The rich, mouth-watering aroma of crispy honey-cumin roast lamb and steaming sweet-corn egg-drop soup wrapped around every single soldier in Moonlight Gorge like a warm blanket from home.
In the front rank, the sixteen-year-old wolf-tribe conscript named Ah-Li stared at the sizzling golden lamb leg in Gu Changsheng’s hand. Tears streamed down his hollow cheeks as he remembered the roast mutton his mother used to make before the Blood-Sea Cult burned their border village and locked a spiked iron collar around his neck.
“Hot... hot roast lamb...” Ah-Li whispered, his trembling fingers loosening around the shaft of his rusty spear.
“And egg-drop soup with real scallions...
Master Gu says we get a clean shirt and three hot meals every day...”
All around him, fifty thousand starving conscripts took an involuntary step toward the golden food stand, their eyes glued to the fifty spinning spits of golden-brown lamb!
Up in the limestone cliff forty feet above the gorge, however, General Blood-Fang, General Corpse-Claw, and General Bone-Saw wrenched themselves out of the rock craters with blood dripping from their chins.
Seeing their fifty thousand cannon-fodder soldiers about to desert for a plate of barbecue, General Blood-Fang’s face twisted with vicious malice!
