The war in the third month had quietly entered the middle of its second month.
Only a month and a half remained before the deadline the Emperor of Great Sheng had given Prince Su.
The Prince Su army’s encampment stood solemnly on Yan Gui Plain.
This vast, desolate stretch of land where grassland met scrub had long been ambiguously divided between Great Sheng and the Northern Di. Both sides regarded it as their own territory. Helian Cang, the Northern Di commander-in-chief, had repeatedly dispatched cavalry to harass and drive out the Great Sheng troops, attempting to uproot the army that had driven itself like a nail into his heart.
Yet Prince Su refused to retreat. He would not give up even a single step of ground, nor would he recklessly engage the main force of the Cangyuan Khanate in a decisive battle. Like an enormous iron nail, he remained firmly wedged into Yan Gui Plain, weathering every storm while maintaining a stalemate that was almost suffocating.
That nail also pricked at the hearts of the commanders defending Duanyun Fortress, Baishui Pass, and Yanqi Ferry, leaving them deeply uncomfortable.
Before Baishui Pass, the flags of the two armies faced each other across the field. Small-scale probes and harassment continued day after day, and the spark that would ignite a major battle could flare at any moment. At Yanqi Ferry, meanwhile, the Northern Di were steadily concentrating their elite troops, heralding the violent storms to come.
Only Duanyun Fortress remained quiet, like a rock forgotten by the flames of war.
Within Duanyun Fortress lay enough grain and provisions to feed an army of a hundred thousand for five months.
The Northern Di had calculated everything with remarkable precision. As long as they held on to the fortress’s stores, they could simply wear Xiao Yuan down through attrition, slowly exhausting him on Yan Gui Plain despite the long journey he had made to reach it.
Xiao Yuan naturally understood this.
But he also understood something else: the granaries of Duanyun Fortress were not merely the Northern Di’s lifeline. They were also its shackles.
◇◆◇◆◇
The commander defending Duanyun Fortress was Chimu Han.
He was not a valiant general who had risen through bloody battles and slaughter. Instead, Helian Cang had personally promoted him as a key figure because of his expertise in managing tribal livestock, provisions, and logistics.
Chimu Han was meticulous by nature, with an almost pathological sensitivity to numbers and an obsessive devotion to accuracy.
He trusted ledgers, not rumors.
Every morning and evening, Chimu Han personally inspected the two enormous granaries that towered within Duanyun Fortress, accompanied by his guards.
Every entry into storage, every cartload issued, every bag lost to spoilage—he checked each one himself.
Recently, the number of wounded soldiers arriving from the front had increased, the consumption of injured horses had risen, and supply convoys from the rear had occasionally been delayed. Chimu Han keenly sensed the mounting pressure on the battlefield. As a result, he increased the frequency of inventory checks from twice a day to three times.
Helian Cang’s military orders to him were extremely simple: strengthen the defenses across the board, especially by doubling the manpower guarding the two granaries. Keep the grain convoys running, increase the number of men escorting them, and hold out through the remaining month and a half.
Chimu Han believed in these orders without the slightest doubt.
In his view, as long as Duanyun Fortress still had its grain, the Cangyuan Khanate was invincible in this war.
As long as the grain remains, there is nothing to fear.
That was the conviction etched into Chimu Han’s very bones.
Yet the smallest cracks often began spreading from the strongest foundations.
It happened on an ordinary morning.
As usual, Chimu Han arrived at the first granary.
A massive iron lock hung on the granary door, which was reinforced with thick plates of wrought iron.
He did not unlock it immediately. First, he examined the lock carefully, confirming that there were no visible marks of tampering and no damage to the lock cylinder.
Chimu Han took a long iron key from inside his robe and inserted it smoothly into the keyhole.
But halfway through turning it, his hand paused ever so slightly.
The sensation was almost imperceptible. The crisp, clean metallic click that usually accompanied the key’s movement had acquired a faint, sticky resistance.
Had he not opened this lock several times every day for the past three years, he would never have noticed.
Chimu Han’s eyes narrowed. He withdrew the key.
Caught between its teeth was a small smear of milky-white, translucent material.
He pressed it gently between his rough thumb and forefinger, rubbing it between them.
…Wax.
Chimu Han’s expression darkened instantly.
He immediately ordered someone to bring a torch, then personally crouched beside the door to examine the crack, keyhole, and hinges.
There were no marks of forced entry, no saw cuts, and not even any significant disturbance to the dust accumulated on the doorframe.
He pushed open the heavy door and entered the granary.
The rich scent of grain filled the dim storage chamber. Bags of grain were stacked neatly in towering piles, and the markings on them were perfectly aligned.
He inspected thirty bags at random. Not a single pound was missing; not one corner had been torn. The accounts matched the actual stock down to the smallest detail.
