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But the ghosts were simply waiting for the perfect terrain. The grand encirclement eventually pushed the Hengyuan vanguard into the jagged, rising foothills of the central mountain range. The path narrowed significantly, forcing the massive columns of armored infantry and their accompanying field artillery to funnel through a series of steep, rocky mountain passes known to the natives as the Serpent's Throat.
It was a breathtaking, intense landscape. Towering cliffs of dark, moss covered stone rose hundreds of feet on either side of the pass, while a roaring, white water river churned in the deep gorge below. The air smelled strongly of sulfur and damp earth.
The vanguard, consisting of five thousand heavily armored halberdiers and a regiment of the heavy infantries, pushed cautiously into the pass. They were led by a seasoned general who kept his eyes fixed on the high ridges, anticipating a volley of arrows or falling rocks.
Suddenly, the eerie silence of the Shikoku mountains was violently shattered.
From the high, mist shrouded peaks above the pass, a series of strange, echoing chants drifted down. The Yamatai defenders, personally led by the mysterious Queen Himiko, finally unleashed their terrifying defense.
But instead of just firing obsidian tipped arrows or rolling heavy boulders, they unleashed something that made the blood of the Hengyuan veterans run completely cold.
A dozen native warriors, their bodies covered in intricate, swirling tattoos, appeared on the high ridges. They did not carry bows. They held massive, sealed clay jars. With a synchronized shout, they hurled the jars down into the narrow pass.
The jars shattered against the rocky floor directly in front of the Hengyuan vanguard, releasing a thick, violently expanding cloud of putrid, yellow green smoke.
"Hold the line!" the vanguard general screamed, raising his shield. "Musketeers, prepare to fire at the ridges!"
Before the musketeers could even level their weapons, a single, flaming arrow was fired from the cliffs, streaking down into the center of the yellow green cloud.
The result was an earth shaking, catastrophic explosion.
The entire pass erupted in a blinding, concussive flash of heat and kinetic force. The explosion was not like the sharp, focused crack of Hengyuan black powder, it was a massive, rolling fireball that consumed the oxygen in the gorge, sending a shockwave that threw heavily armored soldiers off their feet and shattered the eardrums of anyone within a hundred yards.
As the vanguard reeled in absolute terror and confusion, the true nightmare began.
The explosion triggered a chain reaction. The Yamatai defenders had tapped into the natural, volatile elements of their volcanic island. Suddenly, hidden fissures in the rock walls of the pass hissed violently, releasing invisible streams of natural gas.
Flaming torches were dropped from above, igniting the vents and sending massive, roaring geysers of natural flame shooting across the path, instantly incinerating the front ranks of the Hengyuan infantry.
The surviving soldiers, choking on the toxic, blinding smoke screens that smelled of rotten eggs and burning copper, fell into absolute, panicked chaos. They were falling into hidden pits filled with bubbling, naturally acidic mud. The very mountain seemed to be eating them alive.
To the terrified Hengyuan soldiers, who believed their Emperor held the sole monopoly on thunder and fire, this was the terrifying undeniable proof of the Shaman Queen's dark magic. They believed the earth gods of Shikoku had awakened to destroy them.
However, miles behind the burning vanguard, standing at the rear of the massive army on a safely elevated, heavily guarded command plateau, the four strategists, Sima Yi, Guo Jia, Xi Zhicai, and Jia Kui, calmly observed the explosive chaos unfolding in the Serpent's Throat.
They stood together, looking through brass rimmed spyglasses they brought from the capital. They did not see angry gods or dark magic. They saw chemistry.
Seeing this brilliant, devastating manipulation of natural elements, they finally knew exactly why Queen Himiko was so widely feared and called the "Shaman Queen" by the primitive natives.
"Fascinating," Guo Jia murmured, lowering his spyglass and coughing lightly into his sleeve. The faint smell of sulfur had reached even their distant plateau. "It isn't magic. It is alchemy."
"She is using raw unrefined sulfur," Xi Zhicai deduced, his brilliant logistical mind instantly identifying the components of the yellow green smoke. "And those geysers of flame... she has purposefully drawn our vanguard into a pass riddled with active hot mountain vents. She is using the natural gas pockets of the mountain as a weapon."
