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"The Queen speaks the truth," Warlord Suwa rumbled, his deep voice echoing in the tent. "You cannot fight a storm by standing in an open field. We must pull them into the rocks, where their massive iron carts will break their axles and their formations will shatter. The mountains are our shield!"
But the proud, stubbornly arrogant warlords, especially those whose lands sat directly on the western borders and the fertile plains, like Chief Takeinawake of Owari and the lords of Suruga, felt that the Queen's suggestion was absolute, cowardly nonsense. To them, abandoning their ancestral lands without spilling a single drop of blood was a fate worse than death.
"Cowardice!" Chief Takeinawake roared, slamming his heavy iron fist onto the central table, cracking the wood. His face was purple with sheer outrage. "She demands we hand over the Nobi plains? The rice paddies that feed our children? The rivers our ancestors bled for?!"
He pointed a thick, accusatory finger at the envoy. "The witch of Yamatai is simply terrified of the incoming enemy! She is perfectly willing to sacrifice Central Honshu's lands, to let our cities burn and our people die, just to buy her own miserable island more time! She wants us to be the meat that chokes the beast so she can survive!"
"If we do not bend, we will break!" Otohime countered fiercely, abandoning her usual serene composure. "You have heard the survivors! Their weapons shatter stone! Your spearmen will be turned to ash before they even see the faces of these mainland demons!"
"Then we will die as men of honor and courage, not as rats hiding in a cave!" a lord from Suruga spat back, resting his hand on the hilt of his curved sword.
Voices were raised to a deafening crescendo. Insults that had fueled centuries of blood feuds were hurled across the wooden table. The sheer, existential terror of the Hengyuan invasion, rather than forging them into an unbreakable alloy, had exploited the deep, microscopic cracks in their fragile alliance.
Suddenly, a Mikawa captain stepped forward to defend his High Priestess, pushing an Owari general. In a flash of lethal, unthinking instinct, swords were drawn. The sharp, metallic shing of iron clearing scabbards echoed through the tent. A vicious, bloody infighting instantly began right inside the command center. Two men fell dead to the dirt floor before Warlord Suwa and Chief Takeinawake could physically roar their men into a tense, heavily armed standoff.
But the damage was irreversibly done. The blood of allies had been spilled.
This irreconcilable ideological clash completely shattered the fragile alliance. The grand coalition bitterly separated into two distinct, highly uncooperative groups.
One group, led by Warlord Suwa and High Priestess Otohime, strictly followed Himiko's request. They immediately struck their tents, pulling their thousands of warriors, their families, and their supplies back, beginning the arduous trek up into the treacherous, high altitude passes of Shinano to consolidate their strength in a highly defensible fallback position.
The other group, led by the furious Chief Takeinawake and the lords of Suruga and the coastal plains, refused to yield a single inch of dirt. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they furiously marched their combined armies westward.
They stationed themselves directly across the vital borders, utilizing the deep river networks and ancient earthworks. They vowed to do absolutely anything they could to rigidly fortify the border and fight the invaders face to face, prioritizing their martial pride over survival.
It did not take long for the invisible, ever watchful Oriole Agents deeply embedded in the region to act. Disguised as fleeing merchants and terrified conscripts, they had witnessed the catastrophic fracture of the Nobi plains camp.
Slipping away into the night, they wrote tiny, highly encrypted ciphers on small slips of silk. Within hours, swift, specially bred messenger hawks were released into the night sky, flying swiftly over the burning ruins of the western territories back to the Hengyuan lines.
When the hawks landed at the massive, heavily fortified beachhead pavilion, the intelligence was immediately decoded and rushed to the high command.
Zhang Liao alongside the four peerless strategists, Guo Jia, Xi Zhicai, Sima Yi, and Jia Kui, and the four admirals Gan nIng, Zhou Yu, Jiang Qin, and Huang Zu, stood around the massive topographical map. When they heard the highly classified information regarding the enemy's catastrophic infighting and their subsequent geographical split, a profound, chilling silence fell over the pavilion.
Then, they shared cold, predatory smiles.
"They have broken their own spine before we even struck a blow," Sima Yi murmured, his dark eyes gleaming with absolute, malicious joy. "Pride is a much sharper blade than any iron sword."
