The Northern Campaign Strategy Room had become Meng Tian's monastery and his prison. Late at night, long after the last of his young, eager staff officers had departed for their quarters, he remained, a solitary figure under the stark glow of a single lamp. The vast, three-dimensional map of Siberia sprawled before him, a silent, mocking testament to the impossible task he had been given.
He was locked in a frustrating, unwinnable debate with his own brilliant staff. He was trying to justify the new, radical strategy that had been born from his supernatural vision, but he could not reveal its source. To them, he was a commander descending into erraticism, his celebrated genius curdling into madness.
Just that afternoon, the debate had reached a fever pitch. He had been standing before the map with his chief of staff, Major Han, a man whose sharp, conventional mind was a product of the Empire's finest military academy.
"But Admiral… Chief Strategist… with the greatest respect, this makes no tactical sense," Major Han had argued, his brow furrowed in genuine, respectful confusion. He gestured with a pointer at the map. "Standard military doctrine, the very principles we were taught at the War College, dictates that we concentrate our armored forces to assault the primary Russian marshaling yards here, at Harbin. It is their logistical heart in Manchuria. But you are proposing we bypass it entirely."
He moved the pointer to three small, seemingly insignificant locations deep within enemy territory. "And instead, you want to send three small, elite units—our best marines—on a thousand-mile diversion through hostile terrain to strike… a wooden bridge, a single railway pumping station, and a coaling depot? Sir, we would be risking our best men on secondary targets while the main enemy force remains untouched."
"The bridge is a structural bottleneck over the Argun River, Major," Meng Tian had countered, his voice tight with a frustration he could not fully explain. "Crippling it will cause a more significant long-term delay to their reinforcements than a strike on Harbin, which is heavily defended and can be quickly repaired. The pumping station is the only one in three hundred miles capable of supplying water to their locomotives in winter."
His arguments were logical, but they felt thin, based on assumptions and intuitions that he could not prove with hard data. He could see the doubt in his officers' eyes. They saw him as a brilliant naval commander who did not understand the realities of land warfare. They saw a hero whose past victories were perhaps leading him to an arrogant, reckless gamble. They did not see a visionary. They saw a fool.
Now, alone in the echoing silence of the great hall, he knew he needed more. He needed more than just a vague feeling, more than an intuition he could not defend. To convince his staff, and eventually the Emperor, he had to translate the abstract poetry of his vision into the cold, hard prose of military strategy.
He decided to try and consciously summon the power again. He had been running from it, afraid of its implications, afraid of what it meant. Now, he would try to harness it.
He sat in the chair before the map, closed his eyes, and centered his breathing, just as the masters had taught him as a boy to focus his mind before archery practice. He did not think of the heat of battle or the roar of cannons. He focused on the sources of his recent torment: the cold, complex problem of the map before him, the gnawing guilt over his actions in Batavia, the immense pressure of the Emperor's suspicion. He channeled the extreme stress that had triggered the vision before, not as a weakness, but as a key, hoping it would unlock the door once more.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the darkness behind his eyelids and the sound of his own heartbeat. Then, it happened. The sensation began as a faint tingling, and then the room, the world, dissolved. He was adrift once more in the living map of the war.
This time, he was not a passive observer. He was in control. He pushed aside the distracting images of his dying legions and the snapping supply lines. He focused his will on the three "bruised purple" spots his intuition had shown him before, the secret weaknesses of the Russian war machine.
Show me why, he commanded the vision. Show me the truth.
The image in his mind's eye shifted, magnified. He focused on the Klyuchi Pass Bridge. He saw it not as it was now, a solid structure of wood and iron, but as its potential future. He saw the great timbers, weakened by years of brutal Siberian frost and thaw cycles, their internal structure riddled with microscopic fractures. He saw a massive, heavily laden armored train, one of the Tsar's best, rumbling across it. And he saw the moment of catastrophic failure—the splintering of the main supports, the sickening twist of metal, the entire train plunging into the deep, icy gorge below. He had not just seen a bridge; he had seen its death.
He shifted his focus to the pumping station at a place called Zima. He saw its isolation, a lonely brick building in a sea of snow. He "saw" the poor quality of the coal they used, full of impurities that clogged the machinery. He saw the station's boiler, an ancient, poorly maintained piece of equipment, its pressure gauges faulty, its safety valves rusted. He saw the single point of failure that would cause it to rupture in the deep cold of mid-winter, a failure that would halt all steam traffic on that section of the line for weeks, freezing entire regiments in their tracks.
He opened his eyes, gasping, the pen clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white. The vision was gone, but the knowledge it had imparted remained, clear and absolute. He began to write, his hand flying across the paper, no longer with the hesitation of a man trying to justify an intuition, but with the certainty of an eyewitness.
He was translating. He was painstakingly reverse-engineering logical, conventional justifications for his supernatural insights. He spent the entire night at this task, building a fortress of logic around a core of pure magic.
A section of his new report read: 'Target: Klyuchi Pass Trestle Bridge. Justification: Recent analysis of Russian engineering reports from the period of its construction, combined with meteorological data on extreme frost cycles in the region, suggests a high probability of structural fatigue. The timbers used were likely unseasoned larch, making them exceptionally vulnerable to catastrophic failure under the extreme weight of a modern armored train. This presents a high-impact, low-detection-risk target for a small sabotage team.'
Another section: 'Target: Zima Junction Water Pumping Station. Justification: Imperial intelligence sources (left deliberately anonymous) report severe budget cuts have led to a critical lack of maintenance and a reliance on low-grade, high-sulfur coal from a nearby mine. The station's primary boiler is of an outdated design, known to be susceptible to pressure failure in extreme cold. A synchronized disruption of both the primary and backup systems would create a logistical paralysis of unprecedented scale.'
Every line he wrote was a carefully constructed, plausible lie. He was attributing his knowledge to "anonymous intelligence sources," to "topographical analysis," to "probabilistic engineering projections." He was creating a brilliant, innovative, and potentially war-winning strategy. And it was all a fraud.
As the first rays of dawn crept into the room, Major Han entered to begin the day's work. He found his commander asleep at his desk, his head resting on his arms, surrounded by dozens of pages of new, meticulously detailed, and brilliantly argued strategic directives. Han picked up one of the pages and began to read. His eyes widened in awe. The plan was revolutionary, audacious, and yet, every single point was supported by an ironclad, seemingly conventional logic. He was astounded by his commander's genius, by his ability to produce such a visionary plan overnight. He saw a peerless strategist at the height of his powers.
Meng Tian stirred, woken by his subordinate's presence. He looked up into the young major's worshipful gaze. He saw the awe, the respect, the absolute faith. And he felt only the profound, isolating weight of his deception. He had his plan. He had a path to victory. But he was more alone than ever, a man who had to pretend to be a genius to hide the terrifying truth that he was becoming a seer.