So? Did Someone Force You to Become the Heavenly Demon?

While a desperate war of medicine was being waged across the Divine Cult's triage camp, Il-mok was quietly holding a strategy meeting with the Provincial Military Commander.

"I've heard the stories. Word on the street is that thanks to the medical knowledge you passed down to the Divine Cult, we've actually managed to save a massive number of our critical casualties."

Il-mok smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"How could I possibly take credit for saving those lives?"

He didn't say that to sound humble or to avoid stealing the spotlight from the hardworking physicians.

‘Half of them are still dying.’

Even with the introduction of painkillers and disinfectants that had allowed for actual surgical procedures, the level of medicine here was still hopelessly primitive compared to the modern era Seo Ji-hoon came from.

All it meant was that instead of nine out of ten critically wounded men dying like in the old days, now only five out of ten were dying.

Although cutting the mortality rate down from ninety percent to fifty percent was a medical miracle for this era, for someone who carried memories of a past life like Il-mok, it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

It wasn't the most cheerful topic to discuss, so Il-mok moved on to something more pressing.

"Anyway, did you bring the item I asked for?"

The Provincial Military Commander genuinely thought Il-mok was just being exceedingly modest. He had always taken it for granted that surviving a critical wound in war was a matter of pure luck and nothing more. But there was no point in dragging out a subject the other man clearly wanted to drop, so he set what he had brought onto the table.

The Commander pulled out the item he'd brought and set it on the table. 

It was a small wooden box with a tiny hole drilled in the side and a short piece of twine sticking out.

"So, is this the infamous Thunder Bomb I've heard so much about?"

"So this is the Thunder Bomb I've been hearing about?"

"To be precise, it's called the Boxed Thunder Bomb. You basically pack the wooden box full of gunpowder and small iron shards, and then ignite it by lighting this string here. Once it burns all the string and reaches the gunpowder inside, the whole thing explodes and sends those iron shards flying in every direction. It’s an incredibly nasty piece of work."

As he listened to the breakdown, Il-mok found himself thinking of the grenades he had seen during his military service in a past life.

‘I swear, I nearly shat my pants the first time they made me throw a live one in boot camp.’

If the Imperial Army had managed to chuck a bunch of these into his ranks during the battle, the casualty count would have skyrocketed.

Which naturally begged the obvious question.

"It's quite baffling that these were just left behind in the rear of the enemy camp the whole time we battled."

Hearing his remark, Provincial Military Commander Yang Gwang laid out his theory.

"They most likely missed the timing to use them because it was so chaotic at the beginning. The Thunder Bomb doesn't discriminate between friend and foe, so deploying it in a melee would be just as dangerous to your own troops. On top of that, they don't have many of these to begin with, so throwing them around carelessly wasn't an option."

"Are they that hard to mass-produce?"

"The real bottleneck is getting our hands on gunpowder. Not only is the powder itself notoriously hard to manufacture, but the actual quota allocated to the military is laughably small."

"...Wait, what? But it's a weapon of war. Shouldn't the military be getting all of it?"

When Il-mok expressed his disbelief, Yang Gwang let out a heavy sigh.

"It's because of that Supreme Eunuch. I can’t say if his reason for doing that is because he’s afraid of a military uprising, but a large portion of the gunpowder produced goes straight to the Forbidden City. He only hands out tiny and rationed amounts to the Five Military Commands. It's gotten so bad that when soldiers training with the Thunder Bomb practice their drills, they're just throwing empty cases with a lit fuse with no gunpowder inside. The same goes for cannon training. They're so short on gunpowder that troops never actually fire a live round unless it's in real combat."

Listening to all of it, Il-mok was struck by a strange sense of déjà vu.

‘I guess corrupt politicians starving the military of funds is the same across all eras.’

He couldn't help but cynically wonder if the ammunition meant for the modern military was also being quietly siphoned off into someone else's pockets back in his past life. 

However, he quickly shook off the trivial thought. He had much bigger fish to fry.

Il-mok asked the Provincial Commander another question.

"Do you have any versions made with an iron casing instead of wood? For instance, if you loaded an Iron Boxed Thunder Bomb into a cannon and fired it like an explosive shell, it would deal infinitely more damage than just shooting a solid cannonball."

"There are records of attempts along those lines. But apparently, if the iron shell is made too thick, it won't detonate and becomes useless. And if you cast the iron shell too thin, the force of the cannon firing causes the shell to prematurely detonate inside the barrel, blowing the whole cannon to pieces."

"I see."

Il-mok accepted the answer.

‘Looks like the local technology tree just isn't there yet.’

