Inside the stifling, dimly lit blacksmith workshop, the Shanyue tribal chieftains traded glances that basically screamed "what in the world are we looking at here?"
Let us be real. The Shanyue tribes were like Sun Wu's favorite convenience store. They had been hunted, pushed around, and harassed so many times they could probably recite the Wu military's organizational chart in their sleep.
They knew which generals were actually tough and which ones were just rich kids playing soldier better than Sun Quan did himself. Sizing up how dangerous incoming Han commanders were? That was basically their day job.
And what do you think? If you got hunted every single time, how else were you supposed to survive?
So when Ma Liang showed up last year with his tiny little group and just strolled into their mountain territory like he was heading to a picnic, the chieftains' first thought was definitely "this is a trap."
I mean, come on. What kind of commander skips the usual "send thousands of guys to burn villages down" routine?
Normally pacification campaigns involve armies so big they block out the sun. But this Ma Liang guy? He showed up with seven or eight Wuling warriors and half a dozen skinny scholars. Total of maybe fifteen people tops.
They are barely enough to make a decent hunting party. Let us hold off on shooting him full of arrows and see what crazy trick he is pulling.
That was the cautious plan they agreed on back then. And honestly? That decision to wait instead of attacking has been the best thing that ever happened to them.
To understand what is going on here, you need to know who the Shanyue really are. "Shanyue" is just a fancy name lowlanders came up with. It literally means "Mountain Yue." They are actually a mix of two groups who decided "screw this empire stuff, we are better off on our own."
First group: Han refugees. These were regular farmers who ran away from all the war and chaos. They ditched their homes to escape taxes so high they would starve, being forced to fight in wars that were not theirs, and well, just starving in general. They became ghosts in the woods, no papers, no government telling them what to do.
Second group: The original Yue people. Descendants of the old Minyue and Ouyue kingdoms that were around way before the Han Empire was even a thing.
When the empire fell apart and warlords started carving up the country like it was a birthday cake, life for regular folks got real ugly real fast.
So the refugee Han and native Yue teamed up, headed deep into the mountains where nobody could find them, and said "we are not bowing to Wu's rich coastal guys."
They spread out all over Danyang, Xindu, Poyang, and Kuaiji commanderies. But since they would not pay taxes or follow orders, Wu's military just saw them as free labor. They would roll through every so often to beat everyone into line and take whoever they wanted as slaves.
Cut off from everything, the Shanyue survived using old Yue tricks plus whatever farming know-how the refugees remembered.
They hunted, gathered wild stuff, burned small patches of forest to plant crops, and made pots that looked like they had been shaped by toddlers.
When Ma Liang first got to this poor, forgotten place, the first thing he zeroed in on was the most basic problem of all: keeping people from dying of hunger.
He started checking out how they farmed.
But after looking at their tools, he just stood there in the middle of a dusty field, completely speechless.
"What the... You guys are actually still using leisi to farm?" he asked, pointing at some crude sticks leaning against a tree. His eyes were wide with the kind of shock you get when you see someone using a stone axe to chop firewood in the modern era.
The tribal farmer who had proudly brought out his best tool to show the fancy Han visitor just looked confused. He held up the heavy wooden stick with two prongs and a dull bone tip.
"Is that what you call this thing? A leisi?" he said, clearly impressed by the big word.
An awkward silence hung in the air so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Staring at that glorified digging stick, a tool that had been out of style in the central plains for centuries, Ma Liang suddenly thought back to the magical "light screen" they had back in Jingzhou.
He smiled, remembering how Zhao Yun and Lord Liu Bei had acted like kids on New Year's when they first got the curved plow working.
With a heavy sigh, he realized that if the super-smart farmers from the future ever saw the curved plow Lord Liu Bei was using to feed millions, they would probably look at it the same way he was looking at this wooden stick right now. With pity and a quiet "wow, they were really behind back then."
Figuring explaining future tech to a guy who did not even know what his own tool was called would be a waste of time, Ma Liang just asked for a tour of their fields.
