The sultry morning mist lifted, replaced by a cool north wind, but in the forests of the valley, the cold wind was not as strong as in the plains, at least not as if it was a knife in the wind and cut your skin. A strange force www.biquge.info of two hundred men had just packed up camp and was slowly moving along the road through the forest. At the front of this group, more than thirty well-armed cavalrymen with blood lion banners followed behind the knights in silver-gray armor, their horses marching steadily and skillfully maintaining the formation. The cavalrymen were easily recognizable as battle-hardened veterans by their alert demeanor, but the infantry who followed them were a different story entirely. As the main group of troops, the infantry uniformly wore Imperial armor, carried Imperial swords at their waists, and carried Imperial shields, which at first glance looked decent, but a little observation revealed many problems - although the infantry barely maintained their formation, they were in fact scattered, and many of them seemed to be drunk, staggering and colliding with the people around them, and humming a few complaints from time to time.

The knight at the head of the team faintly saw a figure flickering in the woods, and immediately raised his hand to signal the troops to stop advancing, and watched vigilantly. His heart, which had been hanging in the air, quickly settled down, and out of the forest came the scout party he had sent the night before, and they quickly ran to the knight's side and knelt down on one knee in front of the horse, and the scout captain respectfully reported to the knight: "Monroe, according to your orders, the scout team has found out the situation ahead and found no danger. I also left a few men scattered along our march route to make sure there were no surprises and that we were safe for the time being. ”

Monroe breathed a long sigh of relief, and the seriousness on his face eased a lot, "We're never safe, even if you've done your job well. He hesitated for a moment, then lowered his voice and instructed the scout captain: "Take your people here to rest for a while, and then return when the end of the team passes you, I need your people to take care of the infantry, and not let people 'fall behind'." Speaking of "falling behind", Monroe's eyes flashed with doubt, and although he had thought about it carefully, he was still puzzled by the Prime Minister's advice.

Monroe was a conservative general, and his style of conduct earned him the admiration and trust of Duke Newitt, but sometimes the Prime Minister felt that his caution was far greater than that of a thirty-nine-year-old. Monroe always responded with a silent smile and a humble bow to the Prime Minister's kind teachings, but he never intended to change the creed of "be careful to make a ship of ten thousand years". In Monroe's opinion, it was extremely foolish and absurd to assemble the sixteen soldiers of the Imperial Capital Guard to form this joking advance party. The revolt that had been making a fuss in the southeastern part of the empire had crossed the vast plains and blown up the Saihado Bridge—an ancient structure older than the empire that straddled the rift valleys and rivers that had divided the continent—and had successfully cut off all connection between the hinterland of the empire and the west, and now both messengers and reinforcements relied on the narrow tunnels dug by the dwarves at the foot of the Toyalun Mountains to cross the towering natural barriers.

"That tunnel is a rat's hole! The cavalrymen can't even walk in it with their rifles on their backs, let alone ride horses! Not to mention that the hole at the other end is an open snowfield, and as long as the enemy places archers here, we who have just come out of the cave are live targets, and the corpses of war horses alone can fill the hole!" Monroe roared at his lieutenant like this all night the day he received the order, and his lieutenant had followed him for many years, and he had never seen him so out of control. Only Monroe himself knew that what made him mad was not the dispatch of more than 100 soldiers of the Imperial Capital Guards to send him to death, but the task specially assigned by the Prime Minister before leaving.

The advance party marched slowly through the woods like an old camel, and from early morning until noon, the sluggish old fellow walked less than five leagues. Monroe had had enough of the infantry's "leisurely strolls", and for some reason, this woodland always made him feel inexplicably uneasy. Although he knew that the entrance to the tunnel was not far away, and that the enemy would certainly place an ambush at the other end of the tunnel—if the rebels were not there to take advantage of the terrain to hold off reinforcements, there was really no need to go to great lengths to blow up the Saihado Bridge—the subconscious mind kept warning himself: "The seemingly calm woods are full of danger, ready to destroy you and your troops once and for all." In order to get rid of the irritability caused by the restlessness, Monroe ordered several times to speed up, but the blood lions were forced to stop and wait for the unhurried infantry after they could not run half a mile.