The battlefield of Qin's eastern plains was already drowning in the sounds of war.
The cries of soldiers.
The thunder of thousands of footsteps.
The clash of weapons echoing across the land.
Yet among all of this chaos, a single 1,000-man army marched forward.
At the front of the formation was a young general riding with his sword resting on his shoulder.
Shin.
His eyes narrowed as he looked toward the horizon.
"What the..."
Before him was a battlefield far larger than anything his small army had been assigned to.
The banners of Wei covered the land.
Thousands upon thousands of soldiers were advancing, pressing against a Qin army that seemed impossibly small in comparison.
But that Qin army was not breaking.
Instead, the 50,000 soldiers were tearing through the Wei advance like a raging beast.
"They're actually pushing them back..." Karyo Ten muttered in disbelief.
Even she could feel the overwhelming presence coming from that army.
"This isn't a normal army."
Kyou Kai's eyes sharpened.
"Their movements... they're following one person's instincts."
Shin looked forward.
And then his eyes widened.
A massive flag appeared through the dust.
The symbol of the fierce tiger patterned Hyou
.
"No way..."
Karyo Ten immediately recognized it.
"That's..."
Kyou Kai finished the sentence.
"Duke Hyou."
At the Wei headquarters, the commander-in-chief watched the battlefield unfold.
Go Houmei stood calmly, his eyes analyzing every movement.
"So this is the man..."
His expression remained emotionless.
"The man who defeated my father."
The Wei soldiers around him remained silent.
Everyone knew the reputation of Duke Hyou.
A monster who fought purely through instinct.
A man who turned battlefields into flames.
Go Houmei looked toward the battlefield.
"But instinct alone cannot defeat strategy."
He raised his hand.
"The enemy's strength comes from their momentum."
"Their entire formation moves because their front line continues to burn forward."
His eyes focused.
"Break the source of that momentum."
"Attack their rear."
"Pierce them from both the left and right."
"Slowly crush them until their flame disappears."
The Wei army moved immediately.
Duke Hyou stood in the center of the battlefield.
His eyes burned as he watched Wei's movements.
"Hoh..."
A grin appeared.
"They finally decided to show their fangs."
The Wei army began closing in.
Their formation was designed to split Duke Hyou's forces apart.
But before they could complete their attack…
"DUKE HYOU!"
A familiar voice thundered across the battlefield.
A small force charged directly into the chaos.
A thousand soldiers.
Leading them was Shin.
"We aren't just going to sit around!"
Shin raised his sword.
"We're going to help the Duke!"
The soldiers of Duke Hyou looked stunned.
A mere 1,000-man unit charging into a battlefield of tens of thousands.
But Duke Hyou only laughed.
"Hahaha!"
His enormous laugh echoed.
"That boy..."
His eyes softened slightly.
"He really has grown."
Duke Hyou lifted his weapon.
"Very well!"
"Then follow the flame!"
"Target the right side!"
The Duke's army immediately shifted.
The sudden reinforcement from Shin's unit created a new opening.
The Wei formation trembled.
Go Houmei watched from afar.
Interesting.
The young commander had entered the battlefield.
And instead of destroying the enemy's formation...
He had increased the intensity of their flame.
"That boy..."
Go Houmei narrowed his eyes.
"Another one?"
For a moment, he saw the resemblance.
A reckless charge.
A force that should not exist.
A person who changed the battlefield simply by appearing.
But Go Houmei did not hesitate.
"Then let us see..."
He raised his hand.
"How far your flames can burn."
The Wei army suddenly changed formation.
The soldiers began rotating.
The entire army started moving in a spiral.
A massive whirlpool surrounding Duke Hyou's forces.
Karyo Ten immediately noticed.
"Wait..."
Her expression changed.
"They aren't attacking randomly."
"They're turning around us..."
Kyou Kai looked toward Duke Hyou.
"He noticed."
Duke Hyou stared at the battlefield.
The smile on his face disappeared.
For once...
The instinctive warrior became completely still.
"..."
Something was wrong.
The battlefield had changed.
The smell.
The flow.
The direction of the enemy.
"This..."
His eyes narrowed.
