The Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan
As if ordering them to surrender their weapons, Pi Se-ha’s words drew a snort of laughter from Dang Su-jeong.
“And why exactly should we do that?”
“It is the defense of the realm against treacherous invaders! Naturally one must offer everything one possesses to save this land!”
When Pi Se-ha barked the words with forced dignity, Dang Su-jeong gave a short, contemptuous laugh.
“You already crossed the borders of Qinghai ages ago, then dithered in terror of Chagatai’s main host. Only after we broke the enemy’s momentum did you finally show your faces. That is hardly the speech of someone entitled to make demands.”
Her words carved into Pi Se-ha’s pride with the merciless edge of a peerless blade. True statements always sting the hardest; feeling himself mocked, he flushed scarlet to the roots of his hair.
“Y-you low-born wench…!”
Rage flooding to the crown of his head, Pi Se-ha drew the sword at his waist as if he meant to take her head that very instant.
In the same breath the Hagyeongchong hidden in Dang Su-jeong’s sleeve spat fire.
Bang!!
The bullet struck the flat of the blade dead-center. Pi Se-ha’s sword snapped clean in two with a sharp crack.
For a moment even fury deserted him; he stared at the broken steel, swallowing hard. Dang Su-jeong let a thin thread of killing intent leak into her voice.
“The only reason I have not already put a hole through that thick skull of yours for such insolence is that I refuse to become a liability to my nephew, who enjoys His Majesty’s favor. But if you are the one who crosses the line first?
Do not imagine a hundred thousand soldiers will save your life.
Want to bet? After I kill you right here, will those hundred thousand chase me for revenge—or scatter and run?”
“Y-you… you…!”
Born into the Byeongjong Pi Family, one of the Empire’s Eight Great Families, Pi Se-ha had risen through the ranks with almost no personal effort and finally secured the post of Vice Commander of the White Tiger Army, a central-government force. When had he ever suffered such a threat?
He was nearly mad with rage and humiliation, yet he could not vent it. The faint killing aura rising from Dang Su-jeong—whose eyes had turned a clear green—pressed him flat.
This woman will actually do it!
From ancient times the counsel had been: never engage a petty person beyond reason; they cannot be reformed. Pi Se-ha therefore decided to “magnanimously” overlook the unbridled behavior of this minor provincial clan girl who had not even earned a name on the central registers.
“…Hmph. In consideration of the merits you have earned on this soil, I shall overlook your insolence this once.”
“Ah, yes yes, whatever you say.”
Dang Su-jeong waved a hand with an expression that clearly said this is too ridiculous to bother with. A vein bulged at Pi Se-ha’s temple, but he mastered it with what he considered superhuman patience.
“If you will not surrender your weapons, then at least continue fighting the enemy as you have been. Qinghai needs every soldier it can get.”
Being asked to serve as meat shields made Dang Su-jeong shake her head.
“As it happens, the weapons suited to facing a host of that size are already exhausted. We have requested reinforcements from the main family; we must wait until they arrive.”
“Are you not martial artists? Even without those incomprehensible weapons of yours, a sword in hand should let you perform better than ordinary foot soldiers. His Majesty himself commanded you to defend the Central Plains from foreign foes. Dereliction of duty in this crisis cannot be tolerated!”
Perhaps because he had at least dipped a toe into central politics, Pi Se-ha—though incompetent as a field commander—knew how to play the political card and immediately invoked the Emperor.
In that instant Hui-yeom’s advice surfaced in Dang Su-jeong’s mind.
If you ever clash with those who hold military authority, you must never give ground. The moment they start swinging us around at will, people will be hurt and our technologies will leak. However, if they bring up His Majesty…
After a brief pause she spoke.
“I will say it again: we can only display our true strength when we have the proper weapons against the enemy. And with a mere hundred or so people we already annihilated five thousand and forced a host of seventy thousand to withdraw, buying you the time to arrive here at all. We have already piled up military merit His Majesty will not fail to praise. More than that—do you take us for some tireless slaughtering machine that never rests? How many battles do you think we have fought, how many brushes with life and death have we endured to reach this point?”
She laid out an unassailable argument that left even Pi Se-ha hard-pressed to press further, boxing him into an awkward corner.
