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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Without a moment's hesitation, the imperial combat engineers were deployed. Large scale, rapid construction was being done right away along the shores. Thousands of soldiers laid down their halberds and, alongside the dedicated engineers, worked tirelessly day and night. The sound of thousands of axes echoed through the air as they began to ruthlessly cut down the local, ancient coastal forests.
They did not build simple, temporary camps. They were building a permanent foothold of the empire. Utilizing the massive, steam powered pile drivers they had brought dismantled in the holds of the ships, they began to build massive, incredibly sturdy wooden dock harbors extending deep into the ocean.
These colossal structures, built with the architectural genius of Liu Ye's engineering corps, were purely designed to ensure much easier, faster embarkation and disembarkation of future waves of soldiers, heavy cavalry, and delicate, heavy supplies.
Within days, the pristine, untouched coastline of Yamato had been violently transformed into a sprawling, industrialized military port of the Hengyuan Dynasty.
Meanwhile, away from the deafening, chaotic construction of the docks and the relentless unloading of the supply ships, the intellectual core of the invasion force was already moving to secure the strategic advantage.
The high command of the Eastern Expansion campaign, consisting of Zhang Liao, Sima Yi, Guo Jia, the meticulous Xi Zhicai, and Jia Kui, immediately commandeered the largest captured coastal village.
They evicted the local headman and made his sprawling, relatively sturdy thatched roof compound into their main, heavily fortified command headquarters. The yellow banners of the Black Dragon were raised high above the roof, signaling to the entire fleet that the beachhead was officially established.
Inside the central pavilion, the atmosphere was one of intense, cold calculation. Wasting absolutely no time, Sima Yi and Guo Jia had the captive village elders and local, minor chieftains brought before them.
The elders, trembling with absolute terror, were dragged into the pavilion by heavily armored guards. They fell to their knees, pressing their faces to the woven grass mats, completely overwhelmed by the terrifying, towering foreigners clad in dark steel. With the heavily armed guards securing the perimeter and blocking the exits, the atmosphere was thick with intimidation.
Sima Yi stepped forward, unrolling a blank parchment on a low wooden table. He gestured to the side of the room, and the specialized, bilingual Goguryeo translators, the men Li Wei had provided, were immediately being used to interrogate the natives.
"Tell them," Sima Yi commanded the lead translator, his voice smooth but laced with a terrifying authority, "that they are now subjects of the Hengyuan Emperor. Tell them that if they speak the absolute truth, their village will be spared and fed. If they lie, or if they withhold a single detail, I will have them tied to the front of our steam ships and boiled alive in the venting pipes."
The translator, bowing deeply, turned to the trembling elders and delivered the message in their native, guttural tongue. The elders wept, nodding frantically, completely broken by the threat and the sheer reality of the massive army outside their doors.
The brilliant strategists then began a relentless, highly structured interrogation. They urgently asked around the room, firing questions in rapid succession, pressing the terrified locals for highly detailed geographical and political information.
"We are blind on this island," Guo Jia stated, pouring himself a cup of wine and pacing around the kneeling elders like a predatory cat. "I want to know the exact geographical size of Yamato. How far does this landmass stretch to the north? To the south? Are we on the main island, or merely a peripheral rock?"
The translator rapidly interpreted the elders' frantic, overlapping answers. "They say this is Kyushu, the southern island, my Lords. The main, largest landmass, Honshu, lies further to the northeast, across a narrow strait. The lands are vast, heavily forested, and incredibly mountainous."
Sima Yi frowned, his brush moving rapidly across the parchment as he began to draw a rough map based on their descriptions. "Mountainous. That limits the effectiveness of our heavy cavalry charges. We will need to rely heavily on the repeating crossbows, the Hwachas, and the cannons in the narrow passes."
He turned his piercing gaze back to the elders. "Ask them about the difficult terrain of the islands. Where are the major rivers? Where are the natural choke points? And where are the primary roads that connect these coastal fishing villages to the major inland cities?"
The elders, desperate to please, drew crude maps in the dirt floor of the pavilion, detailing the steep volcanic ridges, the dense, almost impenetrable bamboo forests, and the winding, treacherous mountain paths that connected the various domains.
But it was Jia Kui, the master of political subjugation, who asked the most critical questions of the day.
"Geography only dictates how we march," Jia Kui said, stepping forward, his rigid posture imposing order on the chaotic interrogation. "Politics dictates who we kill. Ask them, most importantly, how big the enemy forces are."