"The clay jars," Jia Kui added, his eyes narrowing in intense analysis. "They were filled with high concentration mineral dust, likely a mixture of crushed coal, saltpeter scraped from bat caves, and pure sulfur gathered from the volcanic craters. When suspended in the air and ignited... an area explosion."
Sima Yi's dark eyes gleamed with a profound, almost reverent intellectual appreciation. "A highly advanced, rudimentary form of alchemy and explosive natural elements. She has turned the very mineral resources of her island into an alchemical weapon."
The four strategists realized in that moment that such an incredible, intuitive intellectual skill was actually exceedingly rare. Even back in the highly industrialized, rapidly modernizing Hengyuan mainland, not many people could ever become true, innovative alchemists. The imperial scholars understood the formulas handed down by the Emperor, but to independently weaponize raw nature in such a brilliant, devastating manner required a mind of absolute, terrifying genius.
Watching the massive explosions rock the mountainside and hearing the distant screams of the vanguard, the four strategists shared a knowing, highly calculated look.
They knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their visionary Emperor, Lie Fan, would not want this woman's head on a spike.
Lie Fan was a ruler obsessed with progress, science, and the modernization of his empire. If the Emperor found out about her unparalleled abilities, he would immediately want to spare her life. He would want to employ such a brilliant, scientifically minded talent within the Imperial Workshops of Xiapi. Her intuitive, raw alchemical knowledge, combined with the precision engineering of Huang Yue Ying and Liu Ye, could vastly, terrifyingly accelerate Hengyuan's own gunpowder and chemical warfare research.
"We must alter the parameters of the engagement," Sima Yi stated smoothly, turning to the frantic runners waiting for orders.
"We cannot let Zhang Liao's heavy artillery simply level that mountain," Guo Jia agreed, a dark, excited smile spreading across his face. "If we pulverize the Yamatai fortress, we risk crushing the greatest scientific mind on this island beneath the rubble."
"She is not a witch," Xi Zhicai noted, pulling out a fresh silk scroll to begin drafting new, highly complex tactical orders. "She is a future alchemist that were born in the wrong era. She belongs in the Emperor's laboratories, not in a muddy grave."
Sima Yi turned to the command staff. "Send immediate word to Zhang Liao. Halt the vanguard's advance into the Serpent's Throat. Order the heavy artillery to target only the outer wooden fortifications, but explicitly forbid the use of explosive Hwacha rockets on the inner fortress structures.
"Furthermore," Sima Yi continued, his voice dropping to a cold, absolute whisper, "deploy the elite and most seasoned Oriole assassination squads into the jungle. Their orders are no longer to kill the enemy leadership."
He looked back at the burning mountain pass, watching the brilliant, deadly intellect of Queen Himiko manifest in fire and smoke.
"Their orders are to bypass the front lines, infiltrate the fortress, and capture the Shaman Queen absolutely alive and unharmed. The Emperor will require her mind."
The battle for Shikoku had suddenly shifted. It was no longer a simple war of extermination. It had become a highly lethal high stakes hunt to capture the most dangerous, brilliant woman in the archipelago, a woman who had dared to use the earth itself to fight the Hengyuan Dynasty army.
As the Hengyuan army regrouped, extinguishing the flames of the vanguard and preparing for a much more calculated, surgical assault on the mountain passes, the true might of the empire was focused inward. The artillery was repositioned, and the invisible, lethal net of the Oriole Agents was cast deep into the jungle.
Queen Himiko had played her masterstroke, but she had unwittingly revealed the one thing the Hengyuan Dynasty valued more than land: raw genius. The trap was set, and the empire was coming to claim its prize.
The very foundations of the Shikoku mountains trembled violently under the relentless, orchestrated fury of the Hengyuan military machine. Following the new directives of the four strategists, Zhang Liao had altered the tactical parameters of the engagement. The devastating, explosive Hwacha rockets that had previously turned the lower passes into a fiery hellscape were abruptly halted, entirely replaced by a deafening, continuous barrage of solid iron cannonballs.
Zhang Liao aggressively ordered his heavy artillery batteries to focus their absolute, undivided wrath exclusively upon the outer wooden palisades and the lower stone retaining walls of the massive Yamatai fortress. The objective was no longer to pulverize the stronghold into ash, but to create an inescapable, sensory-overloading cacophony of destruction.
