It happened almost exactly as he predicted. The Goryeon forces made their camp inside their infamous magical shields, while the empire sought to project as much force as possible by encircling the city as near to the shield as they could without being in range of artillery spells. And there, they made their first mistake.
Perhaps. It was not Gao Yuanjun’s place to judge, but if it were, he might suggest that camping so close to the range of enemy support fire gave up too much initiative to the enemy and made it difficult to pursue a counterattack if one of their bases came under assault.
The empire’s encirclement began against the mountain to the southwest of the city and circled around the edge of Kucheon’s artillery range as far to the northeast as they could safely reach without risk of being cut off from the rest of the army.
Or so they thought.
By Gao’s estimation, they failed to account for two things—one which should have been obvious, and another which nobody could have predicted.
First, their enemy was not Goryeo. Nor was it as simple as just an alliance between Yamato and Goryeo. The Austere Mountain was used to fighting against Yamato, who employed swift and aggressive strategies, and he fully expected to see their infantry taking the field. More than that, however, was the often overlooked factor of Jiaguo.
Gao’s brethren often spoke of the ‘southern barbarians’ or the ‘savage beastkin’ but hardly even acknowledged the little city state at the center of it all, except as the seat of their enemy’s power. As though they forgot that the tiny nation had conquered the entire southern continent in less than a decade.
He had heard about some of the wonders coming out of that city. Long-distance communication, unified cultivators, even rumors of an entirely new discipline. They were a wild-card that nobody could predict.
If the first oversight was that Yamato would never allow them to set up camp so close to the city unperturbed, then the second was simply this—they forgot who they were fighting.
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Minami Yuuko practically vibrated with nerves as she led the first charge against Qin’s armies. It was a huge honor—and it had to be her, she knew that. Nobody else had the right combination of experience and expertise to execute their plan and lead the others who could.
Her unit was hand-picked for the operation. An opening move that would bloody Qin’s nose and show them that Jiaguo was not a foe that could be so easily trampled.
If it worked.
If it failed, then Yuuko and her unit were dead. It was a risky maneuver, and they’d had limited time to practice it. But it would only work once, and it could only work now, while the enemy’s guard was down and they didn’t realize it was possible.
It would work. It had to. Yuuko...still struggled with trust, but she swallowed her nerves and put her faith in Yoshika and everything they’d worked for. The techniques that Yuuko had helped pioneer herself, when they’d still been students.
She missed those days—when the worst her pride and jealousy could earn her was an embarrassing public beatdown and a new friend. The stakes had grown so much higher, but she had to rise to the occasion.
Beside her, the proud men and women of Yamato charged past the edge of the barrier, where they’d be exposed to enemy fire, then beyond the edge of their artillery range where their magical support could no longer protect them. Northeast. Towards the furthest of Qin’s encampments.
The Qin army wasn’t taken by surprise—they had their own scouts and clairvoyance techniques, surely—but they hadn’t finished setting up their camp, either. They knew better than to try pushing back against Yuuko’s charge and braced themselves for a retreating battle, back towards the main army and reinforcements.
Just as planned.
“On my mark!”
Yuuko and soldiers prepared their talismans. They only had one chance. It had to be perfect.
Talismans weren’t just canned spells. You still needed to be a mage to cast them, and a talisman made by another mage was usually incompatible unless expressly designed for it. And even then, it required the caster to have a good understanding of the spell which usually limited it to only the most basic magic. Complex spells were out of the question.
Unless, of course, some genius had found a way to optimize and simplify a complex talisman so that it could be mass produced, and another genius had developed a way to use martial arts to memorize simple spell talismans by rote.
And say those hypothetical geniuses then trained a specialized group of individuals, talented in both arcane and martial arts, to use those talismans? Even redraw them with that same rote calligraphy technique?
Well then perhaps that specially trained group of soldiers could cast a spell that should have been far beyond them. Far beyond anything a reasonable person would expect out of a group of common infantry.
Qin’s army formed up and began backing away as the first volley of long-range spells came arcing over them from the back ranks, raining all manner of death and destruction down on Yamato’s close-range shock-troops.
“Now!”
Yuuko’s stomach lurched as she poured her essence into the talisman. Simplified though it was, it was still a powerful spell, and not an especially compatible element with her natural ki affinity of Light—wholly incompatible, in fact.
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Nevertheless, the spell worked, and with a flash of pure Void Yuuko found herself facing the back of a very confused Qin soldier. The others had an easier time of it, having been specially selected for compatibility with the spell, rather than the experience required to teach them how to use it.
“Forward! Drive them back!”
The imperial cultivators didn’t even have time to be startled as Yuuko’s unit crashed into their back ranks, now pinning them between her force and Kucheon’s artillery support.
The battle had begun.
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“Teleportation?!”
Gao nodded grimly at his juniors—the same ones from before. They’d started following him around, and he was beginning to feel guilty about not learning their names.
“An entire unit of elite infantry forces capable of short-range teleportation, yes. We’re moving our camps further back.”
“Why? No, wait—how?! Are they led by some powerful xiantian expert in the Void element?”
