The port of Incheon materialized out of the grey morning mist, a welcome sight for the sailors of the Beiyang Fleet. They had won the race. The Japanese squadron was a faint smudge of smoke on the horizon behind them, a testament to Captain Deng Shichang's daring and the superior engineering of their German-built engines. The Dingyuan and Zhenyuan dropped anchor in the deep outer harbor, their immense steel forms a sudden, shocking statement of modern power in the tranquil Korean port. The landing began immediately.
The operation was a marvel of the new efficiency that Ying Zheng's reforms were beginning to instill in the Qing military. Flat-bottomed landing barges, crewed by disciplined sailors, moved back and forth from the transport ships with a steady, rhythmic purpose. They were not filled with a disorganized rabble, but with companies of the new Beiyang Army, a force forged in the crucible of Viceroy Li Hongzhang's modernization programs.
Their commander, a young and ferociously ambitious general named Yuan Shikai, stood on the newly secured docks, observing the disembarkation. He was a man of the new era, his uniform a practical, tailored garment, his face clean-shaven, his eyes sharp and intelligent. He felt a surge of pride as he watched his men. They were equipped with modern, German-made bolt-action rifles from the Tianjin Arsenal. Their officers, young graduates of the new military academy, barked out clear, concise commands. Their light artillery pieces were being carefully unloaded and hitched to teams of waiting horses. This was not the old, corrupt, and incompetent army of the Opium Wars. This was a new weapon, and Yuan Shikai was eager to test its edge.
Their objective was clear: march the forty kilometers to the capital, Seoul, as quickly as possible. They had to secure the Korean royal palace, protect the king, and crush the mutiny before the Japanese had any excuse to land their own forces in strength.
Hidden amongst the ranks of an elite marine contingent was Meng Tian. He was clad in the same uniform as the others, his face grim and impassive, but his senses were alive, taking in every detail of the unfamiliar land. His official role was as part of the vanguard, a soldier in the Emperor's service. His true mission, delivered to him through a series of coded orders before the fleet sailed, was far more specific. He was to be the ghost in the machine, the invisible hand that would ensure this operation's swift and absolute success. He was the Emperor's personal instrument of decapitation.
The march to Seoul began. The modern Qing army moved with a speed and discipline that would have been impossible for the old banner armies. But the Korean mutineers were not idle. Emboldened by their initial success in taking the capital, their leaders had rallied a force of several thousand men. They had established a crude but formidable defensive position on a series of low hills that controlled the main road to Seoul. They were armed with old, rusty matchlock muskets and a collection of ancient cannons, but they had superior numbers and the fierce desperation of men who knew that defeat meant execution. They were confident they could hold off the Qing force.
General Yuan Shikai, a student of Western tactics, prepared for a conventional assault. He ordered his artillery to be brought forward to soften up the enemy positions. As the cannons began their methodical, deafening barrage, pounding the Korean earthworks with high-explosive shells, Meng Tian began his own, silent mission.
He had been tasked by his Emperor with a special kind of reconnaissance. While the artillery barrage created noise, smoke, and confusion, he slipped away from the main force. He moved through the rough terrain beside the road not with the speed of a man, but with the fluid grace of a hunting panther. His superhuman agility allowed him to scale steep, rocky slopes and leap across wide gullies, easily bypassing the Korean sentries who were hunkered down, cowering from the terrifying shriek of the incoming shells.
He was not there to fight the main force. His target was the head of the snake. His senses, heightened by the elixir's power, allowed him to pinpoint the enemy's command post with an uncanny accuracy. He could hear the shouted commands of the mutiny's leaders, smell the scent of their tobacco smoke on the wind. He found them gathered in a small, sheltered pavilion behind the main line of defense, arguing over a crude map.
He approached from behind, a silent wraith moving through the chaos of the bombardment. The sound of a nearby shell explosion provided the perfect cover. He dropped into the command post like a hawk descending on a nest of mice.
The four leaders of the mutiny looked up, their eyes wide with shock as the imposing figure materialized in their midst. Before they could even draw their swords or cry out, he was upon them.
He moved with a speed that was a blur to the human eye. His mission was not to kill; it was to cripple. Killing them would create martyrs. Maiming them would create terror and chaos. His hands were a blur of precise, devastating strikes. He shattered the sword arm of the first leader with a sharp blow that sounded like a dry branch snapping. He drove his heel into the knee of the second, destroying the joint with a single, brutal stomp. The third lunged at him with a dagger, and Meng Tian simply grabbed the man's head and slammed it against a wooden pillar, the sound a sickening thud. The fourth he simply threw, his immense strength sending the man flying through the thin wall of the pavilion to land in a broken heap outside.
The entire, violent ballet had taken less than ten seconds. The four leaders of the rebellion were left on the ground, groaning and writhing in agony, their rebellion ending not in a blaze of glory, but in a storm of broken bones delivered by an unseen demon. Meng Tian vanished back into the smoke and confusion of the battlefield as silently as he had appeared.
A few minutes later, Yuan Shikai ordered the main advance. His disciplined troops, moving forward in organized firing lines, expected to meet fierce resistance. Instead, they found an enemy in a state of complete and utter chaos. The Korean mutineers, their leaders inexplicably struck down, their chain of command shattered, had no one to give them orders. They were a terrified, disorganized mob. The Qing advance, supported by the relentless pounding of their modern artillery, turned into a rout. The mutineers broke and fled, throwing down their antique weapons as they ran for their lives.
The Qing army took the strategic position with almost no casualties. Their victory had been swift, overwhelming, and absolute. General Yuan Shikai stood on the captured hilltop, watching the last of the enemy scatter into the countryside. He was hailed by his young officers as a military genius, a master tactician who had shattered the enemy with a single, decisive blow. But even as he accepted their praise, a small frown creased his brow. He was a good general, and he knew it. But he was also an honest one. He couldn't quite understand how the enemy's command structure had so completely and so suddenly disintegrated just moments before his main assault. It was as if their leaders had simply vanished from the face of the earth. It was a stroke of impossible, inexplicable good fortune.