The leather dispatch pouch tore open in Han Ping’s pudgy, grease-stained fingers, spilling a stained parchment across the wooden crate in the supply tunnel.
While the peaks above rattled with the thunder of breaking stone and dying elders, Han Ping knelt in the dirt, squinting at the dark ink stamped with the personal blood mark of young master Zhao Feng. It was an operational manifest routed directly from the inner sanctum to the southern garrison commanders.
"Five hundred blood disciples," Han Ping muttered, his breath hitching as his eyes scanned the jagged characters. "They are not reinforcing the high terrace. They are taking the hidden ravine trail straight down toward the water."
Behind him, two young trade apprentices, Xiao Qi and Lu Fang, were binding iron rations into canvas s