Standing in the middle of the granary, Chimu Han stared at the untouched mountain of grain, yet an inexplicable chill crept up his spine.
He knew locks extremely well. Anyone trying to break in could have attempted to pick the lock or make an impression of the key. But leaving behind this milky-white soft wax seemed almost deliberate, as though the intruder wanted him to discover it.
There could be only one conclusion: someone had tampered with the lock.
They had gone to the trouble of reaching it, taken nothing, and even deliberately left evidence behind. It was as if they were telling him:
I can tamper with your lock whenever I please.
That night, another anomaly appeared.
A deputy on night patrol discovered a trail of footprints in the muddy passageway on the eastern side of the granary.
It was not a place where ordinary patrol soldiers would walk. The footprints were faint and stopped about fifteen feet outside the granary wall.
Judging by their position and direction, the person had paused there quietly, observing the sentry posts around the granary and the blind spots beyond the reach of the torchlight.
The deputy reported the discovery with a grave expression.
“Sir, if the other side came to scout the area, they may have even figured out the gaps in our shift changes.”
That night, the garrison dispatched more than a hundred men to search the area. They confirmed that there were no signs of climbing on the wall, and the broken tiles laid along its top were completely undisturbed. The footprints eventually disappeared beside a drainage channel, where they met a stretch of hard stone paving.
The enemy had come, looked around, and then… left.
With a dark expression, Chimu Han ordered the patrol schedule changed from three rotating shifts to four, and doubled the number of sentries assigned to the late-night watch.
The following morning, signs of disturbance were discovered in the wooden fence behind the granary.
Someone had skillfully pulled the iron nails from a section of fence that had been firmly secured, then put everything back exactly as it had been. Fine traces of freshly disturbed soil lay beneath it.
Chimu Han immediately led his men inside the granary and searched for a full hour.
Once again, nothing was missing.
No grain had been taken. No bags had been torn. Not even a second set of footprints extended inside.
Yet Chimu Han’s heart sank lower and lower.
He spread out the defense map of Duanyun Fortress and marked each suspicious discovery: the tampered lock, the footprints outside the passageway, and the loosened fence.
The more he studied the map, the more cold sweat gathered in his palms.
All three anomalies had occurred with uncanny precision during the brief gaps between patrol shifts, in blind spots where the torchlight failed to reach for even half a breath.
The Cangyuan Khanate had fought Great Sheng for years. Chimu Han knew the Sheng army all too well.
In the past, Great Sheng’s troops had relied on formations and heavy armor, favoring direct, head-on clashes. Even when scouts went ahead to reconnoiter, their movements had left discernible traces.
But these infiltrators were entirely different.
There were no signs of aimless searching. Instead, they seemed to know the patrol routes and shift-change times of Duanyun Fortress inside out.
They were not searching for weaknesses. They already knew where the weaknesses were.
The chilling sensation of someone watching everything from the shadows made Chimu Han feel, for the first time, utterly powerless to catch his enemy.
It was almost as though an invisible pair of eyes had once hovered above Duanyun Fortress, looking down from on high and seeing every brick, every tile, and every movement with perfect clarity.
One night, a sentry stationed on the upper watch platform of Granary No. 2 was suddenly struck on the head by a hard object that seemed to come from nowhere.
“Enemy attack!” the sentry screamed before collapsing.
Duanyun Fortress erupted into chaos. Torches illuminated the night sky, archers drew their bows to full tension, and the clanging of armor rang through the air.
But when the military physician arrived, he found nothing more than a swollen lump and a bruise on the sentry’s head, along with a little blood.
After a lengthy search for the hidden weapon, the soldiers finally discovered that the object that had struck him was nothing more than an ordinary stream pebble.
No crossbow bolt. No poisoned needle. No killing blow.
The search party combed through three nearby watchtowers from top to bottom, yet failed to find even the shadow of another person.
The injured sentry sat on the ground trembling, his eyes filled with terror.
The fact that someone could strike him on the head with a pebble without making a sound meant that, had the projectile been an arrow dipped in a deadly poison, he would already be a corpse.
Yet the enemy had deliberately thrown only a pebble, allowing him to live.
Somehow, this was more tormenting than facing an enemy in open combat.
Clutching his head, the injured sentry stared into the darkness around him. He could not shake the feeling that behind every shadow untouched by torchlight, a pair of eyes was fixed intently upon him.
“They can see me… They know where I am. They know when I turn my head…” the sentry muttered, his voice growing increasingly hysterical.
This fear of being watched at all times spread among the garrison like a plague.
The enemy did not need to kill them. They only needed to keep proving one thing:
Whenever we want, we can come and go through every blind spot in your defenses.
At dawn, a sentry discovered an arrow planted in the ground directly in front of the granary’s main entrance.
