The Great Encirclement Operation
War was, by nature, a conservative affair that rarely changed its ways, which meant the aftermath was always more troublesome than the fighting itself. Thanks to the infamy I had cultivated and the wild rumors that had spread from mouth to mouth, the Yellow Turbans had broken in morale. That was all well and good, but managing tens of thousands of them with barely two thousand men scraped together was an entirely different matter.
“Next!”
“Y-yes! I’m… Wang Sepyeong from You Province…”
“Right. What did you do before?”
“I was a farmer… I’ve committed a grave sin!”
“Mm. First barracks. Next!”
“My name is Jo Pyeong, from Jing Province! I was a carpenter!”
“Fifth barracks. Next!”
In the end, handling prisoners after battle was the greatest headache. If they had been horse thieves, I could have simply gathered them all and cut their throats for peace of mind. But the Yellow Turban Rebellion was ultimately a civil war—an uprising of peasants. Killing them would only weaken the realm’s strength, yet sparing them risked missing the true revolutionaries hidden among the ranks. As a former soldier who had only recently become a low-ranking civil official, the best option I could devise was a prisoner camp.
Changli—more precisely, the Bohai Bay region—shared a climate similar to Liaodong’s, a steppe climate with vast, open grasslands stretching in every direction. If the Yellow Turbans had been fleeing, heading south toward the mountains would have given them a better chance of survival. Yet for some reason, tens of thousands of infantry without a single horse had chosen to run straight into these endless plains. Well, that was probably why they were the first-stage mobs that got wiped out early on. I decided not to dwell on it.
Across the wide grasslands, we erected simple long barracks—runways, as they were called—and crammed the prisoners in by the hundreds. Sorting them took days. Those with no hope of reform would have their heads sent to Luoyang. Those who showed any chance of redemption would be sent to Liaodong as valuable labor to fill our manpower shortage.
Why not send them home? West of Changli was still Yellow Turban territory. Our advance had only been meant to harass their rear and ease the way for our lord and teacher’s army, not to launch some lightning campaign that would annihilate them all. If that had been the order, I would have ignored it anyway. How could fewer than twenty thousand men smash headfirst into a million-strong army?
Fortunately, my father-in-law had provided a generous amount of military provisions, and our supply lines were well organized, so the prisoners would not starve. They received only a single bowl of thin gruel each day, but my own rations were hardly abundant either. I emptied my own bowl—slightly thicker than theirs—and approached Liu Bei, who had been sitting gloomily inside the barracks for days.
She had won her first major battle, yet she seemed weighed down by guilt over the dozens of men wounded or killed because the pursuit and annihilation had not gone perfectly. It was a good attitude.
“So, why were you driven back?”
“We advanced too deep, Elder Brother.”
“Did I teach you to do that?”
“But—!”
“But nothing. This is your fault. When you were just cutting down bandits, it was easy to pull back. This is different. This is war. Even if it’s a civil war, war is still war.”
Liu Bei’s force numbered five hundred—equivalent to a battalion by my previous life’s standards. At this scale, logistics demanded attention, and movements had to be considered on a strategic level, not merely tactical. Moreover, as our lord was an official under the Inspector of You Province, we had to account for their movements as well. Charging about like we were hunting local bandits would only end with us being drowned beneath a wave of numbers.
She understood the situation better than I did, so why had she pushed so far in? I truly could not understand it. If she had simply held a defensive line and waited for me to arrive from the east, we could have ground the remnants between us.
“Seeking merit for office is fine, but the deaths of your soldiers are ultimately your responsibility. If you forget that…”
You end up like me. I swallowed the last words. They were not something a person who had died once and received a new life should say.
“I’m sorry, Elder Brother.”
“To me?”
“…”
“One piece of advice: even if you cannot pay your soldiers properly, never let them lose their honor.”
“Honor?”
“Yes, honor. Men can overlook unpaid wages, but they cannot tolerate having their pride trampled. Or rather, if you compensate them generously enough, they might endure it. But you are not in a position to afford that, are you?”
Before entering our teacher’s tutelage, Liu Bei had been a country bumpkin who wove straw mats. Even her studies had been made possible by a relative’s help, so she could not have been feeding and clothing a battalion-sized force with her own money. There must have been support from some powerful figure. Yet such support was never unlimited, and the equipment of Liu Bei’s men, while adequate, was far from complete.