Solid iron spheres, weighing dozens of pounds each, shrieked through the misty air and slammed into the ancient cedar trunks of the barricades with bone shattering force. Wood splintered into massive, jagged fragments, and the defending Yamatai warriors were thrown backward by the sheer kinetic impacts.
Simultaneously, the Hengyuan heavy infantry, thousands of men clad in dark steel lamellar, advanced up the narrow mountain paths in a highly visible, highly aggressive formation. They beat their heavy iron swords against their steel shields in a terrifying, synchronized rhythm, roaring battle cries that echoed off the sheer cliffs. They aggressively engaged the outer defenders in brutal, bloody skirmishes, forcing the fanatical native warriors to continually pour reinforcements toward the front gates and the lower walls.
To the desperate defenders of Yamatai, looking down from their high perches, it appeared as though the mainland demons were committing everything they had to a massive, suicidal frontal assault. Every archer, every spearman, and every alchemical adept was frantically ordered to the outer rings, their eyes fixed firmly outward upon the encroaching tide of black and gold.
It was the perfect, ear splitting distraction.
High above the chaotic slaughter of the lower passes, completely veiled by the thick, rolling clouds of alchemical smoke and the freezing mountain fog, the true offensive was silently beginning.
The elite, shadow clad Oriole Agents moved with a terrifying, unnatural grace. They were the absolute apex of the Emperor's covert machinery, men and women stripped of their names and molded into living instruments of statecraft and assassination. Clad entirely in matte black silk that absorbed the flickering firelight of the burning barricades, they began their relentless, near-impossible ascent up the sheer, treacherous granite cliffs that flanked the fortress.
They did not use loud, clanking grappling hooks. Their hands and feet were wrapped in thick velvet to muffle their movements, and they utilized specialized, hardened steel climbing claws that bit silently into the moss covered rock. They moved like a swarm of dark spiders, ascending the vertical rock faces with a fluid, terrifying synchronized precision, completely bypassing the heavily fortified frontal gates.
However, a heavily defended, deeply mystical stronghold designed by a mind as brilliant as Queen Himiko's was not easily breached, even by the phantoms of Hengyuan. The Shaman Queen had not relied solely on the steep geography of the mountains, she had weaponized the very earth itself.
The outer rings of the high fortress were laced with a labyrinth of hidden alchemical traps. The Oriole Agents, despite their unparalleled training in the dark arts of infiltration, were stepping into an environment governed by rules they had never encountered.
The first tragic failure occurred near a narrow, carved stone ledge overlooking the eastern ravine. A squad of five highly skilled agents, moving silently through a patch of dense alpine shrubs, unknowingly triggered a microscopic, nearly invisible tripwire woven from mountain spider silk.
There was no mechanical click, only a sudden, violent hiss of escaping pressure. Hidden bamboo tubes buried deep within the rock face instantly sprayed a highly concentrated, volatile mixture of pulverized sulfur and bone-dry bat guano directly into the air. A secondary flint mechanism sparked, and the entire ledge erupted in a blinding, localized flash of searing chemical fire.
The three lead agents were instantly engulfed in flames. Their discipline was so absolute, so fundamentally ingrained into their very souls, that they did not even scream as the alchemical fire melted their flesh, knowing a single cry of pain would compromise the entire mission. They simply fell silently into the dark ravine below like burning stars.
The remaining two agents of the squad, thrown back by the blast, immediately tried to meld back into the shadows. But the explosion had triggered the alarm. Dozens of fanatical Yamatai guards, their bodies covered in swirling, protective tattoos and wielding heavy, jagged iron swords, swarmed the ledge from hidden tunnels.
The two surviving agents fought with breathtaking lethality, their short swords dancing in the smoke, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. They were brutally swarmed, overwhelmed, and chopped down in a frantic, bloody melee, their bodies tossed over the edge.
In the southern sector, another squad met a similarly grim fate. While attempting to scale a wooden watchtower, they stepped onto a falsely secured wooden beam that triggered a pressure plate. The floor beneath them gave way, dropping the agents into a deep, concealed pit filled with a bubbling, highly acidic slurry of volcanic mud and toxic minerals that Himiko had painstakingly harvested from the island's geothermal vents. Their armor hissed and dissolved, and the trap claimed their lives in agonizing silence.