It was not a standard arrow of the Cangyuan Khanate. Its arrowhead and fletching resembled those commonly used by the Great Sheng army.
It stood there all alone, dew dripping from its feathers.
The guards stared at the arrow in utter silence.
It was a wordless declaration:
I can come and go whenever I please. I can even plant a weapon right at your feet.
That night, the sounds began to spread.
At first, one guard heard the faint sound of a foot slipping on a roof tile. Then came a soft creak from a wooden plank outside the fence. Later, in the dead of night, came the crisp sound of small stones rolling down against the foot of a wall.
“Who’s there? Stop!”
Every time a sentry roared and rushed toward the sound with his blade drawn, the torchlight revealed nothing but the empty night wind.
They searched. Nothing.
They searched again. Still nothing.
Chimu Han stood on the raised platform, looking down at his exhausted soldiers, all of them on edge as though facing an imminent enemy attack. His gaze was cold as ice.
He was no fool. On the contrary, he was a man of considerable intelligence.
After enduring one bizarre incident after another, Chimu Han leaned against his desk, took a deep breath, and arrived at his own conclusion.
“This is a harassment tactic employed by the Great Sheng army.”
He gave his subordinates a cold laugh, his tone full of certainty.
“They simply lack the ability to infiltrate the granaries and sabotage them. If they really had the means to burn our grain or poison it, they would have done so on the first day. Why bother throwing pebbles and leaving arrows? These petty tricks are meant to provoke us, make us suspicious of everything, and cause us to lose our composure!”
The officers looked enlightened.
“Brilliantly judged, sir!”
“As long as we guard the granaries and refuse to fall for their tricks, they’ll have no options left!”
Chimu Han slammed his palm onto the desk and issued his orders in a sharp voice.
“Pass on my orders! Double the guards at the granaries again. Night patrols must not stop for even a moment. The full inventory must be checked three times a day, without exception. I will personally inspect every day’s grain shipments in and out of storage. Let them harass us all they want! As long as not a single bag of grain goes missing, I’d like to see what tricks they can possibly come up with!”
He knew that his task now was to steady the army’s morale, not to throw it into disarray himself.
As long as they could endure this final month and a half, and as long as he held the grain and Duanyun Fortress, victory would belong to the Northern Di.
Chimu Han’s orders were swiftly relayed.
The defenses of Duanyun Fortress were tightened to the absolute limit.
The system was rigorous. But the people responsible for carrying it out were living, breathing human beings.
The night shifts became increasingly frequent, and soldiers who should have been resting were continuously pulled away to guard the granaries.
Three daily inventory checks and two personal inspections of incoming and outgoing supplies deprived the logistics officers and guards of almost every opportunity to close their eyes.
Everyone spent the late hours of the night with their nerves stretched taut. Every rustle of wind or movement in the darkness made them suspect something was wrong. They feared a pebble might fly at them the next second—and feared even more that the next projectile would be a poisoned arrow.
The soldiers’ physical strength and mental endurance began to be worn away, inch by inch.
Once the garrison realized that the enemy could approach the granary locks without making a sound, pull nails from the fence, and even plant an arrow at their feet before escaping unharmed, a deeper suspicion began to grow quietly amid their extreme exhaustion.
If the enemy really can approach the granaries as though no one were guarding them… can the ledgers and seals Chimu Han checks so carefully really guarantee that the grain has not been tampered with?
Chimu Han insisted that the grain had not been damaged.
But could their crude methods of testing for poison and checking the accounts really protect them?
Once the seeds of doubt had been planted, they began to sprout on their own.
On one occasion, a sentry thought he glimpsed a dark shadow darting across the ridge of a roof on the eastern side of the granary late at night.
Duanyun Fortress erupted into chaos. Hundreds of soldiers drew their blades, raised their torches, and gave chase, searching from the granary all the way to the base of the city wall.
But the night was thick and dark. Apart from a broken dead branch near the wall, they found no concrete trace of another person.
No one knew whether there had really been an enemy or whether their taut nerves had conjured up an illusion.
Late that night, in the narrow passage beside the granaries, a veteran soldier of the Cangyuan Khanate stood holding a long spear. He had served in the army for seven years. His eyes were sunken, and bloodshot veins covered his eyeballs. For three consecutive nights, he had not managed a single uninterrupted stretch of sleep.
Suddenly, an extremely faint tap came from above his head.
The veteran’s pupils contracted. Almost by reflex, he drew the curved saber at his waist with a sharp shing and roared at the top of his lungs.
“Who’s there?! Show yourself!”
More than a dozen sentries nearby rushed over at the sound, startled like birds fleeing a bowstring. Dozens of curved blades gleamed coldly beneath the moonlight.
But when they brought their torches closer, they found nothing more than a scrap of cloth that the night wind had blown loose, causing it to slap against the wooden doorframe.
