The Star Luo Empire, the South-North Alliance's camp.
Night had fallen, tents stretched on and on, and bonfires glittered like stars.
Inside the central command tent, lamps blazed and voices clamored.
A huge sand table stood in the middle of the tent, bristling with little red and blue flags that marked the deployment of the South-North Alliance's forces.
A dozen or so generals stood around the table. Their armor gleamed, but their faces were red as they argued without end.
"Why do you North Alliance lot get three cities? We South Alliance did the most fighting. We should get four!" A burly, bearded man slapped the table, spittle flying.
"Bullshit!" A sharp-faced general across from him jumped to his feet. "Without our North Alliance holding back Dai Weisi's elite troops, would you have made it to the gates of the imperial capital?"
"You held them back? Was that what you call holding them back? You ran at the first sign of trouble!"
"Say that again!"
"I said you ran at the first sign of trouble! So what?"
The two rolled up their sleeves and were about to come to blows when the others hurriedly held them back.
In a corner of the tent, Dai Mubai huddled on a chair. Dressed in an ornate but impractical brocade robe, he looked like a sacrificial offering laid upon an altar.
He was the South-North Alliance's "banner," the only surviving bloodline of the Star Luo Imperial Family.
Under the banner of "installing the rightful heir and punishing the false emperor Dai Weisi," the alliance had "bought" him from Qian Renxue and kept him in the army like an ancestral tablet.
But he knew in his heart that he was nothing more than a puppet.
For days, he had watched the South-North Alliance's generals bicker