Guo Jia let out a chaotic, breathless laugh, coughing lightly into his silk handkerchief. "They actually divided their forces. Half of them are sitting on the open plains, waiting in wooden forts, begging to be burned. It is almost too easy, General Zhang Liao."
The enemy had just foolishly handed them the absolute perfect opportunity. The strategists did not need to deliberate; the tactical response was obvious and lethal.
Wasting not a single second, Zhang Liao slammed his gauntlet onto the map, directly over the borders of Owari. "Signal the vanguard. Tell the artillery commanders to double the powder rations. We launch the full scale attack immediately. We will show these arrogant border lords the true price of standing in the open."
The orders cascaded down the chain of command with terrifying, mechanized efficiency. The massive Hengyuan war machine, which had been resting and consolidating its supply lines, roared back to life.
This new offensive was unimaginably much more brutal than the previous attack on Western Honshu, but it was also shockingly much faster. The element of surprise was gone, replaced instead by overwhelming, industrialized speed.
Because half of the stubborn coalition forces, led by Chief Takeinawake, had foolishly banded together and clumped their massive armies in static, heavily fortified wooden border forts along the river crossings, they became the absolute perfect, stationary targets for the Hengyuan army. They had dug trenches and sharpened thousands of bamboo stakes, lining up shoulder to shoulder with their iron spears, expecting a massive infantry clash.
They did not get one.
Utilizing their superior naval bombardment from the shallow-draft gunboats that had navigated up the deep river networks, and the brilliant, interconnected blitzkrieg tactics of the four strategists, the Hengyuan Army executed a flawless, devastating assault.
At dawn, the defenders of the Owari border forts looked through the morning mist and saw the horizon turn black. Tens of thousands of Hengyuan heavy infantry marched into view, but they stopped well outside of bow range. Then, the earth began to shake as the massive, heavy black powder cannons were wheeled forward by teams of draft horses, their bronze barrels gleaming with deadly intent.
Zhang Liao did not offer terms of surrender. He simply raised his command flag.
The bombardment that followed was apocalyptic. Dozens of heavy cannons, supported by hundreds of Hwacha rocket carts, opened fire simultaneously.
The heavy iron cannonballs tore through the massive wooden barricades as if they were made of dry parchment. Entire sections of the heavily fortified border forts simply exploded, sending massive, jagged splinters of cedar wood tearing through the densely packed ranks of the Owari spearmen like shrapnel. The Hwacha rockets screamed overhead, plunging into the center of the camps and detonating, setting the canvas tents and the terrified defenders on fire.
Chief Takeinawake, screaming for his men to hold the line, was completely silenced when a cannonball smashed directly into his command tower, vaporizing the ambitious warlord and his entire command staff in a cloud of pulverized wood and red mist.
The blitzkrieg was flawless. The Hengyuan infantry finally advanced only to effortlessly sweep through the burning, shattered remains of the forts, dispatching any surviving, deafened defenders with cold, mechanical thrusts of their halberds. They completely overwhelmed the border forts in a matter of three days. The stubborn, prideful decision of the border lords had allowed the Hengyuan Army to rapidly clear up and slaughter half of the entire Central Honshu military power in one fell swoop, with Hengyuan taking almost zero casualties.
With the borders completely shattered and the primary defenders annihilated, the massive, heavily armored legions then proceeded to just ruthlessly take down each defenseless domain.
The blitzkrieg swept across the central plains like an unstoppable tidal wave of dark steel. The Hengyuan cavalry, riding massive, armored mainland steeds, ran down any retreating survivors. The infantry marched into Owari, Mikawa, Suruga, and the coastal Koshi territories. Without their armies, the sprawling agricultural crown jewels of the island offered no resistance.
Village elders wept and threw themselves at the feet of the Hengyuan officers, begging for mercy. The wealthy coastal lords of Suruga, who had bragged about their invincibility, surrendered their entire fleets and their treasuries without firing a single arrow, trembling as the massive Hengyuan warships docked in their harbors.
Jia Kui and his cadre of imperial magistrates followed immediately behind the advancing army, rapidly implementing the brutal, highly efficient Hengyuan administrative system. They seized the massive grain silos of the Nobi plain, secured the coastal trade routes, and imposed martial law. The entire central region, the beating heart of Honshu, was completely subjugated, its wealth and resources now directly fueling the very army that had conquered it.