It had been a false alarm.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Someone shot the veteran an irritated look, muttered a few curses, and dispersed.
The veteran sheathed his saber and stood in the cold wind.
When he returned to the barracks, he lay on his bedroll and stared at the pitch-black ceiling. He could no longer fall asleep.
The next morning, the troops assembled for roll call.
Standing in formation, the veteran could not help opening his mouth and letting out a deep yawn.
No one paid any attention to it.
But throughout that day, around the granaries and among the patrols, yawns like his multiplied—from one to ten, then spreading further.
For three nights running, he had slept less than two shichen each night, and every so often he was jolted awake by some sudden, unexplained sound.
The guards’ eyes began to look weary, and their movements grew sluggish.
A few days later, soldiers began to fall ill inside Duanyun Fortress.
Under ordinary circumstances, this would not have been unusual. Illness and injury among troops stationed at the front were commonplace. But the timing was now extremely sensitive.
First, two cooks from the logistics camp suffered such severe diarrhea that they could not get out of bed. Then several wounded soldiers began vomiting and running fevers. After that, men from the patrols developed agonizing stomach pains and collapsed, writhing on the ground. One even fainted while standing upright.
One soldier claimed that his symptoms had begun after eating. He suspected that something was wrong with the grain.
Chimu Han was alarmed by the report and personally rushed into the barracks with the military physicians to examine the men.
The results came as a great relief: none of them had been poisoned.
The two cooks had drunk cold, dirty water from the bottom of a well because they had been careless about staying warm. The wounded soldiers’ fevers were caused by infected wounds. The patrolmen’s stomach pains were simply the result of gorging themselves on cold, hard meat pies after their late-night shift changes.
The man who had fainted had done so because of several consecutive days of sleep deprivation.
Chimu Han immediately punished those who had drunk unsafe water or eaten carelessly, then issued orders to dispel the rumors spreading through the army.
Everything had a reasonable, genuine explanation and had nothing to do with the grain in the granaries.
But fear linked these isolated cases together. Like an invisible miasma, it grew faster than anything else in the soil of exhaustion and dread.
“Have you heard? Someone in the Third Battalion ate a wheat cake and started vomiting blood…”
“What blood? I heard they ate the bran cakes issued last night, and their stomachs felt like they were on fire!”
“I knew that batch of grain was suspicious! Last time I carried a sack, I smelled something strange that I couldn’t quite identify…”
“Who saw it?”
“I don’t know. Everyone’s talking about it! They’re also saying that Lord Chimu Han goes to the granaries every single day. If there’s really nothing wrong, why does he keep inspecting them?”
“I heard a batch of poisoned grain has already been secretly replaced…”
“I’ve fought Great Sheng for ten years, and I’ve never seen them wage war like this!”
A centurion who had experienced several major battles gritted his teeth in the shadows, his voice edged with barely concealed agitation.
“In the past, if Great Sheng wanted to burn our grain, they set it on fire. If they wanted to raid a camp, they spilled blood. But this time? They’ve reached our granary doors and still haven’t set anything alight! They’re not in a hurry to fight us to the death. They want to drive us mad!”
The rumors, which had begun as a gentle breeze, rapidly turned into a raging gale. Each new version was stranger and more horrifying than the last.
Chimu Han was furious.
He knew the grain was absolutely fine because he inspected it every day, and the results of every spot check were recorded in black and white in the ledgers.
To prevent the army’s morale from collapsing, he issued a ruthless military order:
“Anyone who spreads rumors that the grain is poisoned will receive thirty strokes of the rod and be expelled from the army. The person who started the rumor will be executed!”
At the same time, to eliminate everyone’s doubts once and for all, Chimu Han began an almost frenzied series of inspections.
Every day, he took men with him to examine dozens of sacks of grain at random, opening them in front of witnesses. He compared every incoming shipment against the records and every day’s consumption. He even went personally to the wounded soldiers’ quarters and the kitchens to inspect every pot of cooked rice porridge.
The accounts balanced.
No grain was missing.
There was no poison and no widespread outbreak of disease.
Chimu Han had proven his innocence with hard facts.
But he overlooked the most fatal thing of all.
The soldiers stood at a distance, watching Chimu Han enter and leave the granaries every day with a large retinue of personal guards. They watched sack after sack of grain being opened and sewn shut again. They watched as military physicians were summoned daily to investigate which batches of grain the sick had eaten.
Questions inevitably arose in their minds.
If there’s really nothing wrong with the grain… why is the commander inspecting it so obsessively?
If he has nothing to hide… why won’t he let people discuss it, and why does he threaten to execute anyone who speaks out?
Why are the military physicians constantly being sent to ask the sick which batch of grain they ate?
The more openly Chimu Han tried to prove that the grain was safe, the more his actions looked like a guilty man trying to cover something up in the eyes of the frightened soldiers.
