Hu Hao was acutely aware of the political dynamics within his own Group Army. With the possible exception of Li Jinsong, the other six Corps Commanders harbored a profound disdain for the Emperor and the Imperial Court.
This sentiment trickled down through the Division Commanders, all the way to the frontline grunts. The vast majority of these men had been saved from slaughter or starvation directly by Hu Hao and his forces. Their loyalty was intensely personal.
To the soldiers and the civilians in Late City, Daman City, and Nage City, the abstract concept of the "Empire" meant very little. When the Allied butchers had come, the Emperor's armies had fled or collapsed. It was Hu Hao's army that had stood its ground and bled to save them. Therefore, they recognized only Hu Hao as their Sovereign.
"Hao-ge, I say we just drop the pretense. We openly recruit as many men as we need, and you personally appoint the Division and Corps Commanders! Sure, finding competent Corps Commanders right now might be tough—honestly, even we are struggling—but we definitely have men capable of commanding Divisions!" Weng Tao urged, echoing the rebellious sentiment shared by many of the senior officers.
"I know that! But right now, we lack both sufficient officers and sufficient trained troops! Why on earth would we needlessly provoke the Emperor's wrath?! What's the rush? I will handle the political maneuvering! Do you honestly think I'm just sitting here swallowing his insults?!
"The man who can force me to eat a loss hasn't been born yet! Look at Tang Long in the Ministry of Defense! I'm stuck out here on the front lines right now, but if I were in the capital, I would have destroyed him by now!
"I'm telling you, I am suppressing my temper because I have no other choice! If you all were actually capable of independently commanding multi-corps engagements, do you think I'd be sitting in this command center?! I'd be leading the Vanguard Regiment and slaughtering my way straight to Vostok's headquarters!
"Think about where we started! We built this entire Group Army from the shattered remnants of a single division—the 87th! How long has it been? Barely three months! And look at us now! We command an army of nearly 600,000 men!
"We went from 12,000 men to 600,000! A fifty-fold expansion in three months!
"I'll be blunt: try doing my job for a day! I'm simultaneously establishing an officer training academy, managing basic training for hundreds of thousands of recruits, orchestrating massive offensives against the Allied coalition, expanding our territory, and playing political chess with a paranoid Emperor! It hasn't been easy! I defy anyone else to manage this without collapsing from sheer exhaustion!
"And yet you guys keep telling me to 'ignore the Emperor'! What exactly am I listening to him about?! I just humor him on paper! If I actually obeyed his strategic directives, I wouldn't have pushed south; I would have launched a suicidal offensive north to punch through the blockade!
"I already have a mountain of responsibilities. Why would I deliberately antagonize the Emperor right now and invite a political crisis?! We are thousands of kilometers away from the capital; 'the mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away.' How much does he really know about our day-to-day operations?
"When we win a battle, I report it. The Empire gets a morale boost, and we get the credit. But do you think I actually report my true troop strength?! Of course not!
"He ordered me to leave the Chief of Staff positions vacant so he could fill them with his political commissars. So, I left them vacant! Technically, we don't have enough qualified senior officers to fill those slots anyway!" Hu Hao explained his pragmatic, two-faced approach to Imperial politics. The two Corps Commanders nodded, finally understanding his rationale.
"Hao-ge, you carry an unbelievable burden. But we're genuinely worried. The moment the rainy season ends and those Imperial Chiefs of Staff finally arrive, they'll immediately realize how massive our army truly is! What happens then?
"Hao-ge, if the political situation deteriorates, you should just have the Special Operations Regiment infiltrate the capital and extract your family! Bring your parents here! I firmly believe that even if the rest of the Empire falls, we can hold this territory!
"And let's be honest: if we can't hold the line here, there's no way the incompetent aristocratic generals in the capital can hold theirs! Hao-ge, the brothers are worried about you. The entire 1st Group Army follows you alone. If something happens to you, what will we do?!" Wu Kexiao expressed the deep anxieties shared by the senior staff.
"Yeah, Hao-ge! Send the operatives to extract your parents secretly! If the Empire truly collapses, at least you'll be with your family!" Weng Tao agreed.
"I know. But it's not feasible right now. Sigh... don't worry about the political commissars. Let's see if they even survive the journey here first!" Hu Hao smiled darkly.
"Why? Hao-ge, are we going to assassinate them?! We can use the Special Operations Regiment to hit their convoy!" Wu Kexiao's eyes lit up, his mind immediately jumping to violent solutions.
"Good grief, can you stop being so bloodthirsty?! We don't need to assassinate anyone! The real question is whether they will even dare to come, or if they'll physically be able to make the journey!
"Think about it," Hu Hao explained patiently. "You just said it yourself: we command a massive, independent army. Do you think the Emperor trusts me? No. So, who will he send to supervise me?
"He won't send commoners; he doesn't trust them either. He'll send aristocratic scions! But once the dry season arrives, this entire sector is going to explode into apocalyptic, multi-corps warfare! Do you honestly believe those pampered aristocratic brats will willingly volunteer to march into a bloodbath?!
"Furthermore, when the dry season arrives, the Allied forces will launch massive offensives against the central and western fronts as well! The Emperor is going to need every competent officer he has just to plug the holes in his own collapsing lines! Do you think he'll have the luxury of sparing senior staff officers to play political games with me?
"Currently, the Empire officially fields roughly six million men. But how many of those are actually combat-effective? How many competent commanders do they have?
"And finally, when the dry season offensives begin, we are going to voluntarily cede a massive amount of this newly conquered territory. We can't hold every single city against a concentrated Allied push. We'll fall back to our fortified hubs.