Come to think of it, he hadn't seen a single dedicated musketeer unit in the Imperial Army either. It seemed their engineering had peaked at just setting raw gunpowder on fire. They clearly lacked the industrial tech to mass-produce gunpowder or engineer advanced firearms.

‘Hmm. If I'm remembering my middle school history classes right, during the Imjin War, the Joseon, Japanese, and Ming armies were all firing matchlocks at each other.’

Granted, those early matchlocks were garbage compared to modern assault rifles, so they were mostly just used as supplementary firepower alongside traditional archers.

‘The Imjin War was in the late 16th century, which means matchlocks probably won't be mainstream here for at least another few decades. By now, the West might already be starting to develop firearms of their own.’

It suddenly occurred to him that this might actually be a blessing in disguise.        

It would be one thing if his side could monopolize the invention of firearms. But even though Il-mok had the cheat sheet of modern memories, his actual engineering knowledge on how to build a gun from scratch was zero. 

In that sense, it was better for everyone to remain equally in the dark.

After that, Yang Gwang continued briefing him on the full figures for the Lanzhou forces and the surrendered troops, breaking them down by those ready for combat, those still recovering, and the confirmed dead.

Not long after, a presence approached the meeting place.

"Young Master. Reinforcements have arrived from Xinjiang."

Hearing Jin Hayeon's voice from outside the door, Il-mok smiled for the first time in a while and asked, "How many?"

"Around ten thousand, Young Master."

Ten thousand reinforcements.

But the vast majority of them weren't actually trained soldiers or martial artists. They were civilian volunteers who had eagerly rushed to the front lines the moment they heard the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had declared a Holy War against the Central Plains.

When Wi Jin-hak first led the full forces of the Divine Cult into the Central Plains, he had brought only the martial artists who belonged directly to the Divine Cult. But fighting the entire Central Plains with nothing but a small elite force was like throwing eggs at a boulder.

That was why, when Il-mok sent a skeleton crew of martial artists back home to maintain the Hall of the Demonic Way and the Grand Teacher Pavilion, he had given them a secondary mission.

They were ordered to broadcast the war to the civilian population of Xinjiang and trigger a mass recruitment campaign.

As a result, these were the people who had answered that call.

"Commander, I need you to select around a hundred soldiers to serve as trainers for the reinforcements that will keep coming in."

"So we're moving forward with what you mentioned before?"

"That's right. We pushed out this time because there was no time to spare, but dragging untrained men who have never seen a battle onto the battlefield is just sending them to die."

Yang Gwang nodded in agreement.

He had actually been discussing this hurdle with the Young Master since the day they first formed their alliance.

‘We're going to see a massive influx of volunteers pouring in from Xinjiang. And that's not even counting the local recruits from Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, and Sichuan. With so many untrained militias joining our banner, we have to establish a proper boot camp, if only to stop them from dying a dog's death on the front lines.’

There were a few reasons why he believed new recruits would continue to emerge.

One was the various good deeds that had been carried out over time under the names of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and the Maitreya Luminous Cult.

Those goodwills had already paid massive dividends, considering how many Maitreya believers eagerly volunteered for the recent war against the Western Military Command. 

And the other reason was the thing they had been preparing in various parts of Gansu for quite a while now.

The propaganda campaign.

He wasn't naive enough to think that people would drop everything and join a rebellion just because they read a catchy poster.

However, he had targeted one thing that is common among the civilians.

‘Do you have any idea how many people out there have grievances against the current Imperial Family?’

As long as the Divine Cult proved they wouldn't just roll over and die against the Imperial Army, disgruntled citizens were highly likely to see a real chance at revolution and flock to their banner.

While Yang Gwang was turning over the plan Il-mok had laid out before, Il-mok opened his mouth.

"Commander, I need you to split the forces into two groups. One is heading for Sichuan, and the other is going to Qinghai. The Western Military Command made its move, which means the other will too. The Southern Military Command is almost certainly marching on Sichuan right now, and we need to block them before they take it."

With the Qingcheng Sect now among their allies, Sichuan had become part of the front they needed to hold.

However, it was a necessary commitment.

Sichuan was the most fertile of all the provinces in the southwest of the Central Plains, and if the Qingcheng Sect hadn't joined them, Il-mok would have marched on Sichuan himself the moment he secured Gansu.

As far as Il-mok was concerned, his grand strategy hadn't actually changed; his offensive invasion had simply turned into a defensive occupation.

"The Southern Military Command... I doubt this will end as cleanly as last time."

Il-mok gave a slow nod of agreement.

"If they just march their standing border troops up here as the Western Military Command did, we'll be fine. But if they've taken the time to issue a mass draft across the southern provinces, we're going to be dealing with some massive numbers."

