Kingdom - Chapter 856

these arcs just shows how much background the zhao has.
the kingdom might have been corrupted to the point losing trust from their loyal elites.
like that pervert king, or that corrupt chief minister.

i didn’t know the original history from china.
so in earlier arcs, when the coalition armies fought qin and lose, despite riboku’s genius plan, i genuinely thought the qin six great generals, like ou ki, was too strong.

i mean, from the storyline, it was portrayed/implied that ou ki died because he was old (despite his black hair, he is someone who survive during ei sei grandfather’s era…well wikia said it was her great grandfather. not sure though)
and riboku meticulous trap was specifically targeting him.

at the same, the impression given was that other strong guys of similar caliber had died, gotten old, or retired. zhao was said to only have 3 great generals (2 were active), the wei was said to have 7 but the story only showed 1 active great general (but died in early arc), chu seems a mystery not joining the fray.

so from the manga pov, qin was truly strong. so while they failed to unite the land with 6 generals during king sho peak era, with ou ki still alive, and the army background qin had, it was only natural coalition army failed.

or so i thought.
but now that the story progress further, IMHO it was not that zhao couldn’t defeat qin when riboku rallied the coalition army. it was because the really strong guy was absent. the various generals didn’t join the fray, guarding the border.
only when qin proactively enter their border did these elite soldiers, commanders, and generals, show up one after another.