Finally, with the plains secured, the Hengyuan forces perfectly maneuvered to deal with the remaining threat.
Zhang Liao turned his massive legions inland, marching toward the towering, jagged peaks of Shinano. He flawlessly executed a massive encirclement maneuver, moving his troops through the mountain passes to completely encircle the other half of the coalition group, the pragmatists led by Warlord Suwa and High Priestess Otohime, that had retreated and holed themselves up according to Himiko's plan.
The coalition forces had prepared a brilliant defensive position. They were entrenched high in a massive, bowl shaped mountain valley, accessible only by steep, narrow winding paths that were heavily trapped with deadfalls and ambush points.
Warlord Suwa's hardened highland warriors waited in the freezing fog, their obsidian tipped arrows nocked, ready to inflict horrific casualties on the Hengyuan infantry the moment they tried to climb the slopes. They were ready for a grueling, bloody, heroic last stand that would cost the mainlanders thousands of lives.
But Zhang Liao, an absolute master of warfare, did not immediately send his infantry to charge their prepared defenses. He looked up at the mist shrouded peaks, his face a mask of cold, uncompromising granite. He would not give them the honor of a warrior's death, nor would he spend the lives of his elite soldiers on a suicidal uphill charge.
Instead, showing absolute, terrifying military dominance, he ordered the infantry to hold their lines at the base of the mountains, completely sealing off any hope of escape. Then, he ordered the siege engineers forward.
Thousands of Hengyuan laborers and engineers began to work with terrifying speed. They cleared the forests at the base of the mountains and began constructing massive, elevated earthen ramps and reinforced wooden firing platforms. They utilized a system of complex pulleys and massive draft horses to slowly, painstakingly drag their heaviest artillery into position.
The Hengyuan army simply surrounded the trapped coalition and began to mercilessly bombard them day and night.
First came the heavy black powder cannons, angled high to arc their explosive iron shells over the rocky outcroppings and directly into the valley bowl. The explosions echoed off the mountain walls, amplifying the concussive force, shattering the rocks and causing massive, terrifying avalanches that buried entire companies of Shinano warriors alive.
Then came the sky darkening Hwachas, firing thousands of explosive rockets into the dense pine forests where the coalition had hidden their supplies, turning the sanctuary into a roaring, inescapable inferno.
And finally, the massive, towering trebuchets were assembled. They did not just throw stones. Following the chaotic, cruel brilliance of Guo Jia, they launched heavy, sealed ceramic barrels filled with a mixture of sulfur, pitch, and noxious chemicals that burst upon impact, filling the high altitude valley with thick, suffocating, toxic smoke.
For seven days and seven nights, the bombardment never ceased. It was a relentless, mechanical rhythm of destruction. The warriors of Shinano and Mikawa, trapped in their mountain fortress, could not fight back. They could not use their swords, their spears, or their tactical brilliance. They could only cower in the caves and behind the rocks, listening to the deafening thunder, watching their comrades being blown apart or suffocated by the smoke.
Zhang Liao fully intended to completely break their bodies and their spirits from afar. He was not fighting a battle, he was conducting an siege of psychological and physical annihilation. He would systematically reduce the mountain valley to an ash filled crater, ensuring that by the time a single Hengyuan soldier even had to draw their sword to climb the pass, there would be nothing left to conquer but broken, deafened ghosts begging for the mercy of an absolute, unconditional surrender.
As the sprawling plains, winding rivers, and once tranquil valleys of Central Honshu were entirely filled with the towering, unquenchable flames of war, fires that clearly signified their decisive end, the horrifying news of the one sided battles could not be contained by the mountain ranges. Like a dark, terrifying plague carried on the wind, the reality of the Black Dragon's wrath rapidly arrived in the untouched, rugged Eastern and Northeastern parts of Honshu.
Fleeing native merchants whose caravans had been reduced to cinders, terrified wandering monks who had seen their sacred shrines pulverized by artillery, and weary, blood stained travelers who were originally natives of the east frantically crossed the treacherous, snow capped mountain passes.
