The gorge was a wound in the earth, a jagged, thousand-foot-deep chasm of black rock and frozen waterfalls. The wind howled through it, a mournful, hungry sound, carrying with it a constant, blinding spray of ice and snow. This was the "impassable" barrier that Colonel Jiao had chosen for Meng Tian's test, and it was here that the White Foxes were making their desperate bid for freedom.
Their escape route was a nightmare made real. A single, massive pine tree, a giant felled by some ancient storm, spanned the chasm. Its trunk, wider than a man was tall, was coated in a thick, treacherous shell of ice, offering precarious and uncertain footing. This was the path Meng Tian had "seen," their only hope of slipping through the Russian cordon.
Meng Tian led from the front, his every movement a study in unnatural grace. He placed his feet with an unnerving certainty, his Battle Sense feeding him a constant stream of silent information about the terrain beneath the ice. He could feel the solid heartwood of the log, sense the subtle vibrations that betrayed a weak spot, anticipate the gusts of wind a split second before they struck. He was a tightrope walker in a hurricane, guided by a sixth sense.
Behind him, his men followed, their faces grim masks of concentration, their knuckles white where they gripped their rifles for balance. Each step was a life-or-death gamble.
Close behind Meng Tian, so close the general could feel the man's cold presence, was Colonel Jiao. The commissar was also a skilled soldier, his balance sure, but his focus was not on the path. His eyes were fixed on Meng Tian's back. He watched the general's effortless, preternatural movements. He saw Meng Tian shift his weight to avoid a patch of rotten ice a moment before it cracked. He saw him duck his head an instant before a gust of wind sent a shower of sharp ice shards cascading down from the cliff face. Jiao was not seeing the skill of a master soldier. He was seeing a stream of minor miracles. He was seeing irrefutable proof of the divine gift at work, and his cold, fanatical heart hardened with a terrible certainty.
They were halfway across, ghosts moving through the heart of the storm, when disaster struck. A loose rock, dislodged by the wind from the cliff face far above, clattered down the gorge wall. It was a small sound, but in the vast, windy silence, it was enough.
A shout echoed from the clifftop they were heading towards. A Russian patrol, hunkered down for shelter, had heard the noise. A half-dozen figures appeared against the gray sky, their rifles already raised.
The first shots erupted, the crack of the rifles sharp and violent. Bullets sparked off the rock face around them, whining and ricocheting through the gorge. The patrol was firing blind into the storm, but the White Foxes were now exposed, trapped on their icy bridge, a perfect target.
Panic, the great enemy of discipline, flared. A young soldier just behind Meng Tian, startled by a bullet that whizzed past his ear, cried out and lost his footing. His arms windmilled wildly as he slid off the curved edge of the log, his body dangling over the abyss, his only purchase a desperate, one-handed grip on his rifle, which another soldier had managed to grab.
Meng Tian reacted instantly. Without a thought for his own safety, he spun around, lunging to grab the falling soldier's outstretched hand. He caught him, his fingers clamping around the young man's wrist like a steel vise. But the soldier's weight and momentum, combined with the slick ice, threw Meng Tian violently off balance.
He slipped. His left leg slid off the log, slamming down with his full weight against a sharp, jagged outcrop of rock hidden just beneath the surface of the snow.
A wet, crunching sound, sickeningly loud even over the gunfire and the wind, echoed in the immediate vicinity.
A wave of pure, white-hot agony exploded up Meng Tian's leg. It was a pain so absolute, so blinding, that it dwarfed everything else. The world dissolved into a smear of white snow and black rock. His Battle Sense, the cool, clear stream of strategic data that was the core of his being, was not just disrupted by the pain; it was shattered. The perfect, clear path forward in his mind vanished, replaced by a roaring, confusing static of his own agony. The whispers of the battlefield were drowned out by the screaming of his own nerves. For the first time in his life, his gift had utterly failed him. He was blind. He was crippled. He was just a man in unbearable pain.
"Get him across!" Major Han roared, his voice cutting through the chaos. Two soldiers grabbed their wounded commander, half-dragging, half-carrying him the last few terrifying yards to the safety of the far cliff edge. The rest of the unit provided covering fire, their superior swords deflecting the clumsy bayonet thrusts of the few Russian soldiers who scrambled down to meet them.
They made it. They scrambled into the cover of the rocks on the far side of the gorge, leaving the Russian patrol firing uselessly into the swirling snow. They had crossed the impassable gorge. They had escaped the net.
But their miracle had come at a devastating price.
Meng Tian lay on the frozen ground, his face pale and beaded with sweat, his jaw clenched against the waves of agony radiating from his shattered leg. His men huddled around him, their faces a mixture of relief and deep, fearful concern for their commander.
Colonel Jiao pushed his way through them. He stood over the wounded general, looking down not with sympathy or concern, but with the cold, detached gaze of a scientist observing a failed experiment. He saw the mangled leg. He saw the sweat of agony on Meng Tian's face. He saw the weakness, the vulnerability.
His power failed him, Jiao thought, his suspicion confirmed in a new and far more damning way. He could not foresee the rockfall. He could not save himself from injury. The divine gift is impure. The vessel is flawed. Unreliable.
The commissar's fanatical mind saw this not as a tragic accident of war, but as a sign from heaven. Meng Tian was not just a heretic for hiding his power. He was a failed heretic, an abomination who possessed the Emperor's divine gift but lacked the strength and perfection to wield it properly. Such a being could not be allowed to exist.
He knelt beside Meng Tian, a look of false concern on his face. "A terrible injury, Chief Strategist," he said, his voice smooth and solicitous. "We must find you shelter and medical aid at once. You have saved us all."
As he spoke, his eyes held a cold, reptilian light. The White Fox unit had escaped the Russian army only to be trapped in the vast, frozen wilderness with a crippled commander. And their greatest threat was no longer the Cossacks hunting them, but the smiling fanatic who now believed it was his sacred, holy duty to purge the unclean from the ranks of the divine.