Back when he was managing logistics in Gong'an County, Ma Liang had spent tons of time picking Zhuge Liang's brain. Even after Zhuge Liang headed west to Yizhou, they kept writing letters to each other. Plus, every six months or so, he would get to see secret summaries from that magical light screen.
Thanks to all that, Ma Liang actually knew a little bit about what you would call "science." And after spending years turning Wuling Commandery's swamps from a death trap into a decent place to live, he knew one big thing: you cannot just take a solution that works in one place and force it somewhere else. Northern tricks do not always work down south.
So he figured there must be a good reason these people were using pointy sticks instead of real plows.
And the second he climbed the ridge and saw their fields? The mystery was solved. And it hurt to look at.
Ma Liang grew up in the rich northern plains of Jingzhou, where you could see farmland stretching all the way to the horizon.
To him, the tiny patches of dirt clinging to the mountainsides in Kuaiji were not even fields. They were jagged, sloped, and covered in rocks.
Back home, any farmer worth his salt would look at those miserable plots and say "nah, not worth the trouble." They were basically just piles of gravel on a hill.
But here? These little scraps of uneven earth were all that kept hundreds of thousands of Shanyue people alive.
Ma Liang did not complain.
He did not throw his hands up and say "this is impossible." After all, he had already turned Wuling's malaria-infested swamps into something functional. Compared to that, mountains were just a bit more of a workout. What was there to worry about?
During his time in Wuling, Ma Liang had discovered something game-changing: the curved plow was not just good for flat land. It was perfect for weird, bumpy southern terrain.
Those big straight plows from the north? On rocky ground, they were more trouble than they were worth. Heavy, stiff, impossible to turn. You needed two guys plus a strong ox just to keep them moving in a straight line.
But the curved plow? That thing was built to be agile. It could spin around, change direction in a heartbeat, and handle all the ups and downs of terraced mountain fields like it was made for them.
Even better, you could make smaller versions. A mini curved plow was so light a single guy could carry it up a steep mountain trail without breaking a sweat.
Armed with this amazing tool, Ma Liang got his craftsmen working, built dozens of them, and handed them out all over the mountains. He had arrived in June, and since the south stays hot and humid way into fall, the Shanyue actually got to plant another crop in July.
The harvest that autumn was so big it broke every record they had ever had.
That one harvest alone turned Ma Liang from "suspicious Han spy" to "miracle worker we need to protect at all costs." Suddenly he could do whatever he wanted to make things better.
With people no longer worried about starving to death, Ma Liang's big plan rolled out like butter on warm bread.
The curved plows made tilling the rocky ground way faster and easier.
Then Ma Liang taught them how to make compost from food scraps and other garbage. He showed them how to layer kitchen waste, animal manure, fallen leaves, and ash from their cooking fires into designated pits.
After a few months of decomposition, this rotten-smelling pile transformed into dark, rich fertilizer that made the stubborn mountain soil far more productive.
Crop yields shot up even higher than before.
Next up: dealing with bugs.
Using super strong herbal repellent formulas from the legendary doctor Hua Tuo himself, Ma Liang taught them to crush specific medicinal plants into paste and smear it around their homes and on their skin. The swarms of toxic insects that had been spreading diseases in the humid jungles for generations were suddenly manageable.
But his biggest rule, the one he made everyone follow no matter what, was about public health.
He issued an order so strict it would make a tax collector blush: No one drinks unboiled water or eats raw food. Ever. This one rule was supposed to wipe out the worms and fevers that kept killing their children.
Getting everyone to follow the "Boil It or Cook It" rule, though? That was way harder than teaching them to use new plows.
At first, the chieftains said absolutely not.
The climate in these southern mountains is so hot and sticky you feel like you are swimming through air all day. Eating cool raw food and drinking straight from mountain streams was how everyone beat the heat.
It was part of life.
Plus, they said it just did not make sense economically. Boiling water needs firewood. Why burn good wood to heat water when you could trade that wood for grain and salt in the valleys? It felt like wasting perfectly good resources.
