Yellow River Battle (2)
Even so, I’d put on enough of a show to gauge how long those bastards could hold out. Now it was time to finish them with gas.
“Alright, now. Fire.”
“Right now, ma’am?”
Of course right now. Before the Great Powers could come sniffing around. If I wanted to erase every trace as quickly as possible and build a solid alibi, I had to wipe them out immediately.
“The wind is perfect. Sweep them away in one stroke. Don’t give the enemy time to regroup.”
This would be the end of it. One strike to block foreign intervention and minimize losses to our own troops and equipment. Everything I had prepared for exactly this purpose was about to be unleashed.
Bang— bang-bang, boom!
“Yes, ma’am!”
Mustard gas began to spread thickly across the battlefield—more precisely, only among their ranks, blanketing them completely. Accuracy hardly mattered. They were fleeing like a panicked mob; wherever the shells landed, the bastards would get hit.
The revolutionary troops, still unsure what had fallen among them, soon began screaming in agony as the gas spread.
“Kuhk… kuh-heh-heh-erk!”
“What the hell is this?! What is it?!”
“Wait—this is poison gas! The Joseon bastards are using gas!”
“The Joseon bastards are using gas,” they said. That made it sound like we were ignoring the Hague Convention. Unfortunately for them, we had no intention of doing so. We were the army of the White State of Manchuria, not the Korean Empire. They were all going to die anyway, so I planned to keep it a secret until their last breath.
“Joseon troops? We are the Manchurian White Army!”
“You speak Joseon and claim you’re not Joseon troops? What nonsense!”
“We are the Manchurian White Army!”
I declared it proudly. Here stood not the Korean Empire’s Governor of Manchuria, but the army of the Count of Manchuria—the Manchurian White Army. A country that had never signed the Hague Convention. So who were they to call us the Korean Empire?
“Kuh-heh-erk! Kuwaaaah!”
“Ke-heeeeeek! Someone save us! We’re all dying! My chest—my chest feels like it’s burning!”
The sight of them writhing on the ground was almost comical. They must have been in hell. Yuan Shikai would feel the price of underestimating us deep in his bones. How unfortunate. Truly pitiful.
“Once it spreads enough, move in before they can run. Everyone put on gas masks.”
If even one escaped, it would be troublesome. Just like when we swept Manchuria, every last enemy had to die. I couldn’t risk them fleeing and later claiming that Joseon had used gas.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
We had sprayed so much that most would die quickly, but survivors were still possible. So our troops donned gas masks and stepped into that hellscape. Black uniforms, helmets, gas masks—an eerie sight. To the dying men, we must have looked like reapers.
Yuan Shikai’s Beiyang Army and the revolutionary forces could not believe it. They had failed to break through the Joseon defensive line. Fine, that much could be accepted—they had underestimated us. Battles could be lost, after all. But by sheer numbers and fighting strength, we should have been superior. Reorganize, crush them, and take Beijing. That was what they had believed.
Yet those vile, treacherous Joseon bastards were using poison gas while claiming they weren’t Joseon troops. We should have realized it the moment we saw the crow flag instead of the Joseon one. Everything had been planned from the start.
Even so—how could an entire army be wiped out in a single stroke?
“Aaaagh! Kuh-erk!” “S-save me, kehk!”
“Stop, please stop!” “Mother… Mother!”
Once the gas spread, the Joseon soldiers advanced wearing something over their faces and began slaughtering the troops. Yuan Shikai’s army—the elite Beiyang Army of China—writhed on the ground, poisoned, while the Joseon troops approached and finished them off with bayonets or bullets.
No matter what the soldiers said, the Joseon reply was always the same.
Taang!
Not a single word. No courtesy even for those who surrendered. No mercy from the victors. They simply stabbed and shot without hesitation, treating the enemy like insects rather than human beings. Their faces were completely hidden, so no expression could be seen. Every movement was that of a cleaner disposing of vermin.
‘This isn’t the Joseon army I knew!’
This was nothing like the pathetic force Yuan Shikai had seen in Joseon years ago. If the Korean Empire’s regular army had been in command, this would never have happened. But these were the Manchurian troops, long accustomed to slaughter. Descended from the Gando Army that had ruthlessly crushed anyone who resisted their plunder. Killing helpless soldiers on the ground was nothing to them.
The Manchurian Army was different from the regular Korean Imperial forces. Yuan Shikai, unaware of this, was tasting death.
His dream was crumbling. One by one, men begged for their lives only to be cut down, their screams echoing. It wouldn’t be long before he suffered the same fate.
“This can’t be happening. This isn’t possible. How could something like this—”
Yuan Shikai had no choice but to flee the battlefield. Because he had fought in person, his body was soaked in mustard gas. Even as the gas carved irreversible wounds into his lungs, he desperately wanted to survive. Anywhere would do. He just needed to escape.
“A great reward awaits whoever brings me Yuan Shikai’s head!”
A woman’s voice rang out. He didn’t understand Joseon, but the Chinese mixed in made it clear—Green Standard troops or Manchurian Han soldiers loyal to her were hunting him.
He had to run.
“R-run… I have to run…”
He was not meant to die like this. His life was far too valuable. He would survive, rebuild the Beiyang Army, destroy the Qing, and become emperor. With that single thought, he poured every last ounce of strength into escaping—only to find his path blocked.
“Are you Yuan Shikai?”
