The Reins
“Alright, from now on you lot will follow him… him over there to Liaodong. Once you arrive, they’ll assign you land to build houses on and fields to farm. Grow your crops, eat well, and once the Yellow Turban Rebellion is over, you can call your families over to live together. Got it?”
I repeated myself over and over, but this was still primitive ancient Chinatown. The Malthusian trap was still two thousand years away, and population growth directly translated into securing more arable land. From that perspective, trading the heads of a few hundred irredeemable hardcore revolutionaries for tens of thousands of able-bodied workers was an enormous gain.
Besides, the official report I sent to the Emperor clearly stated that I had exterminated them all and dumped their bodies into the sea off Changli. Unless an imperial inspector showed up, these people would become valuable assets for Liaodong.
What if an inspector does come? As I’ve said repeatedly, Liaodong is the frontier of the frontier. In Korean terms… hmm… Marado? Or maybe Ieodo? Most uneducated people probably don’t even know if Liaodong is part of Han territory. Later on, envoys and tribute trade would pass through, but that would still require another thousand years. In about a hundred years, even a Goguryeo person will be appointed as Administrator of Liaodong. Right now they might not know, but later on they really won’t realize this is Han land anymore.
Moreover, in a grassland region where they can barely grow foxtail millet, let alone rice or millet, there’s no way to collect any significant taxes. Luoyang never had any expectations for Liaodong to begin with.
I detached half of Jeon Hae’s men to safely escort the Yellow Turbans—no, the new settlers—to their new homes, then headed south with Liu Bei to meet our teacher.
“Now that I think about it, Elder Brother doesn’t fight from horseback, do you?”
“When would I have had the chance to learn cavalry skills? I can manage thrusting a spear well enough, but shooting arrows or swinging axes from horseback like the northern nomads? That I can’t do.”
Shooting arrows and swinging blades from horseback? That was work for generals, not some petty civil official. It wasn’t something to teach a civil official, nor something one could learn just because they wanted to. Of course, given my natural physique, even swinging a spear or sword haphazardly would be somewhat threatening… but it was only natural that I’d fall short against trueborn generals.
Well, that’s exactly why I’d made the strong crossbowmen and Jincheonroe. I’d always wanted guns, but this conversation made me crave them even more intensely.
“Tsk. Must be stragglers from the Yellow Turbans.”
Far across the grassland, I spotted the remnants of the Yellow Turbans who had fled from that great battle.
“What will you do? Will you sort them out and send them to Liaodong again?”
“No. It’s hard to split our forces any further here, and waiting for the Liaodong troops I sent earlier to return would take too long. Let’s break them up properly, leave them scattered, and clean up later.”
“Understood.”
“Hey! You yellow bastards!”
Our group was significantly smaller than theirs. Compared to Liu Bei’s army, which could barely form a single battalion, or my own force of ten thousand that I had already split in half, the Yellow Turbans’ numbers looked more than twice our own.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“…Weren’t we supposed to ambush them?”
It was Zhang Fei, the youngest of Liu Bei’s sworn sisters. She looked about fifteen or sixteen, reminding me of the boy soldier I had met before.
“Is that necessary?”
Ambush had its advantages. That was an undeniable fact. But when dealing with rebels, there were far better tactics than a simple ambush.
“Watch carefully. Later, when you raise kids like these, they’ll be useful.”
“Didn’t you say you don’t know how to fight from horseback?”
“I told you. I know how to stab with a spear. It doesn’t exactly require advanced technique.”
If there were any truly monstrous generals among them, things would be different… but I doubted there were any hero-level zerglings here. I spurred my stirrup-equipped horse forward.
“Boys! Let’s go!”
“Shall we assist?”
“No, you’d only get in the way. I don’t know how strong you three are… but I’d rather trust a decent number of reliable subordinates than a single ridiculously strong individual.”
Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei… If even someone like me, who knew next to nothing about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, recognized their names, they had to be truly remarkable. That Guan Yu woman was probably stronger than me. I had won when we sparred a few years ago, but her weapon was originally meant to be used from horseback. The long spear Zhang Fei carried would be cumbersome on the ground, but its length might actually be perfect for fighting from a horse’s back.
If we fought from horseback, I would definitely be weaker than those two. Still, it didn’t matter. The technique I intended to use wasn’t meant for a single superhuman.