This panic traveled inevitably along the supply wagons and reached the front line at Baishui Pass.
The commander defending Baishui Pass, Tuoba Lie, was locked in a tense standoff with Pei Yi, a renowned Great Sheng general.
More than half the provisions for the tens of thousands of troops inside Baishui Pass depended on deliveries from Duanyun Fortress.
When rumors that “something was wrong with the grain at Duanyun Fortress” reached Tuoba Lie, he could no longer sit still.
He dared not take the risk.
If Baishui Pass ran out of grain—or if the grain proved unsafe—it would become a shield that starved its own defenders to death.
That afternoon, a convoy of grain wagons from Duanyun Fortress arrived at the gates of Baishui Pass.
Tuoba Lie personally came down from the ramparts to conduct a spot check, his expression grim.
A guard took a long iron probe and thrust it forcefully into the first sack of grain.
When he pulled it out, golden wheat kernels spilled onto the ground. Everything looked normal.
The second sack was normal.
The third sack was normal.
Tuoba Lie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when the guard drove the probe into the fourth sack.
When he pulled out the iron probe, the kernels clinging to it carried a faint musty smell. Upon closer inspection, they discovered a small amount of clumped, moldy grain at the bottom of the sack.
Further examination confirmed that the wagon had simply been caught in a sudden thunderstorm during transport. A small hole in its canopy had allowed rainwater to seep in, dampening the grain at the bottom and causing it to mold.
It was neither poisoning nor widespread spoilage.
Yet as Tuoba Lie stared at the handful of musty kernels, his face darkened like a stagnant pool.
“Seal your lips!” he barked. “Anyone who leaks a single word about what happened today will be dealt with under military law!”
He then issued another order:
“From today onward, thirty percent of every grain shipment from Duanyun Fortress must be randomly inspected before it is allowed through the pass!”
With that order, the logistical nightmare began.
The guards untied the mouths of the grain sacks and inserted long sampling probes deep into them to collect grain from the bottom.
A convoy that could previously complete the handover in half a shichen now had to wait in a long line outside the pass.
The rate at which grain entered the fortress fell by more than half.
Distribution was delayed. The kitchens could not obtain the grain they had been expecting, and meals for the soldiers at the front were repeatedly postponed.
The grain had not disappeared. But now, even when it arrived, it could not be used immediately.
The entire operation at Baishui Pass became like a gear mechanism clogged with sand, grinding with an increasingly shrill and painful noise.
Just as this oppressive atmosphere reached its breaking point, another “gift” had already arrived.
For three full days, the supply route was unusually quiet.
There was no harassment, no water damage, and no obstruction. The grain convoys traveled smoothly and without incident.
The Northern Di officers even began to relax, thinking that the previous disturbances had been nothing more than false alarms.
On the fourth day, Baishui Pass conducted its routine inspection of the sacks.
When a soldier sliced open a newly arrived sack of rice with his knife, everyone nearby held their breath.
The top layer of rice was covered in a fine, snow-white powder.
“Poison! It’s poisoned!” someone screamed.
Chaos erupted at the checkpoint. Everyone present had heard the cry, and they crowded around to look.
Before long, Tuoba Lie arrived with his men. He had the sack tightly sealed off and summoned both the army’s physicians and its shamans.
The physician took some of the powder, rubbing and sniffing it. He mixed it with water for comparison and even tasted a little himself.
Half a shichen later, the physician looked up with a strange expression and reported to Tuoba Lie.
“My lord… this isn’t poison.”
“Then what is it?!” Tuoba Lie demanded.
“It’s… it’s flour.”
The physician wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
“Just ordinary fine flour, ground from wheat. Someone spread it over the top layer of the rice in the sack. It’s completely harmless. In fact… it can even be eaten.”
In theory, they only needed to scoop away the layer of flour, and the grain underneath could be eaten normally.
Once the grain had been confirmed safe, Tuoba Lie ordered the sack carried into the granary in the cooking camp.
The Cangyuan Khanate had suffered through three years of famine in the past. That bitter experience made him absolutely unwilling to waste even a single grain of food.
Grain in the army was not freely available for soldiers to take as they pleased. Instead, it was distributed according to a strict accounting and rationing system.
Every evening, the grain officer in the cooking camp worked with the ten-household heads appointed by each hundred-man unit. They weighed and measured the provisions according to the number of men, scooping the allotted rice into the hemp sacks belonging to each squad.
At dusk, the low blast of a horn signaled the distribution of grain. Dozens of ten-household heads lined up with their sacks while the grain officer used a wooden scoop to open the bags in order, weigh the grain, and distribute the rations.
But when the line reached the sack of “flour-covered grain,” something strange happened.
