Captain Lin Hu and his fifty Iron-Gate Pass soldiers stood near the newly paved six-lane roadbed, nervously gripping their spears.
Now that Ye Guhan had sliced the crooked ten-mile mountain gorge into a straight, two-hundred-foot-wide canyon, there was nothing blocking the view between the human border and the snowy Southern Demon Steppes. Five miles out in the white blizzard, the dark mass of five hundred thousand Wolf-Kin and Boar-Tribe warriors looked like a storm cloud waiting to crash through the open gate.
“Sovereign Pei!” Captain Lin Hu hurried over, pointing at the wide-open canyon floor. “Since the iron gates and the narrow bends are gone, we should set up the heavy ballistae, the barbed-wire walls, and at least two hundred Six-Barrel Fireball Cannons across the line right away! If five hundred thousand beast-warriors charge down this smooth six-lane road at the same time, they’ll reach our front line in ten minutes!”
General Tie Zhan was standing nearby chewing on a roasted mutton rib. He shook his head and patted Captain Lin Hu on the helmet like an experienced professor teaching a new student.
“Little Lin, you’re still thinking small,” Tie Zhan said sagely. “A Six-Barrel Fireball Cannon can only blow up thirty wolves per shot, and you have to pay for the gunpowder. Watch what the Sovereign puts across the border line—one pot can take down twenty-five thousand wolves without wasting a single copper of ammunition!”
