The Siberian wilderness was a place of absolute, brutal honesty. There was no room here for courtly intrigue or political maneuvering, only the stark realities of hunger, cold, and survival. Meng Tian's "White Fox" unit, two hundred ghosts deep behind enemy lines, was trapped. Their brilliant raid on the Chita railway hub had been a stunning success, but it had also stirred the wrath of the Russian bear. Thousands of Cossack cavalry, the finest trackers and horsemen in the world, were now sweeping the forests in a tightening cordon, and the White Foxes' planned escape route was gone.
Huddled in a makeshift command post under the sheltering boughs of a massive pine, Meng Tian laid out their new, desperate plan. He pointed to a spot on the military map, a section of the Russian line that intelligence suggested was stretched thin.
"We attack here," he said, his voice low and grim. "At dusk. The 7th Don Cossack Regiment. They are overconfident, their patrols are predictable. We use the last of our explosives to create a diversion to the north, draw their attention, and then we punch through their main camp with everything we have. We will use the Emperor's steel and the element of surprise."
Major Han looked at the map, his face grim. It was a brutal, straightforward plan, a far cry from Meng Tian's usual elegant, surgical strikes. It was a plan that accepted casualties as a certainty. They would likely lose a third of their men, perhaps more. But it was their only chance.
As Meng Tian was about to give the order to prepare for the assault, a calm, cultured voice cut through the tense silence.
"A courageous plan, Chief Strategist," said Colonel Jiao, the political commissar. He stepped forward into the small circle of lamplight, his face an unreadable mask of polite inquiry. "But a costly one. Surely, a commander of your unique talents can devise a more… efficient way."
The emphasis on the word "efficient" was subtle, but to Meng Tian, it was as loud as a cannon shot. His blood ran cold.
Jiao was not looking at the map of the Russian camp. He pointed to a different part of the map, a section marked with dense contour lines indicating a deep, treacherous gorge, its sides sheer cliffs of rock and ice. "Our scouts have reported that this gorge is impassable," Jiao continued, his voice smooth as silk. "The Russians have not even bothered to guard it, deeming it a better barrier than any wall. If only there were a way to cross it… we could slip through their net without losing a single man. A perfect, bloodless victory. The kind the Emperor so admires."
It was not a suggestion. It was a test. A direct and lethal challenge.
Jiao knew. He had seen Meng Tian collapse, seen the inexplicable nosebleed. And now, he was calling the general's bluff in the most dangerous way possible. He was not asking Meng Tian if he had the Emperor's power; he was commanding him to use it, here and now, in front of him.
An agonizing choice seized Meng Tian. He was trapped between two impossible options. If he refused, if he stuck to the bloody, conventional plan, he would confirm Jiao's suspicion that his power was a fluke, or worse, that it was limited and unreliable—a sign of a flawed vessel. Jiao would report his weakness and his costly victory to the throne, and Meng Tian's career would be over. But if he accepted the challenge, if he used his Battle Sense to find a path through the "impassable" gorge, he would be confirming, once and for all, that he possessed the same divine gift as the Emperor. In the eyes of a fanatic like Jiao, this would not make him a hero. It would make him a heretic, a potential rival to the god on the Dragon Throne.
And worse, he remembered the psychic shriek of the tremor, the wave of static that had crippled him just days before. His power felt… frayed. Unstable. To call upon it now, under duress, was a risk of unknown magnitude. It could fail him completely, leaving them all stranded.
He looked at the grim, trusting faces of his men, who were preparing themselves for a bloody battle. He looked at Major Han, whose worried eyes pleaded with him not to rise to Jiao's bait. And he looked at Colonel Jiao, whose cold, patient gaze held a universe of suspicion.
He could not sacrifice his men to protect his secret.
Meng Tian made his choice. He straightened up, his face becoming a mask of intense concentration. "There may be a way, Colonel," he said, his voice quiet.
He closed his eyes. He shut out the biting wind, the smell of pine, the worried breathing of his men. He extended his senses, pushing his strange, intuitive power forward, not across a battlefield of men, but into the very bones of the earth, into the geography of the gorge itself.
He felt a wave of dizziness, a faint echo of the static that had crippled him before. His vision flickered behind his closed eyelids. But he pushed through it, forcing his will, focusing his Battle Sense. He was not seeing with his eyes. He was mapping the terrain with his mind, feeling the lines of stress in the rock, the solidness of the ice, the hidden placements of ancient, fallen trees.
And then he saw it. A path. Not a path for an army, but a thread, a spider's strand of possibility. A massive, ancient pine had fallen across the chasm decades ago, its trunk now covered in snow and ice, invisible from above, forming a precarious, hidden bridge. From there, a series of narrow ledges, hidden from view by rocky overhangs, descended like a jagged staircase down the opposite cliff face. It was a one-in-a-million chance, a path that no scout could ever have found. A path that only a god could see.
Meng Tian opened his eyes. The world swam back into focus. He felt a warm, wet trickle at his upper lip and absently wiped it away with the back of his glove, leaving a dark smear.
"There is a way," he said again, his voice strained from the effort. He turned to the map and, with a steady hand, drew the impossible route for his stunned officers.
Colonel Jiao had not been watching the map. He had been watching Meng Tian's face. He saw the intense concentration. He saw the flicker of pain. And he saw the thin, undeniable trickle of blood that appeared at the general's nostril.
A slow, cold, and utterly triumphant smile spread across Jiao's face. It was not a smile of relief that the men had been saved. It was the smile of a prosecutor who had just been handed an irrefutable confession. He had his proof.
His mind, a finely honed instrument of fanatical loyalty, processed the truth. He has the gift. He is like the Son of Heaven. But he hides it. He lies about his victories. He pretends to be a mere mortal. Such power belongs only to the throne, to be wielded openly and with divine authority. This man, this celebrated hero… is a fraud. A heretic. A potential usurper.
Colonel Jiao's personal mission had just changed. It was no longer simply to spy on the Chief Strategist. It was to ensure that this flawed, secretive, and heretical vessel of divine power was purged. The greatest threat to Meng Tian was not the thousands of Russian soldiers hunting him in the snow. It was the quiet, smiling man standing right beside him.