“Finally, we answer only to the orders of the Young Master of the Sichuan Dang Family, Hui-yeom, who received a military command token from His Majesty the Emperor himself.”
Naturally, belonging to the Byeongjong Pi Family did not grant one the right to move every army in the Central Plains at will. Requisitioning supplies from commoners or mobilizing regular government troops might be possible, but the Dang Family was different: Hui-yeom held a personal command token bestowed by Emperor Sungui. No one could force orders upon Dang martial artists.
“Vice Commander. You have brought a full hundred thousand from the capital, have you not? Even without borrowing the hands of a mere hundred martial artists, you should be able to wipe out those barbarian rabble as easily as a prairie fire consuming dry reeds.”
Caught off-guard, Pi Se-ha hesitated, then blurted whatever came to mind.
“…We must examine every available option with care, never losing either boldness or caution as we meet the enemy’s offensive. That is the nature of war.”
It was empty verbiage that practically invited the retort, “So what exactly are you proposing?” Had Hui-yeom been present he might have slapped his forehead and muttered that even the Central Plains had its share of hollow motivational speakers. Yet the man delivering the line was growing distinctly anxious.
I cannot let the Dang Family slip away here!
Though his military talent was meager and he had never experienced a true great war, he was no complete fool.
Facing seventy thousand cavalry with a hundred thousand infantry is simply not feasible.
Of course they would not meet in open battle but would rely on walls and terrain for a defensive stand. Even so, he knew it would never be an easy fight.
And those Dang people already killed five thousand and drove off a seventy-thousand-strong host with barely a hundred fighters, did they not? If I suffer a defeat here I am finished. Even a pyrrhic victory might cost me my head!
Whatever uncanny sorcery the Dang Family had employed, he needed their hands if he hoped to defeat the enemy. That necessity, however, did not mean he could abandon his arrogance.
“At present even a beggar’s hand is useful. You, girl—what is your title?”
“I hold no official rank.”
“Spare me the obvious! You have been leading these troops, so you must have some position!”
“…I am Chief Researcher of the Innovation Hall.”
“Researcher? Not the captain or commander of some combat unit?”
“As a direct-line member of the Dang Family and the Family Head’s younger sister, I can hold such concurrent posts in an emergency like this.”
“Very well then, Captain Dang. You will join the council. We shall discuss methods of chastising those treacherous barbarians.”
“Council?”
Dang Su-jeong could only gape at how swiftly Pi Se-ha flipped his attitude like a hand turning over.
The White Tiger Army entered Xining with imposing grandeur. The Provincial Military Commander of Qinghai literally rushed out barefoot to greet Pi Se-ha. Pi Se-ha cast a look at Dang Su-jeong that clearly said, See? This is the level I command.
Faced with the childish display from the man who was, in name at least, supreme commander of Qinghai’s defense, Dang Su-jeong suddenly found herself longing for home.
I miss Secretary Lee… Mother of—have I gone mad? What am I thinking right now?
While she shook her head at the mortifying thought of Lee Jinmyeong that had slipped into her awareness, the Provincial Military Commander finished his flustered greetings. Together with Pi Se-ha, Dang Su-jeong, and the army’s core officers, they gathered for a council.
Fortunately the Provincial Military Commander did not take one look at Dang Su-jeong and ask why a civilian was present. Instead he seized both her hands and shook them vigorously in fervent welcome.
“You are the benefactors of our Qinghai! I have long wished to meet you in person, and now here we are!”
“Ah… yes. I see.”
“Without your fierce struggle we would have lacked the time to muster and prepare our forces, and the common people would have suffered far worse. Truly, thank you—thank you.”
“I merely followed the orders of our Young Master.”
“The Young Master… that renowned Wise Young Dragon—no, the Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan? It seems the man matches the reputation.”
Dang Su-jeong blinked at the unfamiliar title.
“Pardon? The Sichuan what?”
“I cannot accept this…!”
Sama Yun was so furious her face had flushed an uncharacteristic red; she was practically vibrating with indignation.
“My husband’s sobriquet is Sleeping Dragon? This is a direct challenge to our Sama Clan!”
In wartime the list of tasks multiplies far beyond peacetime. Intelligence on surrounding developments, in particular, can never be overdone. While Hui-yeom was gathering reports on the situations in Yunnan, Sichuan, and Qinghai, he inevitably came across the new information as well.
