Si Xiuyong said hurriedly, "Ask whatever you want to know, my lord prince. I'll tell you everything I know and hold nothing back."

Ning Chen nodded, then asked, "First, tell me how the troops in Bianzhou are deployed."

"Yes!" Si Xiuyong thought for a moment. "Leng Wenyan has a hundred and forty thousand men in all. This time he sent out two forces. One was ours. The other is in the Wangfeng Mountains."

Ning Chen frowned. "He thinks he can crush this prince with so few?"

Si Xiuyong said, "Our goal wasn't to crush you, my lord prince. It was to buy time.

Xiliang's main camp is sending troops to help. Our job was to pin you down here until the Xiliang reinforcements arrived."

Ning Chen frowned slightly. "How long before they get there?"

Si Xiuyong said, "The agreement was twenty-odd days. All we had to do was hold you here for a few days, and the Xiliang reinforcements would arrive.

But then the snow came down all at once, so their march has probably been slowed too.

You took the long way around, my lord prince, and the going is hard now. I'm afraid that by the time you reach Bianzhou, the Xiliang army will be there too."

Ning Chen's voice dropped. "How many men is Xiliang sending?"

"A hundred thousand."

Ning Chen gave a cold laugh. "Xiliang is really going all in. A speck of a place, and they'll part with that many men to prop up Leng Wenyan... They must think a lot of him."

Si Xiuyong said, "Xiliang doesn't care about Leng Wenyan. It cares about our Great Xuan's land... The Great Xuan's soil is rich. If Xiliang took our western frontier, it would be several times stronger."

Ning Chen snorted coldly. "Since when has seizing land been the way of a true king? Since ancient times, spending armies without end has been the womb of disaster. (TL Note: A couplet from classical Chinese verse on the folly of wars of conquest.)

Xiliang may have done well for itself these last couple of years, but it's…