The victory at Yancheng had a taste. It was the taste of dust, and smoke, and reclaimed earth. For a few weeks, the army breathed it in, and the air thrummed with the energy of a beast that has learned it is a predator.
The men mended their gear, sharpened their blades, and spoke of the next river, the next fortress, the next step towards the lost heart of the north.
Then the administrators arrived, and the taste turned to ash.
They came not with the clatter of armor, but with the rustle of silk and the soft, precise tread of expensive boots.
The Logistical Oversight Commission was a procession of twenty men, led by Vice-Minister Wang of the Ministry of War. He was a man of middling years, with a face that looked like it had been smoothed by decades of handling fine paper, not weaponry. His fingers were long, clean, and restless. He wore the deep blue robe of a third-rank court official, and his smile was a thin, professional curve that held no warmth, only a quiet, absolute assurance of his authority.
He presented his credentials to Yue Fei in the command tent—a scroll with a vast array of seals that seemed to suck the air from the room. "General Yue," Vice-Minister Wang said, his voice a dry monotone.
"The Ministry and the Bureau of Military Affairs send their commendations on your recent… successes. To ensure the continued viability of the campaign, and to bring its expenditures into harmony with imperial accounting standards, we are here to assist. To audit, to optimize, to regularize."
The words were threats wrapped in silk. Assist. Optimize. Regularize. They meant control, slow, dismantle.
Yue Fei accepted the scroll, his face expressionless. "The army is in the midst of preparations," he said, his tone flat.
"All the more reason for efficient systems," Wang replied, his smile unwavering. "We will begin with the Quartermaster Corps. And the… medical unit. Their resource consumption in the last engagement was noted as anomalous."
The Commission went to work like a colony of termites, silent, relentless, and destructive to the structure they inhabited.
They descended upon Master Li Ru's domain. The harried quartermaster, who had spent the last month moving heaven and earth to keep sixty thousand men fed and armed, now found himself besieged by polite, implacable clerks.
A request for ten thousand arrows, which once required his chop and a runner, now needed a form in triplicate, signed by the requesting regimental commander, certified by the Commission's inspector for "tactical necessity," and then approved by Vice-Minister Wang himself.
A process that took a day now took a week. The great supply serpent, just beginning to recover from the battle, developed a paralyzing blockage in its spine.
But their most focused attention was reserved for the hospital compound. Vice-Minister Wang himself visited, followed by two junior officials with slates and brushes. He watched Lin Wei's medics changing dressings, his eyes missing nothing.
"The quantity of linen used per wound seems… generous, Surgeon-General," Wang remarked, consulting a small, leather-bound codex. "The Imperial Medical Bureau's regulations for field treatment, based on the Comprehensive Medical Formulas of the Imperial Bureau, prescribe a bandage of one chi by three cun for a wound of that type. Your medic just used a piece nearly double that size."
Lin Wei, his hands still bloody from a minor amputation, did not look up. "The regulation is for a clean wound in a barracks. That is a shrapnel tear, packed with mud and horse dung. It requires irrigation and a clean dressing. A smaller bandage would soil through in an hour, inviting fly-blown corruption. My protocol saves the limb. The Bureau's regulation would cost the army a soldier."
Wang's smile didn't flicker. "Protocols exist for standardization, Surgeon-General. To ensure every soldier, in every army, receives equal and appropriate care. Not all armies can afford such… profligacy. I will need the rosters of all your medical personnel, their qualifications, and the provenance of all medical supplies. We must ensure they are on the proper imperial registers."
It was a declaration of war. They weren't just questioning his methods; they were threatening to declare his people illegitimate, to cut them off from pay, from rank, from existence.
The first major decree from the Commission landed a week later, with the dull thud of a sealing stamp. Directive 7: Unit Rotation and Cohesion Enhancement.
Vice-Minister Wang presented it to Yue Fei and his commanders. "Analysis of the Yancheng engagement suggests certain frontline units developed excessive… localized resilience, but at the cost of broader army integration," Wang read, his voice devoid of inflection. "To disseminate this experience and prevent the formation of insular cliques, a thirty percent rotation of veteran personnel from the First, Third, and Fifth Assault Divisions, and the Scout Detachments of the Mobile Corps, will be effected immediately. They will be replaced by fresh troops from the Southern Garrison Reserve."
