Chapter 285: Jeju Reconnaissance

Xue Ziliang’s original plan did not include entering Jeju town, but the rudimentary nature of its defenses made him reconsider. He decided to probe deeper, infiltrating the town to ascertain the situation within before making a final decision.

The entire city wall lacked enemy platforms, and the gate towers were very small. The few patrolling soldiers could not possibly monitor the entire wall—the circumference of Jeju town was a staggering 3,910 paces, much larger than many county and prefectural towns in Ming China with far larger populations. Large sections of the wall were completely empty.

Xue Ziliang left the support team outside the city and led the assault team, quickly scaling the wall with simple poles.

If climbing the city wall in broad daylight under the noses of the guards wasn’t surprising enough, what he found upon reaching the top shocked him once again. Not only were the fortifications haphazard and almost comical, but the wall itself was bizarre. The inner side of the wall had no ramps for ascending or descending; it was simply a sloped earth bank. From the defender’s perspective, this made it very convenient to get on and off the wall anywhere, at any time, in the event of an enemy attack.

However, conversely, once the enemy scaled the wall, they could immediately charge deep into the city. In other words, the bloody battle that would normally be required for an assault force to capture the ramps leading down from the wall was no longer necessary. Furthermore, if the attackers used earth platforms to assault the wall, this type of inner slope completely eliminated the need to fight for the city gates. As long as the attackers controlled a section of the wall, subsequent forces could continuously and easily cross it via the slopes on both the inside and outside.

This design seemed more to facilitate an attack than to aid the defenders. Although Xue Ziliang had no expertise in ancient Chinese city walls, the tactics of attacking and defending fortifications were universal. Seeing the real thing, he understood the extreme contempt the Senators held for the combat effectiveness of the Joseon army.

After entering the city, the assault team found themselves moving from an open field into a field enclosed by walls. The area within the walls was still a patchwork of fields, vegetable gardens, and small groves, with a few tiny thatched huts scattered about. Xue Ziliang felt very disoriented; it didn’t feel like a city at all.

Xue Ziliang observed from the woods with his binoculars for a long time, marking the locations of the training grounds, garrison headquarters, warehouses, wells, and roads on his map. His original plan, if the enemy’s defenses were strong, was to launch a “blossom in the heart” attack, destroying the local armory, carrying out assassinations and arson to completely disrupt their defenses. But now, that seemed like overkill. It would only reduce the amount of loot and the number of prisoners. Even leading the team into the city for reconnaissance seemed superfluous.

He was now fully confident he could take Jeju town, but his detachment was too small to control the entire city after capturing it. Causing a commotion would be counterproductive—Xue Ziliang was well aware of the Senate’s emphasis on population and resources. Taking an empty city would be meaningless to the Senate.

The two Park brothers knelt on the ground, their faces tense, sweating profusely in the cold winter air. A kūnzéi, colorfully dressed Wokou stood beside them, brandishing a Japanese sword. They were terrified that a wrong answer would get them killed instantly. Jeju Island had suffered greatly from Wokou raids, and whether they were officials, commoners, soldiers, or government slaves, the mere mention of “Wokou” struck terror into their hearts.

The intelligence agent’s Korean wasn’t bad, but it differed from the local Jeju dialect. The Park brothers, frightened and nervous, could barely speak clearly. It took a while to understand that they were government slaves from the Jeju garrison, and they had come here to pay respects to their ancestors.

The food and memorial tablets they brought with them proved they weren’t lying. Xue Ziliang initially didn’t want to waste time on them, but upon learning they were government slaves, he remembered Feng Zongze’s directive to find “proletarian collaborators.” He decided to take them along—they would need local assistance after entering Jeju town.

“Take the prisoners. Let’s go,” he ordered.

The accompanying soldiers immediately produced gags and black hoods. Before the Park brothers could react, they were gagged, hooded, and their hands tied behind their backs.

Because they had prisoners, leaving the city took a little longer than entering, but it went smoothly. The special recon team then took the prisoners and headed towards Biyangdo Island, where they had set up a temporary forward reconnaissance base.

Biyangdo Island was a volcanic island formed by an eruption in 1002, the youngest of the Jeju volcanic islands. It was very close to Jeju Port, only a fifteen-minute ride by large launch, making it an ideal base for an attack. The island had a beacon tower, which had already been seized by the special recon team—the five post soldiers were now acting as a “zombie beacon tower” under their orders.

The Park brothers were brought here in a daze. In a secret camp in the woods of the volcanic crater, a dozen other prisoners captured by the special recon team along the way were already being held. Most of the prisoners were local farmers, with nothing to be squeezed out of them. They were only being held temporarily for the sake of secrecy.

