The dawn broke over the Ussuri River, painting the frost-covered Siberian plains in shades of grey and cold, unforgiving steel. It was the dawn of a new era of warfare, and the Northern Army Group was its herald. They moved not with the chaotic, clanging clamor of the old banner armies, but with the quiet, terrifying efficiency of a well-oiled machine.
Columns of soldiers in modern, field-grey uniforms marched in perfect order, their breath pluming in the frigid air. The leather of their new boots creaked in rhythm, a sound like the stretching of a great beast's sinews. Horse-drawn artillery, Krupp guns polished to a menacing sheen, rumbled alongside them, their wheels churning the frozen mud. This was not the Qing army of the last century, a symbol of decay and humiliation. This was the Emperor's new spear, forged in the fires of Wuhan, tempered by German discipline, and honed to a razor's edge.
From his forward command post, a hastily fortified farmhouse several miles inside Russian territory, General Duan Qirui directed the invasion. He was a man perfectly suited to this new army: professional, intelligent, and utterly devoid of the romantic notions of warfare that had crippled his predecessors. He stood before a massive campaign map, receiving a steady stream of reports from telegraph operators whose clicking keys were the nervous system of his advancing force.
"First Division reports crossing the Iman River. No resistance," an aide announced, moving a small, grey flag on the map.
"Third Cavalry Brigade has cut the railway line ten miles east of Khabarovsk. No resistance," another reported.
General Duan permitted himself a thin, confident smile. Everything was proceeding exactly according to the Emperor's grand design. The intelligence had been clear: the Russian forces in the region were under-manned, demoralized by the war in the south, and scattered in isolated garrisons. The Qing army was not fighting a battle; it was executing a surgical strike, a lightning advance designed to sever the Trans-Siberian Railway and seize the vast military supply depots that fed the entire Russian war effort in the Far East.
"The vanguard should be reaching the outskirts of the Khabarovsk depot now," Duan said, his eyes fixed on the primary objective marker on the map. "They are to bypass the city itself and strike directly at the military stockpiles. I want a report the moment they engage."
Miles ahead, Colonel Ma Jian, commander of the elite First Cavalry Division, reined in his horse on a low ridge overlooking the sprawling Khabarovsk depot. The complex was immense, a city of long, low warehouses, barracks, and railway sidings, encircled by a formidable perimeter of watchtowers and trenches. He raised his binoculars, his heart pounding with the thrill of the first, true test. He had expected to see smoke from cookfires, the movement of sentries, the glint of the sun on bayonets.
He saw nothing. An unnatural stillness hung over the massive base. No smoke. No patrols. The watchtowers were empty.
"Something is wrong," he murmured to his second-in-command. "It's a ghost town."
A feeling of unease, cold and sharp as the Siberian wind, pricked at him. But his orders were clear. He gave the signal. Bugles blared, a sound that was immediately swallowed by the vast, silent landscape. With a thunderous roar, two thousand of the finest horsemen in the Empire drew their sabers and charged, their pennants snapping in the wind.
They stormed the depot, leaping trenches and smashing through the main gates, ready for a bloody, desperate fight. They found only silence and echoes. The warehouses, which were supposed to be bulging with millions of rounds of ammunition, thousands of winter uniforms, and mountains of canned rations, were empty. All that remained were discarded packing crates, drifts of sawdust, and the cold ashes of recently burned documents in iron braziers. The barracks were deserted, the bunks stripped bare. The enemy had vanished. The Russians had known they were coming.
Back in General Duan's command post, the telegraph key began to click frantically. The operator's face went pale as he translated the message. "Sir! Colonel Ma reports the depot is empty! Completely abandoned!"
A stunned silence fell over the command staff. How was it possible? Had their intelligence been so catastrophically wrong? Before General Duan could even begin to process this baffling turn, a second telegraph key from a different sector began its own desperate, high-pitched chatter.
"Urgent message from the western flank screen!" the second operator shouted, his voice cracking with alarm. "They've made contact with the enemy! Heavy concentrations of Russian infantry… dug in on the high ground at Volochayevka! It's not a garrison, sir… they're reporting multiple regiments… Siberian Rifles! They're flanked, sir! The vanguard is flanked!"