Faced with all this pushback, Ma Liang realized reason alone was not going to cut it. These were not scholars he could convince with polite arguments. These were men who had watched their children die from sicknesses they did not understand, for reasons they blamed on curses and angry spirits.
So he gave them something worse to fear than the heat.
He sat all the chieftains down and described, in calm, clinical detail, exactly what happened inside a person's body when they drank unclean water or ate raw food. He told them about the tiny, invisible worms that lived in streams and raw meat. How they got inside you. How they multiplied. How they ate their way through your organs, crawled up into your brain, and sucked the marrow right out of your bones.
He did not shout. He did not threaten. He simply told them the truth, and let the horror of it do the work for him.
To prove he was not making it up, he showed them a whole book of stories about people who had gotten sick and died this way.
The story that finally made them give in was about Chen Deng. And let us just say it was graphic enough to make hardened warriors wince.
It worked so well for two reasons.
First, Chen Deng was not some random nobody. He was the Governor of Guangling Commandery, super rich and powerful. If you go north from Shanyue land, pass through Wu's capital Jianye, cross the Yangtze, boom, you are in Guangling.
To the chieftains, he was basically their rich neighbor who lived just over the hill.
Second, how he had died was exactly like the mysterious sickness that had been killing people in the mountains for years.
Up in the peaks, it was not rare for folks to get weak and waste away for no apparent reason. When they died, sometimes their bodies would literally start crawling with worms. Everyone was terrified of it, calling it stuff like "Shadow Poison" or "Water Demon Hex" because they thought it was dark magic.
When Ma Liang told them two of the best doctors in the whole empire had said all those deaths were just from eating raw things and drinking dirty water? The chieftains practically turned white with fear.
All their stubbornness vanished in a second.
They promised to make everyone follow the rules. No exceptions.
But Ma Liang was way too careful to just trust their word. He sent his trusted helper Dong Jue and those big Wuling guards to go from village to village, teaching people directly why boiling water and cooking food mattered so much.
Since he was way deep in enemy territory, Ma Liang knew he could not just call Jingzhou and ask for backup if things went wrong.
He had to be able to handle everything himself. And he had planned for this like someone who had spent years getting ready for a test they could not afford to fail.
For example, all those gross medical stories about worms from raw fish and dirty water? They had been written down for him by Wu Pu and Fan A, Hua Tuo's top students, basically medical geniuses themselves.
To make sure even people who could not read would understand, Ma Liang spent weeks drawing pictures. Simple, super clear ones that showed exactly what those worms did to your body. Even his Wuling guards, who barely knew a single Han character, got it right away and could explain it all to the Shanyue people in ways they would understand.
Of course, getting every single person to follow the health rules was never going to happen.
There were always a few stubborn knuckleheads who would sneak off to drink from streams anyway, then end up so sick they could barely move.
But weirdly enough, these rule-breakers ended up being the best proof Ma Liang could have asked for. Seeing them suffer made everyone else take the rules seriously, and suddenly the chieftains respected him so much they practically worshipped the ground he walked on.
Looking back at how things were just six months ago, the changes were so obvious you could spot them from a mile away.
The kids and young folks were not always sick anymore. No more fevers that kept them in bed for weeks, no more weird illnesses from bad water.
The strong men were using those curved plows to get all their planting done in half the time. Saved them from breaking their backs working from sunrise to sunset.
When farming slowed down for the season, everyone followed Ma Liang's instructions to the letter, turning food scraps and trash into black gold fertilizer that made their crops grow like crazy.
Even the tribal women were blown away. They would whisper to each other: "Is there anything this man does not know? He can even teach us how to make good clothes!"
Ma Liang had shown them better ways to spin thread and weave cloth. Back in Jingzhou, this stuff was just basic housework, nothing special. But to the Shanyue, who had spent their whole lives wearing scratchy hemp or stiff tree bark? It was like watching magic happen.
And get this. Ma Liang just "happened" to have plans for a way better loom. He had asked Lady Huang, Zhuge Liang's brilliant wife back in Jingzhou, to design it specifically for the Shanyue's needs, and she had come up with something perfect.