The sack stood right at the outer edge, in the most convenient position to reach. Yet the grain officer’s arm paused almost imperceptibly in midair.
He said nothing. He simply bypassed that sack as naturally as if it were not there, reaching instead for an old sack behind it that was already nearly empty.
The ten-household head waiting for his ration watched coldly without saying a word. He silently moved his own sack forward and accepted the old grain from behind.
The several men waiting behind him also held their breath. Not one of them suggested that the grain officer should scoop from the full sack at the front first.
Partway through the distribution, a newly assigned grain officer who did not know what was going on reached for that sack without thinking.
The face of the ten-household head standing opposite him changed instantly. Almost instinctively, he reached out and pressed down on the mouth of his own sack, lowering his voice.
“Brother, use another sack.”
The grain officer froze. He looked up and saw the cold, uneasy wariness in the ten-household head’s eyes. His heart gave a jolt, and he immediately understood that something was wrong.
He asked no questions. Silently, he moved the wooden scoop away and used the neighboring sack instead.
One sack after another was emptied, scraped clean at the bottom, and turned over.
Only the sack of grain that the military physician had officially declared “unpoisoned” stood alone in the most conspicuous position in the granary, still full to the brim and gleaming in the light.
It was like a corpse radiating pestilence, quietly ostracized by the army’s tightly controlled rationing system through a tacit agreement that no one dared acknowledge.
There was no shouting and no riot.
Everything even followed the army’s usual, dull, orderly rationing procedures to the letter.
Yet it was precisely this unspoken, army-wide act of deliberately ignoring the sack that made the atmosphere more suffocating than any uproar could have.
Trust was collapsing.
Tuoba Lie stood in the shadows outside the granary, silently watching the “good grain” that every grain officer and ten-household head was desperate to avoid. His expression was so dark it seemed water might drip from it.
The military physician had tested it in public. It was indeed nothing more than ordinary flour, harmless and safe.
Yet throughout the entire day, hundreds of ten-household heads had come to collect their units’ rations in accordance with military regulations. They would rather give the soldiers under their command half a scoop less of old rice than dare to include that sack in the day’s distribution.
If the fear at Duanyun Fortress was that the grain might have been tampered with, then the fear that had reached Baishui Pass was far more deadly:
Who could guarantee that the grain being delivered had not been tampered with?
Tuoba Lie closed his eyes, feeling confronted by a problem unlike any he had faced before.
For years, the Cangyuan Khanate had studied Great Sheng’s formations and military deployments. He had even laid traps outside Baishui Pass specifically designed to counter Great Sheng’s heavy infantry and heavy cavalry.
He had believed this war would be a brutal meat grinder of attack and defense.
He had believed that he understood Great Sheng well enough.
But he had been wrong.
The enemy had neither burned the grain wagons nor poisoned anyone. Yet with a few sacks of damp, moldy grain and one sack of flour used to create a false alarm, they had forced Baishui Pass to inspect thirty percent of every incoming shipment.
A handover that had once taken half a shichen now consumed most of a day outside the pass. The kitchens could not obtain their expected supplies, and meals for the soldiers on the front line were repeatedly delayed.
Not a single grain had gone missing, yet the efficiency of the entire logistics operation was being strangled by persistent suspicion.
The Great Sheng commander on the other side had never intended to waste troops attacking sturdy walls and fortified granaries.
The army’s way of fighting had changed completely. It was precise and patient, like an invisible surgical blade. Instead of severing the Cangyuan Khanate’s supply lines directly, it had cut with precision into the entire army’s trust in its own food.
Without sacrificing a single soldier or using a single drop of poison, it had transformed mountains of provisions into something everyone suspected.
And the harder the senior officers tried to prove that the grain was safe, the more their efforts resembled a desperate attempt to conceal the truth.
They were not destroying the grain.
They were destroying the army’s ability to trust.
Over the following days, an extremely strange psychological phenomenon emerged inside both Duanyun Fortress and Baishui Pass.
In one barracks, a soldier suddenly developed a stomachache.
In the past, his comrades would have asked, “Did you catch a chill last night?” or “Was the water you drank not boiled properly?”
Now, their first reaction was to take a step back and eye him warily.
“Which batch of grain did you eat today? Which granary did it come from?”
Soon, everyone in the barracks would be asking their companions:
“Do you feel unwell? Did the rice you ate taste right?”
Private discussions could no longer be suppressed.
“If the grain really is fine, why did the officers order people to keep quiet?”
“If there’s really nothing wrong, why does Baishui Pass have to pierce every sack to inspect it?”
“Does the command actually know that the grain has been laced with a slow-acting poison, but they’re afraid to tell us and want us to die on the battlefield?”
The soldiers began to pick through their grain.
When food was distributed, they fought over the portions that looked plump and fresh. Anything slightly yellowed or unusually hard was something many would rather throw away than swallow.
