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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Lie Fan's expression sobered immediately. The mocking smile vanished, replaced by a look of profound, solemn respect. He brought his right fist to his open left palm, offering a deep, martial bow to the fallen titan, a gesture he had not offered to Cao Pi. "Brother Mengde," Lie Fan replied quietly. "You fought brilliantly. You built a magnificent state. But the tide of history cannot be stopped."
Cao Cao let out a weak, rattling chuckle that devolved into a painful cough. "History... history belongs to the man who holds the brush. And today... that is you."
Cao Cao struggled, trying to elevate his head, his eyes burning with a sudden, desperate, fatherly intensity. He looked at his sons, at Cao Pi, at the fierce Cao Zhang, at the brilliant Cao Zhi. He looked at his weeping concubines and his terrified young daughters.
"I know... the laws of conquest," Cao Cao breathed, every word an immense effort. "I know the price of losing the mandate. But Lie Fan... I ask you this not as a rival warlord... but as a man. As a father."
Cao Cao's eyes locked onto Lie Fan's, silently pleading. "The ambition was mine. The armies were mine. The defiance was mine. Punish me. Execute me. Mount my head on your gates. Torture me if it satisfies the bloodlust of your men. Do with me whatever you see fit. But... I beg of you... spare my family. Spare my bloodline. Let my sons live as commoners. Let my wives live in peace. The Cao clan's threat to you dies with me. I surrender it all."
The courtyard held its collective breath. Even the wind seemed to stop blowing. The greatest, most ruthless conqueror of the age was begging for the lives of his children.
Grand Concubine Bian buried her face in Cao Cao's chest, sobbing uncontrollably. Cao Pi closed his eyes, fresh tears leaking out, while Cao Zhang strained against his ropes, his fierce face contorted in agony at seeing his invincible father brought so low.
Lie Fan stood perfectly still, looking down at the dying man on the stretcher.
Outwardly, his face was an unreadable mask of cold, imperial authority. But inwardly, his mind was an absolute tempest.
"It is not that I do not want to grant you this mercy, Brother Mengde," Lie Fan said softly, his voice carrying a genuine, heavy melancholy. "Your death alone would satisfy the vengeance of my armies. But... the burden of the throne is heavier than that and you knew it."
Lie Fan's eyes drifted from Cao Cao to the bound sons kneeling on the cobblestones.
He looked at Cao Pi. The young man was currently weeping, but Lie Fan knew the terrifying, ruthless political animal that lurked beneath that poetic exterior. Cao Pi was cunning, patient, and possessed an innate, venomous ambition.
He looked at Cao Zhang. The 'Yellow Bearded Son' was a physical monster in the future, a man who commanded the absolute loyalty of the military rank and file, a warrior who could easily rally the disgruntled remnants of the Wei army if given half a chance.
He looked at Cao Zhi. The future brilliant, beloved poet whose intellect could weave webs of dissent and rebellion through the scholarly classes without ever lifting a sword.
Lie Fan was truly in a profound, paralyzing dilemma.
His humanity, his inherent sense of honor, screamed at him to accept Cao Cao's plea. To spare the innocent women, to show mercy to the defeated sons, to prove that he was a benevolent unifier, not a bloodthirsty tyrant. It would be a magnificent gesture, one that would echo through history as the ultimate act of imperial grace.
But Lie Fan was not just a warlord of this era, he carried the cursed, omniscient knowledge of a past life in the modern times. He knew the terrifying, cyclical history of this land.
'If I let them live,' Lie Fan thought, his mind racing through the centuries of history he had studied in his previous life, 'if I spare them and strip them of their titles, giving them small estates to slowly cultivate themselves... I am not showing mercy. I am planting the seeds of my own dynasty's destruction.'
He thought of the Sima clan in the original timeline. The Cao family had spared Sima Yi, utilized his talents, and allowed his clan to grow powerful over generations. And what was the result? The Sima clan waited, patient as spiders, until the Cao leadership weakened. Then they struck, slaughtering the Cao bloodline down to the roots and usurping the empire to found the Jin Dynasty.
The Cao clan is too big. They are too full of fiercely talented people, Lie Fan analyzed grimly. Cao Pi has the political venom to plot a coup. Cao Zhang has the martial strength to lead a rebellion. Cao Zhi has the intellect to orchestrate a shadow network.
