"How about we begin with the basics," I said to Zhang, trying to sound professional and intimidating. "Give us the number of soldiers stationed at the palace and their exact positioning throughout the grounds."
Zhang cleared his throat nervously, glancing at Qinyue’s still-flickering fla with obvious fear in his eyes. "The Blade Palace is protected by your standard defensive borders surrounding it on all sides. Soldiers are strategically stationed at every few steps all around the entire periter, totaling about twelve hundred ard guards."
"Twelve hundred?" Jian whistled low. "That’s... that’s a lot of soldiers."
Wasn’t that surprising though, to be honest. Ironbell was literally the hub of weapon making, like I said. And it ant higher military prowess.
"And the king?" I pressed on. "I assu he’s positioned at the heart of the palace, probably in so fancy throne room?"
"Yes," Zhang confird, nodding quickly. "But you need to understand, the palace itself is spread out over a massive area. There’s the drill grounds surrounding the periter, multiple ceremonial halls, court halls, extensive family residences for the royal household, elaborate gardens, ditation chambers, treasury halls, armories, you na it.
If you’re seriously planning on storming the palace, it won’t be an easy task by any stretch of the imagination.
Those twelve hundred soldiers I just ntioned? They’re literally just the outer layer guards, the first line of defense. The inside of the palace is protected by many, many more elite soldiers."
He paused, then added with a smirk, "Plus, there’s the Royal Guard, the king’s personal protection force. About fifty of the most skilled fighters in the entire kingdom. You’d have to get through them too."
Look, nobody ever said this was gonna be easy, obviously. But it sure as hell didn’t feel like we could achieve victory even after facing so serious difficulty. It felt more like we were planning our own elaborate funeral.
It was all fun and gas up until that very mont, but what we were about to do would inevitably bring in a lot of casualties, if I was being honest with myself.
We presently had what, maybe five or six hundred townsfolk at most? And absolutely none of them were properly trained soldiers or experienced fighters.
The little victorious dance we had earlier against Zhang’s troops was honestly just pure luck combined with perfect timing and the elent of surprise.
Those soldiers had already been quite exhausted from their extended fight with and Jian, and they were significantly outnumbered by an angry mob.
Maybe we could try to gather even more people from the surrounding areas, rally more support, but it would ultimately just an more untrained civilians getting seriously hurt or killed.
On top of all that horrible possibility, if I was sohow completely wrong about all of this, if there wasn’t actually a major threat and the king was just being a regular asshole, it ant I would have to take full responsibility for this entire disaster as the official representative of the Zenith Sect.
Then we’d probably be disbanded by the governnt, or even worse, we’d be branded as dangerous criminals for instigating a violent revolution under completely false grounds based on re suspicion and paranoid assumptions.
We’d be called the Zenith Cult from that point forward.
A lot of infamous cults throughout history had begun exactly this way. And being in the permanent bad books of the governnt definitely isn’t a good thing for anyone’s long-term health or freedom.
Still, despite all these legitimate concerns, I was almost completely sure about so kind of major threat currently stirring within the king’s palace. My gut was screaming at that sothing was very, very wrong. And it was ti I actually took this seriously instead of just joking around.
I let out a long, heavy sigh and turned to ask the gang, "Alright, brainstorming ti, people. Anyone got any brilliant ideas?"
"I’ve got one," Jian said, raising his hand. "Since we’re clearly outnumbered by a significant margin, how about we do sothing sneaky instead? Sothing which doesn’t require a huge fleet of fighters charging in? Sothing simple, fast, and efficient." He turned to Zhang with sudden interest. "Hey Zhang, does the king have a wife?"
"Six of them," Zhang replied casually.
"Goddamn!" Jian exclaid, his eyes going wide. "That’s... okay, never mind that. How about we kidnap one of them? He’s gotta have a favorite among the six, right?"
"And what exactly would we do then?" I replied, raising an eyebrow at him. "Try to coerce him into submission by threatening his wife? From everything we’ve seen and heard so far, he isn’t even in actual control of what he’s doing anymore. Soone or sothing else is pulling his strings." I shook my head.
