"Lord."
Guan Yu spurred his massive stallion forward, his green robe fluttering in the wind as he approached to report the final butcher's bill. "In this engagement, our forces have slain over a thousand enemy riders, captured more than thirteen hundred prisoners, and seized over a thousand fully trained northern warhorses! It is a complete, unmitigated victory!"
The proud three-thousand-man legion of the White Horse Volunteers had suffered an astronomical eighty percent casualty rate in a single afternoon.
"What are our own losses?" Zhang Xin asked, his tone level.
A rare, triumphant grin broke through Guan Yu's normally stoic visage. "Five slain, and just over ten wounded."
Standing nearby, Qu Yi's eyes flared with an intense, processing shock. A casualty ratio of five to nearly three thousand? That wasn't a standard military engagement—it was a supernatural anomaly.
Yet, Zhang Xin's face remained entirely devoid of joy.
Five more, he thought bitterly. Five more veterans of the Yellow Turban Old Guard... gone forever.
"I understand," Zhang Xin said, his voice dropping an octave into a cold, detached solemnity. "Detail a secure detail to escort the remains of our fallen brothers back to their ancestral homes in Pingyuan. Ensure their families receive the maximum bereavement stipends. As for the wounded, mobilize the best camp medics immediately; I want their lacerations treated with absolute care. No man is to suffer lasting structural ailments due to neglect."
"Understood."
Sensing the heavy shift in his lord's demeanor, Guan Yu's smile vanished. He cupped his fists respectfully, wheeled his horse around, and departed, letting out a silent, emotional sigh. Lord... you are truly a benevolent master.
"To secure an absolute victory of this magnitude, yet preserve such total emotional composure," Qu Yi remarked, his voice thick with genuine reverence. "Victorious without a shred of arrogance—the Lord is truly the premier peerless general of this era!"
"You misread me, General Qu," Zhang Xin sighed, rubbing his temples. "I simply feel a profound, aching grief for the loss of these warriors. They have bled beside me across the realm for over a decade. Their lives are not cheap."
In truth, Zhang Xin was well aware of the mathematical variables that had permitted such an absurdly lopsided casualty ratio.
Just the previous evening, he had executed a midnight raid directly into the Xiongnu auxiliary camp. The nomads had been completely blind to his approach, wallowing in alcohol and security complacency. The moment the Xuanjia heavy cavalry smashed through their perimeter fences, the Xiongnu fell into a blind, screaming panic, fleeing rather than organizing a cohesive counter-offensive.
Zhang Xin's explicit tactical objective for that midnight blitz had never been a high body count. His targets were their logistics: the massive, tightly packed horse corrals. By setting the main stables ablaze and unleashing a wave of terror, he ensured the enemy's mobility was crippled. How many horses burned to death or bolted into the wilderness was left to the whims of fate.
Operating deep within Han Fu's sovereign territory, encircled by hostile garrisons, he knew a prolonged engagement was operational suicide. They had struck like lightning and vanished before the embers could cool. The Xuanjia Army hadn't lost a single man to the Xiongnu because they had never broken stride to trade blows.
As for today's masterpiece by the riverbank, the entirety of the tactical friction had been absorbed by Qu Yi's brilliant defensive line. The Xuanjia Army had merely acted as the closing jaws of the trap, slamming into the Volunteers' flanks only after their momentum had been entirely paralyzed and their formations shattered into a chaotic heap.
Furthermore, the current White Horse Volunteers were a far cry from the terrifying, veteran legion of later history. At this specific juncture in time, they possessed nothing but an empty, romantic title.
In the original timeline, Gongsun Zan's riders earned their legendary reputation through fire and blood, campaigning continuously through the bloody suppressions of Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun, the brutal pacifications of the Wuhuan, the endless border wars against the Xianbei, and the grinding campaigns against the local Yellow Turban remnants. They had survived dozens of large-scale meat grinders, forging an iron combat experience.
But in this timeline? Every single shred of Gongsun Zan's historical campaign experience had been systematically devoured by Zhang Xin.
With Zhang Xin occupying the northern borders and dominating the frontier threats, Gongsun Zan had been left with no valid military targets to farm for experience points. Where else was he supposed to level up his men?