"When that happens, I will flood the capital with reports of catastrophic defeats, massive casualties, and desperate defensive actions. I'll report the bad news and hide our actual victories! Tell me: if the capital believes this sector is a collapsing meat grinder, who the hell is going to volunteer to be my Chief of Staff?!" Hu Hao chuckled.
"Ah! That's brilliant! The aristocratic brats are terrified of dying!" Weng Tao realized the elegance of the plan.
"Exactly. Right now, I report our victories to secure political leverage and operational autonomy. Later, when the real fighting starts, I'll report horrific defeats to demand more resources and keep the political commissars far away!
"It's a step-by-step process. Honestly, I am extremely pessimistic about the Empire's chances of survival. I doubt the capital can hold the line. They might survive this upcoming dry season, but by next year, the Empire will likely face total collapse," Hu Hao stated grimly.
"Why?!" the two commanders asked, alarmed by his bleak assessment.
"Because if the Allied coalition conquers the Dongxian and Dongjun Kingdoms to the north, the Empire will be surrounded on four fronts! If a single front collapses, the entire nation falls. Even if by some miracle they manage to hold the lines, the sheer war of attrition will bleed the Empire dry. We simply don't have the industrial base to sustain a multi-front war indefinitely.
"Therefore, our absolute priority is rapidly expanding our troop strength and training a massive officer corps! We must ensure that when the Empire finally collapses, we possess the combat power to stand alone! Even if we can't launch strategic offensives, we must be able to hold our own enclave and bleed the invaders in a protracted war of attrition!" Hu Hao revealed his ultimate, desperate contingency plan.
"If that's the grim reality, Hao-ge, then you're absolutely right to placate the Emperor for now. There's no need to provoke a powerful enemy while your family is still within his reach," Wu Kexiao nodded solemnly, finally grasping the tightrope Hu Hao was walking.
"We must secure our own survival first. And honestly, we've already slaughtered enough Allied soldiers to proudly say we haven't shamed the uniform of the Eastern Spirit Empire! If the rest of the Imperial Army fought like us, the Allied coalition would have been thrown back into the ocean months ago!" Weng Tao added proudly.
Hu Hao remained silent, his heart heavy with sorrow. He desperately wanted the Empire to survive, or at least to hold out as long as possible. But his strategic analysis offered little hope. Barring a miracle, the Empire would likely fall by the next rainy season.
He shuddered to think of the apocalyptic slaughter that would follow a total national collapse. He couldn't bear to imagine the millions of civilians who would be butchered.
He had genuinely considered offering to assume the role of Grand Marshal to help the Emperor establish a coherent national defense. But he knew it was futile. The military was completely dominated by the aristocratic families. Even the Emperor's personal armies were effectively aristocratic fiefdoms; the Royal Family was simply the most powerful aristocratic house.
As a commoner general, it would be politically impossible for Hu Hao to exert genuine command authority over the aristocratic generals. They would sooner see the Empire burn than take orders from a peasant. The Emperor, aware of this dynamic, would never trust him with that much power anyway.
Having no other options, Hu Hao could only focus entirely on building his own independent strength, hoping to save as many lives as possible when the inevitable collapse came.
After concluding the strategy meeting, Hu Hao established his primary forward command post in Xinqiao City.
Simultaneously, he utilized the encrypted military network to broadcast live tactical seminars to the officer candidates training back in Daman City. He utilized the real-time drone feeds and frontline reports from the ongoing offensives to provide practical, immediate examples of combined-arms tactics and urban warfare doctrine. His goal was to drastically accelerate the tactical maturity of the newly appointed Platoon, Company, and Battalion Commanders.
As Hu Hao lectured, the engineering battalions launched dozens of reconnaissance drones toward Tonglong City, mapping the Allied defensive perimeter.
Wu Kexiao's two vanguard divisions had already arrived in the sector, and Weng Tao's Corps was rapidly approaching from the rear. They were expected to reach the staging areas outside Tonglong City by early evening.
The commander of the Allied garrison in Tonglong City was Major General Kesma, Commander of the Kabu Kingdom's 37th Corps. He had already detected the massive influx of Eastern Spirit forces in the surrounding towns. Since that morning, he had lost contact with several of his outer perimeter garrisons, and the remaining outposts were reporting heavy contact.
It was obvious to Kesma that the Eastern Spirit forces intended to systematically eliminate his outer perimeter before launching a massive, concentrated siege on Tonglong City itself. He couldn't afford to be complacent; Tonglong City was the primary logistical artery for the entire theater. If he lost the city, the frontline armies would starve.
"Damn it! How did Hu Hao expand this rapidly?! He's actually threatening our sector?! Late City is over 700 kilometers away! How did his forces project power this deep into our rear echelon?!" Kesma muttered, staring at the strategic map with a deep frown.
"Commander, High Command just redeployed three fresh divisions to reinforce us. We currently have two full corps garrisoning this sector! Surely Hu Hao isn't insane enough to assault a fortified position held by two corps?!" his Chief of Staff asked nervously.
"Why wouldn't he dare?! His forces practically annihilated the Mara 1st Corps! The Imperial Guard! At this point, I don't think there's a single unit in the Allied coalition he's afraid to attack! Sigh. When I was assigned to garrison this rear-echelon supply hub, I thought it would be a peaceful, lucrative deployment. I never imagined I'd actually have to fight a massive battle here!" Kesma sighed heavily, the reality of the impending meat grinder settling over him.
(End of Chapter)