Black Blood Stockade frontline command headquarters.
A top-secret piece of intelligence was delivered to Patriarch Lin Cang's desk.
The wax seal was intact, the concealed marks all present. After cross-verification by veterans of the Military Intelligence Hall, it had been judged credible.
Lin Cang broke open the wax seal, his gaze sweeping across the fly-head-sized characters, his brows gradually relaxing.
The intelligence showed that within an abandoned mine cave less than twenty li from the defensive line, the White Bone alliance had secretly stored a batch of upper-stage supplies just plundered from outer resource points.
Moreover, in order to avoid drawing notice and being detected by Black Blood Stockade's spies, the guard force for this batch of supplies had been deliberately compressed to the absolute minimum — fewer than ten Rank 1 Gu Masters and two Rank 2 middle stage cultivators responsible for keeping watch.
This was very nearly a piece of fat meat no one would refuse.
After repeatedly verifying the authenticity of the intelligence, Lin Cang most decisively made his decision.
He assigned this mission directly to Lin Feng's squad — currently the highest-flying on the front lines, holding the very top of the Military Merit Board.
This was both an expression of absolute trust in this spearhead squad's combat strength, and a layer of far deeper consideration: the battlefield needed a totem.
Lin Xingyuan's A-grade aptitude was dazzling, to be sure, but he had not yet truly set foot on the front lines.
Lin Feng, on the other hand, had already proven himself in blood and fire with the heads of his enemies.
Letting Lin Feng's squad devour this fat meat and continue to widen its lead in military merit would plant the totem banner of the "Twin Prodigies of Black Blood" higher and more firmly still,
so that when those weary lower-ranking Gu Masters on the front lines raised their heads, they could always see a sun to follow.
It was a fine move.
Yet when this mission briefing passed through Lin Feng's hands and was handed over to Lin Mu, an exceedingly strong sense of wrongness flashed, most keenly, across the depths of those eyes as black as a deep pool.
Too reasonable.
Lin Mu's fingertips gently and slowly rubbed the corner of the intelligence report, while round after round of deduction ran through his mind.
Weak guards. The timing just right. Extremely close to our own defensive line — which meant the retreat path was exceedingly convenient, and if anything changed, rear support forces could arrive within half a shichen.
The ratio of guard configuration to the value of the supplies seemed logically sound — to conceal this batch of supplies, the White Bone alliance indeed would not dare station too many hands, for fear of drawing attention.
But it was precisely this flawless reasonableness that made him uneasy.
He leafed through the intelligence's attachments once more. Every item fit together seamlessly.
Every item told him: this intelligence was genuine. The supplies in the abandoned mine cave truly existed. And the guard configuration was indeed as weak as the intelligence described.
He had even confirmed one other matter from Lin Feng's mouth: less than fifteen li from the outer edge of that mine cave, there happened to be a Black Blood Stockade rear-support squadron stationed — the instant a distress signal was sent out, reinforcements could arrive in an extremely short time.
So this is simply a piece of fat meat — a gap in the enemy's defenses that opened up because their battle line is stretched thin.
After repeated calculation, Lin Mu's brows finally, slowly, unfurled.
He had ruled out excessive worry. At least within the boundaries of the known information, the risk of this sortie was entirely controllable.
But there was one single point his calculations had missed.
And it was the only variable in this deduction that had never appeared in the intelligence.
Li Mang.
For the sake of this killing operation against Lin Feng, the cold ruthlessness and cruelty Li Mang had displayed had already reached an outrageous, hair-raising degree.
In this meticulously woven scheme, not only was that batch of supplies bait — even those dozen-odd alliance Gu Masters garrisoned in the mine cave were discarded pawns, deliberately abandoned by Li Mang.
The value of their existence had, from the very beginning, never been to guard the supplies or ambush the enemy.
Their sole use was to fill in the authenticity of this intelligence with their own lives — to serve, with their own flesh and blood, as the firewood for burning through the Primeval Essence and physical stamina of Lin Feng's squad.
Lin Cang had not calculated this far. The Military Intelligence Hall had not calculated this far. Even Lin Mu's rational deduction had not calculated this far.
Because in normal logic of war, no commander would treat his own subordinates as single-use consumables.
But when your opponent has become a set of withered bones through and through — when nothing remains in his heart but a hunger for victory — any judgment based on "normal logic" will develop a fatal blind spot.
And of this, Lin Mu — was as yet unaware.
——
Beneath the polar night.
The four-man squad slipped soundlessly through the front-line defense zone.
Lin Wuxie, like a hound that had caught the scent of blood, walked at the very front to open the way. Lin Feng and Lin Wan'er held the center as support. Lin Mu, like a weightless shadow, held steady at the rear.
Everything went as smoothly as the intelligence had predicted.
They broke into the abandoned mine cave with all-crushing force, like tigers into a flock of sheep.
Those guards, under Lin Feng's fierce sword qi and Lin Wuxie's inhuman, violent crushing, could not organize any effective resistance at all before being slaughtered to the last.
The entire battle lasted less than half an incense stick.
Yet this all-out, swift and decisive engagement was not without its cost.
Lin Feng knelt on one knee, panting slightly, more than half of the Red Iron Primeval Essence within his aperture already spent.
Lin Wan'er's forehead was covered in cold sweat — the continuous activation of multiple wound-healing Gu had placed an enormous strain on her mind.
Lin Wuxie's back bore two fresh, oozing new wounds. Though his physical body was repairing itself at a speed visible to the naked eye, it was still no small drain.
Lin Mu, by contrast, had spent little of his Primeval Essence — for at present he did indeed still need to conceal his strength.
By now he had reached the true Rank 2 peak stage, and the Liquor Worm could no longer refine his Primeval Essence any purer; he could only rely on his own gradual recovery.
The exceedingly rich supplies were smoothly obtained.
"Grab the goods, retreat at once!"
Lin Feng harbored not the slightest greed for merit or lust for battle. After storing the Gu materials in his storage Gu, he most decisively issued the order to retreat.
Reason and logic had pushed them exceedingly smoothly into this mine cave; and the rich spoils seemed to perfectly confirm Lin Mu's earlier deduction.
Until — the moment the four of them stepped out through that cold, dim mine cave entrance and set foot upon that wild land bathed in cold moonlight.
Outside the mine cave, the moon was cold as frost.
Lin Mu, supporting Lin Wuxie, had just walked out of the cave mouth, with Lin Feng and Lin Wan'er close behind.
At this moment — the mission complete, the road home about to be set upon — everyone's nerves instinctively developed an exceedingly slight slackening.
However.
In that dead-silent, pitch-black dense forest ahead.
Two figures, long since fused into one with the darkness, had — just as they themselves had once lain in wait for Tie Xiong — lurked in ambush with the utmost patience for a long while.
The one at the head was tall and slender, his entire face hidden behind a cold, bizarre bronze mask.
He leaned against an ancient tree with exceeding casualness. But in his hand he held a bone blade of exceedingly strange design — enormous, as though forged from the spine of a living person.
And at the masked man's side, the other made no attempt at concealment.
It was a middle-aged woman with an exceedingly withered face, her eyes carrying an endless malice and cruelty.
She wielded no weapon of any kind, for both of her hands were fitted with exceedingly heavy, ferociously shaped black-iron gauntlets.
Those gauntlets were covered in dark-red bloodstains, layer upon layer, long since congealed into a thick black scab that gave off a pungent, bloody stench.
The Primeval Essence fluctuations radiating from these two were both the genuine article — the Rank 2 peak stage!
The cold moon was like a blade.
The death interception aimed at Black Blood Stockade's top-ranking Military Merit Board squad was about to begin.