Gao was surprised his junior was familiar with mana theory, but it had been gaining a great deal of popularity within the empire in the last decade.
“No, my understanding is that they can all use the technique individually. They wiped out an entire encampment by teleporting behind them and driving them into the range of the city’s artillery formations.”
The younger men shuddered.
“What a disaster! They just slaughtered the entire encampment?”
Gao Yuanjun squinted at him.
“What? No, after a rout that decisive, the majority were likely captured.”
You don’t just slaughter an encircled enemy to the last, it sets a bad precedent and makes war far bloodier than it needs to be. What good would it do to rule over a mountain of corpses?
“Oh. Well surely we must have a plan to retaliate? Why are we retreating? It was just one minor loss.”
“Not retreating—repositioning. Until we have a way to assail their shield, our enemy holds the initiative, but we remain in control of the battlefield.”
Not that they should have ever allowed Jiaguo to fight so close to their own defenses in the first place, but Gao was not the one in charge. It was a lesson learned, even if the cost was paid in someone else’s blood.
“Won’t the wider perimeter spread our forces even thinner?”
He sighed. Teaching his juniors basic strategy wasn’t really his idea of entertainment, but it was knowledge that might save their lives one day.
“It actually allows a greater concentration of our forces. Consider that the further back we camp, the further our enemy must charge to engage us. That gives nearby forces more time to react, threatening to cut off and encircle the enemy. How would you prevent that?”
“Hmm, send more troops to engage the reinforcements?”
“Which then brings in more reinforcements from further down the line.”
The two juniors’ eyes lit up with understanding.
“The only way to stop it is to engage the entire battle line!”
“And the longer the battle line is, the more they must commit!”
“Which lets us take greater advantage of our numbers!”
Gao nodded with approval as the two finished each other’s sentences. It was heartening to see such camaraderie developing—that would serve them well once their unit saw combat.
Of course, it was an extreme oversimplification of an already very basic strategic principle. As common foot soldiers, perhaps they didn’t need to know.
So what was Yan De’s excuse?
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“They’re harrying our retreat while the main forces draw back to join the reserve camps.”
Yan De scoffed at his disciple’s report.
“Casualties?”
Yan Ren bowed apologetically to his master.
“Light, but not insignificant. Jiaguo has struck us a considerable blow with their opening attack.”
“Tsk—teleportation. The beastkin always have been crafty, haven’t they? A nasty trick we couldn’t have predicted, but it won’t happen again.”
Sun Quan did not scowl. His face was a perfect mask, not betraying any of his inner thoughts. He joined Yan De’s war council, in the lavishly decorated ‘tent’ as an advisor and fellow general, along with Grandmasters Qian Shi and Bai Renshu.
He did not tell Yan De that a proper rearguard might have prevented such a swift and total rout, nor did he comment on the folly of engaging the city too closely. Nor did Qian Shi, though surely both understood it.
They could not.
Yan De had been too forward in his planning. Laid out his reasoning well, and demonstrated a clear grasp of strategic theory and long-term planning. To correct him would be an insult. Surely he was already aware of such basic ideas and had already considered them—and indeed he had.
Except that he had done so alone. Yan De was a man of absolute confidence, and while Qian Shi and Sun Quan were nominally advisors, the way he delivered his plans left little room for argument. For example—
“Pull back to this perimeter here. Limit the encirclement to this point here—any further east will put us in danger from enemy reinforcements. Grandmaster Qian, who among your disciples has the most impenetrable defense?”
A rare question. It seemed a perfect chance for his advisors to add something, and yet...
“That would be Bu Dong Rushan, Grandmaster Yan, but—”
“Assign him to the northeastern edge of the encirclement. We won’t allow another mishap like this.”
Sun Quan did not wince. But he felt for Qian Shi, who had no choice but to interject.
“With respect, that is a highly vulnerable position to station one of our xiantian elders.”
“I am assigning him there because the position is vulnerable. If your sect isn’t up to the task, Elder, then simply say so. There’s no shame in weakness.”
Qian Shi did not grit his teeth. Ironically, Qin’s grandmasters tended to be much looser in the presence of outsiders. Amongst themselves? They let absolutely nothing slip. The honorable grandmaster took the shamelessly unsubtle jab in stride.
“He is, of course, a peerless choice to command that location. I only wish to recommend—”
“Then send him out. A squad of Elder Sun’s demon hunters as well.”
Sun Quan did not sigh. He did not argue, for while his demon hunters were valuable, they were not irreplaceable. He did not remind Yan De that Jiaguo had xiantian fighters of their own, or that peerless defense did not necessarily mean the power to protect an entire unit—though by the God-Emperor’s divine providence, Bu Dong Rushan had both.
After all, Yan De surely knew that. He dared not insinuate otherwise, lest their great war leader lose face.
Sun Quan was satisfied enough to know that the war was happening, and that the Fox Princess would fall. He kept his thoughts private as he wondered why Seong Misun had not honored her oath to prevent her ancestor’s reincarnation. He had no fear that they would lose the war, even if Yan De’s overconfidence meant that it would cost them more than it needed to. But if they did?
Let Yan De pay that price.