"Heh, isn't it a funny coincidence—" Qi Shan's expression suddenly shifted. His gaze turned sharp and intimidating, as if he wanted to tear the governor limb from limb. His voice trembled as he continued, "It just so happened that after this, the weakest of Ten Crows' three great tribes somehow came into a stroke of fortune. With a mysterious, bizarre, and overpowering formation, they swallowed up the other two tribes one after another and unified Ten Crows in a single stroke!"
He crouched and seized the governor by the throat.
"Dare you call that an accident!"
For eight years, Qi Shan had used the fragmentary formation diagram he'd obtained in the secret territory, along with spies on the Ten Crows side, to reconstruct that formation countless times.
The formation was truly ingenious and dazzling. Its interlocking hooks and winding, opposing lines perfectly integrated the art of the unexpected and the orthodox from military strategy into its ranks. As the art of war said, "In battle, meet the enemy with the orthodox and win with the unexpected," and "Those skilled at employing the unexpected are as inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, as unspent as rivers and seas."
For a moment, the governor didn't dare meet Qi Shan's eyes.
He stubbornly argued, "I was born in Ten Crows. Was it wrong to help my people? I wanted to be loyal to Xin Country, too, but its Sovereign was muddleheaded, and the others looked down on my origins. They always treated me like a foreigner and never truly accepted me. Why should I risk my life for Xin Country?"
"But back then, you were gravely ill and stranded in a border city. You'd run out of money and had no choice but to lodge in a tumbledown shack that let in the wind