If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
______________________________
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
"The enemy army possesses horrifying weapons that we have never seen before in our entire lives! Our survivors speak of weapons that spewed unquenchable liquid fire that burns on the water itself! They speak of iron tubes that spit thunder, and massive, rolling engines that shattered our thickest wooden walls in a single, deafening strike! Arrows that explode! Shields that cannot be pierced! How do we fight this?!"
The generals looked at the floor, completely unable to answer. Their entire military doctrine was based on honor, archery, cavalry charges, and the sharp edge of a sword. How could a soldier, no matter how skilled or brave, cut down a wall of liquid fire? How could a cavalry charge survive a barrage of explosive arrows?
The martial pride of Yamato was bleeding out on the floor of the council room, replaced by the cold, crushing realization of their own utter inadequacy.
Seeing the silence of his greatest warriors, a cold dread began to pool in the pit of King Tarashihiko's stomach. His voice dropped to a trembling whisper as he realized the sheer scale of the unknown threat they were facing.
"Do we even know whose wrath we have incurred?" King Tarashihiko asked, the dread heavy in his voice. He looked toward the intelligence officers and the spymasters gathered in the shadows of the room. "Have our scouts even known the true identity of these terrifying people who had suddenly landed on our shores? What banners do they fly? What god do they pray to?"
For a long, agonizing moment, no one spoke. The silence in the room was absolute, heavy with the weight of impending doom.
Then, slowly, the crowd of nobles parted. Stepping out from the panicked, sweating crowd was one of the oldest, most senior advisors in the entire Yamato court. He was a man who had served three generations of kings, a scholar of foreign affairs and ancient texts.
The old man bowed deeply, getting down on his knees and pressing his forehead to the floor. When he finally looked up, his face was ashen, entirely devoid of color. His frail body was trembling so violently that his silk robes shook with the motion.
"Speak, Elder," the King commanded gently, though his heart was pounding against his ribs.
In a heavy, cracked voice that sounded like a death knell ringing through the silent palace, the senior advisor answered. "Yes... yes, we have finally known the identity of the invaders, Your Majesty."
The advisor swallowed hard, tears welling up in his ancient eyes as he delivered the fatal blow to the kingdom's hope. "The banners they carry are pitch black, adorned with a golden dragon. They are not pirates. They are not a rival island clan. It is the Hengyuan Dynasty."
The name hung in the air, foreign and heavy. Many of the younger generals frowned in confusion, having never heard the name before. They lived their lives looking inward, fighting over the valleys and mountains of Kyushu, ignorant of the massive world that existed beyond the waves.
But King Tarashihiko, and several of the older lords in the room, physically recoiled. The King stumbled backward, his legs suddenly losing their strength, and he collapsed back onto his royal seat.
"Hengyuan..." the King whispered, the color draining from his face. "The unknown beast of the west."
The senior advisor slowly stood up, supporting himself with a cane, and turned to face the confused, terrified assembly of generals. He needed them to understand exactly what had just landed on their beaches. He explained to the stunned court that this was not their first time hearing of this monstrous entity.
"This is the exact same devastating force we had briefly, indirectly encountered in the past," the advisor explained, his voice echoing in the silent chamber. "Do you remember the war across the straits? When Yamato was trying to send military help to Silla?"
A murmur of recognition rippled through the older commanders. Silla was their loyal ally and friend to the far west, located across the ocean on the southern tip of the massive peninsula. Some time ago, Yamato had sent fleets of warriors to aid Silla in their desperate, bloody struggle to fight against the aggressive, expanding kingdom of Goguryeo.
"During that distant war," the advisor continued, his voice trembling with the weight of the history he was revealing, "Silla's envoys came to this very room. They begged us for more men, more ships. They told us that Goguryeo was not fighting alone. Goguryeo was heavily backed by this very same Hengyuan Dynasty, which was located even further to the west of the location of Silla."
The advisor looked around the room, his eyes locking onto the proud generals who had just moments ago been boasting of their martial prowess.
"We sent our warriors to aid Silla, and they were slaughtered," the advisor pale facedly explained. "Not by Goguryeo, but by the vanguard forces of Hengyuan. The survivors of that expedition spoke of men in unbreakable black armor, of disciplined formations that moved like a single machine. But we thought... we foolishly thought that because the sea separated us, we were safe. We thought they were just another mainland kingdom fighting over dirt."