The new looms were easy to build from wood they could find right there in the mountains. Even beginners could figure out how to use them. The cloth they made was thick, tough, and actually warm. Who would have thought?
After watching their whole way of life get better so fast, the chieftains let go of every last bit of suspicion they had. Now whenever they saw Ma Liang walking through their villages, they would drop whatever they were doing and bow so low you would think they were touching their heads to the ground.
This gratitude even spread to Liu Bei, the guy they had never even met. The chieftains started talking about him like he was some kind of hero from old stories.
"Any warlord who is willing to dispatch a genius like Master Ma Liang, sending him thousands of miles across hostile territory solely to rescue starving mountain tribes from poverty, must be a man of unparalleled, god-like benevolence!" they whispered among themselves.
"If someone as good as Master Ma Liang is willing to work for him, Lord Liu Bei has to be the most righteous leader there is!"
But then word started getting around that Sun Wu had gone and attacked Jingzhou. Broke their promises and everything. That is when the chieftains started getting worried.
Feeling like they owed Ma Liang their lives, they finally worked up the courage to go to his workshop and ask the question that was on everyone's mind.
"Master Ma Liang," one chieftain said, his voice all rough and nervous, "Lord Liu Bei has been so good to us we will never be able to pay him back. But we need to know. Did he send you here to get us ready for this? Are you going to tell us to march out and fight Sun Wu?"
Ma Liang calmed them down with an answer that made everyone breathe easy again. Then he turned back to what he was doing.
He bent over to look at the forge, watching the molten iron inside the clay pot like he was checking if soup was ready. When he was happy with how hot it was, he nodded, wiped his hands on his pants, and waved for everyone to follow him out to the courtyard where it was cooler.
As soon as they were in the sun, before anyone could say another word, Ma Liang started talking.
"Let us think about this logically," he said, sounding more like a shopkeeper than a general. "If all I wanted was to use you guys to mess with Sun Wu, I would not have spent half a year teaching you how to farm and make clothes. I would have waited till the new year, loaded up some ships with extra swords, sailed over, and dumped them on your beaches."
He looked at all the scarred faces around him. Guys who had been fighting their whole lives.
"Give you proper steel weapons, and all that anger you have got for Wu would do the rest. You would charge down those mountains and fight till there was nothing left of you. So why would I spend all this time and energy teaching you how to live if I just wanted you to die?"
His words hit them hard, and nobody had anything to say back. Deep down, every single one of them knew he was right.
When they really thought about how things were between them and Sun Wu, they had to admit the truth was pretty scary.
This was not just some fight between families that had been going on for years. A feud means both sides see each other as people. But the truth was, Sun Wu's government and rich folks did not even think of the Shanyue as human. They thought of them like wild animals. Dangerous ones that needed to be rounded up every so often, either to work as slaves or just get rid of them.
One of the older chieftains, the kind who thought things through before acting, stepped forward, speaking way more politely now.
"Well then, Master Ma Liang," he said, "now that those sneaky Wu dogs have gone and attacked Lord Liu Bei like cowards, do you really not need us to help fight them at all?"
Ma Liang turned to face everyone, a little smile on his face like he knew exactly what they were thinking.
"Fei Zhan!" he called out, looking right at a big, tough-looking chieftain standing near the back. "Do you really think I cannot tell what you are planning? Do you think I do not see what you are all thinking?"
He pointed straight at the man.
"You have been looking at the map and seeing how all Wu's big armies have gone west. Their homes are practically empty! You want to get all your toughest warriors together, rush down the mountains, and go loot all their undefended towns. Am I right?"
Fei Zhan shut his mouth like a trapdoor slamming shut. Suddenly his feet were the most fascinating things in the entire world.
And from the way everyone else was shifting around and looking uncomfortable, Ma Liang knew he had guessed exactly right. He did not stop there. He started calling out more names.
"And do not think this is just Fei Zhan's idea! You Tu! Peng Qi! Pan Lin! Get over here!"