He leaned down, his face inches from the lead village elder. "And exactly how many fractured, warring kingdoms and indigenous tribes are actually currently present across these mysterious, divided lands of Wa? Who claims the title of King here? Who commands the greatest army?"
The translator listened intently to the elders' terrified, lengthy response, his own eyes widening slightly at the political complexity of the island nation. He turned back to the Hengyuan high command, bowing deeply.
"My Lords," the translator began, organizing the chaotic political landscape into terms the mainlanders could understand. "They say there is no single, unified Emperor here like the great Hengyuan Emperor. The lands of Wa are deeply fractured, much like the central plains were during the time of the warring states. They speak of a period of endless, local warfare. There are dozens of small, fiercely independent domains, each ruled by local kings and tribe leaders."
Xi Zhicai, standing by the map table, stroked his chin. "A fractured land. Excellent. That means they cannot muster a single, unified army of tens of thousands to push us back into the sea. They will fight us piecemeal."
"However, my Lords, there is a central authority, though its actual military power is debated," the translator continued cautiously. "They speak of a High Priestess, a Shaman Queen named Himiko, who rules a powerful, mystical kingdom called Yamatai, located deep inland. She commands immense spiritual and political authority over many of the warring tribes, using sorcery and divination to keep the lesser kings in line. She is protected by tens of thousands of elite, fanatically loyal warriors."
Guo Jia stopped his pacing, a wide, genuine smile breaking across his face. He looked at Sima Yi, his eyes dancing with the thrill of the grand game.
"A Shaman Queen," Guo Jia chuckled, taking a sip of his wine. "How delightfully archaic. They rely on bones and tea leaves to predict the future, while we rely on steam pressure and black powder."
Sima Yi did not smile, but the cold, calculating gears of his mind were spinning flawlessly. "If she holds the spiritual authority of the island, then she is the psychological lynchpin. We do not need to conquer every single fishing village and mountain fortress."
Zhang Liao, understanding the tactical implication immediately, rested his hand on his sword. "We march on Yamatai. We shatter this Queen Himiko's elite guard in an open field with our artillery, and we take her alive. If we break their god queen, the lesser warlords will shatter from the psychological shock and submit to the Dragon Throne without us having to bleed for every inch of bamboo forest."
The high command looked at the crude map drawn in the dirt, their strategic vision perfectly aligned. The invasion was no longer a blind thrust into the dark. They had their target, they had their logistical foothold secured on the beach, and they possessed a technological supremacy that the islanders could not even begin to comprehend.
As the crucial and highly detailed intelligence had finally been successfully gathered, verified, and meticulously translated from the cooperative, terrified local chieftains within the command pavilion, Zhang Liao stepped out into the bright, salty air of the beachhead. He stood upon a slight sandy elevation, his dark cape billowing in the coastal wind, and cast his sharp, calculating gaze over the sprawling expanse of his invasion force.
What he saw was an army of undisputed, world conquering veterans, men who had broken the backs of the northern nomadic hordes and shattered the fortified walls of the central plains. Yet, at this very moment, they looked completely wretched.
Spending the long, countless, agonizing times packed tightly within the dark, swaying, and damp wooden hulls of the transport ships had taken quite the heavy physical and mental toll on the mainland soldiers. These were men of the solid earth, born on the vast plains and rugged mountains of the continent.
They were warriors who could march fifty miles in a day carrying heavy iron armor without breaking a sweat, but the relentless, unpredictable pitching and rolling of the eastern ocean had fundamentally betrayed their equilibrium.
Zhang Liao astutely noticed that as the infantrymen stood in their formations on the beach, their legs were visibly trembling. Many leaned heavily on their polearms for support, their faces a sickly, pale shade of green.
Their stomachs were continuously churning, rejecting the hardtack and dried rations they had consumed during the crossing. They simply aren't used to being on ships at all, let alone surviving a month long, tempestuous voyage across a treacherous sea.
This was in stark, almost comical contrast to the seasoned, iron stomached naval marines under the four admirals direct command, who swaggered across the sand with arrogant ease, completely unaffected by the lingering phantom sway of the ocean, occasionally laughing and tossing water skins to the groaning infantrymen.
Understanding the absolute, vital importance of troop morale and physical readiness before a major inland campaign could commence, Zhang Liao immediately let out an overarching martial order. Through the booming voices of his heralds and the rhythmic beating of the resting drums, he ordered the entire army of frontline soldiers to immediately stand down and rest for some moment along the secured beaches.
