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"I will obey the Grand Commander's orders!"

The generals responded with a thunderous roar, their voices echoing through the tent.

Song Shidao then began to make detailed arrangements:
"First, move all 'Zhenyue' heavy catapults, 'Eight-Ox Crossbows,' and 'Whirlwind Cannons' to the pre-arranged positions three miles in front of the city and bombard the southeast and northwest sections of Liaodong City's walls day and night! The walls here are relatively old, and the terrain is advantageous for my observation and command. Don't be stingy with stones, bullets, and oil; I want those two sections of the walls to collapse within five days!"

"Second, all the elite engineers of the engineering battalion will be divided into three groups and secretly dig tunnels from different directions, directly under the foundation of the city wall! Fill them with gunpowder and flammable oil! When the general attack is launched, detonate them at the same time to completely shake the foundation of the city's defenses! Be careful to prevent smoke, water, and enemy counter-digging."

"Thirdly, with naval cooperation, we will block the river and cut off all reinforcements! Madam Shan!"

"You shall lead the main force of the East China Sea Navy to completely blockade the lower reaches of the Yalu River and the river surface near Liaodong City, intercepting any reinforcements or grain ships that may come from the direction of Pyongyang! At the same time, use ship-borne heavy crossbows and catapults to bombard the riverside city walls and docks of Liaodong City, thus tying down its garrison forces!"

"Order!"

"Fourth, each army's 'Vanguard Death Squad' shall immediately select the bravest and most valiant, and equip them with the finest armor (double-layered composite armor), the sharpest weapons, grappling hooks, and shields. They shall conduct assault drills to familiarize themselves with siege tactics and urban warfare coordination. The reward will be doubled! Those who are the first to scale the walls will be granted titles and rewards, and their descendants will be blessed with honors!"

"Fifth, widely publicize the fear and trembling of the Goguryeo royal court during Queen Eun's trip to Pyongyang. Send arrows into the city to inform the garrison that those who resist will be severely punished on the day the city falls; those who lay down their weapons will be spared and may even be employed. The focus should be on sowing discord among the Han Chinese and Mohe tribal soldiers in their army."

Orders were issued in rapid succession, and the entire Chinese army camp, like a war behemoth wound up tightly, began to operate with unprecedented efficiency and fervor. Long-suppressed anger and the desire to achieve glory transformed into terrifying war energy.

May 3rd, morning.

On the walls of Liaodong, the defending soldiers watched the sudden increase in noise and movement of the Hua army camp outside the city, the enormous vehicles being dragged forward slowly by oxen and horses, and the naval warships lined up like a forest of masts on the river. Their faces turned pale, and a sense of despair, as if a great calamity was about to befall them, spread through them.

The commander defending the city was Yeon Jeong-do (a cousin of Yeon Gaesomun), a veteran of the Goguryeo royal family and a fierce and valiant man. Knowing there was no way out but to fight to the death, he ordered all his troops to hold the city at all costs, driving the able-bodied men and even some of the elderly and weak to the city walls to help with the defense, and stockpiling logs, stones, molten gold, and hot oil. At the same time, he kept sending letters to Pyongyang requesting reinforcements.

The fourth day of the fifth lunar month, at noon.

With Song Shidao's command, nearly a hundred "Zhenyue" catapults and hundreds of medium-sized trebuchets roared simultaneously! Thousands of stone projectiles (some soaked in oil and ignited) and specially made pottery jars filled with iron nails and poisonous smoke rained down on the southeast and northwest walls of Liaodong City like a deadly storm!
"Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!"

The earth shook violently! Smoke and dust billowed into the sky!
The sturdy city walls trembled violently under such intense and continuous bombardment! Bricks and stones shattered, and rammed earth collapsed! In particular, the two pre-designed weak sections of the wall quickly developed obvious cracks and gaps! Countless defenders were killed or wounded, their screams drowned out by the roar. The fireball ignited the city towers and tents, billowing thick smoke.

At the same time, long-range strikes by naval warships on the river also began, suppressing the riverside city walls and preventing them from effectively supporting the inland areas.