Although I had split the troops, most of the cavalry—which could be considered the tanks of this era—remained with me. A few mounted archers had gone with the others for scouting and messaging, but tanks had to fulfill their role as tanks. Naturally.
Yes, I had never learned how to swing a spear or blade from horseback. However, I did know what the most threatening weapon one could use from a horse was.
Thanks to the stirrups, the strain on my thighs had decreased, and that stability in turn improved the stability of my upper body. The adjutants assigned to each cavalryman handed over long lances, and we firmly couched them under our arms. We lowered the face guards on our helmets and strapped the shields hanging from our saddles to our left arms.
Full plate armor that covered the entire body was still a distant dream, but we could at least equip them with plate armor that covered the chest and left arm. They were far from true heavy cavalry in full plate mail with barding, but we could still form a unit of something resembling cuirassiers.
Even though their equipment was decent, considering the horses were barely above pony level, two charges were impossible. But at least one perfect charge could be carried out.
War never changes. I couldn’t kill a million-man army, but I could break their morale. And through my study of military history, I had learned countless historical techniques for breaking morale.
“Let’s go!”
““Yes!””
The Yellow Turbans were originally farmers. They had risen up because life was too harsh, and they had become zerglings after being intoxicated by the people’s opium, but at their core they were still farmers. Bodies trained by farm work were somewhat suited for killing people, but without an Overmind to lead them, wild zerg were no different from a pack of animals huddled together.
We transitioned from a walk to a trot.
“Wedge formation!”
““Wedge formation!””
Slowly, the fifty lancers adjusted their speed and formed a single massive spearhead. The distance to the Yellow Turban mob was now two hundred paces.
“Shields up! Arrows incoming!”
Whether there were hunters among them or not, several hundred arrows flew toward us. From a group that clearly numbered over ten thousand, only a few hundred arrows. The arrows falling on us were blocked by our shields, and the horses’ hides were protected by leather armor. One or two unlucky men fell, but they quickly got back up, suggesting the horses had simply been unlucky enough to be hit.
“Canter!”
““Canter!””
One spur. The cavalrymen who had been running at a quick trot picked up a little more speed, enough to be called a run. The remaining distance was one hundred paces.
“Lances ready!”
““Lances ready!””
We lowered our heads, extended our lances, kept our knees close enough to touch the man beside us, and spurred once more.
“Gallop!”
““Gallop!””
The remaining distance—ten paces.
“Charge!”
- KWAAAAAANG!
Fifty cavalrymen painstakingly trained over several years. They weren’t as good as the ten heavy cavalrymen I had left safely back in Liaodong, but they were still the only strategic weapons of this era capable of performing a lance charge. No matter how primitive the ironworking technology or how close the horses were to ponies due to incomplete breeding, there was no way they couldn’t pierce through Yellow Turbans who lacked proper armor or even decent military uniforms.
The target of the charge was the enemy’s left wing. Not because they were commies… but because there were mountains on that side, which would make pursuit annoying later.
- KWAAAA…KWANG!
The ten seconds that felt like an hour finally ended, and the impact that had been transmitted through the tip of my lance vanished. The enemy formation had been severed.
Soon the mounted archers scattered and began driving the Yellow Turban mob toward the plains. The infantry lined up in two rows with halberds, and the strong crossbowmen positioned themselves behind the long human line, raising their crossbows over the infantry’s shoulders.
“Surrender! Surrender and we’ll spare your lives!”
In truth, if they had fought properly, the Yellow Turbans would have won. Their numbers were several times ours, and even without archers or cavalry, that sheer mass of bodies was a form of violence in itself. However, human morale had the power to turn the impossible possible and the possible impossible.
One by one, the sound of weapons hitting the ground rang out. The second battle was also a victory.
---
After that, the battles were nothing special. In truth, most civil wars went something like “Huh? Huuuuh?” before suddenly exploding, and most successful rebellions only succeeded through an insane stacking of good fortune. It seemed this Yellow Turban Rebellion would simply remain in history as one of the countless failed rebellions.
“Elder Brother.”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t know cavalry skills. Were you deceiving me?”
“Deceiving you? All I did was swing a spear from a horse.”
…That was a look of clear disbelief. It wasn’t a look that required any particular answer, so I ignored it and turned my horse toward the friendly fortress that had finally entered our scouts’ sight.
“Halt! Halt! Stop right there!”
