Chapter 270: The Schemes Behind the Scenes

"A Li, Leng Xiao, why did you come?"

Because they were unsure whether the foreign Beastmen would continue attacking at night, Mu Qing and Leng Xiu stayed at the foot of the mountain; when they saw Yun Li and Leng Xiao appear suddenly before them with people, both of them couldn't help but frown.

"I wasn't at ease with this place, so I asked A Xiao to come down with me."

All three males of Yun Li's family fought today, so she alone had not yet seen the carnage below the mountain.

The corpses piled like mountains, the ground strewn with unjoinable flesh and limbs; the soil, once baked yellow by the heat, now bore a thick brown skin, and farther away even the fallen tree trunks glowed with an ominous dark red in the night.

Of course, what was even harder to endure was the stench of rotting corpses drifting in the air, worse than that on the mountain.

Yun Li couldn't help but cover her mouth and nose and asked, "Are we just leaving it like this?"

"We can't deal with it," Leng Xiu said, shaking his head.

"And those ferocious beasts' corpses are piled together with the Beastmen's," Mu Qing whispered from beside, "No one can accurately tell them apart, and the Tribe won't allow its members to retrieve them."

Even if they could be distinguished, few Beastmen would dare to eat the ferocious beast corpses stained with their own kin's blood and the stench of rot.

After all, the Silver Eagle Tribe has reached this stage, and food remains relatively plentiful.

"Can't we medicate it?"

Setting fire is one thing, but it's the dry season; if a blaze were to start, it could easily ignite most of Heiyan Shanmai.

"Medicate?"

Yun Li's words evidently left Mu Qing and the others confused.

"It means using poison to corrode these corpses, or sprinkling some concoction to lure the carrion‑eating flies, rats, ants, and insects. With so many bodies piled, the stench makes rest impossible, and if your wounds get contaminated while patrolling at night, they'll easily worsen."

After speaking, Yun Li, regardless of their thoughts, said, "I'm going back to the Tribe to tell the tribal chief and the Priest about this."

Seeing that she was about to leave shortly after arriving, Mu Qing and Leng Xiu said little, only reminding Leng Xiao to keep an eye on A Li and the household.

And lately, Leng Xiao, whether influenced by the surroundings or spurred by the earlier injury from Yun Li, had become more composed.

Hearing them, he gave a slight nod, said, "You all be careful," and followed behind Yun Li.

After climbing the mountain, Yun Li went straight to the tribal chief and the Priest's residence; the idea of medicating the corpses below was new to both of them, but Yun Li argued convincingly, and perhaps because of the piled bodies below, the Tribe up on the mountain that night had more snakes, rats, and poisonous insects than usual.

Soon, Yun Li led a few Witch Doctors down the mountain in a hurry.

It turned out to be knowledge she had picked up while studying under Ke Si, about how to use common herbs to create a corpse‑erasing toxin, which for her was a piece of cake.

While Yun Li and her group were busy setting up fires below, on the other side a group of Beastmen wore solemn faces as they discussed their recent defeat in the south.

"When we arrived there were over a hundred of us, now only this few remain; the ferocious beasts and the Beast Slaves we brought are nearly dead, how can we still fight?"

"Lord Yin, when will Master Meng finally come to support us?"

The reason they were so confident to split into two forces and strike the two major southern Tribes was that they had a Purple-rank Beast Person on this expedition, and they also possessed a medicine that could make captives obey, allowing the captured small‑tribe Beastmen to serve as cannon fodder against the Silver Eagle Tribe's Beastmen.

Otherwise, over a hundred of them would foolishly rush at a tribe of more than a thousand, and they would have to wait until the Beastmen they sent gained the Silver Eagle Tribe's Beastmen's trust before striking.

The female, called 'Lord Yin' by the other Beastmen, didn't even lift an eyelid as she said, "Why the hurry? Aren't those Eagle Beastmen so frightened by us that they don't even leave their Tribe?"

"We'll keep using a few Beast Slaves as bait these two days, and lure more ferocious beasts over."

"Just those ten‑something Beast Slaves, if they all die, then this time…"

But before the Beastman could finish, Lord Yin cut him off with a cold face, "Just those few weak Beast Slaves—does that make it any more important for us to capture the Silver Eagle Tribe?"

His words sounded as if they could actually take the Silver Eagle Tribe, and the other Beastmen, who had been skeptical at first, now fully doubted whether Yin was joking.

Over a hundred against more than a thousand, the Silver Eagle Tribe could simply wear them down by numbers until they die.

Fortunately, the captured hundred‑plus Beast Slaves bolstered their numbers, and they deliberately split into squads to infiltrate the Silver Eagle Tribe's territory from the start, which confused the Silver Eagle Tribe so that they didn't know exactly how many had arrived, causing them to patrol daily as if facing a great enemy; during that period their numbers dropped from over a hundred to just over fifty (excluding the Beast Slaves).

A few Beastmen felt a chill in their hearts; a collective attack today was even more out of the question. Lord Yin had never been on a battlefield, and the reason they were still alive sitting here was that whenever danger arose, they threw the Beast Slaves out as sacrificial scapegoats.

Otherwise, haha…

"Actually, it's all Jia Sha's fault; if they weren't useless, we would have arrived at the Silver Eagle Tribe much earlier, yet besides the Market incident, they didn't even find out how many Blue Rank Beastmen their Tribe had."

That caused us to lose two senior Medicine Slaves for nothing, and those were the immortal Medicine Slaves that Lord Wu Wu painstakingly cultivated; who knows…

But we only managed to kill one Blue Rank Beastman.

Now the Silver Eagle Tribe still has three Blue Rank Beastmen; if Master Meng doesn't come, these few of us will probably all perish here if we don't run.

"Indeed."

Regarding this, Yin was actually a bit angry inside, "Jia Sha is truly useless; she came with Yu to scout the Silver Eagle Tribe's situation, and not only did Yu die, but Qing Zhi and the others also met unclear deaths."

And yet Master Meng still allowed Jia Sha to live; that's truly enviable!

A female slave's newborn pup, how could it be about to crawl onto her head? Damn it!

Yin's expression turned grim; the other Beastmen, seeing this, held their breath. After a while, when her face softened, a Beastman asked, "If all those Beast Slaves die and Master Meng still hasn't come, what then?"

If he first goes to Five‑Salt Mountain to deal with those Beastmen, he'll head to Youbuluo first.

Yin scanned the speaking Beastman coldly, "Since Master Meng said he'll come, he will. Moreover, do you really think I sent those ferocious beasts forward just to feed those Eagle Beastmen for free?"

The other Beastmen's eyes flickered, thinking that Beastmen of Heiyan Shanmai aren't like Simu in lacking food, so why would they need to scavenge sun‑baked corpses to eat.

But no one dared to voice that, and after a hesitation they asked, "So, Lord Yin, have you thought of a good solution?"

Forgive them, they couldn't at all see what Yin was really trying to achieve with this scheme.