The bombardment continued for a full day and night, almost without pause. The Liaodong city wall was riddled with holes, and the defending soldiers were exhausted both physically and mentally.

The fifth day of May.

"Detonate!"

With Song Shidao's calm command, the massive amounts of gunpowder and flammable oil buried in the three secret tunnels dug under the city wall were simultaneously ignited!

“Rumble——!!!”

A terrifying roar, ten times more powerful than a stone bombardment and as if an earth dragon were turning over, suddenly erupted from underground in the southeast, north, and southwest directions of Liaodong City! The earth undulated like waves, and soil and rocks shot into the sky from the foundation of the city walls!

Especially the section of the city wall in the southeast corner, which had been shattered by the pelting of stones, emitted a teeth-grinding groan as the gunpowder below exploded violently. A section of the wall, more than ten zhang long, collapsed inward as if cleaved by a giant axe! It raised clouds of dust and formed a huge, fatal gap!

"The city walls have fallen! The Chinese army has stormed in!"

The piercing, distorted alarm blared throughout the city! The defenders' last line of defense crumbled completely with the collapse of this section of the city wall!

"All troops—attack!"

Song Shidao drew his longsword, pointing it straight at the gap!

"kill--!!!"

The long-awaited Chinese vanguard, like a black torrent bursting its banks, charged desperately toward the massive, smoke-filled breach amidst the deafening sounds of war drums and horns! Archers poured a hail of arrows from the rear, suppressing the remaining defenders on both sides of the breach.

The fierce generals Qin Qiong and Yuchi Jingde took the lead, leading their elite cavalry to rush in through the gap! The infantry followed like a tide.

Street fighting raged fiercely in every street, every market, and every courtyard within Liaodong City. Some loyal Goguryeo soldiers among the defenders put up a stubborn resistance, using their familiarity with the terrain to their advantage. However, the majority of soldiers, especially the conscripted militia and tribal soldiers with disloyal intentions, had long lost their will to fight, either surrendering on their knees or scattering and fleeing.

Yuan Jingtu led his personal guards in a final stand in front of the royal palace (there was also a temporary palace in Liaodong City), but was killed by Qin Qiong and Yuchi Jingde. His head was displayed high on a flagpole.

May 6th, dusk.

The street fighting that had lasted for a day and a night had largely subsided. Within Liaodong City, most areas were under the control of the Chinese army, with only sporadic resistance remaining. The black banners of the Chinese dynasty began to rise from the ruined city walls and towering palaces.

Surrounded by his personal guards, Song Shidao entered the Goguryeo Liaodong Palace. The palace was in complete disarray; gold, silver, and valuables had been looted by fleeing palace servants and eunuchs, leaving only some heavy objects. The air reeked of blood and smoke. "Grand Commander," the military advisor reported, "we have captured 347 people, including members of the Goguryeo royal family, officials, generals, and their families. They are currently being held in a side hall on the west side of the palace. Please give your instructions on what to do with them."

Song Shidao's expression was calm, without joy or sorrow. He walked to the main hall of the palace, looked at the throne that represented the royal power of Goguryeo, and slowly said: "According to Your Majesty's established strategy and my pre-war declaration: all members of the Goguryeo royal family, except for children under the age of twelve, regardless of gender, are war criminals and cannot be pardoned."

"However, His Majesty is benevolent and does not delight in killing. Order: all members of the royal family who are adults or over twelve years of age, as well as officials and generals who bear the primary responsibility for resistance, shall be stripped of their titles and official positions, their surnames revoked, and reduced to commoners. Together with their immediate family members, they shall all be exiled!"

"Where are you being sent?" the soldier pressed.

Song Shidao looked southwest: "The newly developed Silver Mountain in Yingzhou (Japan), the wasteland of the newly established Heishui Prefecture (Heilongjiang River basin) north of Liaodong, and... the newly annexed lands of Hexi and Longyou, all urgently need labor to cultivate land, build roads and cities. Disperse them into several teams and hand them over to the local garrisons and land reclamation offices for supervision. Strictly supervise them and make them atone for their sins through labor. Anyone who shows any dissent, escapes, or incites others will be executed without pardon."

