No bro, I am rereading Bayou now, and Riboku’s strategic showing at Bayou was off-the-charts nutty.
Firstly, Riboku was the mastermind between Ouki even leading the Qin to begin with. We’ve never seen another commander with such an extreme level of ability in strategic genius that they literally draw a specific commander out to face them. Not once, and Riboku specifically did this through his use of Houken and deliberately leaking to the Qin that Houken would lead the Zhao.
Secondly, the army that Riboku hid from Qin, he hid so well that not even the state of Zhao knew that Riboku had an elite army of 130,000 in the North, and he overwhelmingly exterminated 200,000 Xiongnu troops without the state of Zhao itself even knowing what was going on up north (with the exception of the Zhao court). Zhao’s own generals had no idea that a war on the scale of hundreds of thousands of troops was taking place, specifically because Riboku hid that information from even his own state. This is what Yotanwa had to say about the Xiongnu:
And Riboku overwhelmingly exterminated them.
Third, Riboku had to conceal the existence of his army against Qin, which was extremely difficult given that Qin had spies in the Zhao court as Shoubunkun said. Riboku hid this army so well, that even though the Zhao court was aware of Riboku’s war against the Xiongnu, no information made it to Qin about this at all.
And finally, even when Ouki finally realizes that a second hidden army exists, Riboku still arrives with this army before Ouki was able to defeat Chousou and Houken. Ouki admitted that he had been completely outplayed by Riboku. Even if Ouki had slain Houken, Ouki and his 10Kish troops would’ve certainly been defeated by Riboku’s lightning fast army of 60K veteran soldiers who had massacred the Xiongnu.
Riboku did all of this without the Qin not knowing that he existed, despite the Qin watching every territory in China closely. Lol