These four men were terrors in the mountains, brutal warriors who commanded immense respect and fear among the tribes. Yet, hearing Ma Liang bark their names, they shuffled forward out of the crowd, keeping their heads bowed low, looking exactly like a group of truant schoolchildren caught stealing from the bakery.
Ma Liang let out a heavy, tired sigh. The Shanyue population was not a monolith. When faced with the endless oppression of Sun Wu, some chose to flee deeper into the jungles, some chose to quietly endure the abuse, and some developed a violent, burning desire for revenge. These four specific chieftains firmly belonged to the latter category.
And Ma Liang knew exactly how they justified their violent urges.
"Let me guess your logic," Ma Liang said, his voice dropping into a stern, lecturing tone. "You tell yourselves that because the Sun Wu army slaughters innocent Shanyue civilians without a second thought, it is perfectly acceptable, even righteous, for you to march down and slaughter innocent Sun Wu civilians in return?"
Unable to contain his defensive anger any longer, one of the four chieftains violently snapped his head up, glaring at Ma Liang.
"Why shouldn't we, Master Ma Liang?!" the chieftain barked, his face flushed with rage. "I hear the stories from the north! Everyone knows that the great Chancellor Cao Cao operates exactly like that! He slaughters whole cities when he is angry! Furthermore, it is Marquis Sun Quan who is the treacherous coward here! He broke the alliance! He attacked you! If we burn a few of his precious villages and steal some grain, who cares? It is a small price for his betrayal!"
The chieftain's argument was delivered with fiery, passionate conviction, but it shattered against Ma Liang's moral clarity.
"Cao Cao may operate like a butchering animal," Ma Liang stated, his voice ringing with cold, unyielding iron. "But my Lord, Liu Bei, does not."
The four warriors were instantly struck dumb. The fiery righteous indignation evaporated from their faces.
Ma Liang paced slowly in front of them, his tone dropping to a quiet, dangerous whisper.
"If you men are truly so obsessed with violence that you are willing to project the sins of the wealthy, aristocratic clans onto the innocent, starving peasant farmers of Sun Wu..."
He stopped and stared directly into Fei Zhan's eyes.
"...then quite frankly, I would rather you pack up the farming techniques and the looms I gave you, take your people, and vanish into the deep, uncharted jungles of the South Sea forever. Leave this war to men with honor."
The threat of abandonment hit the chieftains like a physical blow. Panic erupted among the leaders. They frantically stepped forward, loudly and desperately swearing unbreakable oaths that they would never, under any circumstances, lay a single finger on a civilian village.
As for their lingering desires to question Liu Bei's pacifist military philosophy? Those thoughts were instantly buried.
For the Shanyue, the mountain of debt they owed to Liu Bei was simply too big. To question or mock the strict, honorable morals of the very man who had single-handedly saved their children from starvation would be a gross, unforgivable act of hypocrisy. They simply could not do it.
Unable to handle the nervous tension, Fei Zhan began pacing in tight, anxious circles, aggressively rubbing his hands together. Finally, he stopped and looked pleadingly at Ma Liang.
"Master Ma Liang, I am just going to speak straight from my heart," Fei Zhan blurted out, his voice thick with emotion. "I refuse to run away. I do not want to take my people and hide in the miserable swamps of the South Sea. I want to stay right here, and I want to fight for Lord Liu Bei."
As Fei Zhan finally laid his true intentions on the table, several of the other prominent chieftains lifted their heads. A dangerous, burning spark of ambition ignited in their eyes.
Fei Zhan puffed out his chest, finding his courage.
"I am an uneducated man. I do not understand all this high-level political talk about restoring the glory of the Han Dynasty. But I know this: if Lord Liu Bei intends to bring peace to this broken world, then I want to be the sword that helps him chop the head off Sun Wu!"
"Yes!"
Before Ma Liang could even process the violent declaration of loyalty, another chieftain roared his approval, raising a fist into the air.
"Let us smash our way to the capital of Jianye! Let us drag that arrogant coward Sun Quan off his throne and invite Lord Liu Bei to sit on it!"
