The Empress’ Livestream

“…If it’s just 10,000 troops, we don’t need to worry…” Feng Zhen frowned. “However, a late-night ambush would require strong soldiers with good eyes. Otherwise, they’d basically be sending a bunch of blind soldiers into battle…We can’t guarantee that they don’t have backup troops as well…”

Even though Jiang Pengji always made surprise attacks at night with her troops, night ambushes were rarely used on the battlefield because of their very low rate of success.

Of course, a successful night raid would also bring about substantial results. If they managed to kill a lot of people without losing any of their men, that would be a wild success. After all, the biggest risks sometimes led to the biggest rewards in war.

Ancient commoners often lived in poverty and couldn’t afford to eat nutritional foods. Sometimes, they were even too poor to afford utensils. They were very susceptible to diseases and illnesses, let alone being nutritionally imbalanced. Under these conditions, many people developed night blindness and could only navigate the night streets like blind men.

In these circumstances, very few people would choose to arrange a night raid.

However, going back in the history books, it was clear that incidents of night raids still occurred. Every battle had been fought beautifully, and the ones that made it into written records were the ones that remained well-known in history.

But after close examination, one would find that the scale of these night raids tended to be very small, from a few dozen men to a few hundred.

As for Prince Changshou’s troops…

Yang Si lowered his gaze as he spoke, a hint of mockery in his voice. “Sending tens of thousands of troops out for a night raid is such a big move. Perhaps we can make a bold guess here… First, there was someone under the Chief of Wolong who was secretly helping the enemy and sending out information about them. Otherwise, how did they get past the night patrol? Second, the total number of enemy troops is no less than 10,000. Normally, picking out soldiers suitable for night raids in an army would leave out more than 90% of the soldiers. Would Prince Changshou station 10,000 troops at the Jiamen Gate and wait for us to pass? That would be impossible. Perhaps two out of five people within their elite forces would fit the criteria for a night raid. In a worst-case scenario, the entire army could be elite…”

Feng Zhen was stunned. He said, “What Jing Rong means is that the total number of enemies that are hiding near Jiamen Gate range from between 20,000 and 25,000?”

“This is just a wild guess, not an accurate analysis.” Yang Si smiled and turned towards Jiang PengJi. “Whether this is believable or not will depend on what my lord thinks of it.”

If the Wolong survivors could provide more detailed numbers, Yang Si would at least be a bit more confident with his theory.

The problem was that the entire Wolong army had been completely beaten up. It would be impossible to find more accurate numbers in this chaotic scene, meaning that Yang Si’s theory would stray even further from reality. In conclusion, the target of the ambush upfront was very likely their own army. They had had no choice but to prepare for an attack.

If they made the mistake of thinking that the enemy only had 10,000 troops and carelessly went in with their 30,000 troops, they would end up walking straight into a trap.

Jiang Pengji didn’t answer. She only locked her fingers together as she sank into deep thought.

After a while, she asked the Wolong survivor, “Can you recall the details of what happened that night? Where did the enemy come from? Did a commander show up?”

The middle-aged man tried very hard to dig through his memories but was only able to recall the bloodiness of the night. His expression fell as he recalled the painful experience.

Even though soldiers were used to life and death situations, nobody was prepared to accept the sudden deaths of all their long-long comrades. The soldiers had sacrificed their bodies and their lives to let their comrades escape safely.

The man thought for a while before finally recalling some details of that night.

“That night, there was indeed an extremely strong and powerful general present who was almost completely unstoppable. It was that person… who beheaded the chief…” The middle-aged man’s lips trembled. He held in his emotions and said, “If I remember correctly, those people struck from the right side of the camp…”

After he said this, he remembered more details.

“As this young man here pointed out, now that I think about it, perhaps there really was a spy…” His face turned pale. “It was one thing that the enemies appeared suddenly, but everything that happened to our army that day was also quite strange. Even though it was late in the night, everyone seemed far more exhausted than usual. Even though we didn’t have the strength to fight against many at soldiers once, we were still good at one on one combat. Plus, the entire army was completely on the defense that night.”

No matter how much of a surprise the ambush was, the enemy couldn’t possibly destroy a whole army that quickly.

It had only taken one hour for the entire army to be destroyed. This was partly because the reactions of the ambushed soldiers had been strangely slow.

Now that he remembered everything, it sounded like something must have been wrong at the time.

Perhaps a spy had spiked their soldiers’ food!

Once he realized this, he pulled out something soft wrapped in dried lotus leaves from his armor.

“This was the dinner from that night. I originally wanted to save this to eat the following morning. Is there a medic here who can look at it and see if there’s anything wrong with this?”

Wartime usually required food preparation that could last for at least two to three days. Soldiers often ate cold leftover food. It was considered fortunate if they had dried rations available.

Ever since that night raid two days ago, he’d been starving. He hadn’t touched any of the food he’d received, leaving it to feed his young master, Cai Xiang.

Now that he thought about it, Cai Xiang had been sleeping a lot in the past two days. Even when he was awake, his spirits were low and depressed.

He’d assumed that Cai Xiang was mourning his late father with a heavy heart, but now a sense of fear overran his thoughts.

Jiang Pengji’s expression stiffened. She waved for a medic to come over to take a look.

The medic’s abilities weren’t particularly exceptional. He could only take care of normal external injuries. However, his knowledge of medicine was considerably good.

Even if the weather outside was still chilly, the food had been left out for around two to three days and was a little spoiled. Despite this, the medic couldn’t smell it at all.

Without another choice, he picked out a bit of the food and placed it in his mouth to carefully make out its contents.

He spent quite a while analyzing it, his expression turning grim.

“My lord, there are some sleeping herbs for relaxing and curing insomnia mixed in here. Aside from that, there are also hints of datura metal.”

Datura metal?

Jiang Pengji’s eyebrows lowered.

She saw in the corner of her eyes that the livestream channel was also questioning what this item was.

I love Ji-er Ah: I checked on Baidu and saw that Datura metal is the common name of jimsonweed. It’s still used in medicine in modern days. The leaves can be made into anesthetics for surgery purposes. By the way, some people have speculated that the sleeping drugs used in Wuxia novels are also made of Jimsonweed. If this was thrown into food, it really could make people drowsy. It looks like there is really a spy on the loose.

1

As for the sleeping herb, nobody in the livestream had been able to find any information yet.

And in reality, they couldn’t possibly find out anything about it.

The sleeping herb was a unique equestrian plant that existed only in this world. It could relax one’s mind and cause drowsiness. Owners of horses would often bring some with them to calm down their horses’ during the springtime and to relax the more anxious ones.

However, while the sleeping herb was almost immediately effective and had a lasting effect, the drug itself was not strong. It was very subtle and hard to notice.

“In other words, a spy spiked the soldier’s food and let their enemies strike while the drugs were in effect. They managed to make a successful raid because all the soldiers were exhausted.”

The middle-aged man cried in agony the moment he heard this, mourning for all the lost lives of his comrades.

Jiang Pengji didn’t feel much pity.

War was never a game where the players played by the rules. War generals were not idiots with no brains.

On the battlefield, people were always trying to be more and more cunning than their enemies. In Jiang Pengji’s eyes, spiking the rations of the soldiers wasn’t something too terrible to do. If not for the fact that a strong poison would take effect too quickly and cause the risk of being found out too soon, perhaps the spy would have been ordered to spike the food with deadly poison instead.

However, she was quite curious about this sleeping herb.

1