Yellow Dust in a Dry Sky
Yellow Dust in a Dry Sky
It began with nothing more than a shift in the wind.
A sudden, violent gust that came out of nowhere.
As wind is a common occurrence on the open plains, there was nothing particularly strange about it in itself.
The problem was... the sheer force of that gust was anything but natural.
A wind so fierce you could barely keep your footing, as if a typhoon had struck,
and within it, thick, coarse dust.
The sallow wind, which had swallowed the blue sky of only moments before, swept straight through the vanguard's position.
"Hyaaak!!! Wh-what in the world is thiiis?!"
"Hooaaak!!! We can't see a thing out heeere!!!"
"Unidentified phenomenon. Emergency. Friendly forces uncontrollable."
In an instant, the three blue-clad figures were thrown into chaos by the unforeseen event.
And the same was true of Xiahou Dun, the Vice General who was with them.
"Wh-what kind of nonsense is...!"
A gritty wind so harsh you could barely keep your eyes open.
In conditions like these, let alone fighting, it was hard enough just to tell what was in front of you.
This is bad... if this keeps up, the soldiers will...!
A violent sandstorm pelted the entire body hard enough to hurt.
With the terrible noise battering the ears and visibility cut to nothing, even Xiahou Dun was starting to feel fear take root inside.
If someone like her, who wouldn't flinch at most things, felt this way,
how much worse must the confusion and terror be for ordinary soldiers... let alone the ones who'd been Yellow Turbans until they were forced to surrender?
It was then, with the battle rapidly deteriorating from the unexpected turn and Xiahou Dun unable to get her bearings, that the moment came.
"Th-this is no good! Vice General Xiahou! We must fall back for now!"
"B-but... we cannot retreat like this..."
"If this keeps up, we all die! Even if this cursed sandstorm stops, the camp is already smashed to pieces!"
Hua Xiong urged her frantically.
Retreating without ever getting to fight properly was galling beyond words, but Hua Xiong's judgment was clearly sound.
Soldiers were already scattering in the chaos,
and some were outright attempting to flee.
Just as you'd expect from former Yellow Turbans—the moment they saw an opening, they turned their backs and ran.
In this situation, it was obvious that dragging things out would only make friendly losses snowball.
Then.
—CRACK-BOOM!!!
"Hooaaak!!!! This is complete bullshit! We have to fall back right noooow!!!!!!"
A lightning bolt slammed down right beside Hua Xiong.
With thunderbolts now crashing out of a clear sky on top of the sandstorm, Xiahou Dun no longer had any room left to deliberate.
"Fall... fall back! All forces withdraw across the river!!!"
*
It had already been several years since I entered the world of the Three Kingdoms.
I liked to think I'd had a fair variety of experiences in that time, yet most things had still operated within some realm of common sense.
Of course, the very fact that I was a transmigrator from another world, and that people who had originally been men had become women, was bizarre enough on its own.
Likewise, the displays of near-superhuman martial prowess from certain generals sometimes carried a fantasy-like feel, but since the Records of the Three Kingdoms also mention such things, they were easy enough to shrug off.
Apart from that, however, there had been no so-called unscientific or occult phenomena.
Talk of magic or sorcery was, practically a hundred times out of a hundred, either fraud or cheap sleight of hand.
There had been things like a roadside fortune-teller being uncannily accurate, but that was the sort of thing you could simply chalk up to coincidence.
This was a world where people did not fly through the sky or shoot fire from their bare hands—
where magic as found in fantasy worlds simply did not exist.
And in that regard, the scene unfolding right before my eyes—
a yellow dust storm... no, a sandstorm suddenly raging and lightning striking out of a perfectly clear sky—
was more than enough to leave me genuinely dumbfounded.
"Wh... what on earth..."
"How can they..."
"..."
The three people standing beside me looked every bit as shocked as I was.
Not just Dong Zhuo—both Cao Cao and Yuan Shao had clearly expected some sort of scheme, but the revelation that it was something beyond common sense... literal "magic," had left even them looking dazed.
"O-our forces are retreating."
"Tch..."
Xu Rong delivered the report in a stammering voice.
As I finally managed to collect my wits, I began to grasp how things had played out...
and why the Dong Zhuo of the Original Timeline had suffered such a dog's death of a defeat.