He took a deep, shuddering breath. "We were wrong. They are not a mere kingdom. Hengyuan rules over a massive, unimaginably big land continent that we had just recently known the true, horrifying scale of from Silla's desperate, final envoys before their borders were sealed. It is an empire that stretches from the frozen wastes of the north to the steaming jungles of the deep south. It is an incredibly powerful, seemingly endless kingdom that fields millions of soldiers."
"Millions, my Lords! Their foundries darken the sky with smoke. Their wealth is limitless. And their supreme ruler, Emperor Hongyi, is a man who has conquered every single warlord, every single tribe, and every single nation on the mainland. He has unified a continent of blood and iron. And now... now his eyes have turned to the east. He has crossed the ocean to claim the rising sun."
The revelation dropped upon the royal court of Yamato like a suffocating blanket of lead.
What followed was a long, incredibly tense scene where the entire Yamato council was plunged into a big, absolute, paralyzing shock. The air was sucked right out of the room. The proud, aggressive posture of the samurai generals completely vanished, replaced by a hollow, vacant stare of existential dread.
The silence dragged on for what felt like hours. Only the sound of ragged, panicked breathing could be heard. Some of the lords physically slumped in their seats, their hands shaking so badly they had to grip their own knees to stop the trembling.
One of the naval admirals, a man who had spent his life charting the coastal waters, buried his face in his hands and began to quietly, openly weep, realizing that his entire fleet had been sacrificed for nothing against a force that commanded the very elements.
Then, the silence broke, shattering into a desperate, frantic chaos that made the previous argument look like a peaceful tea ceremony.
"Millions of soldiers?!" a noble from the western mountains screamed, leaping to his feet, his eyes wide with absolute panic. "How can a single ruler command millions of men?! It is a lie! It must be an exaggeration!"
"Did you not hear the survivor reports?!" another lord yelled back, his voice cracking with hysteria. "They have ships helped by the sea itself with how fast it is! They breathe liquid fire! They do not need millions of men to kill us, they will simply burn this island down to the bedrock! We are fighting gods, not men!"
The room erupted into a deafening, panicked cacophony. The men who ruled Yamato, men who believed they were favored by the divine spirits of the island, were suddenly forced to confront their own absolute insignificance in the face of a true global superpower. They were frantically discussing what just happened, talking over one another in a desperate bid to find a solution to an unsolvable equation.
"We must gather the banners! We must call a general conscription!" General Katsuro roared, trying to inject some semblance of martial pride back into the room. "We can muster a tens of thousand men if we pull every farmer from the rice paddies! We know this land! We can lure them into the mountains and crush them in the narrow passes!"
"And fight them with what? Bamboo spears and wooden shields?!" an older minister countered harshly, his face slick with terrified sweat. "You want to send farmers to fight men who possess exploding arrows and siege weapons that shatter stone? It will not be a battle, it will be a slaughter! We will be offering our people up to a meat grinder!"
"Then what do you suggest, coward?!" Katsuro snarled, his hand gripping his blade again, though this time his hands were shaking. "Do we just roll over and offer our throats to these mainlanders?"
"Can we surrender?" a minor lord from the southern provinces asked, his voice trembling so much it was barely audible. The words were highly taboo, a severe violation of the samurai code of honor, but the sheer, overwhelming terror of the situation had stripped away their pride. "If we send emissaries... if we offer tribute, perhaps this Emperor Hongyi will spare our lives? Perhaps he only wants silver and silk?"
"You fool!" the senior advisor barked, his frail body suddenly filled with the bitter energy of a dying man. "Do you think an empire that fields millions of men crosses the treacherous ocean for mere silver? They have all the wealth of the continent! They do not come for tribute! They come for total subjugation! If we surrender, they will strip us of our titles, they will disarm our warriors, and they will turn our proud people into slaves to feed their massive war machine!"
The panic deepened, spiraling into a vortex of despair. The maps of Kyushu were hurriedly unrolled on the floor, nobles falling to their hands and knees to frantically trace escape routes.
"We must abandon Kyushu!" an admiral shouted, pointing to the northern straits on the map. "We must evacuate the royal family and the army immediately! We can retreat across the water to Honshu to our allies! We can fortify the straits and make our final stand there!"
"You cannot outrun ships of iron!" another yelled back. "They will catch our evacuation fleet and burn us all on the water before we even reach the shores of Honshu!"
"What of Queen Himiko?" a desperately hopeful lord suddenly cried out, grasping at the last, mystical straw the island possessed. "What of Yamatai? She speaks to the gods! She commands the spirits of the earth and the sea! We must send riders to her kingdom immediately! We must beg the High Priestess to unleash a divine typhoon to swallow their fleet! The gods of Yamato will not allow these mainland demons to defile our sacred shores!"
