Midnight, the hour of the Rat.

Everything lay under the dark of night.

The soldiers on Qimu City's wall were nodding off.

"Hyah! Hyah! Hyah!"

Hoofbeats drummed, fast and urgent.

A rider came galloping toward the city.

The soldiers on the wall reacted at once, nocking arrows to their bows.

"Urgent military intelligence, urgent military intelligence... Open the gate, quick..."

The rider was shouting at the top of his lungs, his voice frantic.

The officer in charge of the wall stood at the parapet and squinted hard. By the hazy moonlight, he could just make out that the man was one of their own Nanyue scouts.

"Quick, lower the drawbridge and open the gate!"

The officer didn't suspect a thing.

First, the man really was wearing a Nanyue scout's uniform.

Second, it was only one man. Even if he was an enemy, how much trouble could he make?

Third, the man was shouting about urgent intelligence. The officer couldn't risk holding that up.

None of the scouts they'd sent out lately had come back, and the general was worried about it.

Clank, clank, clank!!!

The iron chains ground against each other, and the drawbridge slowly came down.

With a dull boom, the heavy gate swung open too.

"Hyah!!!"

The scout spurred his horse toward the city.

But at the far end of the drawbridge, he suddenly stopped.

He took two bundles of hand grenades, lashed together, out of the cloth bag on his saddle and hung them on the iron chains on either side of the drawbridge, slick as you please.

Then he swung down off his horse, cupped his fist to the Nanyue soldiers who'd opened the gate, and smiled. "Farewell!"

With that, he took a running start, leaped, and vanished into the moat.

From where he stood, the officer on the wall couldn't see what was happening below.

But the Nanyue soldiers who'd opened the gate saw every bit of it.

Before they could do anything, a terrifying explosion went off, the flash glaring against the dark.

Boom!!!

The drawbridge chains were blown apart, and the heavy drawbridge…