However fierce a commander Dong Zhuo might be, if she'd taken a direct hit from magic like that, of course there was no answer to it.
In reality, whether those bastards had truly conjured magic or whether it was simply a product of coincidence, I couldn't say. But in any case, this was clearly a phenomenon that couldn't be countered by ordinary means.
And so, to the people still standing dumbstruck, I spoke in a firm voice.
"First, we should withdraw as well. The soldiers' agitation is too severe to fight as we are."
"... Under... stood."
Dong Zhuo accepted my instruction in a voice still hollow with shock.
Yuan Shao and Cao Cao likewise managed to pull themselves together and began ordering the retreat.
*
"Hngh... I am humiliated... in the end, I was defeated without accomplishing a thing... please punish this Hua Xiong..."
"Enough of that. No one standing here would have fared any differently in the situation just now."
Dong Zhuo answered Hua Xiong in a composed voice.
Her head was still pounding from the feeling of having slammed into an unseen reef, but even so, she forced herself to remain cool as she questioned her subordinates.
"How great... are the losses?"
"Haah... out of sixty thousand, less than twenty thousand returned in decent shape..."
"Killed in action are few. The majority fled or were caught in the confusion and could not extricate themselves."
The battle, waged in a manner no one had anticipated, had inflicted staggering damage on the government forces.
The sandstorm and lightning had, surprisingly, not been all that lethal in themselves.
But in the chaos, most of the soldiers had either fled the battlefield or, unable to recover from their confusion, had been cut down by the Yellow Turban forces advancing in the wake of the storm.
"At least the consolation is that most of them were originally Yellow Turban prisoners."
"Even so... it is a stinging defeat. And what is more, we have no clear way to counter it."
The defeat itself was one thing, but the fact that it had come not through tactics or numbers but through the bizarre phenomenon of "magic" was delivering an even greater shock to them.
How were mortals supposed to stand against storms and thunderbolts... the very forces of nature governed by heaven itself?
That question was more than enough to cripple the soldiers' morale, and to leave even the people in this tent feeling utterly helpless.
It was then, unlike earlier when everyone had been snarling and pressing their own opinions, with no one willing to speak rashly—
"There is one... method."
"What?"
"Are you serious, Gonglu?"
"Wh-what is it? Tell us."
At those words, every head simultaneously turned in that direction.
And so, the eyes of everyone inside the tent converged in a single instant onto Yuan Shu.
The stratagem that then came from his mouth
was, from their perspective, something they could not quite grasp.
But for those who had been feeling only confusion and despair, it began to dawn like a ray of hope.
*
The Essential Arts of Great Peace.
A tome that Zhang Jiao, who had been training deep in the mountains years ago, had received from the Old Immortal Nanhua when he appeared before him in a trance.
The artifact that had transformed Zhang Jiao from a nameless nobody into the leader of the Yellow Turban Army, a divine object containing the means to bend the laws of heaven and earth and wield them at will.
As Zhang Jiao gazed at it, a deep smile lingered on his pale face.
It is nearly done now... once I have swept away the government troops who marched up from Luoyang and fully pacified this region of Ji Province... cough!...
With a single use of the Secret Art, she had succeeded in blunting the enemy's spearhead.
If she could only ride this momentum to drive them out, she could use that to secure Ji Province as a stronghold and consolidate the foundation of the great cause.
Even if he did not live to see its end, Zhang Jiao felt he could close his eyes in peace with that alone.
Cough!... Though my own part will end here... the great cause shall be fulfilled without fail... this rotten world will be ended, and a new world...
Zhang Jiao had always striven not to show it, but he and his younger brother Zhang Bao knew the truth.
The moment he began to use the Secret Art, Zhang Jiao's physical condition had sharply worsened.
For all its immense power, the force within the Essential Arts of Great Peace worked directly against the natural order of heaven.
For a human to defy heaven's order, a price must be paid.
The reason Zhang Jiao, who had been healthy only a few years before, had fallen into his current state was precisely because he had overused the power of the book.
Raising the morale of a starving and exhausted army, replenishing grain stores that had been scraped clean at the bottom...
As such small but miracle-like events happened one after another, the Yellow Turban Army had been able to rapidly expand its influence. But the price had been Zhang Jiao's lifespan burning away at a terrifying rate.
