"What's the matter?" Sir Ren turned his head, looked at Shi Hu, and tried to find out what was going on.
Ren Baqian had continuously been in such a mood for a few consecutive days. Ever since he learned that his money was gone, he had been consumed by great bitterness and deep thoughts all day long, causing others to wonder if he had been dealt too huge a shock.
"Her Majesty is looking for you."
"Oh!" Ren Baqian nodded and hastily headed over to the main hall of the city commander's residence.
"Your Majesty! Sir Li!" Upon arriving at the main hall, Ren Baqian noticed that the empress was eating popcorn. She even shared some of the popcorn with Li Qianqiu, and he was extremely touched.
It was indeed worth it for him to feel touched. For the empress to share her snacks with him, he must be someone highly favored by the empress.
"Sir Ren, I wish to launch a night attack on the Great Xia barracks again. What do you think?" Li Qianqiu asked. If it was only about a night attack, he wouldn't have had to inform Ren Baqian at all. However, with the amount of manpower he had, it wasn't possible for him to gain much from a night attack. Naturally, his purpose of informing Ren Baqian was so that he could obtain some good stuff from him.
"There have been further reinforcement soldiers from Great Xia!" The empress then added, "40,000 elite soldiers as well as 30,000 of their regulars are escorting and protecting a batch of rations while heading over here. They will arrive in two days' time. These reinforcement soldiers were transferred from Tiesuo Pass and the outskirts of Shun City."
It couldn't be denied that the value of the radio station in this world was too great. The communication between each and every Dayao district was extremely smooth. As long as there were any changes in the other party's military strength, Dayao would immediately be aware of it and would make preparations before they arrived.
After listening to what Li Qianqiu said, Ren Baqian immediately knew why Li Qianqiu wanted to launch a night attack and replied on the spot, "I'm afraid that a night attack will not be that effective."
"Does Sir Ren have any other ideas?" Li Qianqiu inquired.
"Let's take a look at the direction the wind is blowing tonight before we try to poison them." Ren Baqian felt that it was time for him to utilize the remaining two bottles of sarin gas.
"How do we poison them?" Li Qianqiu's eyes brightened. Everyone knew that Ren Baqian was famous for his poison which killed over 10,000 Great Xia soldiers and horses. However, Li Qianqiu felt that a large amount of poison was required to kill this many Great Xia soldiers, and Ren Baqian might not necessarily have it with him. Thus, he hadn't asked Ren Baqian during this time.
Fortunately, Ren Baqian had always come up with some other powerful weapons that had played a great role in defending the city in recent days.
At present, it wasn't only Li Qianqiu who treated Ren Baqian as a sack with multiple treasures—the winged cavalry soldiers and troops from the Protectorate of the Center also treated him this way. They always felt that he had a myriad of rare items, and nobody knew where he obtained them from.
If there was someone else who knew about where these items came from, Li Qianqiu felt that it would definitely be the empress.
"Airdrop!" Ren Baqian said straightforwardly. Airdrop would cover the largest surface area, and furthermore, the poisonous liquid would evaporate faster too.
The only thing to be worried about was how effective the poison would be on the plains, which were spacious and empty.
Previously, he had used the sarin gas on some sunken land in a mountain gorge. The airflow there was inferior compared to the airflow on the plains. Even so, only 3,000 Great Xia soldiers had been poisoned to death at Bailong Stream while standing in their battle formation.
At this moment, Great Xia's tents extended into the distance. With such a wide range, the sarin gas might not be effective anymore.
Not to mention that the plains were windy and the poisonous gas could easily be blown away.
In fact, Ren Baqian's goal was to poison a few of the main areas in the Great Xia barracks. If he could poison the Great Xia's chief commander to death, things couldn't be better.
It was a pity that the chief commander hadn't shown up at all. Otherwise, the empress would immediately behead him with her own hands.
...
At night, Ren Baqian was sitting in the room and fiddling with the drone when Shi Hu knocked on the door and said, "Sir, it's a southeasterly wind!"
"Understood."
Ren Baqian opened the door, got someone to take the two drones, carried his back, and then went out to meet Li Qianqiu, who was waiting outside.
