The barbarian encampment, nestled in the long shadow of Baiyuan's towering walls, had barely changed in outward appearance after more than a month of siege and scattered skirmishes. The bonfires still flickered against the grey dawns, riders still rode out at first light, and tribal songs still echoed across the plains at dusk, haunting and proud—as though the world itself had not shifted one inch. But beneath this brittle illusion of routine, weariness had begun to carve its way into every face and every gesture. The horses looked thinner, their ribs more visible each day. The guards atop the perimeter watched with half-closed eyes, heads nodding against exhaustion.
The Khan saw it all. Every crack in the mask of strength. But he had not let doubt show. Not yet.
That morning, the Khan was deep within his command tent, surrounded by three grizzled tribal generals and two high-ranking officers from the puppet army. They were bent over a crude map, engaged in heated discussion about how best to keep pressure on the enemy's supply lines, when the tent's flap was thrown open with a sudden gust of wind.
A lone horseman stumbled in.
His body was caked in dust, his traveling cloak torn and fluttering like a ragged banner. His lips were split and parched, blood crusting at the corners from the northern wind's relentless bite. He dropped to his knees before anyone could speak. The silence that followed hit the tent like a thunderclap. It was a silence thick with dread, like the hush before a blade falls.
—"What is the meaning of this?"—one of the generals snapped, clearly annoyed at the intrusion.
The messenger slowly raised his head. His eyes were wide—not with exhaustion, but with something colder, something more primal.
Terror.
—"My Khan…" he rasped, his voice dry and hoarse as though scraped raw from shouting into wind and sand. "The imperial riders… they've entered the Great Grasslands."
No one moved. The words seemed to hang suspended in the air, unreal, as though they had come from the world of dreams—or nightmares.
—"What grasslands?" the Khan asked softly, yet his voice was taut as a drawn bowstring.
—"The northern ones," the man said, swallowing hard. "Our homeland… the tribal capital… is no more. The great tents… the sacred stores… the ancestral relics… everything… all of it—destroyed."
A chill passed through the tent like the whisper of a blade unsheathed.
The Khan rose slowly, like a mountain waking from centuries of slumber. Every muscle seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. No one dared speak. No one even breathed.
—"Are you telling me," muttered one of the puppet officers, his voice incredulous, "that fifty thousand imperial horsemen crossed the plains without being seen… and struck the heart of our territory?"
The messenger nodded, trembling now.
—"There was no coordinated resistance. They avoided the mid-sized settlements. Left nothing behind but smoke and ash. The western clan has vanished. No word from the southern clan. The center… went silent five nights ago. It's all gone. They burned the sacred stables. Smashed the totems. They even threw the stones of the council circle into the river."
A tribal general sprang to his feet, his face pale, twisted with disbelief.
—"Impossible! The capital isn't fixed! Even we cannot always find it when it moves. How could they…?"
—"Because they didn't search for it," the Khan murmured, his eyes on the fur mat beneath his feet. "They forced it into the open. They cornered the clans. One by one. Like fire chases shadows out of a cave… they lit the night on all sides."
No one replied. The weight in the air had grown unbearable. For the first time since the campaign began, the feeling in the tent was no longer tension.
It was fear.
The Khan stepped toward the table, toward the worn leather map spread across it. Wooden markers still indicated Shen Ruolin's lines at Baiyuan, the feints toward the south, the fictitious distractions to the west. But in the north… there was only emptiness. A blank expanse. Nothing at all.
—"Luo Wen…" the Khan said under his breath, almost with reluctant admiration. "He hasn't come to win a battle."
—"Then what has he come for?" one officer asked, voice low.
The Khan's gaze hardened.
—"He's come to erase us from the world."
The messenger still had more to say, but hesitated.
—"Speak," the Khan commanded, still staring at the void on the map.
—"It is said… no survivors were left. Not even the wells were spared. And the crows have fled, my Khan. As if even they know… there is no meat left for them to scavenge."
The silence that followed was complete. The Khan closed his eyes, if only for a moment, as though trying to gather the strength to absorb the truth.
The balance of the war had shifted.
While Shen Ruolin hammered at Baiyuan's gates, the force they had dismissed as a diversion had driven a blade straight through the heart of the steppe. This was not merely a strategic setback. It was a spiritual amputation—a wound struck deep into the very soul of the nomadic people.
—"Summon the war council," the Khan said at last, his voice devoid of its usual iron certainty.
And for the first time, the generals gave no shouts, no protests, no boasts.
They simply nodded.
Because each of them knew now, in their bones, that the end might be far closer than they had ever imagined.