“Chieftain! We've been defeated!”
“Defeated? How could twenty thousand cavalry lose to that pleasure-seeking prince of the Southern Dynasty and the few thousand starving people under his command?”
“Chief... his walls... they breathe fire! It's some kind of sorcery called ‘cannons.’ One shot flattened a mountain! Our warriors hadn't even reached the city walls before they... they were gone!”
“Sorcery?”
“General! His soldiers... they're even more terrifying! The fire-sticks in their hands can pierce our thickest armor! They can take a man's life from a hundred paces away, deadlier than the most venomous scorpion on the grasslands! We... we can't even get close to them!”
“How can this be?!”
“Chief... the scouts we sent out report... that prince is sitting in a steel monster that moves without horses, a train, drinking iced wine and watching a show... He said... he said we're welcome to come back and die again...”
They called Chu Yuan a weakling and a useless fool, but what fool could arm an army with steel? They called Shazhou a barren wasteland, but what barren land could produce thousands of jin of steel a day? We thought we were going to hunt a fat sheep, but instead we charged straight into a slaughterhouse run by the gods! How are we supposed to fight this war?
