The Conquest of Jiangdong (1)
The Shanyue Tribe had dwelt in Jiangdong since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era—long before the First Emperor of Qin unified all under heaven. The Han, for their part, were simply people who had fled across the Yangtze to escape the turmoil consuming the central plains.
Of course, that is not to say there were no Han born and raised in Jiangdong—but set against the Shanyue, their numbers were vanishingly few. Merely putting down roots in Jiangdong was a towering ordeal in itself, and even for those who managed it, bringing a frail infant with a settler's weak immunity safely through a land where a grown adult could barely keep their own body alive demanded tremendous good fortune—and effort greater still.
Under conditions this hostile, the Han ought in truth to have been swept away by the Shanyue without offering any real resistance. And yet the Han had their own desperate reasons to survive, and so they met the tribe on even terms, holding fast to the land they had claimed as their own.
The will to live—the one urge every living creature carries without exception. The Han who had abandoned the war-torn heartland and reached Jiangdong understood full well that if they were driven out even from here, there would be nowhere left to go. So they resisted with everything they had. Just as a cornered rat will bite the cat, the Han of Jiangdong never hesitated to take up arms whenever the need arose.
Had history flowed as it was originally meant to, the warlords' contest for power would only have grown more savage. Bandit hordes in the hundreds of thousands, bred by ever-worsening lawlessness. The Sanfu Rebellion that Li Jue and Guo Si would have unleashed upon Chang'an. The Xuzhou Massacre Cao Cao would have carried out in the name of avenging her father… Any one of these would have been reason enough for the Han to abandon their homelands and emigrate to Jiangdong.
As more and more Han who could not endure the chaotic age streamed south, the Shanyue—who had held the advantage in numbers for centuries—were destined to be slowly pushed back by the dynasty that had ruled all under heaven for hundreds of years. And then, into that current, a figure known as the Little Conqueror was to appear, striking down the entrenched gentry clans and the Shanyue alike to pacify Jiangdong, while her younger sibling inherited the lands won by that conquest and laid, stone by stone, the foundation of what posterity would one day call the Kingdom of Wu…
But the original history had derailed long before.
The Sanfu Rebellion, which should have cost Sili Province hundreds of thousands of lives, never came to pass. Neither did the Xuzhou Massacre, which would have butchered people on much the same scale. And with no crushing taxation driving the people to starve or turn to banditry, there was no great migration of commoners fleeing the central plains' chaos for Jiangdong.
The scales of balance, which should have begun their slow tilt toward the Han, somehow held their equilibrium—until a single event sent them swinging decisively toward the Shanyue.
The betrayal of Ze Rong.
Because one bandit lacked the wits to imagine that he, too, would be boiled like a hound once the rabbits were caught, the Han suffered a wound far too deep. The largest city in Jiangdong had tumbled into enemy hands absurdly, and the countless troops guarding it had been thrown away with it.
And so, having seized Moling, the heart of Jiangdong, Yan Baihu kept driving out the remaining Han powers with nothing but raw force.
"Those Han dogs still haven't stirred from their cities, is that it?"
"Yes, Big Sis! They've shut their gates tight and won't so much as twitch!"
Yan Yu, who stood at her sister's side at all hours, answered the question dutifully, and Yan Baihu muttered on with a faintly troubled look.
"Hmm… I'd hoped to see this finished before those lot up north come swarming in, that's what I'd hoped…"
Even as she kept shoving out the Han gentry clans entrenched across Jiangdong, Yan Baihu never once stopped watching the far bank of the Yangtze. And small wonder. By soldier count alone, the enemy outweighed her by a good tens of thousands. War was never a simple game of numbers, it was true—but the sheer scale of foes who dwarfed the tens of thousands of Shanyue under her command was more than enough to keep her nerves taut.
Yan Baihu turned to a Shanyue warrior waiting nearby.
"And what are those northern dogs doing at this very moment, is what I'd like to know?"
"Yes! As of this moment, the enemy still shows no sign of movement, they report!"
"Hmm…."
At the warrior's spirited answer, Yan Baihu rocked her head this way and that—then something came to her.
"Ah, yes! A splendid idea has just come to me, that's what!"
"Big Sis?"
Come to think of it, she had heard that the lot lingering north of the Yangtze were hopeless at fighting on water! Word had it that hardly a moment aboard a ship went by before they were retching over the rails, fit for nothing resembling a proper fight…
"The most important thing in war is striking first and seizing the initiative—that's what it is!"
She had, after all, already culled a few of her most water-savvy Shanyue and set them to keep constant watch over the vicinity of Shuchun and Lujiang—and with that thought, Yan Baihu cried out in full confidence.
"Yan Yu! From the territory we now hold, haul out every tower ship there is—every last one, that's what you'll do!"
"You mean the tower ships, Big Sis?"
At the call for the massive vessels so often built for battle on the water, Yan Yu tilted her head.
"Big Sis, are you planning to wage a naval battle?"
"That is exactly it!"
Yan Yu had seen straight through her intent in an instant—sharp as ever—and Yan Baihu declared at the top of her lungs.
"We Shanyue have dwelt in Jiangdong since ages past—water is second nature to us, that's what it is!"
"Then…."
"Exactly! We will show them that taking the Shanyue for weaklings at naval battle is a colossal delusion, that's what we will!"
