The flickering bonfire, wavering gazes, unsteady expressions, a precarious atmosphere;
In Zheng Fan's silence, everything within the fort seemed to hang in anxious suspense.
The barbarian soldiers standing around unabashedly cast their gazes towards the women in the corner, their eyes burning.
Ever since that night, when they followed the young tribal leader's trail to this fort, they had felt like wild animals trapped in an iron cage.
From north to south, and now here—a foreign land, war, the dark night—all these elements were loosening the bars of their cages. Some of their fundamental instincts were gradually reviving.
The people of Qian State called the Yan people "Yan barbarians," a form of regional discrimination, similar to the mutual disparagement among different regions in later generations.
Yet, whether for the Yan people or the Qian people, their name for the barbarian tribes transcended mere inter-group disparagement, elevating to a racial concept.