“Make them think that dying for you is something a man should experience at least once in his life.”
It was an incredibly difficult thing to do, but it was the duty of anyone who led others.
---
The tale of the Battle of Changli soon spread through the Yellow Turban ranks along with the fleeing remnants. Through the mouths of Yellow Turban prisoners, it also reached Lu Zhi’s ears.
“Haha, that boy… He always makes the most of the cards he’s dealt.”
“You mean those gruesome rumors, my lord?”
“Exactly. I scolded him for being too cruel, and he replied, ‘It is all necessary. The dead cannot speak, nor can they feel pain. If a bandit who discovers the corpses is so shocked that he abandons banditry, then the dead bandits will have driven away the living ones.’”
“A strategy of using barbarians to control barbarians?”
“Hahaha! More precisely, using dead bandits to drive away living ones.”
Of course, the disciple had added that to employ this method, one had to deliver precisely the right amount of visual shock—neither too much nor too little. Before studying under Lu Zhi, the boy had been a mere scribe, and before that, an illegitimate son in western Liaoxi of You Province. Where he had learned such creatively gruesome execution methods remained a mystery, though Lu Zhi supposed a born killer might simply realize them on his own.
“It is a method ordinary men cannot use. Moreover, the Yellow Turbans’ numbers have grown far too large for us to imitate it now.”
And for Lu Zhi, it was already too late to adopt the method. Even if he executed a few of the million-plus Yellow Turbans and displayed their corpses, he could not plant deep terror in their minds. The fear sown before the rebellion and the fear born within it were entirely different things.
“Hmm… Then what are we to do…”
Lu Zhi and his adjutant, Zong Yuan, were studying a map of the surrounding terrain. Red flags marking friendly positions were scattered in small clusters, while yellow flags representing the enemy were split north and south around Guangzong, as though their waist had been severed. The credit for breaking that waist and maintaining this long front line belonged to the mobile fortresses—ancient methods refined into medium-scale tactical bases. Soldiers were grouped by the hundred, simple palisades erected just sturdy enough to be troublesome to destroy, and long trenches dug to create makeshift strongpoints. Instead of raising high walls, they dug into the earth to conceal archers, with watchtowers atop the palisades serving as their eyes.
If the enemy committed to overrunning them, the forts would fall, but at least a four- or five-to-one exchange ratio could be achieved. With cavalry, the enemy might leap the trenches and behead the fort commanders, but these were millions of infantry. Beyond the palisades waited dozens of archers, and all nearby trees had been felled for construction. Capturing a fort would yield only a hundred men’s worth of rations and several thousand catties of green wood too damp to burn. There was no profit in taking the forts, yet bypassing them to advance would only bring the next mobile fortress into their path.
The forts’ role was not that of a pass like Hulao Gate, but of a wall. If the massive Yellow Turban horde split to avoid them, they would become nothing more than common bandit bands—and common bandits were nothing more than a single meal for the imperial army. The strategy could not bring victory through offensive action, but if the Yellow Turbans—mostly peasants—failed to decide the war quickly, they would have no future. Reinforcements from the rear, from Yizhou, Jiaozhi, and Xiliang, were only a matter of time. Time was always on the side of the imperial forces.
Hundreds of tiny forts were packed densely between the lines. The Yellow Turbans, unable to conceive of any organic strategy, were already fragmenting. The fortress line that had begun in the north, in You Province, now stretched in a long line centered on Guangzong. Slowly, almost imperceptibly to all but a few who could read the map, a vast encirclement was nearing completion.
“The Yellow Turbans who break out beyond the line can be handled by Inspector Liu. Chan’s reinforcements have also arrived at Changli, and Liu Bei is said to have distinguished herself. She should have no difficulties. The General of the Household’s army is expected here next month…”
A smile touched Lu Zhi’s lips.
“It will be over before winter. Thank the heavens.”
“Is… is such a front line even possible?”
An encirclement, no matter how large, was limited to the battlefield. Anything beyond that exceeded a commander’s capacity. Even Han Xin during the Chu-Han Contention had only encircled the area around Gaixia. Yet the line drawn on this map clearly encircled an entire province. It was only a sparse line of forts, but once General Huangfu’s army joined, it would become the needle that stitched through the gaps. Once the needle passed, the forts behind would be dismantled and advanced to the new front, gradually tightening the noose.
As Lu Zhi had said, the Yellow Turban Rebellion was already nearing its end.