They stumbled into the hidden valleys and coastal settlements, bringing with them blood chilling tales that defied logic. They spoke of iron ships that did not need wind to move, of thunder weapons that could erase a village in a heartbeat, and of armored demons who marched with a mechanical, emotionless precision that no mortal warrior could match.
Soon, the absolute entirety of the eastern region knew of the devastating, world ending war that had engulfed the island. They learned the brutal truth, Western Honshu, once a powerhouse of iron and wealth, had already completely fallen and been digested into the empire. Central Honshu, the agricultural heart of the archipelago, was currently bleeding out on its last legs, its massive armies either burned in their forts or suffocating in the high mountain valleys.
However, the political reaction to this apocalyptic news was fundamentally different here than in the west or the center. Unlike those centralized states, the Eastern and Northeastern region was a highly fractured, untamed, and deeply paranoid landscape.
It was made up entirely of fiercely independent chiefdoms, massive, sprawling clan territories, and wild tribal confederations. It was a harsh, unforgiving land, and its people were molded by it. The total population of this vast, rugged region was actually noticeably smaller compared to the dense, rice rich populations of Western and Central Honshu, but what they lacked in sheer numbers, they made up for in sheer, primal ferocity and geographical isolation.
The intelligence gathered by the few Oriole Agents who had braved the freezing eastern passes painted a rich, complex picture of this Yayoi period geopolitical landscape.
Dominating the center of this region, located on the vast, fertile expanse of the Kanto plains, were the agricultural giants of the east, Musashi and Hitachi.
Musashi, holding a population of around 25,000, was a powerhouse of organized violence. It was ruled by the fiercely arrogant Warlord Arahabaki, a man who claimed descent from the storm gods. Under his iron fisted command, Musashi boasted 5,000 highly skilled spearmen, renowned for their long, bronze tipped pikes and aggressive phalanx formations.
Hitachi, its wealthy, sprawling coastal neighbor to the east, held 15,000 people. They controlled vital coastal trade routes and possessed a formidable navy of sleek, fast raiding vessels. Musashi and Hitachi shared a fragile, heavily negotiated alliance of convenience, mostly born out of necessity, as they constantly rivaled and skirmished against the fierce northern mountain clans that threatened their borders.
Guarding the vital, sprawling inland mountain passes to the northwest were Kōzuke and Shimotsuke. These territories were famous throughout the island not for agriculture, but for their early, highly effective horse breeding programs and their fierce, mobile infantry.
Combined, they held a rugged population of 20,000 and 4,000 hardened, highly mobile warriors. They were not ruled by a single king, but by a pragmatic, ruthless council of tribal elders. They held absolute, undeniable control over the strategic, narrow valleys that connected the untamed east to the fertile central plains. Their warriors were experts at ambush, utilizing the rough terrain to launch devastating cavalry skirmishes before melting back into the forests.
To the southeast, occupying the sprawling, jagged coastline of the Boso Peninsula, were Kazusa and Shimōsa. These chiefdoms were culturally distinct, relying heavily on deep-sea fishing and the bounty of marine resources rather than agriculture. With a combined population of roughly 18,000, they fielded 3,000 fierce marine raiders. They were fiercely independent, hardened by the brutal storms of the Pacific, and they often engaged in ruthless piracy against the southern coasts when the fishing seasons were poor.
And finally, looming like a dark, frozen shadow over them all were Mutsu and Dewa, the Deep Northeast.
Located in the freezing, incredibly rugged, and heavily forested northernmost reaches of Honshu, this was a land considered savage even by the other eastern clans. They were inhabited by fierce, Emishi like tribal confederations who eschewed the complex politics of the south. They wore heavy pelts of bear and wolf, surviving in a climate that would kill a lowland farmer in a week.
Though their combined population across the massive territory was only about 30,000, their 6,000 tribal hunters were absolutely unmatched in brutal, silent guerrilla warfare and tracking. They wielded deadly, iron tipped hunting bows with terrifying accuracy. More importantly, though they barely utilized it for trade, they controlled massive, entirely untapped resources of iron sand and gold hidden deep within their freezing mountains. They were usually entirely isolationist, content to let the southerners slaughter each other while they hunted the great beasts of the north.
______________________________
Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0