The mountain fortress was a meat grinder of brilliant, alchemical ingenuity. But the Oriole Agents were not a finite resource, and they did not know the concept of retreat.
The grim casualties, rather than deterring the infiltration, served as a macabre, bloody map for the surviving squads. Utilizing a series of complex, silent hand signals and low, bird like whistles that perfectly mimicked the native wildlife, the remaining agents seamlessly communicated the locations of the triggered traps. They adapted instantly, their minds calculating the perimeter defenses with cold, mechanical logic.
While the Yamatai guards were distracted by the blazing traps and the deafening roar of Zhang Liao's artillery echoing from the valley below, dozens of highly skilled, ghost like agents successfully managed to bypass the outer rings.
They slipped over the high wooden palisades like shadows detaching themselves from the night. They crawled through narrow, high-altitude ventilation shafts designed to release the smoke of the braziers, and they dropped silently into the sprawling, labyrinthine courtyards of the inner walls.
They had breached the perimeter. Now, they seamlessly slipped through the dark, flickering shadows of the compound, moving ever deeper into the heart of the Yamatai Kingdom. Their singular, absolute mission burned in their minds: bypass the remaining guards, locate the sacred chambers, and capture Queen Himiko alive.
The central wooden palace was a breathtaking, sprawling architectural marvel of massive, interlocking cedar beams and polished wooden floors. The air inside was thick, smelling heavily of exotic pine incense, burning charcoal, and the sharp, unmistakable metallic tang of raw sulfur. The corridors were dimly lit by small oil lamps suspended from the high ceilings, casting long, undulating shadows that the Oriole Agents weaponized.
The surviving agents, converging from three separate infiltration routes, began to quietly gather in the dark, cavernous rafters high above the main hallways. They moved across the heavy wooden crossbeams with a terrifying, weightless grace, their velvet wrapped boots making absolutely no sound against the timber.
Looking down through the narrow gaps in the ceiling slats, they observed the frantic, panicked movements of the palace interior. Servants ran through the halls carrying clay jars; minor priests chanted desperately before bronze mirrors, begging the sun goddess for deliverance from the thunder outside.
Using precise, coordinated hand signals, the lead agent, a veteran assassin whose face was entirely concealed behind a black silk mask, directed the squads. They moved in perfect, lethal unison, a dozen phantoms crawling through the upper architecture of the palace, heading directly toward the most heavily guarded section of the compound: the sacred chambers of the Shaman Queen.
They reached the space directly above the grand chamber. The lead agent carefully, silently shifted a small wooden ventilation grate, peering down into the room.
The sacred chamber was massive, serving as both a throne room and a brilliant, chaotic alchemical laboratory. The walls were lined with thousands of ancient bamboo scrolls, alongside hundreds of sealed clay pots, glass vials, and heavy bronze mortars filled with glowing, crushed minerals. The air was hazy with chemical fumes.
At the center of the room, standing over a massive table covered in topographical maps and highly complex elemental diagrams, was Queen Himiko. She was dressed in layers of immaculate, flowing white silk, her face obscured by a delicate, beaded veil. She was not praying, she was frantically mixing a very volatile compound, barking sharp, intelligent orders to her aides, desperately trying to calculate a way to break the Hengyuan siege.
Surrounding her, forming an impenetrable, bristling wall of muscle and iron, were her elite royal guards. There were twenty of them, massive, towering giants chosen from the fiercest tribes of Shikoku. They were heavily armored in thick, lacquered leather and iron plates, their exposed skin covered entirely in swirling, intimidating tattoos that they believed rendered them impervious to pain. They gripped heavy, double edged iron broadswords and long, barbed spears, their eyes scanning the shadows of the room with fanatical, unblinking devotion.
The lead Oriole Agent raised two fingers. The phantoms in the rafters drew their breaths, their muscles coiling like high tension springs. He dropped his hand. The assault was a masterclass in breathless, high stakes violence. The black clad agents dropped silently from the high ceiling, falling like a sudden, localized rain of shadows.
______________________________
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