After all, the commander himself had said that there was plenty of grain.
An even more serious phenomenon emerged: hoarding.
Some veteran soldiers began secretly saving their issued dry rations, hiding them beneath their straw bedding.
They were not hoarding out of greed. They were acting on a desperate instinct to survive.
What if the grain really is unsafe one day? Or what if the command suddenly stops issuing rations? At least I’ll have enough to survive for another three days.
The practice of hoarding spread like wildfire. Even cooks in the logistics camps and drivers transporting the grain began quietly setting aside supplies along the way.
All of this eventually developed into the nightmare Chimu Han feared most.
Late at night, in the commander’s quarters at Duanyun Fortress, Chimu Han stared at the latest inventory ledger presented by his subordinates. His vision went dark, and he nearly fainted.
The accounts were beginning to diverge.
It was not because the enemy had raided the supply convoys, nor because a granary had caught fire.
A convoy might collect five hundred sacks of grain, yet arrive at Baishui Pass with only four hundred and eighty-three to hand over.
Some drivers, afraid that the front line might run out of food, had secretly kept two sacks beneath their carts for their own protection.
Some guards had damaged sacks and spilled grain while repeatedly opening them for inspections.
Even veteran soldiers in the lower ranks had begun hiding their issued hard cakes beneath their straw bedding.
Some hoarded supplies out of fear. Others took more than their share because they were suspicious. Some exploited the confusion to exaggerate losses. And when logistics officers discovered how chaotic things had become, a few began secretly embezzling grain to sell for profit.
For a man like Chimu Han, who trusted only numbers, discrepancies in the accounts were more unbearable than an enemy attack.
The ledgers he had once taken such pride in had now deteriorated into a complete mess.
“Investigate! …Investigate everything!”
He issued the order in a harsh voice and personally led his men to seize drivers who had withheld grain and punish veteran soldiers who had hoarded dry rations.
Beneath one veteran’s straw bedding, they found two dried, hard cakes.
The old soldier knelt on the floor, lowering his head as he spoke hoarsely.
“My lord, I wasn’t trying to steal… I was just afraid the command might suddenly stop issuing food one day. I wanted to keep enough to survive.”
He had lived through famine before. He did not want to experience that terror again.
Chimu Han remained silent for a moment. In the end, his face still dark with anger, he ordered the cakes confiscated and the veteran given ten strokes in accordance with military regulations.
He arrested the corrupt officials and beat the soldiers who hoarded food.
But with every hidden ration he uncovered and every soldier he severely punished, the wariness and alienation in the eyes of those around him deepened.
To the soldiers, the command was acting out of guilt, seizing the last provisions they had to protect themselves.
From that moment on, whenever Chimu Han passed by, the soldiers instinctively avoided meeting his eyes.
Chimu Han sank into a state of exhaustion unlike anything he had experienced before.
Every morning when he opened his eyes, he was no longer thinking about how to defeat Xiao Yuan, or whether Xiao Yuan would attack.
Instead, he faced endless discrepancies in the ledgers, an endless stream of hidden provisions to uncover, and rumors that could never be fully dispelled.
He had not lost to the enemy’s blades.
He had been brought to a standstill by the very web of controls he had strengthened with his own hands.
At the same time, Tuoba Lie at Baishui Pass was also being pushed beyond his limits.
Pei Yi seemed to have an uncanny grasp of his rhythm.
Whenever grain inspections threw the logistics into confusion and left the garrison exhausted, Pei Yi would launch a small probing attack.
The war drums would suddenly thunder. The Great Sheng troops would put on a show of overwhelming force, compelling Tuoba Lie to lead his weary defenders up onto the walls and prepare for battle.
Tuoba Lie had to deal with the military pressure outside the city while also managing the growing resentment among his own soldiers over the delays in food distribution.
He had lost a considerable amount of weight, and his usually steady temperament had begun to fray into irritability.
The grain reserves at Duanyun Fortress still lay piled high. During this period of chaos, some had silently been consumed, but on the surface there was still more than enough to sustain an army of a hundred thousand through the end of the war.
Yet this enormous stockpile, rather than becoming the resource that would allow the Cangyuan Khanate to exhaust Xiao Yuan, had turned into a shackle around the neck of its own army.
From beginning to end, the Su Guards had not burned a single grain of food or poisoned anything.
They had merely given the first gentle push.
Everything that followed had been carried out perfectly by the Cangyuan Khanate’s own suspicions, fears, systems, and greed.
The supplies were still there, but the logistics machine that had once run smoothly was beginning to seize up, inch by inch.
◆◇◆◇◆
Late at night on Yan Gui Plain, inside Prince Su’s military camp, a faint light glowed from the oil lamp in the central command tent.
Outside, the wind howled against the tent walls. From time to time, the measured, steady footsteps of the night patrol passed by.
