This sudden flashback in the middle of the fight all but confirmed it, Jiaoqiu was already dead!
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"So you mean, in your eyes, I've already become prey with no secrets left, just waiting to die?"
Jiaoqiu couldn't even lift his head; only his mouth twitched as he spoke.
Hoolay's voice was especially cold: "Do you have any other path to take? Jiaoqiu, I have torn apart your disguise and defenses, and I've completely drained your value."
Everything about Feixiao, including those trivial daily details. Jiaoqiu had already told him.
And now, this medic held no more use for him. To drain his blood was merely making full use of him.
But at that moment, Jiaoqiu weakly said: "But the War Chief secretly told me as well, I already know everything."
Hoolay paid it no mind: "You will never use it. You will be buried here with him. However, you are fortunate, Jiaoqiu."
"After all, you don't have to live to witness the tragic future your general will face, "
"She will be overwhelmed time and again in battle by the Moon Rage, becoming the very beast she most fears becoming."
"And the only cure lies in my hands." Hoolay spoke as if offering a last mercy to someone about to die.
Yet that pity remained cruel.
He wanted Jiaoqiu to be unable to rest even before he died. To let Jiaoqiu think of the tragic end that the general he served would face.
"I should be leaving, Foxian. Before I go, do you know what else you will have to face, hmm?"
Faced with Hoolay's question, Jiaoqiu calmly said: "The Borisin's custom , killing captives and drinking their blood before going into battle to stimulate frenzy… just like you did just now."
"That's right, there's still some value in your body that hasn't been drained." Hoolay said no more.
The screen went dark.
Only Jiaoqiu's screams remained.
Amid the screams, scene after scene flashed up.
It was that familiar surgical scene again.
Only this time, lying before Jiaoqiu was Feixiao.
"If you are a medic, can you cure my Moon Rage?"
"So what if I cure it , are you going to throw yourself at death again? Child, you are not fit to take medicine anymore."
"Then, can you cure 'war'?"
"What? I'm just a medic. All I can do is-"
"So, what you can do is heal us, so we can go heal war."
"..."
"Like how you desperately save the dying and help the wounded, yet there will still be disease and death in this world, and we will keep fighting. You heal us, and we heal war! I order you, Jiaoqiu, cure me!"
The dialogue between Feixiao and Jiaoqiu flashed line by line.
The screen went dark again.
Large captions followed immediately.
[How to make a picky child eat green peppers]
[How to make a suspicious hungry wolf swallow poison]
[The answer is obvious]
The image returned once more to Jiaoqiu lying in the corner.
Hoolay had left. Only Jiaoqiu, with his last breath, murmured in his gradually dimming state.
"A person with no secrets… just torn skin and flesh… prey waiting to die."
"Drink my blood to your heart's content… Hoolay. It's a pity, I am not a person without secrets; I still hide a carefully prepared plan…"
"Hahahaha, I took a type of poison early; the poison has already spread through my whole body… sooner or later… it will take effect on you."
"The world's deadliest poison, if it can buy back an innocent life, can also be called a good medicine."
"I will do my best to heal, Feixiao. I have kept my promise, using this insignificant life to exchange victory for Yaoqing."
Under this successive impact, the audience's minds went blank.
Jiaoqiu's plotting. His schemes. And the forbearance within them. The truth had all been revealed.
Although earlier, some had suspected Jiaoqiu was tricking Hoolay, they could not have imagined the scheme would be so ruthless.
Trade with the enemy with his own life!
This medic first told part of the truth in front of Hoolay… about the medic's identity.
But he deliberately hid his role as a strategist and adviser.
Those people naturally could not discern the authenticity of the information.
And during their subsequent escape from Hoolay and the others, Jiaoqiu's talk masked his strategist identity beneath the medic's facade.
Various medical theories, food-and-medicine theories, all spoke from the perspective of his assumed identity.
And he was indeed telling the truth. Only he was choosing to tell the truth selectively.
Many viewers could already see this. But Jiaoqiu's true purpose was not clear.
Now, looking again, these actions were only a surface, seeming to conceal another identity, but in fact they were stepping into Hoolay's trap.
Hoolay was a cunning, suspicious war chief. So letting Hoolay trust him as a medic, and then being "forced" to reveal what a medic would know, was only natural.
At that point, his task was already completed.
Jiaoqiu knew well that a captured person whose value had been drained would not be kept by the Borisin. What awaited him was to be consumed as a blood-drinking wine.
...
That was also his purpose.
The medicine or poison had appeared in the previous episode. Back then Jiaoqiu had already spoken of this drug's use: if the dose is sufficient, it can even kill a large group.
After taking the concoction, Jiaoqiu himself was a huge poison.
But Hoolay did not know this; he made the choice to drink the blood himself, and naturally would not suspect that his choice had any problem.
Thus, the poison was passed into Hoolay through the blood as a matter of course.
This method, Jiaoqiu had even hinted at it to the viewers in the small courtyard through his words.
That thing about making a child eat green peppers, you need to chop the green peppers and put them in the meat filling.
The poison is the green pepper, the Borisin are that lump of meat filling.
Not only that, he also successfully fooled Hoolay, making Hoolay believe everything was under his control.
In arrogance or cruelty, he revealed the connection between Moon Rage and the Crimson Moon.
The value of that intelligence might even be more important than the war-chief himself.
One life. In exchange for such a result.
In the frame, lying on the ground was Jiaoqiu, seemingly the one who had been sacrificed in Hoolay's confident estimation.
But from a higher perspective, Hoolay was the one who lost terribly, the one toyed with in Jiaoqiu's palm!
The audience was shaken to their core by the cunning of the scheme.
Only one thought remained in their minds.
To trade one's life, to win by becoming a prisoner!