Chapter 313. Prelude to the Great Battle 2
"What should we do?"
"We need to shake them."
"How?"
Yeongu stared for a long time at the black markers spread across the earthen battlefield.
"We have already played almost every card available to us. Song has declared war. The Goryeo army is marching. We have agents working to stir unrest inside Liao.
By now, the Liao command should have divided its forces, changed its formation, or pulled the emperor's central army farther back.
Yet their main camp has not moved."
Wanyan Zonghan immediately understood the three measures Yeongu meant.
Song had declared war from the south.
The Goryeo army was advancing toward the Nok River.
Or perhaps they had not crossed it yet. The last report had said they would cross within a few days.
Operations to provoke rebellion inside Liao were also underway.
Attempts had even been made to contact men within the Liao court who were dissatisfied with the current emperor.
That should have been enough to force the Liao court to divide its army, or at least alter its formation.
Yet the Liao army showed no visible reaction.
Instead, it continued receiving forces arriving from every region and reorganizing them into its existing formations.
Zonghan spoke quietly.
"They may be doing nothing because they have no countermeasure. Or perhaps they simply consider these threats too small to warrant a response."
Yeongu nodded.
"Both are possible. They have also grown accustomed to peace for too long. They may fail to grasp the true weight of what is happening."
Goryeo.
Song.
Jin.
Nearly the entire world known to Liao had begun moving against it from different directions.
And still the center of the Liao army remained unmoved.
Yeongu pointed to the road leading toward Song.
"The Song army is far away. Liao commanders may not consider it an immediate threat. They have fought Song for too many years. A declaration of war alone may not be enough to make them divide their forces."
Then he pointed east.
"The Goryeo army is strong, but it moves slowly. From Liao's perspective, they may believe it will take time for the Goryeo forces to reach Changchun Circuit. They may judge that Goryeo has little influence on the battlefield directly before them."
Zonghan asked,
"And the unrest within Liao?"
"That takes time.
Shaking men's hearts reveals itself more slowly than moving an army. They may already be wavering inside.
But outwardly, the signs are still too weak."
Yeongu fell silent.
There were too many Liao markers on the earthen board.
Black stones and tiny banners lay layered one behind another, like the broad back of some enormous beast.
"So we need to shake them once more.
Not from far away.
It must be something they can see with their own eyes and cannot ignore.
Something close to their main camp.
Something large enough for the emperor beneath the great standard to feel it directly."
Zonghan's gaze darkened.
"You mean to offer bait?"
Yeongu slowly nodded.
"Yes. Anything.
Let us establish every possible plan and put it into motion."
War was always difficult.
Any idea worth trying had already been attempted.
Almost everything they could do had already been done.
Yet the Liao army had not moved.
Not even slightly.
It had not divided its forces.
It had not withdrawn its main camp.
Its formation had hardly changed.
How much farther did they have to go?
The sheer distance of it shook Yeongu's heart.
For a moment, he wanted to stop.
Perhaps they could have avoided this war entirely.
Perhaps swallowing humiliation and buying time had been another way.
Lowering their heads.
Increasing tribute.
Accepting demands.
Enduring one more day.
Could that too have been a way to preserve the nation?
But could they truly have lived that way?
Liao's demands had only grown with time.
A head bowed once had to bow lower the next time.
Today's humiliation seemed to purchase tomorrow's peace, but tomorrow always returned carrying a greater humiliation.
War was terrifying.
Yet a peace built upon endless humiliation consumed people just as surely.
Yeongu looked down at the Liao markers.
There were too many black stones.
He could never remove them all.
But he did not need to.
He only needed to shake the place where the emperor stood.
The Liao army appeared to be one enormous body because the emperor's main camp remained intact.
The moment that center wavered, the tribal armies would begin looking for their own paths to survival.
Each day, more markers appeared on the enemy side.
Meanwhile, fewer men were defecting to Jin, and fewer reinforcements were arriving.
They had to strike before all of Liao's forces gathered.
They had to attack before the enemy completed its battle formation.
They had expected movement along the Goryeo and Song frontiers to shake the Liao army.
By now, it should have begun to move.
But the world did not obey a man's wishes.
A battlefield least of all.
They had believed several carefully chosen measures would force a response.
Instead, the Liao army simply kept coming.
And this was no ordinary enemy force.
It numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
It had grown beyond the scale that one man could easily calculate.
At such a size, even orders from the highest command could not immediately reach every corner of the army.
Perhaps even Liao's own leadership could no longer move that enormous force freely.
That itself might have been the reason.
Even shocking news could disappear into that immense host like water sinking into a swamp, swallowed before any outward reaction became visible.
Zonghan finally spoke.
"They may already be shaken.
Our intelligence network is not dense enough to see everything happening inside their army.
Their confidence may already be weakening, but because their force is so large, the effects may take longer to appear.
We need confirmation.
I will send our agents deeper."
Yeongu nodded.
"Yes. Please do.
And beyond that…"
He paused.
"This war may become difficult in ways different from every battle we have fought before."
Zonghan gave the faintest smile.
"I am prepared."
"Then review every plan again from the beginning."
Zonghan narrowed his eyes.
Yeongu was saying that events were no longer unfolding as expected.
"We have already repeated the planning several times. We drew the plans, revised them, and drew them again."
Yeongu gave a thin smile.
"That is why we need to look again.
What we have now is still not enough."
Of course it was not.
Everything they had prepared so far was insufficient.
Yet no better answer had appeared.
Then all they could do was examine their existing plans again, repair every weak point, and sharpen whatever could still be improved.
Zongwang spoke cautiously.
It was, in fact, the same suggestion he had raised earlier.
"What if we strike them once directly from the front?
I want to see how they respond.
Perhaps some weakness will reveal itself."
Yeongu looked at the Liao markers.
The black stones stretched far across both flanks.
The moment Jin attacked the center, those wings would fold inward.
"The instant we strike, they will herd us like deer."
Zongwang drew in a short breath.
"Ah."
Yeongu asked again,
"Do you still want to try it?"
It was less a rebuke than a confirmation.
Zongwang already knew the answer.
He had only spoken aloud the one method they already knew because no other path had appeared.
If twenty thousand Jin soldiers charged directly into the front of seven hundred thousand Liao troops, the enemy forces on both wings would immediately surge toward their flanks.
The main army would hold them from the front.
Cavalry would close in from both sides.
The Jin army would be marching straight into the open jaws of an enormous enemy formation.
The moment they tried to retreat, pursuit would begin.
Once their speed broke and their formation collapsed, rebuilding the lines would become nearly impossible.
Yeongu spoke quietly.
"Review everything we have done so far. Every part of it."
Zonghan nodded.
"Understood."