"What about...those children under twelve years old?"

A complex emotion flashed in Song Shidao's eyes, but it quickly returned to firmness: "Gather them together and temporarily settle them. Select the intelligent and well-mannered ones and send them to the Imperial Academy and the Imperial College in the capital to learn Chinese characters and classics, and educate them with Chinese laws so that they may become citizens of the Chinese Dynasty. The stubborn and unyielding ones will be placed in the border regions to support themselves, strictly supervised, and never allowed to enter officialdom, practice martial arts, or return to the former territory of Goguryeo."

"What about the ordinary people and surrendered soldiers in the city?" the military advisor continued to inquire.

"Issue a proclamation to reassure the people and reiterate our military discipline. The people shall live in peace and not be disturbed. Surrendered soldiers shall be screened. Those who have committed no major crimes and are genuinely loyal may be incorporated into the auxiliary troops or sent to the interior to cultivate land. Those who resist to the end and have notorious misdeeds shall be punished the same as the royal family and exiled to the borderlands. The entire Goguryeo official system shall be abolished. Local administration shall be temporarily taken over by our army's civil officials and soldiers accompanying the army. Chinese laws shall be implemented, land shall be surveyed, and households shall be registered."

The order was swiftly carried out. Cries, pleas, and shouts rang out in the western palace, but were quickly suppressed by military command. Teams of former Goguryeo princes, nobles, generals, officials, and their families, bound together by ropes and with ashen faces, staggered away from the cities they had once ruled, escorted by black-armored soldiers, towards the arduous land of exile. The terrified and bewildered children were placed in a separate group.

Standing on the high platform outside the palace, looking at the ruined but now largely restored Liaodong City in the twilight, Song Shidao felt little joy in his victory.

Conquest is always accompanied by blood and fire, and by the tragedies of countless individuals and families. But he knew that this was the inevitable price to pay for unification, and the swift and decisive means necessary to establish lasting peace.

…………

In the autumn of the eleventh year of the establishment of the dynasty, the last stubborn Western Turkic tribe presented the Chinese army with a golden wolf-headed staff symbolizing their submission on the banks of the Suyab River (now the Chu River), bringing an end to the large-scale conquest that had lasted for nearly ten years.

The vast Mongolian Plateau and most of the Western Regions (up to the Pamir Mountains) were incorporated into the territory of the Chinese dynasty. The Beiting Protectorate (governed from Tingzhou, present-day Jimsar) and the Anxi Protectorate (governed from Kucha, present-day Kuqa) were established to govern the region, and military settlements were established, and post stations were built along the straight roads.

By this time, the territory of the Hua Empire stretched from the Sea of ​​Japan and Ryukyu Islands in the east to the Pamir Mountains and the middle and upper reaches of the Syr Darya River in the west, bordering the eastern frontier of the Sasanian Persian Empire; it encompassed the vast steppes to the south of Lake Baikal in the north, and extended to Jiaozhi (northern Vietnam) and the islands of the South China Sea in the south. Its territory covered most of the richest and most central regions of Asia. Its vastness was unprecedented.

The imperial center exercised its radiating management through the Four Capitals system (Luoyang, Chang'an, Xiangyang, and Youzhou) and six large Protectorates (Andong, Anbei, Shanyu, Beiting, Anxi, and Nanhai).

The end of the war was not the end of expansion, but the beginning of a full-scale shift in the massive state apparatus toward internal development and governance.

With his visionary insights, absolute authority, and the new system that he has initially built and continuously improved over the past decade, Yi Huwei has led this giant empire onto a high-speed development track that surpasses any previous dynasty.

The central decision-making and execution system, centered on the three departments of the State Council, the Privy Council, and the Censorate, is mature, mutually checks and balances each other, and is extremely efficient.

After ten years of implementation, the imperial examination system had taken root in people's hearts and become the primary means of selecting officials. A large number of scholars from humble backgrounds, and even a few naturalized foreign elites who were well-versed in Chinese studies, were able to enter the government, which greatly reformed the composition and vitality of the bureaucracy.

