Chapter 233:
In the more than half a year that followed, Mo Ziyuan and Lin Xin operated in this manner, stealing a considerable number of war horses from the Western Rong People, leaving the Western Rong Soldiers panicked and uneasy. Privately, many were whispering that perhaps their Khan had angered the gods by launching wars year after year, bringing down divine punishment, which caused their war horses to keep disappearing one after another.
Once this rumor started spreading, it could no longer be stopped. At first, it only circulated among a small group of soldiers, then it began to spread through the military, and eventually even the Western Rong common people all knew about it.
The Western Rong Khan flew into a great rage, executing several ministers who had advised him one after another, and he proclaimed to the people that the so-called divine punishment was pure nonsense, telling the common people not to spread false rumors anymore, and that anyone caught doing so would have their entire clan exterminated.
This harshly worded decree aroused great indignation among the Western Rong common people, because now what the Western Rong had lost was no longer limited to war horses—even the cattle and sheep raised by the common people had started disappearing.
The Western Rong people had always been fierce by nature, and the common people revered the strong; they did not fear the Khan unconditionally. Thus, not long after this decree was issued, the Khan, who was out traveling, suffered an assassination attempt by the common people.
Fortunately, the Western Rong Khan was no pushover; he had honed a body full of real kung fu. Thus, after paying the price of several heavily injured guards around him, he killed all the common people who had tried to assassinate him.
But this instead ignited the common people’s will to resist, sparking successive assassination attempts against the Western Rong Khan. Later, they even formed folk organizations one after another, eventually reaching a certain scale.
Upon receiving the news, Chen Lingyuan was extremely pleased. The more chaotic the Western Rong became, the better—of course—and this could also be considered an unexpected bonus brought to him by Mo Ziyuan and Lin Xin.
After thoroughly disrupting the Western Rong, Mo Ziyuan and Lin Xin returned to the large camp, bringing with them a space full of cattle, sheep, and lamb.
When they first started targeting the common people’s cattle and sheep, Lin Xin had once asked Mo Ziyuan if he thought she was being too unscrupulous.
Mo Ziyuan was silent for a moment before answering: “No. Every winter when the Western Rong Soldiers run short of grain, they burn, kill, and plunder the villages on the border. And every time, the Western Rong common people follow behind the soldiers, carrying out a second round of looting on the villages, and they even kill all the villagers they encounter who survived the soldiers’ massacres.”
“So they are not innocent themselves. It could be said that every livestock they raise bears the blood and flesh of our common people. What you’re doing actually makes me feel very satisfied.” Mo Ziyuan concluded in the end.
Lin Xin fell silent. In the apocalypse, she had seen too much of the law of the jungle. At first, it was only people driven mad by hunger who would rob others of food, but later it evolved into the strong robbing the weak and powerless, supernatural ability users robbing ordinary people, because they discovered that by doing so, they could obtain everything they needed for life without even facing the various unknown risks outside the base—it was a deal that couldn’t be more worthwhile.
And those who were robbed, if they didn’t want to starve to death, had no choice but to venture out again at risk to search for supplies, though some chose to rob those even weaker than themselves.
So Lin Xin, who had no qualms to begin with, became even more at ease after hearing Mo Ziyuan’s words. When collecting livestock from the Western Rong common people, she no longer held back, adhering to a “strip everything bare” strategy: not only taking their cattle, sheep, and horses, but also their grain and valuables.
Lin Xin and Mo Ziyuan already knew that Chen Lingyuan had also contributed to spreading the rumors, so they cooperated especially well.
Thus, their new round of mischief began again.
Not long after, the Western Rong common people discovered that not only had their livestock disappeared, but many Western Rong people’s lives had been lost as well.
The dead people fell into two main categories in total.
One category consisted of those who had once followed behind the soldiers to participate in robbing border villages. Their deaths were extremely horrific: all the blood and flesh on their bodies had vanished, leaving only a layer of skin wrapped around the bones. Moreover, their postures as they lay fell to the ground were extremely contorted, with all ten fingers’ nails stuffed full of mud, some nails even flipped over, and their mouths gaping open to the extreme—it was clear they had all died in extreme agony.
The other category was the Western Rong nobles who possessed vast wealth. They died peacefully, with only a scar on the major artery of their necks. However, their residences had all been ransacked: aside from a few corpses, nothing was left.
“These are all people laden with sin—it is punishment from the gods!” After inspecting all the corpses and their residences without finding any traces left by the perpetrators, the High Priest came to this conclusion!
“High Priest, I called you here to solve the problem, not to spread superstition! What bullshit divine punishment—I don’t believe it!” The Western Rong Khan, with a gloomy expression, sat in his royal court and angrily pointed at the High Priest’s nose while cursing. No one knew that last night his royal court had also lost a large amount of property, and on his chest was stabbed a line of Han characters: Bitch will be taken by heaven!
It was this line of characters that made him absolutely certain that all the strange events in the Western Rong over the past half year were not any “divine punishment,” but the work of those “insidious and cunning” Han people.
But he couldn’t rip open his clothes to show everyone the characters on his chest, so after facing the distrustful gazes of his subordinate officials and the High Priest, he lost control, drew the sword at his waist, and stabbed it into the High Priest’s chest.
“Khan…” The High Priest, with eyes wide in disbelief, mumbled a few times with his lips but could never get out the words he wanted to say. In the end, he could only unwillingly exhale the last breath from his lungs, fell to the ground, and died with eyes wide open.
“Do you still think this is divine punishment?” After the High Priest was completely lifeless, the Khan did not sheathe his dripping sword, but instead swept a sinister gaze over the civil and military officials before asking coldly.
“This…” The officials exchanged glances, none daring to speak first.
“Speak!” The Khan’s roar, like a thunderclap from a great bell, exploded, startling all the officials present into a shudder.
“Reporting to the Khan, this—this is clearly man-made, not any divine punishment at all.” In the end, it was an elderly official with white hair and beard who spoke first.
With the first one backing down, the others felt much more relieved and didn’t hesitate any longer, kneeling to the ground one after another, vying to express the view that “divine punishment is utter nonsense.”
Once again, the Western Rong people submitted to the Khan’s prestige.
This directly led to the common people completely losing trust in the royal court, with anti-Khan activities escalating to a fever pitch—people died every day, and the Khan’s position became even more precarious.
Lin Xin was very satisfied with the consequences caused by her unintentional actions and even proposed the idea of single-handedly charging into the Western Rong royal court to take the Khan’s head.
Chen Lingyuan’s current attentiveness toward Lin Xin far exceeded her expectations. He had previously almost always followed her ideas to the letter, but this time he unusually refused.
“Miss Lin, our soldiers need the tempering of war!”
After hearing the reason he gave, Lin Xin was silent for a moment and realized that her previous idea had indeed been too simplistic.
