Sanyou Campaign & Coalition Buildup

Qin pursues a series of regional campaigns including the Battle of Sanyou and the Battle of Joto, while the surrounding states begin to coordinate on the unprecedented Coalition Invasion that will threaten Qin's existence as a state.

The middle arcs between Bayou and the Coalition Invasion serve as both Shin's tactical apprenticeship and Hara's most extended development of the political geography of [Kingdom](/manga-series/kingdom)'s seven-state map. The Battle of Sanyou expands the Hi Shin Unit from one hundred to one thousand men under the elder strategist Kaine and forces Shin to confront the difference between leading a small unit through frontline combat and commanding a force whose decisions affect the lives of soldiers he cannot see. Hara stages this transition deliberately, with several engagements where Shin's personal heroism is explicitly the wrong tactical answer and where his growth as a commander requires him to learn to delegate. The Battle of Joto introduces the alliance between Qin and the Mountain Folk under King You Tan Wa as a formal military instrument. The arc's political subplot — the maneuvering of Lu Buwei, the wealthy merchant-prince whose patronage put Ying Zheng on the throne and who has spent the years since the coup arc consolidating power as the de facto regent — comes to a head with confrontations between the king and his former patron over the proper relationship between commerce and state. The Black Sheep arc, interleaved with the military campaigns, follows the Qin court's investigation into a faction of officials loyal to Lu Buwei and the consequences of removing them from the apparatus. The arc closes with intelligence reports reaching the Qin court that the surrounding six states have begun to coordinate. Shocked by Qin's rapid territorial expansion under Ying Zheng, the states of Zhao, Wei, Han, Chu, Yan and Qi are organizing the first formal Coalition since the early years of the Warring States period. The intelligence sets up the most ambitious arc Hara has yet written and reframes the previous campaigns as preparation for an existential war.