Locally, the administration and judiciary were separated at the prefecture and county levels. The governors and magistrates were in charge of administration, the patrol offices were responsible for public security and basic education, and the "anchasi," a branch of the supervisory authority directly under the central government, was responsible for supervision.

Meanwhile, in the frontier protectorates and newly developed areas, a flexible policy combining "control" and "direct administration" was adopted. Local customs were respected, and tribal chiefs and original nobles were appointed as hereditary local officials, but they had to accept Chinese laws, Chinese language education, and supervision from "temporary officials" dispatched by the central government.

The vast network of post stations and the system of censors who regularly inspected the capital ensured that even in the most remote corners of the empire, government orders could be relatively smoothly delivered and information could be fed back.

The empire maintains a standing elite force of about 600,000 men, of which 200,000 of the most elite imperial guards are stationed in the four capitals and key locations in the heart of the empire, while the rest are stationed in various protectorates and important passes.

At the same time, the "Fubing system" was fully implemented, with military garrisons established in various places, land granted, farming during the agricultural season, training during the leisure season, and conscription during wartime. This not only guaranteed the source of soldiers but also reduced the financial burden on the central government and closely integrated military forces with local production.

The well-developed military academy system cultivated a large number of mid- to low-ranking officers, ensuring the professionalism and loyalty of the army. The navy was unparalleled in its time; the fleet under Shan Meixian's command not only controlled the waters of East Asia, but its exploration fleet had sailed as far as Luzon and Borneo, and even made contact with merchant ships in the Indian Ocean.

The thorough implementation of the "Equal Field Edict" greatly liberated productive forces, leading to a surge in the number of self-cultivating farmers. The imperial court vigorously promoted new agricultural tools such as the curved plow and the waterwheel, constructed water conservancy projects, and introduced superior varieties such as Champa rice, resulting in a steady increase in grain production.

By the twentieth year of its establishment, the empire's registered arable land area had more than doubled compared to its early days. In the handicraft sector, the state-run "Tiangongyuan" (Imperial Workshop), under the leadership of Lu Miaozi, continuously improved techniques in textiles, metallurgy, shipbuilding, porcelain making, and papermaking. Private handicrafts also flourished under the stimulus of a unified market and low-tax policies, with Luoyang, Chang'an, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, and Quanzhou becoming major handicraft centers and commodity distribution hubs. Commerce experienced unprecedented prosperity, with the Grand Canal (renovated and widened based on the Sui Dynasty's Grand Canal) connecting north and south, along with the extensive network of official roads facilitating the flow of goods.

Under the strong protection of the empire, the Silk Road became even safer and more prosperous, attracting merchants from all over the world to Chang'an, Dunhuang, Kucha, Shule, and other places. The Maritime Silk Road also became increasingly busy, with masts standing tall in ports such as Guangzhou, Mingzhou (Ningbo), and Quanzhou. The empire issued unified copper coins and reputable "Baochao" (a rudimentary form of paper money with reserves of gold, silver, and silk), thus establishing a preliminary financial system.

The government established Mandarin Chinese as the official language, compiled the "Chinese Classical Dictionary" and the "Dingding Dadian" (a massive encyclopedia encompassing classics, history, philosophy, literature, astronomy, geography, agriculture, industry, and medicine), and vigorously promoted official education.

Official schools were established in every prefecture and county, and the popularization rate of elementary education far exceeded that of any previous era. While upholding the dominant position of Chinese culture, a relatively tolerant attitude was adopted towards the cultures of various ethnic groups that had submitted to it. Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism, and even the shamanistic beliefs of the grasslands could all exist legally as long as they did not violate the law or threaten the rule, but they were subject to management.

This cultural cohesion and inclusiveness, coupled with advanced production methods and a significant improvement in living standards, made the "Sinicization" process in the border regions natural and rapid, though not forced. Countless merchants from Central Asia, envoys to China, and students flocked to the capital, bringing exotic customs and taking away the seeds of Chinese civilization.

Of course, no one can take military technology with them. (End of Chapter)