Feng Xia wiped at the sweat beading on her forehead. The thing about the South was the goddamn mountains, there were so many it was pissing her off. She wasn't like Taeyun, who was known to be undefeatable in the mountains, or like Jia Xu, who was known to be undefeatable in the plains. Rather, Feng Xia simply pressed ahead with her talent and crushed the enemy with little thought to the landscape at all. But that didn't exempt her from having to travel through difficult terrain.
Feng Xia suddenly regretted volunteering for the vanguard as the commander of the First Shaman Brigade. It meant she had to move faster than the others, not an easy task when all the remaining highways and roads wound through the mountains like a dropped slinky.
Even if the warlords nearest to Canton were somewhat weak, they were allied with stronger factions in an unnecessarily complicated hierarchy that stretched upwards to the Yangtze. Then again, the Shaman Council had also entered the Triple Alliance, however reluctantly.
While Warlord Gu Feng in Hunan would crumble easily by himself, once they attacked him they would have no choice but to take on his backer. Gu Feng's strongest ally was Wu Peifu, a warlord who controlled Hubei and Henan, the two provinces directly above Gufeng's territory. Wu Peifu was also known as the Jade Marshal for his strategic military tactics.
It wasn't as though the Jade Marshal couldn't take Hunan for himself, he simply chose to use Gufeng as a buffer zone against Canton.
In other words, Gu Feng of Hunan was only a shield.
Whatever Gufeng was, the Triple Alliance, planned to destroy him and then take on Wu before bringing forth the second batch to take over Jiangxi and Fujian. Those two provinces were also easy pickings. The problem was that the two belonged to a different faction under Warlord Sun Chuanfang, who also controlled Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, the three provinces directly above Jiangxi and Hokkien.
However, Sun Chuanfang's faction needed to crumble for the Alliance to gain access to the Eastern coastline. After taking over Jiangxi and Fujian, the campaign would become a two-pronged attack that would split into the Eastern Front that continued fighting Sun's faction, and the Western Front that would focus on taking over Guangxi.
Guangxi was only a single province, but it was under the control of Li Zongren. Warlord Li had been pretty powerful up to fifteen years ago, but he'd gradually lost all his control as Canton grew to be a powerhouse. Even so, he was still good at pitting warlords against each other, and the Alliance couldn't leave him alone too long or the old codger would definitely stir up trouble.
Eventually, they would all finish up and converge to take on Sun Chuanfang's power base.
Sun's power base was in Jiangsu province, in the city of Nanjing.
After they took Nanjing, the three forces would have to splinter off into three separate directions. Whether or not the process would be a bloodbath was something no one could say for sure. Even Joyce, despite her irreverence and casual attitude, seemed to have some pretty impressive tanks that probably weren't just intended for the warlords.
Feng Xia decided not to worry about any of that for now. They were entering Hunan and heading straight for Gu Feng's power base of Changsha. Even if he didn't stand a chance, the warlord was sure to try and hold on for reinforcements from Wu the Jade Marshal. The first battle was sure to begin soon.
The wind-spirits brought back the information almost as soon as they crossed the border.
'The first line of defense is at Yizhang County. Less than 1,000 soldiers stationed.'
The southernmost county in the southernmost city of Chenzhou, a careful and cowardly guy like Gufeng would definitely try to stop them as soon as they entered the territory, even if he only had about 5,000 soldiers in total. Though in truth, he would actually stand a better chance if he lured them into the Nanling Mountains and ambushed them there.
Feng Xia nodded as a shaman received more information.
"Sir, Gu Feng has set up a second line of defense in northern Hengsha County with about 1,000 soldiers, and concentrated his remaining forces in Changsha," the shaman reported.
Feng Xia scoffed at the information. Did the fool think that two roadblocks along the way would stop them from reaching Changsha?
"Sir, we will engage in approximately thirty minutes," the shaman reported. Feng Xia waved her hand in an irritated gesture.
"Disable all their weapons as soon as we're in range," Feng Xia said. "Make them squirm before we even get there."
"Yes, sir," the shaman replied, quickly relaying her orders to the rest of the brigade.
The First Shaman Brigade was composed of only 100 shamans, and they would be the only ones engaging in the first battle unless they encountered a force over 3,000. That had been Jia Xu's intention since it was a good way to crush the confidence of the warlords further north.
It was perfectly reasonable since when shamans worked together, their combined powers would be significantly amplified. Even long-distance battles became possible when more than 20 shamans worked together. For 100 powerful shamans under the leadership of a genius, they could crush the enemy before even entering the enemy's firing range.
Feng Xia felt completely at ease even knowing there were enemies vastly outnumbering them only a mountain away. This was the chance to remind the country of the strength of shamans. They wouldn't even need the tanks this time.
"We're in range!" Her subordinate turned towards her expectantly. Feng Xia grinned.
"Begin!" Feng Xia gestured sharply.
The shamans in the First Brigade launched the first large-scale attack of the war. A wall of metal-spirits rose into the air. The metal-spirits swept forth at lightspeed like a wave that crashed down over the enemy, overpowering the weak hints of metal-spirits present. Even though the defense line was scattered in pockets in the hills and mountains, the metal-spirits scoped them out without regard to camouflage or hiding.
Trucks, communication devices, guns, knives, tanks, anything made of metal were now controlled by the shamans. With the amplified power of a combined attack, the First Shaman Brigade swiftly took control of all the weapons in the enemy line.