"Sir Ren, it's all up to you now!" Li Qianqiu cupped his hands and said.
As long as the poison was able to destroy half of the Great Xia soldiers outside the city, they would still be able to defend Liao City.
Under the light of a torch at night, a group of people headed north. After walking for a short while, they heard the empress's voice from a walkie-talkie ask, "Are all of you ready?"
"We are ready. Let's hope that there will be good news." Ren Baqian laughed. He said this quite easily, but wasn't confident that his plan would succeed.
When they reached the top of the city wall, Ren Baqian began to hang bottles on the drones. Just like the method he used previously, he made use of the cradle head when it changed direction to loosen the bottle cap. As such, the liquid in the bottles would spill out naturally.
As the drone rose toward the sky, it flew toward the north barracks and went straight to the area where the most soldiers were stationed according to the images taken by the drone. Next, he manipulated the cradle head of the drone and caused the liquid spilled out. The poisonous liquid was dispersed by the air and evaporated when it approached the ground.
Upon seeing how Ren Baqian controlled the drone, Li Qianqiu eyes were filled with admiration at how truly useful this thing was. Even if it wasn't used to release poison, it was extremely useful during war because they could check out the enemy's deployment of soldiers.
Buzz, buzz, buzz!
A few Great Xia soldiers who were on patrol looked up, but ignored the sound.
During the day, there were many people, so it was noisy. As such, drones weren't easily noticeable from a height of 600 meters. However, in the dead of night, the sound of the drone was relatively easy to hear. Fortunately, the sky was dark, and even if people heard it, they weren't able to locate it. Instead, they might think that the sound was made by mosquitoes or something.
As one soldier turned over in his sleep, his breathing grew progressively heavier until he was almost gasping for air. He then held his throat and struggled, but not a sound was made at all. In the end, the soldier died a miserable death.
This didn't only happen to him, but to all the other soldiers in his tent as well.
One of the commanders who was patrolling walked into a tent and felt that something was amiss because the positions of the soldiers lying inside were too weird. Each and every one of them was grabbing their throats as if they were being suffocated to death.
"Enemy attack!" the commander shouted at the top of his lungs. Soon after, he also experienced breathing difficulties, headache, and nausea.
A thought flashed in that commander's mind, and he hastily yelled, "Poison! There's poison!"
He fished out a lump of pennisetum and staggered outward. After running for over ten meters, he crashed into the ground.
That commander's shouts alerted many people, causing them to rush out of the tents with blank looks on their faces. It was only when they felt suffocated and nauseous that they snapped out of their daze, took out lumps of pennisetum, and then stuffed them into their mouths. At the same time, they yelled "Enemy attack! There's poison!"
Before the attack, the Great Xia army had already been prepared against being poisoned by Dayao. After all, the entire Nine Pavilions as well as an entire barracks had been destroyed by them. In that case, how could Great Xia not be prepared?
Every soldier had been warned about this matter when the pennisetum was given out to them. At the beginning, everyone took this matter very seriously, but a long time had passed since then. They hadn't encountered the legendary poison that had killed thousands of people, so they all forgot about it.
They put the pennisetum into their mouths in a flurry only after hearing the other soldiers shouting and witnessing the actions of the surrounding soldiers.
...
"Great general, we have counted up the figure. A total of 1,700 people were killed. Everyone took pennisetum in their mouths. At present, there aren't any new deaths."
At this moment, Wu Shenghou grabbed his head because it was throbbing really badly. If the poison attack hadn't been detected so early, he would have died from it too. Currently, he felt relieved after listening to the number of casualties.
"Hmph, I believe this is their final strategy, right?" Wu Shenghou snorted. The other party even used poison, so he was certain that they didn't have any other tricks up their sleeves anymore. Once the reinforcements arrived, they would then take down Liao City in one move.
"Notify everyone that we will rest for one day and continue to attack Liao City the day after," Wu Shenghou instructed. At the same time, a long cry could be heard coming from his stomach, which made his expression change.
They had no choice but to take a break because the side effect of the pennisetum was diarrhea. If they attacked Liao City tomorrow, that image would be too beautiful, so much so that Wu Shenghou didn't even dare to think about it.