Outside Haizhong City, twenty thousand men stood drawn up in ranks.

A big, powerfully built middle-aged man, sword-browed and tiger-eyed, paced back and forth, frowning.

This was Lu Ming, garrison commander of Haizhong City.

He sincerely meant to surrender.

Ning Chen, the god of war of Great Xuan: nothing he attacked held, no fight he took on was lost, and in all his campaigns north and south he had never once been beaten.

He had thought Xiang Xiuming might hold him a while.

And how long had it taken? The city broken and the man dead.

The moment he learned Xiang Xiuming had died in battle and Linhai City had been taken, he made up his mind to surrender.

It was not that he was gutless. It was that they simply could not win.

And then Li Wenshu and He Guanyu came back and told him about the Zhaohe army... thirty thousand men, not one left alive.

How was he supposed to fight that?

Xiang Xiuming's fifty thousand, and thirty thousand Zhaohe on top of them — eighty thousand men had not slowed Ning Chen's stride. Twenty thousand was all he had. What in hell was he going to fight with?

Lu Ming understood it perfectly well: if he wanted to live, the only way was surrender.

But Ning Chen had told Li Wenshu and He Guanyu to go back and wait for word... and for days he had not been able to eat or sleep in peace.

What if Ning Chen did not accept their surrender and slaughtered the lot of them?

Lu Ming was in an absolute panic.

He Guanyu and Li Wenshu looked just as worried.

They had no way of knowing whether Ning Chen would take their surrender.

Fight? Don't be absurd... If it had been anyone else, they would never have surrendered — but this was Ning Chen.

Nanyue, Xiliang, the Tuoluo Kingdom... every one of them had paid dearly at Ning Chen's hands.

Their twenty thousand men did not have the nerve even to cross weapons with Ning Chen.

"Report... General Ning Chen's army…