Autumn crept further across the frontier, and with it the endless war that seemed to swallow entire generations. Fortresses shifted hands like dice cast upon a cruel gaming board, claimed at dawn only to be lost by nightfall. And as the cycle repeated, the Invincible Chancellor Luo Wen began to see in the eyes of his soldiers something far more dangerous than mere exhaustion: the slow, hollowing weight of despair. Discipline kept their formations straight, but no discipline in the world could conceal the toll of an unending grind.
In his command tent, the great map of the borderlands lay stretched across a table, riddled with ink marks, arrows, scratched-out notes, and dark stains from wine or blood. Luo Wen stared at it with a face carved from iron, while his generals gathered around him in uneasy silence.
"It is our men who are breaking," said Han Qiu, the old veteran with a beard streaked in gray. His voice carried the weary certainty of experience. "Each time we seize a fortress, Wei Lian sends his wolves back at nightfall. We cannot keep this pace forever."
"Then we will not keep it with them," Luo Wen replied sharply, his hand sweeping toward the clusters of villages marked upon the map. His eyes gleamed like steel catching firelight. "The land itself will give us new soldiers."
An uncomfortable murmur rippled through the tent. The younger Meng Kai furrowed his brow."You mean… to recruit the peasants?"
"Not recruit," corrected Luo Wen, his tone as cold as the edge of a blade. "We will take them. These people cower in their hovels while we bleed for every hill and tower. From now on, every village will contribute men. Ten out of every hundred if need be. Twenty if the war demands it. They will be our reserves—flesh to feed the walls."
Han Qiu drew in a long, heavy breath. He understood the enormity of what had just been spoken."Chancellor… with such a measure, we will lose what little support we still have from the population."
"Support?" Luo Wen's fist struck the table, rattling cups and lamps. "Where was this so-called support when Wei Lian conscripted his peasants into ragged militias? Where was loyalty, in these lands that trade allegiance as easily as changing banners on a wall? I do not crave their love or their gratitude. I require their labor, their arms, and their blood."
The order spread like wildfire by dusk. Imperial officers, backed by squads of armed soldiers, marched into nearby villages. Beneath the glint of steel, peasants were forced into ragged lines. Young men and trembling elders alike were dragged from their homes—some weeping openly, others cursing the Empire with clenched teeth as wives and children looked on in despair.
The new conscripts were handed crude spears, wooden shields, and battered leather caps. Imperial captains divided them into makeshift cohorts, destined for the lowest tasks: to garrison walls, to fill trenches with their bodies, to drag siege engines through mud, and, when the horns called, to serve as the first expendable wave in assaults.
The hardened veterans of the Imperial host watched them with a mixture of disdain and pity."They won't last an hour in battle," one soldier muttered."That's not the point," another answered grimly. "They fall first so that we may stand longer."
And the strategy bore fruit almost immediately. At the next contested fortress, Luo Wen hurled five hundred peasants against the gates, driving them forward under a storm of enemy arrows. They died in swathes, collapsing like sheaves of wheat under the scythe. Yet they drained the strength of the defenders, and in their wake the heavy imperial infantry surged forward, breaching the walls. By sunrise, imperial banners waved once more above bloodstained battlements. Luo Wen, watching from afar, knew he had spared hundreds of his seasoned warriors at the cost of nameless villagers.
In the following weeks, casualties among the regulars dropped sharply. Where once the empire lost a thousand trained men in a siege, now two thousand peasants perished instead, while only a few hundred veterans fell. The army marched onward with less attrition—but the price was visible everywhere. Villages emptied of men, fields lay abandoned to weeds, and hatred for the empire spread like a stain across the countryside.
Whispers traveled faster than horses. In huts and in ruined markets, peasants spoke in hushed tones of "the Chancellor's black levies," likening imperial officers to marauding bandits. Families fled entire hamlets before the soldiers could arrive, seeking shelter in mountains or slipping across lines into Wei Lian's territories.
From Guangling, Zhao Qing received the first reports and let out a bitter smile."He is digging his own grave," he told Wei Lian. "He may win his battles, but with every farmer he drags into this war, he loses the soul of the land."
Wei Lian nodded gravely, though no triumph touched his eyes."It makes him the enemy of all, true. But it also blunts our edge. His veterans now bleed more slowly. If he can hold on long enough, each passing day brings us closer to exhaustion."
On the frontlines, the cruelty sharpened. Pressed peasants filled the garrisons of newly taken fortresses. When Wei Lian's elite struck back, they found little more than frightened farmers on the walls—men who fled, surrendered, or were slaughtered in droves. And that, perversely, was precisely Luo Wen's intent. His veterans no longer died in hopeless defenses. The peasants absorbed the first storm, leaving the professional army intact for the next strike.
Thus each fortress became a slaughterhouse repeated endlessly: the peasants thrown forward, annihilated; then imperial regulars arrived to secure what was left; and soon enough Wei Lian's shadow warriors swept back in to tear it all down again. The war of attrition had become even more savage, but Luo Wen had found a way to staunch the hemorrhage of his precious core troops.
Yet hatred seethed in the villages. Women who had seen their sons dragged away spat curses at the Chancellor's name. Orphaned children wandered the roads like beggars. Survivors of the levies fled the fronts, banding together as desperate bands that swore revenge on the empire.
When news of this unrest reached Luo Wen, he only sneered."Fear maintains order better than love," he told his officers. "Let them hate, so long as they obey."
But even the most loyal of his generals sensed that the Chancellor was sowing seeds too dangerous to reap. For if one day the peasantry as a whole rose in fury, no army, however vast, could hope to contain them.
For now, Luo Wen had slowed the bleeding of his war machine. But the cost was steep: the steady death of the land's spirit, sacrificed for each step of his relentless march.