The Kingdom of Yue, raised beside the Yangtze in the Spring and Autumn era, had built its strength from the start by governing the maritime trade routes. True, it feuded so bitterly with the neighboring state of Wu that the pair lent their names to the old idiom "Wu and Yue in the Same Boat"—a saying for enemies forced to share one vessel, or for circumstances that demand cooperation despite mutual hostility—and true, it was in the end battered black and blue by Chu and set upon the road to ruin. But the hard-won experience of commanding the sea lanes had not simply evaporated.
And there was scarcely any reason the Shanyue should lose a naval fight to the Han—people who were neither of Wu nor of Chu.
Yan Yu's eyes glittered as she shouted back.
"That's our Big Sis! What an exceedingly wise decision!"
"Heh heh heh! Feel free to keep the praise coming, that's what you may!"
And so, just as the Shanyue sisters cackled merrily and dreamed of a bright tomorrow, one of the tribe came dashing in.
"Virtuous King! Urgent news!"
"Hm? What is it this time, is what I wonder?"
One glance at the warrior's grave expression told Yan Baihu this was no trivial matter, and the Shanyue snapped a salute before reporting at once.
"The army of the General-in-Chief, who has taken Lujiang—they say he has finally crossed the Yangtze!"
"Wh-what did you just say?!"
At the soldier's report, Yan Baihu realized her plan had come apart from the very first step, and she shot up from her seat as if launched.
"He crossed the Yangtze?! What were you doing instead of stopping them?!"
"P-pardon?"
The soldier blinked, plainly flustered.
"But did you not say, Virtuous King, that once they crossed the Yangtze, it would not be too late to repel them?"
"When did I ever say any such—… Ahh?!"
Mid-shout at the warrior's words, Yan Baihu remembered what she herself had said back when Shuchun had only just fallen into her hands.
"Uwaaaaah!"
"V-Virtuous King?!"
Realizing that her warriors had merely followed her orders to the letter, Yan Baihu let loose a strangled, meaningless shriek.
"I-It is quite all right, that's what it is! Lujiang aside, a massive fleet already stands ready in the Shuchun sector!"
It was a chain of defensive fortresses that Liu Yao's faction, once masters of Moling, had strung out along the Yangtze against rival powers—built for one purpose alone: to fall upon and intercept, without delay, any greedy warlord beyond the river who tried to force a crossing. The greedy warlord in question, naturally, being Yuan Shu, the man who had once sown trouble in every quarter.
And Yan Baihu had taken that region virtually without loss, thanks to Ze Rong's betrayal. The moment word arrived that Moling had fallen, the garrisons had abandoned their own forts and fled helter-skelter—a rout in the most literal sense. Not that they could have held out long had they stayed; the problem of supplies would have seen to that.
Presumably that was why the General-in-Chief's army, now seated at Shuchun, kept a wary eye on those forts and dared not rashly attempt the crossing. She could tell as much from the enemy scouts alone: their reconnaissance boats took one look at the fortresses rising on the far bank and rowed straight home to pitch war camps along the river, exactly as she had.
But the other enemy force—the one that had taken Lujiang—had noticed the absence of any defensive fortress and crossed the Yangtze on the spot, without a moment's deliberation!
"Ugh, ugh! By any common sense, the proper thing is to lie low and watch for what the enemy might be after, is it not?!"
Yan Baihu stamped her feet as she wailed.
"Why so reckless, is what I'd like to know! Are they utterly without fear?!"
"B-Big Sis?"
Just as Yan Yu began to gape at the sight of her sister in such a state, Yan Baihu issued her orders.
"Yan Yu! Take a portion of our soldiers and deal with the enemy who have crossed the Yangtze—this instant, that's what you'll do!"
"Y-yes, ma'am! Just leave it to me!"
The moment Yan Yu took the order and hurried off, an uneasy feeling crept over Yan Baihu.
Nngh…! Something about this, something about it bodes ill, that's what it does…!
Back when she had only just taken Shuchun and was still steeped in happy daydreams, she hadn't seen it—but thinking it over calmly now, the situation was nowhere near so rosy. From the north, the Han General-in-Chief was probing her lines, jabbing for any gap to exploit—and in the west, the moment an enemy sensed precisely such a gap, they had vaulted clean over the Yangtze. And to the south, the Jiangdong coalition she had never finished crushing was holding its breath, biding its time.
Which was to say: the one thing that must never happen in a war had just happened to her. The multiplication of fronts. On the surface, Yan Baihu commanded the largest power in Jiangdong—but it meant she could soon find herself hammered from three directions at once and driven to the very brink of destruction. The one silver lining, perhaps, was that Moling sat at the far eastern edge of the land, sparing her the worry of being beaten from all four sides.
No, no! It is fine, that's what it is!
Shaking off the anxious visions, Yan Baihu shook her head hard. Once I crush every last enemy, it all resolves itself anyway—that's what it will! Hadn't even the old local powers who had strutted about Jiangdong like they owned the place ultimately fallen before her? All that had changed was that the enemy she must now repel was an invading army from beyond!
Seeking to muster her own courage, Yan Baihu sprang up from her seat and shouted.
"To these Han madmen who rampage without knowing their place, we shall show the might of the White Tiger—that's what we shall!"
"Ooooh! Magnificent as ever!"
The Shanyue, a people skilled at little beyond the fight itself, simply roared their eager assent to Yan Baihu's cry.