"The gods did not stop their ships from landing!" a pragmatic, cynical general spat back, slamming his fist onto the map. "And I highly doubt Queen Himiko's prayers will stop those big iron balls from tearing through our palace walls! We are completely cut off! Our southern domains are already falling silent, swallowed by their blockade! We don't even know how far inland they have marched!"
King Tarashihiko sat in his royal chair, paralyzed by the sheer volume of the panic surrounding him. He looked at his advisors, his generals, his admirals, the greatest minds and warriors his isolated nation had ever produced, and saw nothing but broken, terrified men.
They were desperately, frantically discussing how their isolated island nation could possibly survive the wrath of the greatest empire in the known world. But as the arguments raged, as the suggestions grew more wild and suicidal, the horrifying truth settled over the room like a heavy, executioner's blade.
There was no strategy that could save them. There was no secret mountain pass that could hold back the tide of Hengyuan's industrialized army. There was no divine wind coming to sweep the ships back into the sea.
The Black Dragon had reached across the ocean, its jaws opened wide, and the frantic, screaming men in the council room finally realized that they were already trapped inside its mouth. The invasion had barely begun, yet the psychological devastation of the Hengyuan Dynasty had already conquered the heart of the Yamato kingdom.
As the grand Yamato council remained entirely plunged in a state of paralyzing, suffocating panic, the ornate wooden halls of their ancient palace echoed with the sounds of desperate, terrified men. The proud nobles and seasoned generals, men who had spent their entire lives cultivating an aura of stoic, untouchable martial honor, were now reduced to screaming over one another in a frantic, uncoordinated frenzy.
They were desperately arguing, their faces slick with cold sweat, proposing wild, suicidal counter attacks one moment and humiliating surrender the next, but completely failing to find any concrete plan or unified strategy on the next step they should take.
The sheer, overwhelming scale of the Hengyuan Dynasty's invasion had completely short circuited their traditional military doctrines. They were trapped in a burning house, arguing over who knocked over the lantern while the roof was already collapsing on their heads.
While the isolated island leadership remained paralyzed in their capital, hundreds of miles to the south, the Hengyuan Army continued to mercilessly bulldoze across the entire southern half of Kyushu.
The invasion force moved not like an army of men, but like a localized, industrialized force of nature. Under Zhang Liao's relentless, cold blooded orders, the Black Dragon's legions executed a flawless, systematic eradication of all resistance. This uncompromising advance was the direct result of the brilliant strategy and tactics that have already been carefully made and constantly refined by the intellectual core of the expedition, Guo Jia, Xi Zhicai, Sima Yi, and Jia Kui.
The native defenders of Kyushu stood absolutely no chance.
It was not for a lack of courage. The brave warriors of Yamato, clad in their distinctive, vibrantly colored lacquered armor, fought fiercely. They rallied behind the ancestral banners of their local lords, drawing their beautifully curved, razor sharp blades, and charged down the terraced hillsides with battle cries that invoked the spirits of their forefathers.
They launched desperate, incredibly brave ambushes from the dense, suffocating bamboo forests, attempting to engage the mainland invaders in the close quarters melee combat where samurai traditionally excelled.
But their bravery was met with a cold, mathematical, and utterly indifferent wall of steel. They are just continuously being decimated and brutally pushed back from every single defensive line they attempted to hold.
The Hengyuan generals rarely even needed to unsheathe their swords. When a wave of Yamato infantry charged from the tree line, the Hengyuan shield walls simply locked into place, forming an impenetrable iron barrier. From behind this wall, the sheer, apocalyptic destructive power of Hengyuan's arsenal was unleashed.
The front ranks were shredded by the rapid firing repeating crossbows. The mechanical thwack thwack thwack of the heavy bowstrings releasing filled the air, sending hundreds of iron tipped bolts tearing through the fragile, lacquered armor of the islanders as easily as paper. For those who managed to survive the initial hail of bolts and continued to charge, the sky itself seemed to turn against them.
The sky darkening Hwachas were wheeled to the flanks. With a deafening, shrieking roar, thousands of rocket propelled arrows were launched simultaneously. They arced high into the island sky, trailing thick gray smoke, before plunging down into the dense concentrations of native defenders. The explosive payloads detonated upon impact, completely blanketing the samurai formations in blinding fire and jagged iron shrapnel.
______________________________
Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0