…Wait a minute. Why does this fortress look so familiar?
“Im Jung!”
“What?”
“Im Jung!”
“…”
“Im Jung!”
Uh… was this the Peach Garden Oath from the story? I wasn’t sure. I had been a civil official, and since the Han made Confucianism its state doctrine, it was basically a proto-Joseon, so I had read the Analects. But no matter how I thought about it, studying had never suited me.
“Peach Garden!”
The one who answered was Guan Yu, one of Liu Bei’s sworn sisters. She was always opening books to study whenever she had a spare moment… Maybe she was smarter than she looked. That’s actually terrifying… She’s good at fighting and good at studying? Is she some kind of Batman? Ah… she doesn’t seem to have money, so maybe Spider-Man would suit her better.
More importantly, was that really a password? My heart swells with grandeur… A modern-style password in 1st-century primitive ancient Chinatown… Well, the Yellow Turbans and the government troops looked pretty much the same anyway. Originally there should have been a clear difference in appearance thanks to proper supply armor, but… friendly fire has been a very old human tradition since the beginning of mankind.
“Who goes there!”
“This is Guan Yunzhang of You Province! We have come with reinforcements led by my sworn sister Lady Liu Xuande and Lord Gongsun Baekgyu, the merchant of Liaodong, to assist General of the Household Lu Zhi!”
“Gongsun… that human butcher from Liaodong?!”
What a fucking rude thing to say… and from a mere low-ranking soldier from Qingzhou, no less…
“Hah! My apologies. There were simply too many Yellow Turbans nearby… Ah, that’s not what I meant. What happened to the Yellow Turbans? There should still be quite a few left in the area…”
I had sent most of the captured Yellow Turbans to Liaodong, but I couldn’t send the hunters or low-ranking military officials among them. They were too high-quality to use as simple farmers, and I also needed to fill the vacancies in my Liaodong troops, which had been reduced to less than half their original number when we set out. I couldn’t trust them one hundred percent, but they were still useful as disposable meat shields to plug holes in the front line.
Liu Bei’s glare was quite sharp… but if we had advanced in the standard way without using these methods, wouldn’t we have had to retreat near Qingzhou Castle anyway? From the beginning, the main force had been me and the fifty cuirassiers, and given our unit’s nature of prioritizing morale-breaking over annihilation, the penal unit didn’t have that many opportunities to fight.
“We killed them all. We captured a few and are using them as a penal unit… Where is my teacher?”
“That is…”
---
“What?”
My teacher had been captured. He had been dismissed from his post.
…What kind of crazy bastard replaces a field commander during wartime? Nazi Germany? The Soviet Union? Ah… those guys with the mustaches would probably do something like that.
If the field commander had been so incompetent that it became unbearable, I could understand. However, from what the fortress garrison commander was saying, the war situation wasn’t that unfavorable. They had established a continental-scale encirclement surrounding the entire Shandong Peninsula, and together with the army of Left General of the Household Huangfu Song, who had advanced by slipping through the gaps, they had planned to finish all fighting before winter.
But… what? He was dismissed because his advance speed was too slow and his capability was suspected?
What the hell had the Grand General been doing?
“Bro.”
It’s your own damn subordinate. Sure, he’s an uncle over fifty, but he’s the Grand General’s man.
“Bro.”
He succeeded in that insane large-scale encirclement that even I couldn’t replicate, and trapped millions of Yellow Turbans on the Shandong Peninsula. What does it mean to realize an operation that densely covers a front twice the length of the Belgian border with a fortress line in an era without radios or wireless? Don’t these bastards have any sense?
Instead of protecting such a person, they dismissed him? Dis-missed?
“Elder Brother!”
I don’t know. Is the absolute monarchy they’re so proud of just a game of stripping generals like in Runeterra? I really don’t know… I truly don’t know.
- SLAP!
“Get a hold of yourself!”
“…”
“Teacher hasn’t died! He simply stepped down from the position of Left General of the Household for a while! We can deal with the Yellow Turbans first and then resolve this step by step!”
That’s right. The Yellow Turbans were the problem.
“Elder Brother?”
“…For now, let’s cut off Zhang Jue’s head first and think later.”
I don’t know. When my head is this complicated, it’s wiser to just let it stay unknown. I should just cut the heads off those fucking rebel bastards first, then run away to Goguryeo with Lady Jin. This country was no place for a sane person to set foot.