Everyone was shocked at what Baron had made his men do. Meng Tian was shocked beyond belief, Yue Fei was taken aback, Guan Yu could not help but to look away. Bai Qi, Sun elder, and Li Mu just looked on absolute disbelief, they had rarely ever been in a situation where they had no idea what they were going to do. Gasps of horror filled the plain where over a hundred thousand soldiers stood looking at the sight of 5 prominent strategists be cut multiple times.

(BM) “What’s wrong Bai Qi, are you speechless? And here I thought they called you the human butcher, all’s fair in love and war, isn’t that what you said just now?.” Baron said with a blank face, clearly he didn’t want to resort to such cruel tactics to prove a point.

(BQ) “You...you’re mad.” Bai Qi said while still shocked at what he was looking at, but that only lasted for a split second as he returned back to his harsh nature. “You have made an enemy out of 2 of the 3 most powerful factions here in the Chinese community, and for what? To prove a point? Your career here is basically finished here, kid.”

(BM) “Oh, I don’t think so, Bai Qi, you should know that while I may not have sufficient influence to take the likes of you on, I’m quite charismatic in the way that I can get the general populace on my side. Your faction is indeed powerful, but that is only because these ordinary people allow you to be. If they were riled up into one cohesive force, then I’m fairly confident that not even the Sun Alliance will be able to survive.”

(LM) “Enough of this tomfoolery. Junior Baron! What Bai Qi has done is wrong, I will admit that much, but that does not give you the right to do the same. I demand you release them this instant. Though this is a sim, this is a tournament, after all, the screams that come out of their mouths are real.” Li Mu said in a rather dark tone.

(BM) “Oh, but Li Mu senior, as someone from a respected faction, you shouldn’t beg your opponent for anything should you? That’s quite a loss of face on your part.”

(LM) “You...you…”

(BQ) “Humph, watch your language boy. Allow me to tell you something about this world that we have been sent to. Your people that I just killed, were of no importance. The 5 in your care, however, are. So if you continue what you are doing right now, you will have made multiple powerful foes. You wouldn’t want something like that now would you?”

(BM) “Heh, save it. You should have thought of that before you killed my friends. I think this conversation is over.”

“Sir, 1,000 cuts to the enemy has been dealt. We await your signal for the final blow.”

(BM) “Ah, excellent timing, let’s go, everyone, you too Meng Tian.” Baron said and turned around to walk away followed by his elite guard. With a snap of his fingers, 5 well-known strategists fell to Baron’s soldiers.

----------

Both sides decided to keep the truce for the time being and resume all conflicts the following day. Guan yu, Yue Fei, Meng Tian, and Baron were having a secret meeting.

(MT) “Baron.” Meng Tian said with tears still fresh on his eyes.

(BM) “Yea?”

(MT) “Did you expect this result?”

(BM) “Well no, I had really expected Li Mu to be the one to deliver your brother to us. Turns out that that assumption was wrong.”

(MT) “But, there was a distinct possibility in your mind that it would go down like this?”

(BM) “Yes…” Baron started but he was instantly on the floor gasping for air. Meng Tian had given him a mean punch to the stomach.

(MT) “Don’t you EVER use me or my brother as one of your chess pieces ever again.” Meng Tian said and stomped away.

Silence ensued.

(YF) “You know Baron, I hope what you did today is a one-time thing. Personally, what you did could be considered admirable of sorts, but going down this path will surely lead you to become someone on Bai Qi’s level, perhaps even lower.” Yue Fei advised Baron.

(GY) “Yue Fei and Meng Tian both have a point Baron, what you did today was impressive, but you did go a little overboard. You must consider it from the perspective of those that you had executed today. They were killed by someone many times their junior, even if they lost to vastly superior strategists originally. This puts them in a very awkward position, in fact the amount of face that they have lost is by no means a small amount.” Guan Yu lectured.

(BM) “Not to worry, the both of you, I have thought everything through the moment I came up with the idea of trading prisoners of war. Though I didn’t want to resort to torturing those 5, we couldn’t let them get away with killing our comrade could we? If we had instead kept them, wouldn’t they just find a way to escape? There is a 99% chance that they would never accept superiors as weak as us.”

(GY) “That may be true but we could have had other uses for them.”

(BM) “I didn’t want to take the chance that they were listening on to us and would somehow manage to get a message to their comrades as soon as we had our backs turned to them.”

(YF) “Alright, but you need to promise me that you will never do anything that twisted ever again.”

(BM) “Do promises even have any bearing in the afterlife? Whatever, sure, I promise that I wouldn’t unless I had a very good reason to like I had today.”

(GY) “Enough of this, it’s time we met back up with Meng Tian. We still need to strategize for tomorrow’s battles. This will now be extremely difficult to survive now that some of the best will be coming for us with all of their abilities.