"This is the crux of the entire conspiracy!"
Meng Chao said excitedly, "Right now, everyone believed the Wolf Clan had been crippled. Quite a few major army groups had been wiped out wholesale, while the remaining troops had low morale and were trapped defending isolated cities, passively taking blows.
"But was that really the truth?
"First, like every race among the High-Level Orcs, after fifty full years of explosive growth during the Era of Prosperity, the Wolf Clan did not have too few people or troops. They had too many.
"Such an overabundance of troops placed tremendous strain on the Wolf Clan's organization, command, logistics, and supplies. One careless misstep, and it would turn into severe internal attrition, with everyone hindering one another.
"So, just as the Five Great Clans held the 'Brave Man's Game' within themselves, and the 'Five Clans Competition' between themselves, the purpose behind what appeared to be mutual slaughter was survival of the fittest—discarding the chaff and preserving the essence, selecting battle-hardened elite troops of an appropriate scale through the cruelest yet most effective means.
"Although the Wolf Clan had suffered a string of crushing defeats, and countless living forces had been swallowed by the surging Rat Tide, there was every reason to believe that the wolves who survived were all elites who had lived through a hundred battles. They had honed unparalleled combat skills upon the line of death. And having suffered the humiliation of being defeated by Rat People, they had thoroughly cast aside the arrogance and conceit usually found in High-Level Orcs, becoming tougher and more composed.
"That was equivalent to undergoing a baptism a hundred times harsher than the Brave Man's Game and the Five Clans Competition.
"Next, as long as their morale could be restored, I believed they would absolutely rebound