The horn tore through the gale with a physical bite, signaling the early march of the provincial magistrate's purge column. Ren Xu gripped his shortsword till his knuckles blanched, scanning the other scouts before looking to Jiyue.
"The storm is our screen," Jiyue said, her tone level against the howling rafters. She rolled her reinforced wheelchair, its metal wheels crunching against the frozen earth of the tent floor, towards a map strewn with crude markings. “Pang’s vanguard will be slowed, blind. Our window is now, before they can establish proper perimeters.”
Minutes later, the mountain pass vanished beneath driving sheets of ice that whipped against Jiyue's cheeks. Her breath plumed, instantly snatched away by the gale. The ‘combat’ wheelchair, a contraption of scavenged iron and hardened timber, felt like a frail boat in a raging sea, its gears grinding as Suo Ning and two sturdy villagers pushed it through the deepening drifts. Wujiu, a dark silhouette against the whiteout, moved like a ghost beside them, his hand never straying far from the hilt of his elegant longsword. He carried no torch; the faint glow of the snow was their only light, and even that was quickly swallowed.
Their target was Pang’s forward depot, a cluster of canvas pavilions and grain carts huddled in a shallow hollow leagues from Kuyao’s perimeter. The squall muffled their advance and buried their tracks beneath rising drifts. Jiyue’s forces were small: Suo Ning, Wujiu, Ren Xu, and a dozen more villagers, each a master of silent movement honed by years of desperate survival. They dragged with them a crude, heavy catapult, its frame lashed together from salvaged lumber, and its basket loaded with their horrifying payload.
When they finally reached a ridge overlooking the encampment, the wind briefly parted the curtain of snow, revealing a chaotic scene below. Soldiers huddled around sputtering braziers, their shoulders hunched against the cold. Visibility was barely a few paces. It was perfect.
“Begin,” Jiyue murmured, her voice lost in the wind, but her hand signal was clear. Ren Xu, his face grim, nodded. He and his team moved the catapult into position, its timber groaning with the effort. They loaded the first ‘corpse’ – a grotesque effigy crafted from rotted furs, animal entrails, and Jiyue’s most potent theatrical pigments. The limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, the 'skin' mottled with sickly green and purple splotches. Its 'eyes' were open, staring blankly, though the snow immediately began to collect on them, giving the impression of frosted glass.
With a strained grunt, the arm of the catapult snapped forward. The first dummy tumbled through the blinding gale, a dark bundle turning against the whiteout before landing with a wet thud near guards beside a ration pavilion. A moment of stunned silence, then a single, terrified shriek tore through the wind. One of the soldiers, closer than the others, had seen it. The grotesque heap, half-buried in fresh snow, looked like something dragged from a buried tomb.
Another corpse followed. Then another. They rained down upon the unsuspecting camp, silent harbingers of terror. Panic erupted. Men stumbled back, tripping over their own feet, their crude lanterns swinging wildly, casting grotesque, flickering shadows. Shouts of “Sickness!” and “The blight has reached us!” mixed with desperate cries for their officers. The storm swallowed their vision, turning every drifting shadow into an omen. Jiyue watched from the ridge, tallying their scattering ranks with the detached precision of a director checking sightlines.
Then Suo Ning stepped into view near the central pavilion, his broad shoulders draped in sable, wearing the cured resin and pig-fat replica of Pang's bloated visage. The jowled, sneering features, sculpted in layered tree-sap and powdered zinc, held fast under the lantern glare. His voice, deepened and rasped by careful practice, boomed over the rising din.
“Silence! What is this insubordination?!” he bellowed, striding with Pang’s characteristic arrogant swagger. “Are you dogs so easily frightened by a few dead animals?” His eyes, Jiyue knew, were filled with a calculated menace behind the mask. “Return to your posts, you craven fools! This is a diversion! The blight cannot cross the sacred border!”
The terrified soldiers, confused by the sudden appearance of their Governor amidst the horror, hesitated. Suo Ning capitalised on the moment of doubt. "I ordered an immediate fall-back to the southern post! The main column regroups there! Any dog lingering here will hang before dawn!"
The barking threat cut cleanly through the panic. Pressed between the rotting effigies and their master's known cruelty, the conscripts scrambled toward the valley path, abandoning the freight tents.
In the chaos, Wujiu moved. He was a phantom, his steps soundless, his dark robes blending with the shadows cast by the blizzard and the flickering lanterns. While Suo Ning maintained the deception, bellowing at bewildered squad leaders, Wujiu slipped into the munitions tent, its flap flapping loose in the wind. He worked swiftly, methodically, his movements precise as he secured the weapons and rendered the remaining stores useless, all without spilling a single drop of blood.
The staging held. The perimeter stood vacated, its armaments spiked without an arrow loosed. Jiyue raised a gloved hand to signal the pullout. The snowfall would cover their withdrawal as cleanly as their approach. Suo Ning, still playing the furious Governor, was the last to leave the abandoned encampment, his false face set in an angry scowl, barking at the last stragglers to run faster.
Just as he turned toward the perimeter drifts, a shrill bellow cut over the wind: "You dogs! Who sounded this withdrawal?!"
From the central pavilion stumbled an ornate figure wrapped in silver-fox pelts, his face purple with fury. It was Pang himself, blinking in disbelief at the mirror of his own face across the snow.