Why is the Seika Army the strongest in Zhao?
I can only think of two ways to explain why Seika is this powerful.
First theory is that they did not fight much before the Northern Zhao campaigns, especially not massive wars, and are just absurdly talented. But that makes zero sense when you look at what happened in the Han invasion arc. Tou explicitly pointed out that Han generals had all the talent in the world but got washed because they lacked real big war experience. You cannot win massive total wars against veteran monsters like Ousen and his generals on raw talent alone. Ousen's officers have been through absolute hell. A pure talent army with no macro experience should have crumbled the moment high intensity warfare hit them.
Second theory is that the Seika army is actually battle hardened and used to fighting massive wars. But if that is true, how on earth did they stay completely unnoticed for so long? Some people say they were just fighting regional border clashes with Yan. But regional skirmishes are like 5k to 10k troops max. Fighting small border raids does not prepare an army to lead 50k to 100k troop formations in total state warfare. And if they were fighting actual massive wars against Yan, there is no way Yan or Qin intelligence would miss an army of that scale and such talented officers. Ordo literally found out about SBS for the first time during the WZI arc when SBS is already a GG.
Another common cope I see is that deserting Zhao veterans and refugees flocked to Seika over the years. But if high level veteran commanders and thousands of troops were migrating to Seika to join a legendary general, Kakukai and the Kantan court would have definitely noticed and stepped in. On top of that, the vast majority of Seika's numbers are still just regular citizens and local levies from Seika and nearby towns. Maybe a few thousand could be elite, but Hara portrays the entire SBS army as literally unstoppable. They ride through 20k+ cavalry flank charges and rear attacks like it is nothing.
I am not writing this out of hatred for SBS. I just really hope Hara actually gives us a solid grounded explanation for Seika's power scaling instead of just buffing them out of nowhere to make Qin look like the underdog.