A minimum of two hundred thousand.

Maybe more than three hundred thousand bearing down on them.

"That's exactly why I need you to send that along with the forces headed for Sichuan."

As he spoke, Il-mok pointed directly at the Boxed Thunder Bomb sitting on the table.

"Unless it turns into a full open-field engagement, a defensive war means the enemy and our troops are rarely going to be mixed together, so this thing should come in plenty useful."

"I'll see to it immediately. Ah, speaking of deployments, what exactly is your plan for Qinghai?"

Il-mok turned the question back on him.

"Tell me, what is your personal assessment of Qinghai's Provincial Military Commander? Is he the type of man we could realistically recruit to our side?"

Yang Gwang thought about it for a moment, then let out a sigh.

"A vile and contemptible man. To the point that I am ashamed we share the same profession as military officers. From what I know, he spent his career sucking up to the Eastern Depot, offering them bribes and acting like a petty king in Qinghai with complete disregard for the law."

Having answered thus, Yang Gwang carefully added his words.

"This is not me saying this because I don't want to share the credit with him."

"I know. In truth, I had already heard enough rumors through the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's intelligence network. I simply asked you once more to confirm it."

After taking root in Gansu under the false name of the Maitreya Luminous Cult, their covert missionaries had spread beyond Gansu into northern Sichuan and Qinghai. Naturally, Il-mok had already gathered plenty of information on Qinghai's officials through the people working there.

‘The reports said that while there might be a handful of salvageable bureaucrats in the middle and lower ranks, the high command in Qinghai is rotten to the core.’

With his thoughts sorted, Il-mok delivered his verdict.

"We'll handle Qinghai like we handled the Western Military Command. We will systematically purge the entire officer corps and exclusively absorb their foot soldiers into our ranks."

Even though they were currently so laughably shorthanded that they'd gladly accept help from a stray dog, Il-mok refused to recruit corrupt officers into his ranks. The damage might not be visible at first, but intentionally eating spoiled food was always guaranteed to make you sick in the end.

"Understood. We will push to join the Sichuan division as quickly as possible to fight a defensive siege before the Southern Military Command pushes them back, and we will try to organize the troops for Qinghai with the premise of fighting a large-scale battle."

Il-mok nodded with a satisfied expression, then added one final condition.

"Oh, and make sure to assign the Head of the Baek Family and the Head of the Dokgo Family to two completely different groups.”

Just the thought of having to babysit those two bickering old masters gave Il-mok a massive migraine.

***

The following morning, a staggering army of roughly eighty thousand men stood assembled in formation outside the gate of Lazhou.

In addition to their original soldiers, the nomad cavalry led by Dokgo Ryong, and even those among the Western Military Command's soldiers who had surrendered, every single able-bodied man among them was gathered there.

Every face was drawn tight with tension. Then Il-mok stepped up onto the city walls.

"YEAAHHH!!"

The moment he appeared, cheers erupted from every direction.

It was the war cry of fanatics, surging up from the martial artists of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and the soldiers who had once served under Lanzhou's banner.

Their eyes burned with unshakeable conviction.

They fully believed that as long as they marched behind Young Master Il-mok, the very concept of defeat ceased to exist. 

That was why even the men who were mostly farmers and laborers conscripted into service burned with the kind of fighting spirit you'd expect from hardened veterans.

Strangely enough, it was the same for the soldiers who had once served under the Western Military Command.

They just hadn't fully succumbed to the religious madness yet, but they stared up at Il-mok with expressions full of awe.

‘The Demon God is with us.’

‘As long as that monster is on our side, there's no way in hell we'll lose.’

They too had witnessed Il-mok's divine majesty firsthand, even though they came from the receiving end.

No, it was precisely because they had been on the receiving end that his divine majesty felt all the more overwhelming to them.

Moreover, upon hearing the news that some of their critically wounded comrades—who they thought as good as dead—had miraculously survived thanks to that Demon God named Il-mok, the sprouts of genuine faith were slowly beginning to grow within their hearts as well.

"We will purge those wicked eunuchs and the corrupt officials who grovel at their feet while bleeding the people dry! We will tear down this rotten empire, and we won’t stop until we forge a world where the common people can finally thrive!"

"YEAAHHH!!"

"The God walks with us!!"

The fanatical cries of the Lanzhou soldiers pouring in from all around were like sunlight and rain pouring down onto those seeds.

"THE HEAVENLY DEMON DESCENDS!!"

"TEN THOUSAND DEMONS OBEY!!!"

By the time Il-mok's speech came to its conclusion, the former Western Military Command soldiers had joined in chanting with eyes blazing in the same fervor as the fanatics of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.

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