Every Man Bore Responsibility for His Nation's Fate; Great Wei's Royal House Shrank from Battle

The next day.

Great Wei's Western Frontier.

It was already Mao Hour.

Two double-hours had passed since the Marquis of Quzhou poisoned the water.

The Marquis of Quzhou did not know whether it had worked, but he knew that the third battle was already over.

The Western Frontier of Great Wei was a land of gravel flats and deserts, where water was exceedingly precious. If its water sources were destroyed, the tribal soldiers might all be martial artists capable of going a dozen days, or even a month, without drinking.

But their people still needed water, didn't they?

With the water contaminated, the people's only way out was to migrate, leaving the Western Frontier to survive elsewhere.

Once that happened, without their tribespeople, the tribal soldiers could no longer remain, however much they wanted to fight.

They were tribal soldiers, after all, not soldiers of some nation. Naturally, they would put the survival of their own tribes first rather than fight to the death.

The court's assignment was to sweep the Western Frontier clean. Destroying its water sources was itself a kind of sweep. As for killing the enemy, they could simply take care of that in passing on their triumphant return.

What he needed to do now was reach the Chen Kingdom before three days from now.

At that moment.

The sky had brightened, a streak of fish-belly white appearing overhead.

The Marquis of Quzhou's voice rang out.

"Entire army, stand by. In three double-hours, we will sweep through the Western Frontier."

The Marquis of Quzhou issued his orders, telling the army to prepare for a full-scale sweep in three double-hours.

With that order, the nine hundred thousand soldiers of the Emperor's Army immediately blazed with fighting spirit.

All this time, they had been fighting a circling, evasive war: