Mohan nodded in satisfaction as he stood behind Selva, looking at the information that was flowing in from the tracking spirits. They were in yet another requisitioned City Hall, using one of the offices for the Intelligence Department's work.
Wu Peifu had arranged his forces into three defense lines at strategic locations on the Hunan-Hubei border, split into the East, Center, and West defense lines with 10,000 soldiers each to prevent the Triple Alliance from circling around and attacking a weaker point. The warlord probably named each of the defense lines something cool, but Mohan couldn't give less of a shit about that.
Joyce had attacked the forces stationed right above Changsha, in the Eastern Defense Line. The Eastern Defense Line was armed to the teeth with long-range weapons and arranged in a staggered formation throughout the mountains. As the defense range of the Triple Alliance was too small to disarm all of them at once, the Eastern Defense Line was designed to force the Triple Alliance into fighting their way through mountain by mountain, slowing them down long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Joyce hadn't given a shit about any of that. She'd stormed into range with 100 shamans and three more brigades on backup and then threw up the ward, slowly moving it over the defense line as it took effect.
"This world doesn't have biological weapons so they'll definitely panic," Joyce had concluded that after looking through Selva's research, and promptly decided to take the route where she would be unrivaled.
Turns out she was right. The Eastern Defense Line had crumbled into a panicking mess. Those who were hit by the ward were immobilized, those who weren't panicked and ran. They'd retreated further North, creating a large gap between the East and Center defense lines.
The Triple Alliance pursued right after them, the Shaman Council and Hengshan's brigades pushing back the reinforcements from the Center Line and continuing to attack the retreating Eastern Defense Line. After several hours of this, they'd managed to carve out a foothold in Hubei.
Joyce had cheerfully traipsed along, sending up wards at random intervals to scare the shit out of the terrified enemy soldiers.
Mohan had to admit he was a little impressed. "That child is more talented than I thought," Mohan said lightly. Selva turned towards him with a disbelieving look.
"Talented? Joyce is hella scary," Selva said. "I should've known when she tried to become my godmother."
The staff around them winced and kept pretending they couldn't hear anything.
"That's a great honor," Mohan said. "Even if you're not a shaman."
"Grandmaster, please don't make fun of me about that and focus on this," Selva said in annoyance.
Mohan only continued to chuckle at Selva's expense.
"And where the hell is Spade? Why did he turn his whole team's GPS off? This damn bastard, at least let your Intelligence Department know!" Selva seethed.
Mohan did actually know exactly where Spade was, thanks to the tracking spirit he'd sent with the swordsman. But Mohan preferred to watch Selva squirm a little longer.
The staff members winced again but continued to keep their eyes stuck to their screens and their lips tightly shut.
"You do realize everyone else is also hacked into our tracking system, including Wu Peifu," Mohan said drily.
"Yeah, working with my ex-boss and my ex-boss' rival together with my boss to fight someone else's boss is a goddamn nightmare," Selva said. "So where's Spade?"
Mohan chuckled. "You should ask your godmother," he said, relishing Selva's annoyed reaction.
Selva picked up the phone and dialed Joyce's number.
"Joyce, where the hell is Spade? It's been hours, we can't just have our Vice-Chair disappear at a time like this!" Selva snapped into the phone.
The staff members looked genuinely concerned now, shooting furtive glances at their Director.
"What?! You crazy brat! Who the hell even does that with so few people? Other than you, obviously – hey, don't hang up!" Selva dropped his phone onto the desk, looking even more annoyed than before, his staff members cautiously looking away and pretending they never heard anything.
The door burst open and Joyce entered with Kiyoko in tow. Joyce waved at them while chewing a half-eaten sandwich.
"This is the Chairman's third sandwich," Kiyoko announced helpfully.
"Dude, why did you call me when I was literally right outside your door?" Joyce asked. She shook off some stray crumbs from her sleeve, ignoring Selva's sputtering.
"Anyways, Spade will be back soon so don't worry about it," Joyce said. She grinned at them cheerfully. "Guerrilla tactics, tried and true, lovingly crafted by hand, I'll give up on the shitty advertisement while I'm ahead. Spade already said he's almost back, they spent more time driving than doing anything else, it's fine."
"But where the hell did he go without notifying anyone?" Selva asked.