"Plus," I continued. "The news of this whole chaotic situation is probably already on its way to the palace as we speak, if it hasn’t arrived already. The king will either brace for the impact of the coming fight and reinforce his defenses, or he’ll send a massive force of soldiers out here to snip this little rebellion in the bud before it grows.
So what we need right now is to find a clever way to avoid massive casualties, sohow get ourselves safely into the palace without fighting through twelve hundred guards, and finally expose whoever the hell is behind this whole twisted situation."
"How about we try so kind of a distraction tactic then?" Qinyue suggested. "We could bring even more chaos into different parts of the town, set so buildings on fire or whatever which creates the most panic, make a huge ruckus, and basically force the king to send the majority of his military force into the town to deal with it.
Then we can attack the significantly less-defended palace?"
"It’s actually not a terrible idea," I admitted, considering it. "But just setting a few random buildings on fire won’t attract enough attention from the king to matter. Besides, who’ll rebuild all that destruction? You? We’ve gotta hit him where it matters the most. Sothing he actually cares about protecting."
"Oh, that reminds ," Liangyu suddenly spoke up, snapping his fingers. "What was that mysterious cargo we saw being transported this morning? Surely they must be sothing very important to the king, right?"
"They are," Zhang confird imdiately. "Extrely important. They never miss a single day with that cargo delivery. It’s like clockwork."
"What’s actually in those boxes?"
"Honestly? None of us know," Zhang shrugged. "The boxes are all qi sealed with so kind of advanced technique. They respond and open only to the king’s specific qi signature. No one else can access them."
"Interesting," I said, my mind racing. "Well, has today’s cargo been completely delivered yet?"
"I don’t think so, actually," Zhang replied, thinking about it. "The complete cargo shipnt is usually finished with the full delivery by afternoon. So I’m guessing only about half of it has been delivered to the palace so far. There are quite a lot of boxes, dozens of them."
"Perfect," I said, a plan forming in my mind. "All we gotta do is intercept the remaining cargo and sit on it. Refuse to let them reach the palace under any circumstances. Make it clear we’re holding them hostage.
Our first strategic step would be to make sure that every single troop the king sends to retrieve the cargo doesn’t go back to report. We eliminate or capture them all.
Eventually, after he keeps sending forces that never return, we can infiltrate the palace with reasonable ease."
"Let’s do this," Liangyu said with determination.
Qinyue stood up and confidently walked up to address the waiting mob. She climbed onto a slightly elevated stone platform so everyone could see her clearly. "Listen up, people!" she shouted.
All of them imdiately bowed down in deep respect to their newly appointed revolutionary leader. So even got down on one knee like she was actual royalty.
"We will not be storming the palace!" she announced dramatically.
The entire crowd visibly deflated with disappointnt. So people even started muttering complaints to each other.
"Instead," Qinyue continued, pausing for perfect dramatic effect, "the palace will co to US!"
"YEAH!!" they all started screaming enthusiastically, pumping their fists and weapons into the air.
One old lady in the front was waving her rolling pin around so enthusiastically I thought she might accidentally hit soone. Another guy was banging his pot lid against a wooden plank like it was a war drum.
The baker who’d called Qinyue "mighty queen" earlier looked like he might actually cry tears of joy. Han was sobbing openly, still clutching his frying pan.
"FOR IRONBELL!" soone shouted.
"FOR IRONBELL!" everyone echoed back, creating a deafening roar.
Liangyu leaned closer to and muttered quietly, "You sure about this plan? Like, really sure?"
I wasn’t. Not even remotely. The whole thing depended entirely upon whether we could actually defeat every single troop the king sent towards us without losing too many of our own people.
It was a gamble, and not a particularly good one.
But hey, you gotta keep the morale high and the people motivated, right?
"A hundred percent confident," I said.
Liangyu gave a look that clearly said he knew I was full of shit, but he didn’t call out on it. Good man.
Zhang looked at all the commotion and just shook his head in disbelief, clearly convinced he was surrounded by complete lunatics.
He wasn’t wrong.
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