"What?"
"So soon?"
Though they had been mentally prepared, hearing it with their own ears still came as a shock. Qiu Cheng gripped the armrest of his chair even tighter, hiding his true feelings. Xun Ding followed up by dropping another bombshell. "If nothing unexpected happens, Shen Tang isn't just personally leading her troops..."
He deliberately left everyone hanging.
Then, unhurriedly, he finished the sentence.
"...she's also the vanguard's Great General!"
He had never seen a lord so diligent.
A scholar recalled the details Xun Ding had given earlier and asked, skeptical, "The vanguard's Great General? But didn't you just say that you ran into Shen Thief's vanguard camp and only managed to escape with your troops after a hard-fought battle? Could it be—you saw Shen Thief?"
At first, the question seemed perfectly reasonable. But Xun Ding had depended on his father from a young age, and through years of living and learning at his side, he had acquired no shortage of savvy. He could naturally hear the accusation beneath the scholar's words: since Shen Thief was there, why hadn't he killed her?
The scholar wasn't wrong to think that way.
Vanguard camps were usually short on troops, and they had already sacrificed over four hundred Heavy Shield Warriors. The losses were irreparable. Why hadn't Xun Ding simply gone all the way and sacrificed the rest, dragging Shen Tang, the enemy leader, down with them? Wouldn't that have been better?
It seemed there had been an opportunity.
And Xun Ding hadn't taken it.
Xun Ding scoffed. "Exactly. Shen Tang was the vanguard's Great General, and that's why I took such a heavy loss. Have you all forgotten—or did you never know—that four years ago Shen Tang could stand against Gongxi Chou on the battlefield and hold her own? How could