The five hundred men under Qi Kai, who had fled the southern battlefield of Yin City, soon received a batch of supplies from Shangjing, along with an elder who had come in person to assess the situation.
This Shangjing elder was around fifty years old. His real name was Chen Ji, and he possessed an extraordinary bearing. Even dressed in the plainest Mao suit, he stood out sharply from the crowd. He carried the rare aura of someone in power, much like the leaders of the major bases—an air that a young man like Qi Kai, who had only recently become a general, could not acquire overnight.
"Elder Chen, why did you come here in person?!" Qi Kai hurried over to greet him, thoroughly alarmed.
Chen Ji stood on the ground for a while, easing the discomfort of having just gotten off the helicopter. Only then did he nod calmly at Qi Kai. "The situation is urgent. Wang Chen of the Strategic Department was killed, so I came directly."
"Wang Chen was killed?!" Qi Kai was struck as if by lightning, shocked beyond measure.
"You didn't know?" Chen Ji frowned, then shook his head with a bitter smile. "The Strategic Department made repeated operational errors during the war. The department head entered the battlefield personally and met with disaster. Now, the entire western and southwestern war zones of Yin City have lost control. Our people can't even conduct reconnaissance."
Qi Kai was still reeling in shock. Chen Ji's words carried far too much information, catching him completely off guard.
Wang Chen had been tied to him by the same rope. With Wang Chen dead, didn't that mean the entire plan was close to failure?
How was he supposed to explain this to the Bai family...
"How could this happen? How