On the eve of the fall of Liaodong, he led his troops in a remonstrance against the young marshal.

Bhikkhu Kingdom, Little City.

The air in the headquarters meeting room was as still as a heavy lead plate.

The incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling emitted a faint hum, their pale light illuminating the faces of everyone on either side of the long table, making those already gloomy faces appear even more ashen.

No one speaks.

Prime Minister Saito Makoto sat at the head of the left side of the long table, his hands crossed on the table, his fingers intertwined, his knuckles white.

In front of him lay a document, the full text of a battle report from the Kwantung Army headquarters. It had been read countless times, and the edges of the pages were wrinkled and stained with sweat from being pinched by fingers.

The 2nd, 19th, and 20th Divisions were completely annihilated.

With the fall of Lushun Fortress and the collapse of Fengcheng Defense Line, Goguryeo's gateway was wide open.

One hundred and twenty thousand elite Imperial Army soldiers were reduced to a series of cold casualty figures.

Army Minister Minami Jiro sat opposite Saito Makoto. The medals on his uniform reflected a dim gold light under the lamplight, but he no longer had the arrogance and conceit he had shown before.

At this moment, his back was slightly hunched, his hands were on his knees, his fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly, and the veins on the back of his hands were bulging.

Prince Kan'in sat at the end of the long table, his hands resting on his military sword, the scabbard against the floor. His aged face was expressionless, but the knuckles of his hand on the hilt of the sword had turned bluish-white from the force.

Navy Minister Mineo Ōsumi leaned back in his chair, his expression seemingly calm, but his fingers were constantly tapping lightly on the edge of the table, the rhythm irregular, sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

Foreign Minister Hirota Koki sat furthest away, near the door. He kept his head down, repeatedly wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief, which was already soaked with sweat.

120,000 people.

This number hangs over everyone's head like a knife that could fall at any moment.

The side door of the conference room was pushed open.

Everyone stood up at the same time, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a screeching sound.

The king of the little kingdom strode in, his steps unhurried, his military boots making a dull thud with each step.

Instead of wearing his usual civil official's formal attire, he changed into the military uniform of an army marshal, with the imperial sword with chrysanthemum patterns hanging at his waist, the tassel of which swayed gently with his steps.

He stood at the head of the long table without sitting down.

His gaze slowly swept across each person's face.

Under his gaze, Nanjiro lowered his head, while Kenji Doihara huddled in the corner, a fine layer of cold sweat beading on his forehead.

Saito Minoru wanted to say something, but in front of those sinister eyes, he swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

"Can anyone tell me?"

The king's cold voice echoed throughout the conference room:

What exactly happened in Northeast China?

No one answered.

Why did the situation deteriorate so badly?

His gaze lingered on the Minister of the Army's face. "Nanjiro."

Nanjiro shuddered and reflexively straightened his back:

"His Majesty!"

"What guarantees did you give me before?"

The king's voice was icy. "Before we set out, who told me that our army was invincible and that we would conquer the entire northeast within three months?"

He paused, his gaze shifting from Nanjiro to every face in the room:

"Who said that the Imperial Army is invincible and the Chinese army is utterly defeated?"

The meeting room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"Now."

The king's tone was cold: "120,000 imperial soldiers perished in the northeast."

"Lushun Fortress, the unsinkable warship that the empire built over thirty years, is lost."

"The Fengcheng defense line, the northern gateway to Goguryeo, has also fallen."

"Goguryeo, which the empire has managed for thirty years, is now wide open, and the Chinese army can cross the Yalu River at any time."

He stopped, raised his eyes, and all that remained in them was a chilling coldness that pierced to the bone.

"This responsibility..."

He asked, word by word, "Who will take responsibility?"

silence.

Nanjiro's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and beads of sweat slid down his temples, dripping onto his military uniform collar insignia and spreading into a small, dark stain.

His fingers trembled slightly on his knees, but he tried to remain calm on his face.

He was the Minister of War, and all the defeats in this room were fought by the army; all the shame was etched on the army's flag.

He knew he couldn't escape, so he had to find a scapegoat before he was held accountable.

He stood up shakily, his knees hitting the edge of the table with a dull thud.

All eyes turned to him, some with sympathy, some with schadenfreude, and some with a sense of shared misfortune.

Nanjiro took a deep breath and said in a trembling voice:

"Your Majesty! In my opinion, the failure in this battle lies with the intelligence!"

His voice rose sharply when he said the word "intelligence," as if grasping at a straw, "When did the Northeast Army acquire a large-scale tank force?"