Though he felt regret at not being able to see the great cause to its conclusion, Zhang Jiao had resolved to burn the last of this dwindling life to the very end.
Just then.
"Brother!"
"Cough!..."
Zhang Bao burst in urgently.
Zhang Jiao hastily wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and turned around.
"Wh-what is it?"
"Brother! The enemy! They are advancing on us again!"
"What? Already, you say?"
The government army had begun preparing another attack after barely a single day.
Zhang Jiao moved his uncooperative body and stepped out of the tent.
"Cough... They took a blow like that and yet they come swarming back."
"It seems they still do not grasp the terror of you, Brother... or of our great Yellow Turban Army."
Unlike the day before, the enemy was advancing this time with a force built around cavalry, as if they meant business.
They likely believed that by charging at speed they could pierce through the camp and force a chaotic melee, but these sorts of petty tricks were utterly meaningless.
"Fools... cough. Very well... if that is what you want, I will let you taste it again!"
The fact that they had reorganized their army and come back so quickly after such a beating was unexpected, but from the perspective of the Yellow Turban Army, riding high on momentum, it was not entirely unwelcome news.
Besides, had the government forces not just lost an army of tens of thousands in yesterday's attack?
The enemy was said to number roughly one hundred and fifty thousand. If things went like this another two or three times, she could completely crush them.
With that thought, Zhang Jiao immediately began to invoke the Secret Art of the Essential Arts of Great Peace.
As she lit a fire on the altar prepared in advance, the sallow wind began to gather.
Watching it swallow the blue sky—a literal fulfillment of "The Yellow Heaven Shall Rise"—a smile began to spread across Zhang Jiao's lips.
But then...
—Boom-boom-boom-boom!
"Hm?"
"Eh?"
The sudden sound of drums.
At the simultaneous shift in the enemy formation, perplexity began to creep onto the faces of Zhang Jiao, Zhang Bao, and the Yellow Turbans who had been on the very verge of charging forward.
"Cough! N-no... what are those bastards doing?"
"Wh-why are they retreating?"
An army that had been poised to charge in formation was suddenly wheeling its horses about and beginning to withdraw.
And not an orderly withdrawal—seeing them move as if fleeing, practically in an instant, the Yellow Turbans wore dazed expressions for a moment.
And then.
—Whoooosh!
—CRACK-BOOM!
"Tch..."
Sandstorms and thunderbolts erupted violently over the ground the enemy had just vacated.
Watching the ferocious Secret Art rain down on empty dirt, Zhang Jiao and the rest of the Yellow Turbans started to look bewildered.
"Those wretches... they turned tail before the art could even finish..."
"It seems they were cowed in advance by your power, Brother."
It was an anticlimactic response, but in any case, the enemy that had been about to attack had retreated.
For the moment, it was a situation you could still call a victory.
Just as the Yellow Turbans were convincing themselves of that, the ferocious sandstorm subsided before their eyes, and the surroundings began to grow calm again.
And then...
"Eh?"
"No... those bastards again? Cough!"
The moment the sandstorm died down, the government forces wheeled about again and began to advance on horseback.
Zhang Jiao's face automatically twisted into a scowl, but he hurriedly began to invoke the Secret Art once more.
Her body was already starting to shake with pain from having warped the natural order.
But with the enemy advancing, she had no choice but to use the art again.
The Secret Art that summoned sand-winds and lightning did not have high lethality, but it was highly effective at throwing the enemy into chaos while simultaneously raising allied soldiers' morale.
Behold, the will of heaven is with us.
A power like a sure promise that victory would ultimately be theirs.
And now that the enemy's retreat had rendered it completely useless,
even if it meant straining herself, she had to land a solid blow on them and lift the army's spirits.
So Zhang Jiao suppressed his agony and invoked the Secret Art.
But...
—Boom-boom-boom-boom!
"!"
"N-no... those bastards, again!"
As soon as the smoke began to rise, the drums resounded once more.
And at the same time, the enemy ebbed away like the tide, only to begin advancing on the allied forces again the instant the sandstorm subsided.
As if mocking them—if you can use your Secret Art, go ahead and use it more.
"C-could it be... those wretches? Have they already caught on... urp! Cough! Cough! Cough!"
Amidst his bewilderment, Zhang Jiao violently vomited blood.