Chapter 2112 - Swelling Emotions
This improved performance stemmed partly from the mysterious "spy" mentioned in intelligence reports, and partly from the uncomfortable truth that not all Ming high officials and generals were incompetents.
Who would have imagined Xiong Wencan possessed such ability?
Zhu Mingxia had originally harbored no particular interest in capturing Xiong Wencan alive. Now, suddenly, he found himself eager to take the Governor-General prisoner and interrogate him personally—to discover how this top-tier figure of seventeenth-century China truly perceived the Council of Elders.
Over the years, the Elders had encountered countless natives of this era, but the vast majority were common folk from the lower strata. High officials and genuine intellectuals remained exceedingly rare specimens. Though Zhao Yingong had cultivated connections with the Revival Society in Hangzhou, those relationships had never progressed beyond superficial courtesy. Even with substantial behind-the-scenes collaboration, personal rapport had remained elusive. An Elder simply could not penetrate that rarefied circle.
After Gao Shunqin had been kidnapped and brought to Lingao, he had spent years under comfortable house arrest. The Elders treated him as a living anthropological specimen, an opportunity to dissect the mindset of traditional high-ranking Ming officialdom. Every conversation with him was recorded, transcribed, and subjected to exhaustive analysis.
But Gao Shunqin had been merely a regional inspector—several ranks removed from a provincial viceroy like Xiong Wencan. Though later historians would heap scorn upon Xiong's name, by any contemporary measure he ranked among the most capable officials of the late Ming. What such a man thought of the Council of Elders was a question that fascinated both the External Intelligence Bureau and the Grand Library.
Zhu Mingxia found himself recalling something a certain county administration director had told him during the Qiongnan campaign.
"Battalion Commander Zhu, have you seen the BBC documentary Walking with Cavemen? At the end of the final episode, the presenter cradles a Homo sapiens infant and declares: 'If I brought her back to modern society and raised her as my daughter, she would be psychologically and physiologically indistinguishable from my biological child.' The gulf between us and the natives isn't the chasm between sapiens and apes, or even between sapiens and Neanderthals. It's the distance between modern humans shaped by centuries of scientific and social development and their ancient counterparts. We can afford to mock their backwardness—not because we possess superior intelligence, but because we stand atop an accumulated mountain of knowledge built by generations of scientific explosion. Too many people imagine that a few centuries of inherited advantage automatically grants them the right to dominate. But lordship isn't so simple. The natives aren't apes. They learn. Sometimes we must learn from them. Right now, we're living off inherited capital, dressing ourselves in the achievements of our predecessors without generating genuine innovation or development. Worse, many can't even be bothered to copy properly—they simply muddle through, imagining themselves invincible. This complacency is poison. Sooner or later, it will destroy us."
Since the Two Guangs campaign had begun, Zhu Mingxia had come to appreciate those words with painful clarity. The enemy was learning. Their methods remained crude, but they were inflicting serious difficulties on the Fubo Army nonetheless. Meanwhile, too many within the Council wallowed in dangerous complacency. He thought of the numerous weapon upgrade proposals that had been summarily rejected, and felt a familiar surge of frustration. Yet considering the army's staggering consumption rates, he grudgingly conceded that the State Council's fiscal conservatism wasn't entirely without merit.
Perhaps more challenging battles would prove beneficial to the force's long-term development. Zhu Mingxia suspected the Council had developed a toxic overconfidence regarding warfare. Too many seemed to imagine that commanding troops was akin to playing Age of Empires—maintain a technological lead of several ages, and victory would arrive effortlessly, without blood or sacrifice.
The delusion had metastasized to the point where not merely significant casualties, but even minor tactical setbacks provoked Elders on the BBS to demand formal investigations, shrieking accusations of "incompetent command." Some had escalated from questioning the capabilities of naturalized officers to openly doubting the competence of Elder officers themselves.
This perfectionist neurosis toward warfare—convening "inquiry meetings" and "disciplinary hearings" over trivial mishaps—had generated profound resentment throughout the Fubo Army's officer corps. Elder officers voiced their displeasure openly; naturalized officers muttered bitterly in private about superiors who "didn't understand the cost of rice" and were "searching for fleas on a bald man's head."
Zhu Mingxia understood intimately that war contained too many chaotic variables. No battle proceeded one hundred percent according to plan—ever. Even in this era, where they enjoyed absolute technological and organizational superiority and won virtually every engagement with minimal losses, after-action reviews invariably uncovered failures of execution and unforeseen complications.
"Fight according to plan, suffer zero casualties, win every time—it's fantasy," Zhu Mingxia muttered under his breath.
"What's that?" Xu Ke approached and inquired.
"Nothing." Zhu Mingxia cleared his throat. "What did the field survey reveal?"
"Old Xiong opened his coffers!" Xu Ke's voice carried emphatic satisfaction. "Preliminary count of abandoned Nanyang rifles: fifty-one confirmed. Factor in those we failed to locate and those carried off by routed troops—this force fielded at least one hundred Nanyang rifles. We recovered substantial ammunition from the corpses as well. Estimate exceeds forty rounds per man."
"Any other significant discoveries?"