Xia Lanshi wore a brand-new spring outfit in frosty white that gradually shaded into purple aster. Seated before the desk, he lightly plucked the strings of his guzheng with slender fingertips.
The cool, clear notes flowed through the tent like crystalline water, soothing the atmosphere thick with the violence of war.
Whenever he accompanied Xiao Yuan to the battlefield, he brought his guzheng with him. Occasionally, he would play at night, as though it were a kind of ritual.
The music drifted beyond the tent.
The night patrol soldiers heard it, and their tense shoulders relaxed a little.
Over the past few nights, an unspoken understanding had formed throughout the camp:
As long as they could hear Lord Xia, the Chief Secretary, playing his guzheng, they knew nothing serious had happened in the command tent that day.
Xiao Yuan still wore his black armor. Sitting sideways beside the desk, he carefully read the various secret reports that had arrived from the front, illuminated by the lamplight.
The tent flap was gently lifted, and Chi Banyue slipped inside wearing a night outfit, bringing with her the cool dew of the night.
She reported in a low voice, “Your Highness.”
Xiao Yuan did not look up.
“Speak.”
A mischievous glint flashed through Chi Banyue’s eyes, though she tried to keep her voice composed.
“At Duanyun Fortress, Chimu Han launched a major search after discrepancies appeared in the accounts. They uncovered a considerable amount of dry rations secretly hoarded by soldiers and executed three storehouse officers for embezzlement. The entire fortress is now in a state of anxiety as everyone scrambles to verify the ledgers.”
“At Baishui Pass, Tuoba Lie has ordered random inspections of thirty percent of every grain shipment. The supply wagons are lining up outside the pass, and by noon today, the kitchens at the front had delayed serving meals by an entire shichen. The logistics officers and the garrison soldiers even got into a confrontation.”
She could barely suppress her smile.
Watching the Su Guards having so much “fun” with their work, even she was tempted to join their ranks. But as the commander of the covert guard battalion, she had different responsibilities.
“The accounts at Duanyun Fortress no longer add up.”
After finishing her report, Chi Banyue let out a small breath.
She had followed Xiao Yuan for many years and witnessed countless major battles in which flesh and blood flew everywhere, yet she had never seen warfare conducted like this.
No rivers of blood. No headlong charges.
With nothing more than a few smears of soft wax, a pebble, an arrow from Great Sheng, and a sack of flour, they had thrown the Northern Di’s proud logistics system into a grinding halt.
Chi Banyue could not help raising her head to look at Xiao Yuan.
“Your Highness… how far do you intend for the Su Guards to take this? Do you want the Northern Di to become completely convinced that their grain is poisoned?”
Xiao Yuan finished reading the last secret report in his hands and casually tossed it into the brazier beside him.
The flames swallowed the report in an instant, illuminating his sharply defined, cold and stern features.
Xia Lanshi finished his piece. His fingers curled slightly against the strings, and the music fell silent.
Xiao Yuan slowly raised his head. His eyes were as dark as the night, and he spoke calmly.
“There’s no need to take it to any particular extreme.”
His deep voice gradually spread through the quiet command tent.
“They only need to think about it every time they lift a bowl of food… and wonder whether the grain is safe to eat.”
The faintest curve appeared at the corner of Xia Lanshi’s mouth.
His fingers fell upon the strings once more.
The clear, high-pitched notes rang out again, like a sharp blade slicing through the pitch-black night over Yan Gui Plain.
The new special unit under Xiao Yuan’s command had received its secret orders some time ago.
The orders given to the Su Guards had never been to set fire to the grain, much less to poison it foolishly.
In addition to his original position as captain of the headhunting unit, He Chongshan had now been formally appointed commander of the Su Guards.
The secret order he received from Prince Su was extremely brief. It consisted of just six vaguely worded characters:
“Make them doubt their grain.”
At the time, He Chongshan had not asked a single question. Instead, a bloodthirsty yet shrewd smile had spread across his face.
That day, inside the Su Guards’ camp, a topographical map of Duanyun Fortress lay spread across the desk. It had been obtained earlier by the covert guard battalion, along with a timetable detailing patrol routes and sentry shift changes, as well as several pieces of highly classified information personally handed to them by Prince Su.
Several unit captains gathered around the desk.
They did not debate the overall direction of the strategy. Instead, they immediately divided up the work according to the blind spots in the sentry posts and the gaps between patrols.
Their objective was crystal clear:
Not a single grain burned. Not a single drop of poison used.
In the first stage, all they needed to do was drive one invisible needle of suspicion after another into the area surrounding the granaries the enemy valued most.
The Cangyuan Khanate still had plenty of grain stored in its granaries.
But the logistics lifeline that had once flowed smoothly was already becoming obstructed, inch by inch.