The sudden news threw Yuan Long into a moment of panic.

Li Zang and Rong Xian went pale too.

Ning Chen was Yuan Long's military adviser, and this was no time for him to play deaf and dumb. "Don't worry, General," he said in a low voice. "Before, with a hundred thousand men bearing down on us, there might have been no way out.

But now we have allies. The land beyond the pass is wide open as far as the eye can see. Pull our men out, join our armies with the Nanyue soldiers into one, and fight as one house.

Together, not counting the baggage train, we'll have a hundred and twenty thousand men... Feng Qizheng has a measly hundred thousand. What do we have to fear?"

Those words were exactly what Yuan Long needed to hear, and he quickly calmed down.

He turned to Li Zang. "General Li Zang, I ask for your help."

Li Zang frowned slightly.

If Yuan Long pulled his seventy thousand men out, wouldn't that amount to abandoning the pass?

Then what the hell was the point of winning Yuan Long over?

The whole reason they had paid so much and accepted Yuan Long's defection was that it let them walk into the pass without spending a single soldier and set foot on Great Xuan soil.

Rong Xian said, "General Yuan, the moment your seventy thousand men come out, the enemy will shut the gates. Breaking them open again would be as hard as climbing to heaven."

Yuan Long asked, "Then what are you saying?"

Rong Xian said, "General Yuan, let our fifty thousand into the pass... Then we join our armies into one and crush the enemy's hundred thousand for certain."

Without thinking, Yuan Long looked at Ning Chen.

Ning Chen's brow creased. His original plan had been to wipe out the Nanyue troops right here.

A battle inside the pass would be sure to alarm the common people.

They lived a long way from the pass, but with fighting on this scale they'd be frightened all the same.

Of course, he…