"Nothing critical beyond the rifles." Xu Ke produced a cigar and lit it with deliberate leisure. "But you can observe the evolution. The Ming are learning."
"I concur." Zhu Mingxia nodded slowly. "They fought with genuine discipline."
"The intelligence regarding an enemy spy grows more credible by the hour," Xu Ke observed. "Whoever this individual is, he certainly served within our forces. Examine these trench constructions—no one excavates approaches like this without our specialized training. And positioning enfilade strongpoints at communication trench termini? That's professional military engineering."
"Yet we have no reports of missing officers."
"Perhaps an enlisted soldier or NCO," Xu Ke speculated. "Could also be someone who staged his own death. Battlefields breed chaos—absolute certainty about personnel accounting is impossible."
"True enough." Zhu Mingxia fell silent for a moment. "It appears the enemy is growing stronger..."
"If you want my opinion, a stronger enemy is precisely what we need," Xu Ke declared. "Right now the troops are winning too easily. An army that fights nothing but colonial police actions will inevitably degrade. Consider—how many years has it been since we fought an actual pitched battle with conventional force-on-force engagements?"
"Not since Shandong have we conducted proper combined-arms operations," Zhu Mingxia agreed, understanding the implication immediately. Years of technologically asymmetric counterinsurgency were corrosive to genuine combat readiness.
"Exactly. So greater tactical complexity, increased difficulty, even higher casualties—I consider it acceptable. Indeed, we should deliberately execute more sophisticated operational maneuvers. Some will cry 'overkill,' but I say it's investment. Consider it large-scale live-fire training."
Zhu Mingxia laughed despite himself. He hadn't anticipated that Xu Ke, whose background lay in naval intelligence, would share so many of his professional convictions. He nodded with genuine respect. "You're absolutely right."
He recalled that Xu Ke had long been marginalized among the Elders. Past policy disputes had earned him the enmity of influential factions, leaving him professionally isolated. Though he had secured his preferred posting in military intelligence—nominally serving as director of the General Staff's Military Intelligence Bureau—in practical reality he operated as little more than a solitary bureaucrat managing a skeletal organization. Most substantive intelligence work flowed through the External Intelligence Bureau. Among the Elder establishment, Xu Ke remained an obscure, almost invisible figure.
Yet his field performance was exemplary. Most importantly, Xu Ke deployed to the front lines for every operation—from pre-battle intelligence preparation through post-battle surveys and prisoner interrogations, he participated whenever physically possible.
But such work rarely earned accolades or recognition. When something failed, however, blame arrived swiftly and mercilessly. Such was the thankless nature of intelligence work.
"You possess remarkable patience for this profession," Zhu Mingxia observed. "Minimal glory, maximum exposure to criticism."
"The I Ching counsels, 'The dragon lies hidden—do not act.'" Xu Ke's tone carried philosophical serenity. "This is my season for maintaining a low profile. The organization will remember my contributions when the time comes. Meanwhile, certain individuals love nothing better than inflating hot air—especially the so-called 'soy sauce faction,' perpetually pointing accusatory fingers at matters beyond their competence while accomplishing precisely nothing themselves. I'm not remotely afraid of giving offense. Most of those people were professional failures in the old timeline. Do they imagine that transmigration magically transformed them into capable leaders? Absurd. I spent years working within institutional bureaucracies, and I observed a consistent pattern: the individuals with no career prospects are invariably the ones obsessed with gossip. They fixate endlessly on others' shortcomings, never recognizing that anyone who actually does substantive work will inevitably make mistakes. They were so paralyzed by fear of error in the old world, so pathologically timid, that naturally they achieved nothing. They imported that crippling mentality here, and unsurprisingly they remain irrelevant. Contrast them with those who dared to seize initiative and leadership—haven't they all risen to positions of genuine authority?"
Inside Wuzhou's walls, though the hour had grown late, the city trembled with barely suppressed panic. The fall of Bangshan signified that yet another escape route—the Gui River passage—had been severed. The roads to Hexian, Zhongshan, and Mengshan now lay beyond reach. Australian forces had already occupied Changzhou Island astride the Xi River waterway. The garrison stood encircled.
Throughout the city, minor officials and common soldiers wallowed in abject terror. Wuzhou's defensive garrison had never been substantial—ever since the scorched-earth strategy had been finalized, elite formations including the Dongxi Mountain Regional Commander and the Central Route Deputy Commander had withdrawn to Tengxian and Hexian.
The daylight bombardment and Bangshan's collapse had broadcast an unmistakable message: Wuzhou could not be held. Despite the late hour, officials, clerks, and soldiers scrambled frantically to pack their possessions in preparation for flight. Civil order teetered on the brink of total collapse; sporadic outbreaks of soldier riots and civilian wailing echoed through the darkened streets.
Yet amid this besieged and crumbling fortress, Xiong Wencan felt no fear whatsoever. Bangshan's fall accorded perfectly with his expectations. The scorched-earth contingency had been prepared long in advance. Several hundred elite household guards remained at his disposal—more than sufficient to secure his overland escape. The city's grain reserves and portable valuables had already been evacuated; the primary military forces had departed Wuzhou days earlier. At this juncture, how many officials and civilians perished within the walls mattered not in the slightest to the larger strategic picture.
(End of Chapter)