Here, the Park brothers revealed more information, including the approximate population of the town and the number of soldiers. But for Xue Ziliang, the most valuable piece of intelligence was that the magistrates of Jeongui and Daejeong counties, who had been in the city, had now rushed back to their respective counties after receiving news of the “Wokou attack.”

Xue Ziliang immediately dispatched two teams to pursue them along the roads, with orders to intercept and capture the two magistrates alive—if they couldn’t be captured alive, they were to be killed on the spot.

Although his team was on foot and the magistrates and their entourage were on horseback, a person cannot ride a horse at a gallop for a long time without rest—even if the rider could endure it, the horse could not. The special recon team, however, was capable of continuous forced marches. Besides, they could use the small launches to cover some distance; the official roads on Jeju Island, like those on Hainan, followed the coastline.

The Park brothers, who had provided crucial information, were still in shock when they were put on a boat and transported to Seongsan. As residents of Jeju town, they were clearly ideal candidates for collaborators. Feng Zongze had requested that a number of prisoners captured around Jeju be selected and sent to Seongsan for a crash course in “persuasion.”

While the special recon team advanced to Biyangdo Island and began their reconnaissance of Jeju town, Nangong Wudi organized a task force composed of regular infantry, public security forces, and laborers, and launched an attack on Jeongui County.

Jeongui County town was situated on a plain by the sea, very close to Seongsan. As the troops marched, they found that apart from a fishing village near Seongsan, there were no other villages along the way, only a few beacon towers, some long abandoned, others with their post soldiers having already fled.

The roadside was a vast coastal plain. Although the terrain was flat, there were no signs of cultivated fields, only dense stretches of coastal grassland, the dry grass swaying in the strong sea wind.

The sea breeze, carrying the salty taste of the sea, was exceptionally biting on their faces. Nangong Wudi had heard from Feng Zongze that the plants in these coastal grasslands were rich in salt and minerals, which was very beneficial for raising horses and cattle. The reason Hokkaido had become a world-famous pastureland was related to its special geographical conditions.

Although Jeju Island was not as uniquely blessed as Hokkaido, it had many similar advantageous conditions—it was a natural pastureland.

It wasn’t until Jeongui County town came into view that some fields appeared by the roadside. The fields had already been harvested, and stalks were scattered about. These were clearly dry fields.

“This county town is really run-down!” Nangong Wudi observed the town through his binoculars. Although the dilapidated state of the few county towns he had visited in southern Hainan had already surprised him, the condition of Jeongui County town was clearly worse.

The so-called city wall was just a wall built of volcanic rock, at most three meters high. And many parts had already collapsed. The construction method of Korean city walls, which involved piling stones straight up into a rectangular shape, resulted in an unstable foundation that could not be built very high and was not very strong.

The city gate did have a barbican for protection, but both the gate and the gate tower were too low. And just like Jeju town, there were no crenellations or parapets here.

Although the city wall was dilapidated, its circumference was still over a thousand paces. Even among the ancient county-level towns in China, it was not considered small.

A characteristic of Joseon fortress construction was their tendency to be overly large, always trying to enclose as much land as possible within the walls, even though there were not enough residents and buildings to fill the space. As a result, a large part of the area inside the walls was often farmland and wasteland.

The result was a flimsy wall surrounding an oversized city, with often insufficient defenders. It was adequate for fending off small bands of bandits and rioters, but it could not withstand a large-scale army. When the Japanese army invaded Korea, they advanced as if through uninhabited land, and not a single Korean city could hold out.

The same thought that had occurred to Xue Ziliang now came to Nangong Wudi: “Damn, a city like this might as well be taken by the labor corps—as a training exercise for the militia.”

Despite this, he was still cautious and sent out scouts for a close reconnaissance. There was a small village outside the city, but no other settlements.

The gates of Jeongui County town were already closed, and all the soldiers in the town had mounted the walls. But the commoners and officials in the town had no will to fight to the death. Firstly, the county magistrate had gone to Jeju, leaving no one in charge, and morale was low. Secondly, Jeongui County town had a fatal flaw: there was no water source within the walls. The water source was five li outside the town. The drinking water for the town was usually transported by people and cattle from the spring. The water used for daily chores was “heaven-sent water”—pits were dug in the ground, and buckets were placed to collect rainwater. This “heaven-sent water” could be used for washing clothes. If collected with bamboo pipes and left to settle for a while, it could also be drunk. It was now autumn and winter, the dry season, so the stored rainwater was insufficient. The only fresh water available in the entire town was the water stored in the water vats of each household, which would last for three or four days at most.

Without food, one could hold out for a considerable time. Without water, one couldn’t even last three days. Therefore, the soldiers and officials in the town were in a state of panic, not knowing what to do, only hoping that the “Wokou” would retreat quickly.