The tent was silent for three heartbeats. Then it erupted.
"CLIQUES?" Niu Gao's roar shook the canvas. "You call our troops that saved the garrison at Three Rivers Gate a 'clique'? You are taking the eyes and teeth of this army and replacing them with blind kittens! This is how you lose a war, you ink-splattered fool!"
Yang Zaixing held up a hand, his face like a cliff. His voice, when it came, was quiet and carried a terrible finality. "It is not about losing the war, Niu Gao. It is about who owns the victory. A veteran knows his general, trusts his sergeant, and fights for the man beside him. A green recruit knows only the uniform and the official feeding him. They are not breaking our strength. They are breaking our will. Making us a tool that can only be wielded by the hand that holds the seal in Lin'an." He looked at Vice-Minister Wang. "Is that not so?"
Wang inclined his head, a minute gesture. "The Empire values unity and standard procedure above all, General Yang. Personal loyalty is a feudal relic. The army is an instrument of the state, not of a man."
Commander Xin, who had been standing like a statue, finally spoke. His voice was thick. "My men… the ones who were tempered in hell. The ones who held the line at Qiling Ridge. You're splitting them up? After all that?" He looked at Yue Fei, a silent, desperate appeal in his eyes.
Yue Fei had not moved. He stood, his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the directive on the table as if it were a viper. The muscle in his jaw was a hard knot. "The order," he said, the words ground out, "comes from the Ministry of War. It bears the seal of the Bureau of Military Affairs. It is a lawful command of the imperial administration." He looked up, and his eyes, those chips of winter river ice, swept his commanders. "We will comply."
The words were a death sentence for the army's spirit. The loyalty that was his greatest strength had just been used to shackle him.
Lin Wei found Sly Liu that evening in a shadowy corner behind the hospital' linen stores, where the thief was expertly re-rolling a bandage that had been deemed "excessively sized" by the Commission.
"The official supply line is dead," Lin Wei said without preamble, his voice low. "They will strangle us with paperwork and 'standard allocations.' We will have no alcohol, no linen, no honey within a month."
Liu didn't look up from his work. "The Commission's clerks have already inventoried the strong wine. They've locked two barrels away as 'non-essential.' For the victory celebration, they said." His smile was a knife-slash in the gloom. "A celebration of our slow starvation."
"We need another channel," Lin Wei said. "Not from the south. From here. From the Jin. From anyone who sells."
Liu finally met his gaze. "The black-market contractors. The corrupt Jin border magistrates. The bandit chiefs who don't care whose silver it is. It will be expensive. And if we're caught…"
"If we don't, the corps dies, and the army bleeds out from a thousand small cuts the Commission will call 'efficiency,'" Lin Wei interrupted. He handed Liu a heavy pouch. It clinked softly. Captured Jin silver, from the raid on White Stone. "Start with the basics. Linen. Alcohol. Then sulphur. Salt. Find a way."
Liu hefted the pouch, his eyes gleaming with a familiar, feral light. The thrill of the game. "Operation 'Ghost Suture,' eh, Doc? Mending the army with stolen thread. I like it." He melted into the darkness.
Lin Wei stood alone. The directive in his mind, which had been tracking medical inventories and recovery rates, now scrolled with a new, grim line of text:
"[THREAT ASSESSMENT: LOGISTICAL SABOTAGE (INTERNAL). PRIORITY: MAXIMUM.]"
"[COUNTERMEASURE INITIATED: COVERT SUPPLY CHAIN (OPERATION 'GHOST SUTURE'). STATUS: ACTIVE.]"
He walked to the edge of the compound. In the fading light, he saw the visible front of the war. A column of his veterans—men from Commander Xin's old unit, their faces hard and closed—were being marched to the rear.
Their places were taken by rows of fresh-faced boys from the southern garrisons. They looked around, wide-eyed and lost, their uniforms too clean, their spear-work clumsy. The unbreakable, tempered blade of the army was being deliberately nicked and replaced with brittle ceramic.
And in the gathering darkness, the invisible front was opening. A thief with a pouch of silver was slipping into the night, heading to buy from the enemy what their own empire now denied them. The siege of the Northern Expedition had begun in earnest, and the first wall to fall was not made of stone, but of edicts written in paper and imperial seals.