"I sent him to do the same thing to the western part of the Central Defense Line after we started moving in, I wanna make them panic like headless chickens," Joyce said cheerfully.
"Chairman, headless chickens are dead chickens," Kiyoko supplied very helpfully, staring into the distance soullessly.
"So you sent him there to stir up trouble on the western side of the Central Defense Line so that they couldn't focus their efforts on backing up the Eastern Defense Line, and then you had Spade come back so they'd panic about where the hell the enemy was hiding," Mohan summarized since Joyce evidently didn't plan to explain herself and Selva evidently needed an explanation. Honestly, this was something only possible for someone like Joyce, and by extension, Spade.
"Probably only gonna work once, they'll know soon enough I only needed a hundred shamans," Joyce said.
"But they don't know Spade can do the same thing as you, Chairman." Kiyoko looked at Joyce hopefully.
"No, actually, a few of Spade's shamans posted videos of the whole thing," Selva said, scrolling through his social media. He groaned, planting his face onto his desk while his staff members politely looked away.
"It's fine, I want them to know that for now," Joyce said, patting Selva sympathetically without offering any further explanation. The poor man only stayed on his desk with no intention of getting up and continuing to deal with Joyce.
Mohan and Kiyoko squinted at Selva's screen.
"It's not like a ward shows up on camera unless it's materialized, even shamans won't know what's going on. It just looks like Spade's mocking a bunch of nauseous men while waving his sword and laughing," Kiyoko said. "I'm not sure what the hell you were trying to accomplish, Chairman."
"They'll put two and two together. Anyways, it's too late to keep going today and there's no point in overworking our soldiers this early on, so let's just call it a day for now," Mohan suggested.
He wanted to keep the conversation from getting to the point where Selva would probably start crying at the exact moment Kajio walked in, probably leading to a misunderstanding that would foreshadow a more serious misunderstanding in the future the way it often would in soapy dramas.
"Fine," Selva snapped, getting off from his desk. "Everyone, switch off with the night shift and go sleep! And eat, the Chairman can't be the only one with a full stomach here."
Most of the staff members promptly scuttled out with visible looks of relief, and the few who hung back trying to eavesdrop were quickly scared away by Mohan turning his head almost 180 degrees to smile at them.
"My stomach's not full yet," Joyce said.
"You're eating us out of house and home," Selva said dramatically, probably still miffed about the Spade thing. Joyce ignored him and pulled another sandwich from her sleeve.
Mohan looked at it, feeling mildly disturbed until he realized it was covered in plastic wrap and not just chilling in Joyce's sleeve in an unsanitary fashion.
"So we want to avoid letting people think that we can conduct long-distance operations, but that would slow us down in taking the South–" Mohan began. Joyce dropped her sandwich at the same time Kajio burst through the door, holding his phone to his ear.
"What the fuck?" Joyce said in alarm. She met Kajio's shocked gaze with her own.
"What happened?" Mohan asked. Kajio slowly lowered the phone.
"Spade ran into Gu Feng on his way back," Kajio said faintly.
What kind of luck did the swordsman have that he would run into the warlord of Hunan while coming back from a mission? Mohan stared for a second before grabbing for his communication radio to ready a team of reinforcements. Joyce hurriedly grabbed his hand, narrowly avoiding stepping on her sandwich.
"Ran into," Joyce said carefully. "As in, with his sword. Gu Feng's dead as of thirty seconds ago."
"Near the Eastern side of the Central Defense Line," Kajio added. "Gu Feng was in charge of liaisons between East and Central."
"No way," Selva gasped from behind them.
"They just lost their field commander via sword, I think this is a major stroke of luck," Joyce said. "We need to attack right now."
"I'm already on it, I've notified the Alliance and gotten five of our brigades on standby," Kajio said, typing furiously at the speed of light.
"That was really fast," Joyce said in surprise. She stepped back to pat his shoulder, wincing as she stepped onto her forgotten sandwich.
Mohan took another two seconds to formulate a proper plan before nodding and grabbing his radio.
"Joyce, you'll need to do the wards again, are you still up to it?" Mohan asked. At her affirmative, he began snapping orders into the radio. Another peaceful evening gone, but he didn't particularly mind.
He somehow felt it in his bones that this would be a decisive battle.