"Exactly!" another chieftain bellowed, his face red with excitement. "We were born in this territory! We are the true sons of the east! I refuse to bow to the current master of Jiangdong! We reject Sun Quan!"
"Master Ma Liang!" Fei Zhan shouted over the rising din. "Instead of telling us to run away and hide in the South Sea, you should just send a messenger and invite Lord Liu Bei to come here! We will conquer this land for him!"
This was the raw, unfiltered nature of the Shanyue. Whether they were descendants of the wild southern tribes or hardened refugees who had lost everything, they did not traffic in subtle political maneuvering or hidden agendas. When they felt an emotion, they expressed it with explosive, deafening volume.
Within seconds, the quiet courtyard outside the blacksmith shop devolved into a roaring, chaotic rally of screaming warriors, all enthusiastically debating the best tactical route to besiege the enemy capital.
The noise was so deafening that Ma Liang was forced to physically climb onto a pile of stacked timber and wave his arms frantically just to restore a semblance of order.
Looking down at the sea of fiercely loyal, fiercely expectant faces staring up at him, Ma Liang's breath caught. His hands trembled slightly.
Perhaps it was because a significant portion of their population was originally Han, but securing the cultural and political loyalty of the Shanyue had required almost zero effort. Historically speaking, if you traced their lineage back to the reign of Emperor Wu, their ancestors in the Minyue and Ouyue kingdoms had officially been subjects of the Great Han Empire for centuries. The foundational connection was already there.
It was a stark contrast to his grueling experience with the Wuling barbarians back in Jingnan. The historical relationship between the Han and the Wuling tribes had been defined by centuries of bitter, paranoid tension. Winning their trust had required Ma Liang to exhaust every diplomatic trick in his arsenal, eventually forcing him to adopt Liu Bei's legendary tactic and officially swear a blood oath of brotherhood with King Shamoke before they finally, truly submitted.
But with the Shanyue? The transition from deeply suspicious outcasts to fanatically loyal zealots had happened almost frighteningly fast.
"Alright, calm down," Ma Liang shouted, a wide smile breaking across his face. "If you are all truly so eager for war, then follow me."
Jumping down from the timber pile, Ma Liang, still shirtless and glistening with sweat, turned and led the curious mob of chieftains back into the sweltering heat of the blacksmith shop.
During their brief political rally in the courtyard, the molten iron they had been observing earlier had been carefully poured into clay molds and cooled into rough ingots.
Now, one of Ma Liang's Wuling bodyguards was standing over an anvil, gripping a glowing iron bar with heavy tongs, methodically folding and violently hammering the metal, sparks flying with every thunderous strike.
Standing off to the side, Dong Jue was using simple, easily digestible vocabulary to explain the precise mechanics of the process to an attentive group of Shanyue blacksmiths.
The chieftains instantly realized what was happening. Master Ma Liang was conducting a masterclass in advanced metallurgy and iron forging.
The mountains inhabited by the Shanyue were actually rich in natural iron ore deposits. They did not lack the raw materials. What they lacked was the complex, generational knowledge required to properly smelt it. The crude iron weapons and tools produced by the tribal blacksmiths were notoriously brittle. The metal was basically useless, far inferior to common bronze.
Because their iron was worthless for military or agricultural applications, the tribes were forced to secretly smuggle their valuable copper ore down into the Wu valleys, trading it at extortionate rates just to buy basic survival necessities.
To live surrounded by mountains of iron ore, yet be unable to utilize it, was the ultimate, tragic irony of the Shanyue existence.
But Ma Liang, having successfully secured their food supply and stabilized their health, had clearly decided it was time to radically upgrade their technological standing.
If they possessed durable, military-grade iron tools, the speed at which they could clear forests, terrace mountains, and plant crops would increase exponentially.
Ma Liang walked over to a dark corner of the workshop, reached into a wooden crate, and pulled out a freshly forged, beautifully polished steel ring-pommel dao. The blade gleamed with a cold, lethal light. He walked back and casually tossed the heavy weapon into Fei Zhan's hands.