A young woman stood before him. She looked barely over twenty, gazing down at him with an unreadable smile. Her face was bare, completely unaffected by the gas.
“Y-you… You’re that Ok Jin-seo bitch. I saw your photograph, but I never imagined you’d be such a young woman.”
“Hmm. You look rather unimpressive.”
The casual dismissal made Yuan Shikai’s blood boil, but something far more important seized his attention. His chest felt torn apart. The gas had already invaded his lungs. While his entire body screamed in agony, the woman before him stood perfectly fine.
In his panic, he blurted out the question he should have asked first.
“You—you’re not even wearing anything over your face. How are you still alive?”
His trembling finger pointed at her as he forced the words out.
“Simple. I’m not an ordinary human. Ah, it’s not that I don’t feel pain. But the fact that this agony tearing through my body never stops only proves I’m alive—and that excites me.”
Her expression shifted from indifferent to rapturous in an instant, like a demon or a goblin. She couldn’t die? That meant she truly wasn’t human. So the one who came to save Joseon and punish China was a monster after all. And if that were true, wasn’t it terribly unfair?
“You really do wage war like absolute shit.”
How could a monster interfere in human affairs? With death at his doorstep and his consciousness fading, Yuan Shikai muttered in hollow resignation.
Ok Jin-seo smiled more meaningfully at his words.
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Taang.
A clean bullet hole appeared in Yuan Shikai’s head. He left the world far more quietly than a man who had once briefly become emperor in another history ever deserved.
The battle had become nothing more than a one-sided massacre. Escape was nearly impossible. We had already positioned troops along the riverbank wearing gas masks to block any retreat the moment the gas spread.
Once the fighting ended, we began clearing the corpses—every last one, along with everything they had carried. We intended to burn it all to erase every trace of evidence.
“Isn’t this dangerous, ma’am?” Nam Sang-deok asked, clearly worried.
“What is?”
“If we do this, Europe will have plenty to say.”
He was right. If discovered, they would raise hell. Using poison gas, even against rebels, would draw condemnation. But it didn’t matter to us. The country that had never signed the Hague Convention was the White State of Manchuria.
“They probably will. That’s why we’re saying the Count’s domain—which never signed—acted independently.”
“But even so, your reputation—”
My reputation, and possibly future investments, could suffer. But that wouldn’t happen.
“To win, I’ll become whatever madwoman is necessary. That’s why this is a last resort. The Korean Empire had nothing to do with the use of poison gas.”
“So in the end, you’re cutting ties?”
It was a last resort, as I said. More of a safety measure than cutting ties—an insurance policy for the worst case. If the Korean Empire wasn’t the main actor, I could suppress any scandal with my own authority.
“Not quite. That’s only the worst-case scenario. First, we erase the evidence. Hunt down every survivor and kill them. Burn all the bodies. We can claim some strange plague broke out and forced us to do this.”
If we burned everything, there would be nothing left to find. The factories that produced mustard gas and gas masks had already been converted back to regular arsenals producing firearms. Without evidence, what could they say? And to strengthen the alibi, I had prepared something else.
“But won’t the truth still leak out eventually?”
“With this evidence? Really?”
I snapped my fingers. A foreign war correspondent whose name I didn’t remember—the one who had once taken my photograph—hurried over and handed me several pictures. I had kept him in Korea precisely for moments like this.
“What is this?” Nam Sang-deok asked, startled.
“If the claim that I ‘used poison gas’ is to hold up internationally, I would need to have been far from the battlefield, wouldn’t I? But in these photos, I’m standing right beside the dying Chinese soldiers, looking concerned.”
Exactly. In the photographs, I stood beside the corpses with an expression that said, “Why are these men dying like this?” And I wasn’t wearing a gas mask—my bare face was clearly visible. That would lend credibility to the claim that the Chinese hadn’t died from gas. Of course the Russian Tsar and nobles knew I couldn’t die, but if I denied everything, they wouldn’t press the issue. As long as it stayed hidden, they wouldn’t care whether yellow monkeys died from gas or were used as test subjects. Even if it left a bad taste, they wouldn’t object. And thanks to the French, the image of the “Oriental Saint” would make it unthinkable that I had done such a thing. We had nothing to worry about.
“I always prepare in advance. Even if some Westerner who loves China appears later and claims Korea—or China—is a country steeped in poison, we can simply say it wasn’t the Count’s domain.”
The perfect picture had been painted. Now then, it was time to report our victory to the Qing court. By now those men holed up in the Forbidden City must be terribly worried, wondering whether Joseon could truly defeat the Beiyang Army. Honestly, without gas, a frontal assault would have been difficult.
After wrapping up the aftermath, I entered the Forbidden City and met with Prince Chun and Prince Qing. Prince Qing looked at me with a dazed expression, as if he had already received the report.
“You… you actually won.”
“Didn’t I tell you we would? This is Yuan Shikai’s head.”
I smiled and showed them the severed head. Until a few days ago, the man had been the Qing Empire’s Prime Minister. It must have been unsettling to see someone who had been alive so recently reduced to this.
“What do we do now?”
“Simply repelling the rebels won’t be enough. We need to retake Wuchang, don’t we?”
We had to march south. Sun Yat-sen was apparently with the revolutionary forces. He had to be dealt with. If that dreamer remained alive, he would only cause unnecessary trouble later.