The collective sigh of relief that washed over the hundreds of thousands of armored men was almost louder than the crashing waves. Formations were temporarily relaxed.
Armor was unbuckled, heavy helmets were removed, and the soldiers collapsed onto the warm, solid white sand of Yamato. Medics moved swiftly through the sprawling camps, distributing fresh water and boiling ginger root tea to settle the churning stomachs of the mainlanders. The men were ordered to eat hot meals, sleep on unmoving ground, and let the sun bake the damp, miserable chill of the ocean from their bones.
At the same time, out in the deeper waters of the secured bay, the four admirals, Zhou Yu, Gan Ning, Huang Zu, and Jiang Qin, stood together on the reinforced deck of the command flagship, looking at their own exhausted fleets.
The sailors and boiler engineers had not slept properly in weeks. They had fought the shifting tides, the sudden gales, and the terrifying responsibility of keeping hundreds of thousands of land bound soldiers from sinking to the bottom of the abyss.
Recognizing that their men were pushed to the absolute brink of human endurance, the admirals also let the exhausted navy crews drop their heavy iron anchors and rest on the shores. Small rowboats ferried tens of thousands of sailors, riggers, and coal shovelers onto the beach. They desperately needed this rest before they could even think about turning the massive fleet around.
The admirals knew that they had to safely conduct a massive, arduous return voyage back across the unpredictable, treacherous seas to the staging grounds of Jeju-Do.
They could not afford tired eyes on the watchtowers or sleeping engineers in the boiler rooms, because they still had to pick up the remaining tens of thousands of soldiers, reserve cavalry, and mountains of heavy supplies left waiting there to be brought here, as not all of the imperial soldiers have been fully transported yet. The logistical chain could not be broken.
Meanwhile, days passed by quickly under the bright, forgiving island sun. The warm weather and the feeling of solid earth rapidly cured the mainland soldiers of their sea sickness, replacing their nausea with a burning, eager anticipation for the battles to come.
But while the infantry rested and cleaned their weapons, the imperial combat engineers did not waste a single second. In just several days, the pristine, untouched coastline had been violently transformed. The massive, highly complex wooden docks have already started to fully form along the coast, jutting out into the deep water like the grasping claws of a wooden dragon.
The relentless, highly coordinated construction speed of the Hengyuan combat engineers was a spectacle of terrifying, industrialized efficiency.
Massive, steam powered pile drivers, machines that hissed with white vapor and pounded with the force of a falling boulder, rhythmically drove thick, ancient tree trunks deep into the sandy seabed. Thousands of men sawed, hammered, and lashed the heavy timber together with thick iron chains and hemp ropes.
This display of sheer, mechanical dominance, of course, completely amazed and terrified the native locals. The Yamato fishermen and villagers, peeking out from behind their woven bamboo doors and the edges of the tree lines, looked at the towering wooden structures as if they were built by divine magic.
To a people whose largest constructions were modest wooden shrines and simple fishing piers, the sight of a sprawling, multi tiered harbor being erected in a matter of days by men wielding hissing, smoke breathing iron beasts was beyond human comprehension. They fell to their knees in the dirt, whispering prayers to the sea spirits, believing that gods of iron and smoke had descended upon their shores.
Yet, despite their overwhelming fear, the locals quickly realized that these foreign conquerors were not the bloodthirsty demons they initially appeared to be. Under Zhang Liao's strict but merciful martial law, a tense but absolute peace fell over the occupied zone.
The supreme commander had made his decree clear, and the Hengyuan military police enforced it with lethal efficiency. Any soldier caught harassing a villager or stealing from a local storehouse was immediately flogged in full view of the camp. Seeing this strict discipline, the locals were peacefully allowed to continue their daily life.
They tentatively stepped out of their homes, returning to farming their small, terraced plots of root vegetables and fishing in the shallows with their small nets, completely unbothered by the towering mainland soldiers who simply watched them with quiet, disciplined indifference.
However, this mercy came with a rigid, impenetrable boundary. The locals absolutely aren't allowed to go far off past the military perimeter. Heavily armed patrols of infantries and repeating crossbowmen stood shoulder to shoulder along the edges of the occupied villages, facing the dense inland forests.
The villagers were warned through the Goguryeo translators that any attempt to cross the line of black armor would be met with immediate death. This was an absolute strategic necessity, perfectly enforced so that the villagers wouldn't accidentally, or intentionally, alert the other tribes, the roaming patrols, and the warlords further inland about the true, apocalyptic scale of the invasion force that had just landed on their shores.
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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