Consequently, out of those three thousand riders, only the few dozen core Yicong guards riding the conspicuous white horses possessed genuine, battle-hardened instincts. The remaining ninety-eight percent of the regiment were, at absolute best, common bandits stuffed into official imperial uniforms.
The moment Qu Yi unleashed his devastating mechanical crossbow volleys, followed instantly by the thunderous flanking hammer of the Xuanjia heavy cavalry, the standard recruits lost their minds. They didn't even possess the baseline discipline to draw their blades; they simply turned their mounts to flee or dropped to their knees to beg for quarter.
Even with all those compounding structural advantages, fighting two separate operational engagements across twenty-four hours while incurring a mere five fatalities was a logistical miracle.
Zhang Xin understood the math. In the grand calculus of war, men were currency; they had to be spent to purchase territory. Yet, even after ten years of surviving this brutal translation into the Han Dynasty, he still could not bring himself to view the lives of his soldiers as mere cold digits on a ledger like the other regional lords did. At the very least, for the men of the original Yellow Turban Old Guard, his heart remained fiercely protective.
"The Lord's benevolence is boundless," Qu Yi murmured, his respect deepening.
His own personal corps consisted entirely of private household soldiers—sons, cousins, and lifelong retainers of the prominent Qu lineage. They ate from the same iron pots, slept under the same canvas tents, and had bled together for decades. Their interpersonal bonds were absolute. Had he lost five of his core family elite today, he would be drowning his sorrows in spirits, not celebrating.
"Most of the core legions under my command possess unique tactical designations," Zhang Xin said, breaking the somber mood with a warm smile. "General Qu, your martial merit stands supreme today. I believe it is only fitting that we mark this occasion by bestowing a formal title upon your private regiment. What say you?"
Qu Yi's posture went completely rigid, a wave of profound astonishment washing over his face. "The Lord is willing to grant my men an official designation? I... I am overwhelmed with gratitude!"
In the grand martial traditions of the era, an official, independent unit designation was a privilege reserved exclusively for the elite vanguard of the realm. It was clear proof that after a single afternoon of combat, Zhang Xin had fully recognized his tactical genius and accepted him into his inner military circle.
Zhang Xin noted with inward satisfaction that despite just crushing a legendary cavalry unit, Qu Yi displayed zero of the toxic, abrasive hubris that historically defined him. He was using deeply humble, deferential language, treating the title as a supreme honor bestowed from above.
It was clear that today's perfectly orchestrated trap had thoroughly, completely subdued Qu Yi's volatile ego.
In the annals of the original history, Han Fu's administrative incompetence had driven Qu Yi away, while Yuan Shao had spent the early years of his regime paralyzed with fear over Gongsun Zan's mobile supremacy. None of Yuan Shao's elite commanders could match the speed of the northern horsemen. It was Qu Yi who had stepped into the vacuum. His masterful defense at the Battle of Jieqiao had single-handedly broken Gongsun Zan's martial spirit, forcing the warlord into a paranoid, reclusive shell from which he never recovered.
Throughout the endless, grinding conflicts that followed across Ji Province, Qu Yi had been Yuan Shao's premier blunt instrument, consistently out-maneuvering and slaughtering the northern forces. At the historic Battle of Baoqiu, Qu Yi had seamlessly allied with Yan Rou and regional coalition forces to deliver a decapitation strike against Gongsun Zan, slaughtering over twenty thousand elite troops in a single afternoon. It was that catastrophic loss that drove Gongsun Zan to construct his infamous multi-tiered watchtowers, sealing himself inside a fortress to wallow in wine and concubines until his ultimate demise.
Without Qu Yi's operational genius, Yuan Shao would have likely been ground to dust by the White Horse Volunteers long before the unification of the north. Even if Yuan Shao had somehow managed a sloppy victory, his consolidation of Ji Province would have been delayed by nearly a decade. Had the historic showdown at Guandu manifested under those parameters, Yuan Shao would have found himself trapped in a fatal, multi-front pincer between a rising Cao Cao in the south and an intact Gongsun Zan in the north.