Feng Xia smiled as she felt their spirits click into control.
"Go!" she shouted.
One hundred shamans moved as one – the spirits bent and twisted at all the metal in their range. They were still too far to hear the screams, but Feng Xia already knew what kind of sight was waiting for them. Desperate soldiers trapped inside tanks or trucks where doors had been welded shut, infantry holding bent and useless weapons, communication officers grabbing at broken radios.
They'd already won.
But that wasn't enough. The first battle had to be a crushing victory.
"Justice and retribution," Jia Xu had said, writing the words in beautiful calligraphy as she'd spoken to Feng Xia. "Strike fear into their hearts."
Feng Xia signaled for the brigade to prepare for the second move. The shamans adjusted their positions, calling back the metal-spirits while amassing a giant cluster of fire-spirits. Heat shimmered above them as their combined power pulled forth heat-spirits in the surrounding air – summer was barely over, fire-spirits were as common as blades of grass.
"Attack!" Feng Xia shouted, waving for the brigade to commence.
The fire-spirits burst forward in a shimmering wave of heat. In the chaos that had ensued on the enemy side, few of the soldiers even thought to take cover until the heat rippled and blasted them in the face.
"Shit! Take cover!" One of the more quick-witted soldiers gave out a warning cry, echoed by others around them as the sky filled with flame.
Feng Xia held her hand up, motioning for the brigade to wait. They'd give the enemy a little time to take cover, if it was too brutal public opinion would drop. Justice required a tricky combination of brutality and mercy.
From the tracking spirits, Feng Xia knew that the soldiers were diving into caves, under rocks, and under vehicles in a desperate attempt to escape the flames twenty feet above them. She waited until about 60% had taken cover.
"Now!" Feng Xia brought her arm down in a sharp gesture.
A blanket of fire dropped over the soldiers, enveloping them in a scorching veil. Feng Xia was rather glad they were too far away to hear the screams.
The controlled fire would not spread and spark a wildfire, but it also would not be put out normally. Those who had foolishly flung themselves to the ground without cover, a good chunk of them, would be dead before the brigade could get there. The soldiers who had hid under trucks and tanks would likely die as well from the extreme heat that the metal would all but bake them in.
Not exactly a pretty sight, but it would leave enough survivors to appease the soft-hearted, and not too many injured soldiers who needed to be taken care of to appease the stingy. Bodies were cheaper than wounded prisoners after all, and it was acceptable to cut losses in small-scale battles.
The brigade waited for several minutes before Feng Xia gave them their next order.
"Advance at full speed," Feng Xia commanded.
The fire-spirits dissipated, the uncontracted ones peeling away to return to their places while the contracted ones floated back into the air, far above their shamans. Even so, the heat hung unbearably over their heads, only made bearable through turning on the AC to the coldest setting as they moved forward.
The whole time, none of the shamans had even gotten off their vehicles.
Feng Xia nodded at the shaman next to her. "Notify the Chairman that we've finished our attack," she ordered.
"Yes, sir!"
Feng Xia looked at the pillars of smoke rising in the distance. The first battle was over for good. The only thing left to do was clean up.
///////
Spade looked at the scene around him with a slight frown. The smell of burnt flesh hadn't fully cleared, even though the wind-spirits had been positioned to blow the stench northwards, where it would terrify those defending the city.
It really was closer to a massacre than a battle, but it probably provided the confidence that the Northern Expedition needed.
"100 shamans can cause more damage than 5,000 soldiers," was probably what would soon begin circulating. That wasn't really true, a better-armed 1,000 soldiers could cause this kind of destruction all the same, but weaponry always improved slower than shamanic techniques.
The biggest problem they would face after the Northern Expedition would be shamans, and not the remnants of the warlords. With the armies gone, the power imbalance would only continue to tilt in the shamans' favor, and what kind of society that would result in really depended on the faction leaders. That was Spade's prediction for the future.
He glanced at Joyce's group, right behind his.
���You good?' He sent through the mental link. A mixed sense of awkwardness and fear was her reply.
'This is…a lot,' Joyce sent back. 'I'll be fine, just thinking.'
'We can't stop them since we share the same goal, but the Flying Dragons will do things the way you want,' Spade reassured her. He tried not to think about the irrefutable fact that Joyce would still probably have to be responsible for a lot of deaths, and probably kill a lot of people herself.
They'd seen plenty of terrible scenes while beelining through warzones, from mass graves that uncovered bodies every time it rained, to the bodies of refugees on the roadside, but they hadn't been responsible for any of it. Any chaos they caused had a very low death rate compared to the scale of the incident, and all of the deaths were by Spade's sword.
This was different. Of the 1,000 soldiers, half had survived to surrender, the other half being dead before Feng Xia could even get there. Not much could be requisitioned. Most of the weapons were bent and burnt, some of the more horrific ones being melted onto dead bodies.
'Holy shit.' Spade hadn't seen anything like this in a long time. He certainly hoped this wasn't going to be a trend, or people would grow desperate and fight to the last man rather than be subjected to this kind of horror. That would just unnecessarily extend the war and increase casualties.
Spade didn't think the other factions were that stupid, but…he looked at some of the prisoners as they passed by. Conscripted soldiers, many of them in their teens.
He could already tell that this Expedition would be a brutal one.