A new sobriquet had attached itself to him.
His previous title, “Wise Young Dragon,” meaning “a young dragon of exceptional wisdom,” had always sat a little awkwardly on a martial artist who had reached adulthood and already celebrated his wedding. It was simply the result of having risen to prominence at so tender an age that the sobriquet stuck early. The gossips of the martial world had long felt that the now-adult Hui-yeom deserved a new one.
Then, in this war, he had achieved far more than anyone expected—though in a rather peculiar fashion.
Rather than the classic martial-world feat of charging into the enemy ranks and taking a Mongol chieftain’s head, he had simply studied maps from a hundred li away, issued precise orders, and somehow melted tens of thousands of cavalry (rumors always inflate numbers) with a mere handful of poison hands. Or so the stories went.
Fierce debate had erupted among the gossips over what sobriquet to bestow. The trouble was that this affair was a war, not a private martial-world matter; the tale had spread far beyond the jianghu to the common people themselves.
And when ordinary folk were handed the phrase “a peerless strategist who appears and vanishes like a spirit,” the first name that leapt to their tongues was none other than Zhuge Liang, Kongming.
No one knew who began it, but a song soon circulated: “The Young Master of the Dang Family is just like the Sleeping Dragon Master of the later Han; from a seated place he gazes a thousand li and, with divine stratagems, melts a great host with only a handful of troops.”
When the gossips of the martial world realized how the matter had spun out of control, they were horrified. By the strict (and rather stuffy) standards of the jianghu, the title “Sleeping Dragon” was a kind of sacred ground—an unspoken taboo, no different from refusing to casually adopt sobriquets such as “Damo” or “Sanfeng.” If anyone were ever to bear the name Sleeping Dragon, that person ought to belong to the Jegal Family. No one had formally decreed it, yet such was the unwritten law.
But the common people were already shouting “Long live the Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan, Dang Hui-yeom!” How were a few martial artists supposed to reverse that? A handful of voices could never break the will of the entire realm.
Nor had Hui-yeom himself gone about demanding to be called the Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan; people had simply begun using the name of their own accord. One could hardly take the man to task for it. In the end, the official sobriquet of the adult Hui-yeom became “the Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan.”
Having unintentionally stuck it to the Jegal Family, Hui-yeom had been fretting—until he found himself gently scratching the neck of Sama Yun, who was growling like an enraged Chihuahua.
“Easy, easy, dear. It’s not as though I’ve suffered any harm.”
“Knowing full well that you are the son-in-law of the Sama Clan, how dare they pin the name of the Jegal Family’s ancient rival on you! Those scheming snakes must have pulled strings behind the scenes! They’ll use this as an excuse to shove that Eun-ryeo girl at you!”
“Come now, surely not. And even if the Jegal Family tried some ploy like that, I would never fall for it, so rest easy.”
“…Really?”
“Of course.”
“…Then why do you keep scratching under my chin? This feels weird. You’re not treating me like an idiot, are you?”
“Never. You’re just adorable.”
“Suspicious…”
Having soothed Sama Yun and successfully redirected her attention, Hui-yeom watched her storm off declaring she would launch a campaign to change the sobriquet from Sleeping Dragon of Sichuan to “Zhongda of Sichuan.” He tapped the report he had been reading into neat order.
The war is entering its final phase.
Nearly two months had passed since they first faced the enemy at Dali. In that time the foe had been waiting for Möngke Khan’s forces in Qinghai to produce meaningful results, intending to strike once confusion spread through the allied ranks. Yet Dang Su-jeong and Dokkyo’s desperate fighting had bought Qinghai the time to concentrate its military strength. Central-government troops had also arrived, successfully hardening the province’s defenses.
However incompetent Pi Se-ha might be, he was not so arrogant as to ignore every word of advice from those around him. The fact that he had admitted Dang Su-jeong to the council suggested that, while proud, he might not be quite as useless as first feared. That meant Qinghai could not overwhelm the Chagatai army, but it could at least hold and endure a siege.
If that were so…
Their grain is already nearing its limit, and winter is almost upon us.
The enemy would have no choice but to withdraw.
Before they retreat, they will launch one final major offensive.
And Hui-yeom’s prediction proved correct.