Chapter 777: Spending the Night Among the Liuren, Hidden Suicide Warriors, Poison Scheme to Undermine Xiazhou

The bitter winter wind beyond the frontier howled across the boundless wilderness like countless cold steel knives with barbs, tearing the night‑sky clouds into ragged fragments.

Xiazhou Chengwai, that sprawling refugee settlement that stretches for dozens of li, its end invisible to the eye, still lets the scent of soul‑soothing food drift in the cold wind beside the gigantic black‑iron cauldrons that simmer dozens of pots of white‑rice meat porridge by day.

Hundreds of thousands of Qi State Liuren who have just escaped the reaper's scythe now huddle tightly inside the thick wind‑proof cotton tents distributed by the Xiazhou authorities; the weather‑worn lines on their faces bear a long‑missed satisfaction and absolute security as they drift into deep sleep within the warm bedding.

Occasionally, a few murmurs from the sleeping arise in the silent night, expressing gratitude for the lifesaving provisions bestowed by Chen Zhuguo.

Yet, beneath this seemingly peaceful, utopian night, a murderous intent capable of killing those hundreds of thousands in an instant spreads silently in the camp's dark corners like a venomous snake spitting its fang.

Dozens of "refugees" drenched in filthy mud and exuding a nauseating sour stench of Liuren do not rest in their own tents.

They move with a strangely serene gait utterly at odds with their status, like black ghosts gliding along the ground, silently evading the patrols of Xiazhou soldiers surrounding the camp.

These people completed an extremely precise midnight covert rendezvous beside an abandoned, dilapidated transport cart that now consists of only a wooden frame.

Weak starlight pierces the clouds and falls on their faces, reflecting eyes as cold and ruthless as a hawk's, showing no trace of the frailty a starving person should have nor the muddied indifference to life and death.

These are the elite Suicide Warriors of the Shadow Division, who, under the mad death order of Emperor Gao Ying, have traveled thousands of li disguised as desperate starving Liuren to infiltrate the settlement.

The chief operative Wu Duo crouched beneath the massive wheel's shadow, his rough, large hands probing deep into the tightly sewn, oil‑stained rags of the broken cotton jacket.

With a faint rustle of fabric, he covertly retrieved from within several paper packets of potent Baidou Fen, repeatedly refined by the Qi State palace physicians and lethal enough to poison a Herd of Cattle, as well as a few heavily sealed black‑clay jars packed with Blazing Oil and flammable sulfur.

Wu Duo's eyes glittered with a murderous frenzy that would drag tens of thousands to their graves like a jade‑stone conflagration; he slipped the lethal items into the hands of several trusted Suicide Warriors, lowering his voice to a chillingly cold, vicious tone.

"Listen up, all of you! At midnight tonight, once the watch‑tower gong sounds, the first team must immediately locate the deep well at the camp's center that sustains the drinking water lifeline for these hundreds of thousands,"

Wu Duo's fingers brutally sketched a rough map of the water sources on the frost‑covered ground, crushing a shard of ice beneath his fingertip.

"Dump all the Baidou Fen you hold into the well water, move fast, leave no residue; at first light tomorrow, once these beasts drink the tainted water, this vast refugee camp will become a sea of corpses and blood, filled with the cries of dehydration,"

A Shuyi crouching beside him cradled the heavy Blazing Oil jar, his rough thumb deftly prying off the bamboo cover of the Fire Striker to inspect the fire‑wool inside, emitting a strained, hoarse, eerie laugh from his throat.

"Boss, keep your mind on the belly. The brothers guarding the granary have already scoped the defensive routes during the daytime porridge distribution; once you lift that well cover, we'll instantly ignite the mountain‑piled winter provisions with Blazing Oil,"

The Shuyi patted the cold belly of the clay jar, his eyes flashing with an intense yearning for flame and destruction.

"When this cold wind blows, fire catches the draft; in half the time it takes to burn a incense stick, it will surely turn the winter provisions painstakingly saved by Chen Yan into irretrievable ash that fills the sky,"

This meticulously divided death scheme is maddeningly extreme; should they succeed amid the densely packed crowd lacking fire‑prevention or antidote measures, the hundreds of thousands of Liuren freshly freed from Qi State's clutches will face a massive dehydration‑death catastrophe.

Even Xiazhou's lifeline granary, capable of sustaining tens of thousands of troops through winter, will suffer devastating damage in this nameless inferno.

Wu Duo, after hearing this, twisted a more vicious, sinister grin; his once‑disguised ordinary face now contorted like a death‑seeking specter as the colossal conspiracy took shape.