General Duan's blood ran cold. He stared at the map, and the terrible, horrifying truth of the situation crashed down on him. It wasn't a retreat. It was a trap. The empty depot was the bait. He had sent his best cavalry division, his vanguard, deep into enemy territory, over-extending them in a race to seize a worthless prize. And now, the true Russian army, not the scattered remnants from his intelligence reports but battle-hardened Siberian regulars, had emerged from hiding and slammed the door shut behind them. His vanguard had not walked into an empty base. They had walked directly into a perfectly prepared kill box.
The scene cut to the chaos of the ambush. Colonel Ma and his cavalry were caught in a long, shallow valley, the worst possible ground for mounted troops. On the forested ridges above them, positions they hadn't even bothered to scout, believing them to be deserted, Russian artillery, already zeroed-in, opened fire.
The world exploded. The first shells landed amongst the tightly packed cavalry squadrons with devastating accuracy. Men and horses were torn apart in geysers of black earth and red mist. Before the survivors could even react, the distinctive, rhythmic hammering of dozens of Maxim machine guns erupted from the tree line, scything through the ranks. The elite Qing cavalry, the pride of the new army, were being slaughtered like livestock, cut down by an enemy they couldn't see.
Panic replaced discipline. The perfect, modern army, caught completely by surprise and in a hopeless tactical position, dissolved. It became a desperate, chaotic scramble for survival. Colonel Ma, his face a mask of fury and shame, roared orders to fall back, to find cover, to form a firing line. But it was too late. They were forced into a humiliating, fighting retreat, harried every step of the way by an enemy who seemed to know their every move. The lightning strike had failed. The Emperor's spear had been blunted, broken on its very first thrust.
In the Forbidden City, the silence was heavier than any stone. Qin Shi Huang sat on the Dragon Throne, his face an unreadable mask, as a terrified General from the Ministry of War read the after-action report. The litany of failure was brutal and concise. Empty depots. A prepared enemy. A perfectly executed ambush. A vanguard division savaged. A bloody and ignominious retreat back to the river.
The Emperor did not fly into the rage the assembled ministers expected. His fury was a far colder, more profound, and infinitely more terrifying thing. It was the silent, absolute fury of a perfect intellect confronted with an imperfect world. His own supernatural senses, his Dragon's Spark, had thrummed with a vague sense of danger during the advance, a low hum of warning. But a sense of danger is useless when the enemy is not where your maps and spies say they are. This defeat was not a failure of strategy; his plan had been flawless. It was not a failure of courage; his soldiers had fought bravely once the trap was sprung. It was a catastrophic, unforgivable failure of intelligence.
Or rather, it was a sign of the enemy's perfect intelligence.
He dismissed the trembling general with a flick of his wrist. He stood alone in the vast, silent chamber, the weight of his first defeat in this new life settling upon him. And he knew. He knew with an unshakable certainty that transcended logic, that went deeper than any report from Shen Ke's spies. This was not a Russian miracle. The slow, clumsy, unimaginative Russian military was incapable of such a brilliant, coordinated deception on its own.
Someone had warned them. Someone inside his own circle, someone with access to the highest levels of his war planning, had passed the details of his entire offensive to the enemy.
He walked to the massive map of his empire, his eyes sweeping over the territories. They passed over the burning arsenal at Wuhan, a monument to his domestic miscalculation. They passed over the bloody fields of Port Arthur, where his finest general was being reforged in a crucible of slaughter. And they came to rest on the north, on the province of Manchuria. On the site of a new railway, being built with American money, and administered by a man he had humiliated, broken, and then foolishly trusted with the logistical key to his entire war.
He had no proof. He had not a single shred of evidence. But the Emperor did not need evidence. He needed only to understand human nature. He had leashed a rabid dog, and the moment he had turned his back, it had gnawed through its tether. A new, deadlier front in his war had just opened. Not on the frozen plains of Siberia, but in the secret, shadowy corridors of his own empire. The war against Russia was now secondary. His hunt for the traitor had just begun.
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