"Test it," Ma Liang commanded simply.
Fei Zhan did not hesitate, nor did he ask for a wooden practice dummy. Acting with the direct, brutal pragmatism of a warrior, he drew his own decorated, expensive personal sword from his hip. Holding his own weapon out horizontally, Fei Zhan raised the new ring-pommel dao and brought it crashing down with all his terrifying physical strength.
CLANG!
The sharp, earsplitting shriek of violently colliding metal echoed through the workshop.
Fei Zhan stood perfectly still, his eyes wide with shock, staring at his hands. His own, prized personal sword had been cleanly, effortlessly sheared in half. The broken blade clattered uselessly onto the dirt floor.
"Master Ma Liang..." Fei Zhan whispered, his voice trembling as he stared in awe at the unblemished edge of the ring-pommel dao. "Is this...?"
"It was forged from the exact same raw iron ore we dug out of your mountains yesterday," Ma Liang confirmed, refusing to drag out the suspense.
He gestured broadly to the group of tribal blacksmiths furiously taking mental notes around the anvil.
"The reason I summoned every master blacksmith from your various tribes to this workshop today is to thoroughly instruct them in this exact smelting technique."
Fei Zhan's face instantly flushed crimson, as if he had just chugged an entire jug of potent rice wine. The other chieftains mirrored his reaction, their chests heaving, their faces stretched into grins of pure ecstasy.
As men who had spent their entire lives being ruthlessly slaughtered by the vastly superior, disciplined, steel-clad infantry of Sun Wu, they understood the geopolitical value of premium-grade steel better than anyone else on the planet. This was not just a new tool. This was the ultimate equalizer.
Gripping the flawless steel blade, feeling the perfect, deadly balance of the weapon, Fei Zhan raised it high above his head and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"The true Lord of Jiangdong is Lord Liu Bei!"
Over by the anvil, Dong Jue paused his lecture for a fraction of a second. He glanced over his shoulder at the screaming warriors, let out a tiny, imperceptible sigh of aristocratic snobbery, shook his head, and went right back to teaching the Shanyue blacksmiths the agonizingly primitive basics of metallurgy.
In Dong Jue's educated, technically demanding opinion, the crude "hundred-refined" folding technique they were currently demonstrating was basically a historical joke. They had no towering clay blast furnaces. They had no water-powered mechanical bellows to superheat the forge. They were not using the brilliant, efficient co-fusion steelmaking processes, nor were they utilizing the revolutionary, mass-production puddling techniques currently being pioneered back in Jingzhou's cutting-edge industrial sectors.
Without the heavy-industrial machinery required for true mass production, what could this slow, labor-intensive hand-forging method actually achieve on a grand strategic scale?
Well, Dong Jue conceded internally, watching a tribal blacksmith excitedly strike the glowing metal, I suppose it is perfectly adequate for churning out thousands of high-quality hoes and shovels for the farmers.
Ma Liang, standing amidst the cheering chieftains, possessed a vastly deeper, more complex understanding of the strategic board. Watching the tribal leaders lose their minds over a basic, hand-forged steel sword, he could only smile and marvel at how beautifully simple it was to satisfy men who had been denied everything.
However, amidst the roaring celebration, a sudden, sharp pang of intense nostalgia pierced his heart. He thought about the magical light screen, the divine artifact that had single-handedly rewritten the tragic destiny of their entire faction.
The last time he had been granted access to the classified historical transcripts before departing on this dangerous, undercover mission deep into enemy territory, the future history had just concluded the horrifying, empire-shattering narrative of the An Shi Rebellion.
He desperately, terribly wanted to survive this war, return to the safety of Jingzhou, and finally read the rest of the historical summaries.
He needed to know what happened next.
Yes, Ma Liang thought, wiping the soot from his eyes, a gentle smile forming on his face.
And if I survive to see the Chief Strategist, Zhuge Liang, again, and earn the right to gaze upon the glowing screen with my own eyes... that would be the greatest reward of all.