He stepped forward, placed his hand on the Shuyi's shoulder, and laid out the final, most poisonous and lethal link of the Plan to Cut Off the Heirs in the biting cold wind.

"Poisoning and burning the grain are merely a pretext to sow chaos; the remaining undisclosed brothers must immediately blend into the crowd awakened by the blaze and stomach pains,"

Wu Duo's fingers formed a phantom fist in mid‑air, as if already gripping the fragile psyche of the hundreds of thousands of Liuren, ready to crush it completely.

"Everyone, shout at the top of your lungs in the crowd, proclaim that this isn't a path to recruit talent but that the Xiazhou officials have poisoned the porridge water they 'charity‑give', aiming to eliminate us unregistered Qi State Liuren to save grain,"

He released his fist, making a wild outward thrust.

"These wretched people, terrified after being slaughtered in Qi State, are already a flock of startled birds; once our rumor spreads, the hundreds of thousands sunk in despair and madness will erupt in an uncontrollable cataclysm,"

Wu Duo lifted his head, gazing at the faint crescent moon in the night sky, his suppressed snarl in his throat sounding like an owl's hoot.

"When the time comes we won't need to act; they'll trample each other to death, tens of thousands, and we'll ride the irrational mob to assault Xiazhou's supposedly impregnable city gates,"

"If chaos takes hold in the camp, even Chen Yan with three heads and six arms like a great celestial deity won't be able to preserve Xiazhou City's peace; we, a few dozen brothers, will etch our names forever on Qi State's Lingyan Pavilion,"

Such a vile, human‑weakness‑exploiting plot that pushes the entire Dazhou North Region to the brink of annihilation is, to these Shadow Division Suicide Warriors who pride themselves as the world's premier assassins, a flawless, near‑certain masterpiece.

Wu Duo's narrow eyes swept the surrounding ready‑to‑strike Suicide Warriors; seeing everyone grip their poisons and fire sources firmly, he briskly gave a covert signal understood only within their ranks.

Dozens of Suicide Warriors clad in tattered burlap bags instantly understood; like drops of ink sinking into a black abyss, they split into three squads, flawlessly using the terrain to merge into the bottomless, silent darkness of the refugee camp without a fight.

The overcast clouds completely blocked the moonlight; the cold wind cut faces like knives, emitting a whimpering sound.

Three Shadow Division operatives, masters of fluid movement and soft‑bone contraction technique, slithered silently like three slick poisonous snakes along the ground to the largest Qingshi deep well at the camp's center that supplies water to the porridge sheds.

The lead operative crouched carefully on the well rim, pressed his ear to the cold Qingshi stone slab to listen to the water's flow at the bottom, then gave a safety signal to the two men behind him.

He reached out, grasped the edge of the hundred‑pound Qingshi well cover, Qi Refining silently circulating within him, ready to use brute force to pry the cover open just enough to pour the poison.

On the opposite side, around the massive granary that stores a million stone rations of emergency army food, several Andi clutching Blazing Oil jars slipped like geckos along the blind spots of patrolling soldiers' sightlines, perfectly lurking deep within the granary's wooden shadows.

The Suicide Warrior wielding the Fire Striker had his rough thumb expertly prying the lid open, revealing a flickering crimson spark hidden within the fire‑wool.

He only needs to lower his head and casually blow a breath onto that spark; the all‑consuming inferno that could turn Xiazhou's lifeline into scorched earth will blaze uncontrollably around the wooden granary.

These Qi State Suicide Warriors believe this infiltration plan is as seamless as an iron barrel.

In their minds they already uncontrollably rehearse tomorrow morning's scene: outside Xiazhou City transformed into a human hell, littered with dehydrated Liuren corpses, while they stand atop the ruins, proudly overlooking the Zhou Army's brilliance.

The operative holding the gunpowder can couldn't help but curl a wildly triumphant, snarling grin at the corner of his mouth.

Yet their laughable disguise, which they think can deceive the heavens and overturn the Great Zhou realm, crumbles before the terrifying intelligence grinder named "Mingjing Division," forged by Chen Yan himself, which has already turned the entire Northern Border into a solid iron plate.

Just as the Fire Striker broke free from its lid, about to spark the most lethal first ember in the cold wind, the granary teetered on the brink of being engulfed in flames.

From the previously empty, dead‑silent dark sky above the granary's roof, dozens of rapid‑fire crossbow bolts of metallic ghostly light, cold as underworld flames, suddenly ignited without warning.

Accompanied by an extremely faint yet scalp‑tingling click of the mechanism, the cold, solidified merciless killing intent formed a death‑metal net with no escape, instantly locking the Qi State Suicide Warriors below, still lost in their destructive fantasy, in place.