"Whoosh!" An arrow sang through the air.
A guard behind Wang Xian shoved him aside. In the blink of an eye, he took the arrow that had suddenly shot toward them with his own body.
The guard who had been struck thought he was as good as dead. But the next moment, he froze.
He looked down at the iron arrow embedded in his breastplate. Before he could say a word, the marshal had already pulled it free.
A closer look revealed it was a bamboo arrow, with a slip of paper tied to it.
The slender bamboo arrow hadn't pierced his armor; it had only left a small hole... Wang Xian darkened his expression and unfolded the note.
He needed only one glance before fury surged through him.
The message was the same as the ones they'd seen three times by the roadside.
But that was only the beginning. Nearly a hundred, even a thousand, iron arrows came bearing either scraps of cloth or slips of paper...
The messages carried by the iron arrows spread through the thirty thousand soldiers like a plague. Her Majesty the Empress was dead. A new emperor had ascended the throne and ordered every army to return to the southern frontier at once!
The empress was dead!
Their sky had fallen!
Even Wang Xian, the marshal, hadn't expected the enemy commander to set a trap for him in broad daylight—to launch an open scheme he couldn't simply evade.
As a commander, he naturally knew that taking a city was the lesser strategy; striking at the enemy's heart was the greater one.
They'd been away for months, and not a word had come from the southern frontier. He and the prince had always assumed the distance was too great, the sea too vast, for letters