As it turned out, Yun Zhe's plan succeeded. When Yun Zhe recounted his "thrilling" experience the following day to Andrew, Andrew was practically enraged. In Andrew's vivid memory, this was the second time Yun Zhe had been assassinated. While the first time was due to his bad luck in encountering the Shadow Assassin who was supposed to assassinate Serena, this time it was a blatant attack, and in front of dozens of soldiers no less.

"Arrogant!" That was Andrew's first reaction after learning the details, but then he thought, who would be so blatant and ruthless as to assassinate an Aruru?

Andrew immediately thought of his beloved younger brother, Sind. It must be that he was jealous of his side's tremendous success in taming the refugees and wanted to kill this Aruru. But these orders all came through him or Serena. If they could trace it back to Yun Zhe, then there was only one possibility: his brother had planted an informant within him! Thinking of this, Andrew felt a chill run down his spine. However, Andrew regretted that he didn't have any informants among his brother's people, and at this moment, he couldn't accurately assess his suspicions.

This matter greatly worried Andrew, so he assigned the task of investigating past mercenaries and rangers. However, a day of investigation and searching yielded no results, except for a disassembled crossbow bolt found in a clump of grass a few hundred meters away from Yun Zhe's military camp.

Therefore, as a matter of course, the city of Pas closed itself off to mercenaries, rangers, and hunters on the second night.

Yun Zhe was very satisfied with the result, while Ellie was amazed. However, she couldn't tell anyone about this and could only enjoy this special memory by herself.

However, Ellie quickly forgot the complicated emotions she felt about having this exclusive memory, because Yun Zhe actually spent a lot of time with her after that day, which made Ellie feel much better, so she stopped mentioning the matter.

Yun Zhe used this time to compile a new training syllabus, combining movies and novels from his previous life with real-world training, and began to train his limited number of over one hundred people into special forces soldiers.

Under Yun Zhe's orders, each soldier had to learn to use bows, crossbows, spears, two-handed swords, one-handed swords, meteor hammers, and all other weapons they might encounter. They also had to master horseback riding, driving, swimming, and even basic wilderness survival skills. Alongside this intensive skills training, Yun Zhe also taught them basic literacy, enabling them to read and write and acquire more information and knowledge. At the same time, he generously shared all the limited war knowledge he had retained.

If the soldiers could still manage the extensive weapons training and skills development, then Yun Zhe's cultural classes and his self-proclaimed art of war classes truly opened their eyes. Yun Zhe's teaching skills were naturally not strong, but he made full use of his intelligence, inventing many vivid props and combining them with his own physical demonstrations, finally giving the soldiers an immersive learning experience as if they were actually there.

Yun Zhe even made a sand table while explaining tactics—yes, a crude one. At the time, neither Yun Zhe nor his soldiers thought this invention was anything special.

Time flies, and it was already mid-September. After nearly forty days of intensive training, Yun Zhe was confident that his soldiers had reached the pinnacle of their time in both military skills and theory. Of course, this pinnacle still needed to be tested in actual combat. Therefore, Yun Zhe didn't voice his claim of reaching this peak, partly because he was worried about being proven wrong, and partly because he feared the unit would become arrogant. After all, pride comes before a fall.

However, while Yun Zhe was diligently training and Andrew was thriving in production, the other rivals or potential rivals on this land were having a less than comfortable time.

Andrew's younger brother, Sind, whom his brother worried might plant a spy within him, actually didn't. It wasn't that he didn't have the opportunity, but rather that in their decades of interaction, Sind genuinely felt there was no need to plant a spy within his brother's circle. His brother was so frank and direct, seeing right through him effortlessly.

So now Sind was regretting it so much he was practically grinding his teeth. Ever since the count ran off to his brother’s territory, his brother’s actions had become increasingly incomprehensible, and in this ambiguity, they revealed an unparalleled brilliance and effectiveness.

However, he was now completely unable to obtain any useful information from his brother. Ever since the strange man in black robes disappeared without a trace, he had made numerous attempts and sent many people there, but none of them had yielded any useful information. Even as he considered infiltrating Pas City with rangers and mercenaries, the city had already imposed martial law and closed its gates to rangers and mercenaries. Once again, the opponent was one step ahead of him; it was as if he were playing chess with a master. He raised his hand, and the opponent already knew where his pieces would land, setting up their moves in advance.

It was very painful and frustrating. But Sind's pain was merely a psychological adjustment. Compared to Barons Ars and Tra, he was actually much luckier.

Since his failed raid on the castle in a fit of rage, Ars had been utterly demoralized. Fortunately, he stopped in time and began preparing for winter, though this cost him a considerable expense. After exhausting his savings and obtaining food from the Tra and Lunlang families, his rations were finally enough to last until August or September of the following year. While still somewhat insufficient, it would at least allow him to survive the harsh winter. However, being penniless, he could no longer muster a capable cavalry unit, and even much of his own armed force had been disbanded.

Worse still, the two consecutive defeats caused his prestige to plummet in his territory and among other lords. While he wasn't exactly ridiculed, he became a topic of conversation.

The Tra family, who suffered almost no losses, also had their own difficulties. Although they had gained a great deal from the battle, especially since Ars had hastily retreated to save his homeland, leaving almost all the plundered people and food to the Tra family. This should have been good news, but the Tra family's excessive desire to completely seize everything they had gained inadvertently opened Pandora's box: a slave revolt. Led by a man named Black, the Tra family finally tasted the bitter fruit of their war. Starting in August, in just one month, a group of slaves armed with stolen, worn-out weapons, led by Black, swept across the entire Tra family territory, burning, killing, and looting without restraint. Although they were finally completely wiped out by the end of August, with nearly four hundred slaves involved in the revolt being hanged, beheaded, or even trampled into mincemeat by horses, two indelible wounds remained for the Tra family: one, Black was never found; and two, the losses caused by the chaos far exceeded the gains they had plundered from Donic. It was a case of more harm than good.

At this time, on the morning of the first day of September, two caravans from the Lunlang family quietly entered the home of Ars and Tra.