"Where did their armored forces come from? Where were they purchased from? How many are there? What is their organization?"

"The military was completely unaware of all this beforehand!"

His finger suddenly pointed at Kenji Doihara, who was huddled in the corner:

"The soldiers of the army are using their flesh and blood to fight against the iron torrent of the Chinese!"

"This is not a battle, this is a massacre! And the root cause of this passive situation is a fatal dereliction of duty in the Special Higher Police's intelligence work!"

"Kenji Doihara, as the head of the Special Higher Police, is undeniably culpable!"

Doihara's face turned deathly pale in an instant.

All eyes in the room were now on him.

There was no pity in those eyes. Nanjiro needed a scapegoat, and the most suitable candidate for that scapegoat was none other than Doihara.

The Special Higher Police (THP) is responsible for intelligence on China. With such a major upheaval in the Northeast Army, the THP did not issue any warning. If this charge of dereliction of duty is confirmed, Doihara will be finished.

Everyone present understood this, including Toimoto himself.

The king's gaze turned to Doihara.

That gaze was as cold as icicles in the dead of winter, piercing through Doihara's body and pinning him to the spot.

"Doihara."

The king's tone was unusually calm. "Do you have anything to say?"

Doihara's lips trembled, and his Adam's apple bobbed wildly, like a chicken being strangled.

He stammered, his voice sharp and distorted, sounding particularly jarring in the quiet conference room:

"Your Majesty...Your Majesty! Your subject has a report to submit!"

The king did not respond, but simply stared at him expressionlessly, waiting for him to continue.

Doihara took a deep breath, knowing that every word he uttered from now on would determine his life.

He tried his best to calm himself down, walked to the side of the long table, placed his hands on the tabletop, and began to speak at an extremely rapid pace.

"Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, the reason why this battle took such an unexpected turn was not due to poor intelligence work, but because of a variable within the Northeast Army that we never anticipated."

He paused, wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and then said the name:

"Zhang Xueming".

There was a moment of silence in the conference room.

Several army and navy generals looked at each other, their eyes filled with confusion.

The name was completely foreign to them.

Zhang Xueming, the second marshal of the Northeast Army? Zhang Zuolin's second son?

That good-for-nothing who lived in the shadow of his father and brother in the Northeast, never had any outstanding military achievements, and was rarely mentioned in any important military intelligence.

Doihara noticed the confusion on everyone's faces, and he knew he had to strike while the iron was hot and pour out all this information at once:

"Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, please allow me to explain."

"For a long time, the Empire's intelligence focus has been on Zhang Xueliang, because we judged that the real power of the Northeast Army was in Zhang Xueliang's hands."

"Although Zhang Xueming was Zhang Xueliang's younger brother, he was always low-key, never participated in military affairs, and never showed any obvious hostility towards Japan."

"Before the September 18 Incident, our assessment of him was that he was insignificant."

He swallowed hard, his voice beginning to tremble:

"But on the very night of the September 18 Incident, everything changed."

"According to our intelligence, on the night of September 18, Zhang Xueming suddenly went mad. He personally led his guards to surround the Fengtian Theater, pointed a gun at Zhang Xueliang's head, and forced him to hand over military power."

"Zhang Xueliang complied under duress, and the two then flew back to Fengtian together."

"From that moment on, the actual command of the Northeast Army fell into the hands of Zhang Xueming."

The air in the meeting room grew even heavier.

The generals' expressions shifted from confusion to shock.

A mutiny? Kidnapping his own brother? On the very night the Kwantung Army launched its attack?

"The series of battles that followed were all personally commanded by Zhang Xueming."

Doihara spoke faster and faster, as if he were rushing to finish his words before death could arrive: "The Battle of Fengtian and the Battle of Port Arthur, his figure was behind them all."

"During the Battle of Port Arthur, this man employed an unprecedented tactic: distributing large quantities of captured blunt knives to his soldiers, forcing them to execute prisoners of war and civilians in the most brutal manner, thereby inciting hatred among the soldiers towards the Empire."

"At the same time, his armored forces cooperated extremely well and their tactical style was extremely cunning, completely unlike the Northeast Army we knew before."

"As for the Battle of Fengcheng, it was his doing."

"According to survivors, the steel torrent that our 19th and 20th Divisions encountered at Luofengpo consisted of an armored formation of at least several hundred T-series tanks, followed by a large number of infantry, and bombers in the sky."

"The commander of all this was Zhang Xueming."

He paused for a moment, then summarized with his last sentence:

"In other words, we did not lose to Zhang Xueliang, but to Zhang Xueming, whom we had never taken seriously before."