Because his historical achievements were so monumental, and because Yuan Shao possessed no other military commanders of equal stature to keep him in check, Qu Yi's ego had naturally ballooned into a toxic, unmanageable insubordination that ultimately forced Yuan Shao to execute him for treason.
But under Zhang Xin's grand banner? Qu Yi possessed absolutely zero capital to behave arrogantly.
He didn't even rank in the top five of the current order of battle. Commanders like Zhang Liao, Guan Yu, Dian Wei, Zhao Yun, Gao Shun, Xu He, Yu Jin, and Yue Jin had all amassed mountainous piles of legendary military achievements under Zhang Xin's direct oversight. As a freshly surrendered general, Qu Yi could not match their historical seniority, nor could his single victory compete with their decades of legendary service.
More importantly, Zhang Xin himself was an undefeated martial titan. His sheer administrative and tactical gravity was more than enough to keep Qu Yi's ego permanently, completely suppressed.
"Since you approve," Zhang Xin pondered for a moment, his eyes scanning the horizons. "Your vanguard legion shall henceforth be known across the realm as the Pioneer Camp—the Xiandeng."
"The Xiandeng? The First to Ascend?!" Qu Yi's breath caught in his throat, a surge of profound pride warming his chest. He dropped to one knee, slamming his fist over his heart plate. "Thank you, Lord, for bestowing such an illustrious mantle upon my family's blades!"
In the military protocols of the Han Dynasty, the four supreme accomplishments a warrior could achieve on a field of blood were explicitly codified: decapitator of enemy commanders (zhanjiang), captor of the enemy standard (duoqi), breaker of the line (pizhen), and the absolute first to scale the enemy battlements—the Xiandeng. To carry the name of the Xiandeng meant his unit was officially recognized as the absolute tip of Zhang Xin's imperial spear.
"Rise, General," Zhang Xin smiled, gesturing toward the disciplined line of crossbowmen standing quietly behind them. "However... a mere one thousand men is far too small a complement for a premier vanguard camp. Give me a few days to process the regional logistics; I will personally allocate several thousand elite recruits to your command to fill the Xiandeng out into a fully reinforced, independent legion."
Qu Yi bowed his head once more, a profound, unfamiliar wave of raw emotional loyalty swelling within his chest as he thought back to his miserable years wasting away under Han Fu's regime.
On the surface, Han Fu had always spoken politely to him, praising his utility. But deep within his aristocratic bones, that corrupt Confucian bureaucrat had viewed him as nothing more than a crude, uncultured barbarian mercenary plucked from the trash heaps of Western Liang. Han Fu had treated him with permanent, systemic contempt.
In contrast, look at someone like Zhang He. Despite being a green, unproven youth, the moment he brought his local family militia to surrender, Han Fu had instantly showered him with an independent Military Commission. Yet he, Qu Yi, who had spent his youth bleeding in the trenches against the fierce Qiang nomads of Liang Province, a man whose skin was a tapestry of scars from real combat, had been insulted with a minor, administrative desk job as an Assistant Aide.
Now, look at the contrast. The moment he pledged his blade to Zhang Xin, he wasn't just handed an elite independent commission—he was immediately entrusted with strategic command and granted additional regular troops to build his dream legion.
This is a true Lord! Qu Yi thought, his fists clenching with an intense fervor. Look at this man's staggering magnanimity! Look at his boundless operational vision! What right does a worm like Han Fu have to even breathe the same air as the Marquis?
In that exact microsecond, Qu Yi realized that surrendering Liyang... no, submitting his entire soul and lineage to the destiny of Zhang Xin, was the single wisest, most brilliant decision he had ever executed in his entire life.
While they spoke, Zuo Bao and the secondary cavalry details completed their sweep of the field, dragging the massive lines of captured horses and weeping Volunteers into neat columns.
"Return to the fortress," Zhang Xin commanded, waving his leather whip toward the horizon. He led the combined vanguard and the massive train of captives back toward the secured gates of Liyang.
During a scheduled water stop halfway down the road, Zhang Xin dismounted, spreading a massive, detailed silk map of Ji Province across the flat surface of a smooth stone outcropping.