheming against each other, yet they are forced to sit under the same tent."

He picked out the patterned bead, examined it, and then put it back. "This grassland is much more interesting than the capital. In the capital, knives are hidden in sleeves, but on the grassland, a knife is held directly to one's neck. No one will write an urgent memorial before taking action."

He put the black jade bead back on the table, got up and walked to the door of the tent, lifting a corner of it.

The wind and snow rushed in through the cracks, hitting his face and blowing his hair back.

He squinted and looked in the direction of the main tent in the distance.

The lights in the large tent were still on, and a few thin, orange streaks of light peeked out from the gaps in the thick felt, falling on the snow like a cut-off road.

In the distance, a small cluster of green light flashed briefly in the direction of the row of black cloth tents at the edge of the camp, then dimmed again, like a half-open eye blinking.

He lowered the curtain, turned around and walked back to the table, and blew out the oil lamp.

In the darkness, he sat there motionless, as if listening to the faint, continuous sound of the wind passing through the tent.

The sound was like a long thread being slowly pulled out from a certain direction in the north.

The candlelight flickered, and in its last moment before going out, it illuminated half of his face, making the other half dark, just like everyone else in the camp.

Each harbored their own secrets and concealed their own dangers, waiting only for the first bugle call to sound from the direction of Black Wolf Mountain five days later.

The wind had picked up, pressing in from the north, as if trying to expose everything hidden under the snow to the elements.

The snow fell heavier, pattering against the felt of the tent with a dense rustling sound, like countless fine needles simultaneously sewing an invisible curtain.