The Silent Storm

While General Yuan Shikai's forces were busy securing the main approaches to Seoul, another, more desperate battle was taking place within the city walls. The Japanese legation, a handsome, two-story wooden building constructed in a Western style, was under siege. A large, furious pocket of several hundred mutineers, cut off from their main force, had channeled all their rage towards this symbol of foreign influence.

The Japanese Minister, Hanabusa Yoshimoto, and his small legation guard of two dozen men were trapped. They had barricaded the doors and were firing from the windows with their modern, breech-loading rifles, their superior firepower holding the mob at bay for now. But the situation was desperate. The crowd outside was growing larger and angrier, their cries for death to the "Japanese dwarfs" echoing through the streets. Ammunition was running low. It was only a matter of time before the mob overwhelmed their defenses and stormed the building. If the legation fell, if the minister and his staff were massacred, it would give the Empire of Japan the ultimate justification—a casus belli of unparalleled power—to launch a full-scale invasion of Korea to "avenge" their fallen diplomats.

Yuan Shikai's main force was still engaged in securing the Royal Palace and restoring order to the city's chaotic streets. They could not reach the legation in time. The Japanese relief force, their ships having finally arrived at Incheon, was still disembarking, hours away from the capital. The small contingent of Japanese diplomats and guards was completely, utterly on its own. It seemed they were doomed.

Hundreds of miles away, in the quiet, candlelit depths of his study in the Forbidden City, Ying Zheng stared at a large, meticulously detailed map of Seoul that Shen Ke's team had prepared. He had been receiving a steady stream of intelligence via coded telegraph messages, a new technology he had insisted his government invest in. He knew the precise disposition of Yuan Shikai's forces. He knew the location of the besieged legation. And he knew that the situation had reached a critical, strategic tipping point.

He could not allow the legation to fall. The massacre of the Japanese diplomats would give his enemy the perfect excuse to land an entire army on the continent, escalating the crisis far beyond his control. He needed to save his enemies, to deny them their perfect pretext for war. But he had no troops on site. He had only himself.

This was the moment to test the true extent of his power, to see if his will could truly reach across vast distances and influence the world. He dismissed his attendants, leaving only Lotus and Ying to stand guard outside his doors. He sat in a meditative posture before the map, his eyes closing, his breathing becoming slow and deep. He shut out the sounds of the palace, the scent of the incense. His consciousness, his will, expanded, soaring out from the confines of the study.

He did not try to see the city with his own eyes. Instead, he reached out with his senses, the strange, extrasensory perceptions granted to him by the elixir. He focused his mind on the geographical coordinates of Seoul, feeling for the subtle atmospheric pressures, the flows of temperature and humidity. He was not a god, capable of creating something from nothing. But he was, he was beginning to realize, a master of a far more subtle art: the art of acceleration.

He found what he was looking for. A large mass of cool, moist air was moving slowly in from the coast, a common weather pattern for the season. It would likely bring rain in a day or two. He would not wait. He would bring the storm now.

He focused the entirety of his immense will, the will that had unified a continent, on that single mass of air. He pushed. He commanded the cold air to descend rapidly, to force the warmer, moist air below it to rise with violent speed. He manipulated the temperature gradients, creating an unnatural instability in the atmosphere. He was not creating a storm; he was taking a natural process that would have unfolded over two days and compressing it into two minutes.

Over the skies of Seoul, the weather began to change with a speed that was both terrifying and profoundly unnatural. The hazy afternoon sky began to darken, the clouds boiling up from the west in angry, bruised-looking shades of grey and purple. The wind, which had been a gentle breeze, suddenly began to howl through the streets.

The Korean mutineers surrounding the Japanese legation looked up, confused by the sudden, violent shift in the weather. They were preparing for their final, human wave assault, their fury reaching a fever pitch.

Then, the first drops of rain fell. They were not gentle spring showers. They were thick, heavy, icy drops that quickly turned into a torrential, blinding downpour. The temperature plummeted. The rain was swiftly joined by a barrage of hailstones, some as large as a man's thumbnail, that hammered down with a deafening roar, stinging any exposed skin and forcing the men to cover their heads.

The mutineers' assault dissolved into chaos. Their primary weapons, their old, reliable matchlock muskets, were instantly rendered useless. The slow-burning fuses they used to ignite the powder were extinguished by the deluge. Their black powder, stored in open horns and pouches, was soaked through in seconds, turning into a useless, black paste. Their main weapons were now nothing more than heavy, unwieldy clubs.

Their morale, already frayed, shattered completely. To these superstitious soldiers, a sudden, violent, and unnatural hailstorm erupting from a clear sky on the very eve of their attack could only be one thing: a sign from Heaven. The gods themselves were displeased with their actions. The attack was cursed. With cries of fear and dismay, the mob broke and scattered, seeking shelter from the divine wrath that had been unleashed upon them.

Inside the besieged legation, the Japanese minister and his remaining guards stared out the windows in stunned disbelief. One moment, they were preparing for a final, suicidal stand against a screaming mob. The next, a furious, localized thunderstorm had erupted from nowhere and completely dispersed their enemies. They saw it not as a meteorological event, but as a miracle. They had been saved by a kamikaze, a divine wind, just like their ancestors had been centuries before.

Ying Zheng, back in his study, opened his eyes. He was breathing heavily, and a thin line of blood trickled from one nostril, a sign of the immense mental strain he had just endured. But he had done it. He had reached across hundreds of miles and commanded the weather itself to serve his strategic aims. His power was far greater than he had ever imagined. He had saved his enemies in order to defeat them.