"Something smells extremely off."
His soldiers looked at him.
Duke Hyou raised his weapon.
"HALT!"
The entire army stopped.
"We're pulling out!"
Everyone was shocked.
"Pull back?!"
The Duke laughed.
"That Wei commander in chief..."
He looked toward Go Houmei's direction.
"I thought Wei no longer possessed any generals worth worrying about…"
His grin returned.
"Seems like I was wrong."
That night….
Outside Duke Hyou's tent.
Shin waited.
Beside him stood Kyou Kai and Karyo Ten.
The three looked toward the entrance.
Eventually…
"Sorry for the wait."
A massive figure stepped out.
Duke Hyou.
Shin immediately bowed.
"Duke Hyou."
The Duke laughed.
"You three were a great help this afternoon."
Shin looked surprised.
The words coming from Duke Hyou were rare praise.
The Duke looked toward the dark horizon.
"I have fought for many years."
"Countless wars."
"Countless enemies."
"But this..."
His expression became serious.
"This is the first time I have witnessed an invasion of this scale."
The wind blew through the camp.
"If Qin does not handle this carefully..."
Duke Hyou looked at his soldiers.
"The state itself may disappear."
Silence filled the tent area.
But Shin clenched his fist.
"That doesn't matter."
Everyone looked at him.
"Right now..."
Shin stared forward.
"We don't have the biggest army."
"We don't have the advantage."
"But right here..."
His eyes burned.
"With whatever strength we have..."
"We're going to stop them."
Kyou Kai smiled faintly.
"That's the duty of those standing on the frontline."
Karyo Ten nodded.
"The ones protecting Qin's future."
For four days, the battle continued.
Duke Hyou's army resisted.
Shin's 1,000-man unit fought alongside them.
Every single day became a struggle of survival.
They stopped Wei's advance.
They burned their own strength to hold the line.
But eventually...
The order arrived.
All Qin armies were to retreat toward central Qin.
The invasion was far larger than expected.
The enemy was not coming from one direction.
Five nations.
Five armies.
A storm unlike anything Qin had ever faced.
Meanwhile.
Some news has spread across the battlefield.
The news that arrived was like a nightmare.
The Han army had been destroyed.
The report firstly reached both Zhao and Wei.
The closest.
At first, neither Riboku nor Go Houmei could accept the scale of the defeat. An army of 50,000 soldiers had disappeared from the battlefield, leaving behind nothing but questions.
But as the Zhao and Wei forces continued their march toward Qin, they eventually reached the land where Han had made its final stand.
And there...
They stopped.
The battlefield before them was silent.
There were no cries of wounded soldiers.
No banners of a defeated army.
Only an endless field of death.
The land had been transformed into a forest.
Not a forest of trees...
But a forest of corpses.
Across the horizon stood rows upon rows of Han soldiers, their bodies displayed upon stakes that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Fifty thousand men.
An entire army.
Reduced to a horrifying monument.
The soldiers of Zhao and Wei who followed behind their commanders felt their hands tighten around their weapons. Even veterans who had survived countless battles found themselves unable to speak.
This was not simply the aftermath of a battle.
This was a message.
A warning carved into the earth itself.
Whoever came for Qin...
Must be prepared to face the consequences.
The battlefield was Qin's answer to every nation that dared to march toward its lands.
They were not saying they could not be defeated.
They were saying that anyone who wished to destroy Qin would have to pay a price beyond imagination.
Riboku rode slowly through the field of corpses.
The usually composed strategist of Zhao stared silently at the countless bodies before him.
For the first time, even he felt the weight of the enemy he was about to face.
Go Houmei's expression hardened.
The man who had always believed that war was a calculation of numbers, formations, and strategy...
Now stood before something that could not be measured.
A battlefield that was not meant only to kill.
It was meant to be remembered.
The two commanders eventually met in the center of that horrifying landscape.
Neither spoke.
They did not need to.
The sight before them had already delivered its message.
Qin was wounded.
Qin was surrounded.
But Qin was not helpless.
And from this day forward, every army that marched toward Qin would have to remember the same truth.
To invade Qin was to accept the price of failure.