"Were they supposed to remain at a stalemate like this? No, there had to be a way. Father had entrusted this enormous army to me so I could win a great victory and capture enough slaves to sacrifice to the Ancestral Deity at his coronation... I couldn't keep dragging this out..."
Shao Jun muttered to himself as he stared at the distant peaks, anger surging in his eyes. He wished he could lead men back into the mountains and attack at once.
But a prince did not sit beneath a precarious roof. He would never be allowed to fight in person, no matter how powerful he was!
"Commander." One of Priest Aman's trusted aides approached and lowered his voice. "Priest Aman is ready!"
"Good!" Shao Jun's face lit up. "I'll go over at once!"
A raised platform had been built behind the army. Countless prisoners of war, and even slave soldiers, had been slaughtered, their blood smeared across the entire altar.
Standing atop it, Priest Aman's robes billowed without a wind, his sleeves and long hair streaming through the air. "The Ancestral Deity has agreed. These Black Rock People who dared defy his will shall all be reduced to charcoal!"
Shao Jun was overjoyed. "Then what are we waiting for? Set the fires at once..."
Reinforcements from every quarter had gathered in Blackwater Stockade, along with an envoy from the Black Rock Sacred Stockade.
They had just suffered another defeat, losing two or three hundred warriors. The reinforcements, battered by successive losses, had fallen silent under an oppressive gloom. Yet accusations and complaints rang out without end... everyone was trying to shift the blame.
Then they saw the Pan Tribe army withdraw of its own accord, retreating across the Blackwater River. Everyone found it strange. Could the Pan Tribe army