Lie Fan knew the brutal, inescapable logic of ancient Chinese politics. This was not a modern democracy where defeated politicians retired to write memoirs. This was a feudal, blood soaked reality where the concept of the 'Nine Familial Exterminations' existed for a very specific, terrifying reason. It was an era defined by clan feuds.
Even if Lie Fan forgave them, even if Cao Cao genuinely meant his surrender, the resentment would fester. It would be passed down through the generations. In ten years, in fifty years, in a hundred years, some descendant of Cao Pi or Cao Zhi would look at the Hengyuan throne and remember that it was built on the ashes of their ancestors' palace. They would cultivate loyalists, they would amass wealth in secret, and they would eventually, inevitably, stab the Lie family in the back.
'A tiger leaves cubs that grow into tigers,' Lie Fan thought, a cold, sickening realization settling into his bones. 'If I leave them alive, I am condemning Muchen, or Muchen's children, to fight a bloody civil war against the ghosts of Wei a century from now.'
Lie Fan looked over his shoulder. He looked at his young son, Muchen, who was watching him with wide, impressionable eyes. The boy was waiting to see what kind of Emperor his father truly was.
Lie Fan looked back at Cao Cao. The dying warlord's eyes were still fixed on him, filled with a desperate, agonizing hope.
Lie Fan closed his eyes for a long, heavy second. The weight of the future pressed down upon his shoulders, crushing his desire for mercy beneath the cold, iron gears of dynastic survival. The clan feud could not be allowed to survive. The roots had to be pulled, no matter how bloody the harvest.
When Lie Fan finally opened his eyes, the heavy, suffocating melancholy that had briefly clouded his vision was entirely gone.
In its place was the terrifying, absolute resolve of an Emperor who had just weighed the lives of a dozen people against the lives of millions in the centuries to come, and made his choice. The gears of dynastic survival had turned, crushing his softer instincts beneath cold, iron pragmatism.
Lie Fan looked down at Cao Cao, his voice steady, carrying the booming, inescapable resonance of a divine edict.
"Brother Mengde," Lie Fan began, his words echoing across the silent, torch lit courtyard of the Harem Palace. "You have asked for mercy as a father, and I hear your plea. The Nine Familial Exterminations is a barbaric relic of a chaotic age, a slaughter of innocents that taints the earth. I will not subject your wives, your daughters, or your sons to the executioner's blade. I will not wipe the physical existence of your family from the face of the earth tonight."
A collective, shuddering gasp of relief rippled through the bound captives. Grand Concubine Bian slumped forward, weeping in sheer gratitude, while Cao Pi let out a trembling breath, his forehead resting against the cold cobblestones.
"However," Lie Fan continued, and the sudden, chilling drop in his tone instantly froze the relief in their veins. "I am the architect of a new era, and I will not plant the seeds of my own dynasty's destruction simply to satisfy my own conscience. A royal bloodline is not a mere family, it is a banner. And as long as the banner exists, ambitious men will rally to it."
Lie Fan stepped closer to the stretcher, his towering shadow falling over the comatose warlord.
"You, Cao Mengde, shall be executed with the full honor befitting a Chancellor of the Han and a King of Wei. You will not face a public beheading. You will be given a silken cord or poisoned wine in the privacy of your chambers, and you shall receive a state burial with the rites of a supreme commander," Lie Fan declared. "As for your family... your wives, your concubines, your sons, and your daughters... they shall be spared the sword. They will be placed under permanent house arrest in one of the largest, most luxurious countryside estates here in Chang'an. They will not want for food, clothing, or comfort."
Lie Fan's eyes swept over Cao Pi, Cao Zhang, and Cao Zhi. "But they will be placed under absolute, impenetrable surveillance. There will be no contact with the outside world. No letters, no visitors, no scholars, no sympathetic retainers. And, most importantly... there will be no continuation."
The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
"Your sons will not be permitted to take wives," Lie Fan pronounced, his voice as hard as forged steel. "Your daughters will not be given in marriage. Eunuchs and my most trusted, unbribable guards will govern the estate. The descendants of the Cao clan will live out their natural lives in peace and comfort, but the bloodline ends with the generation kneeling before me today. I will not allow your grandsons to grow up nursing grievances, dreaming of reclaiming a throne that was lost before they were born. The threat of Wei ends, permanently and peacefully, with your children."
The silence that followed was horrifying. It was a sentence of genetic annihilation, delivered with the terrifyingly polite wrapping of imperial mercy. To spare their lives, only to condemn them to watch their ancient, proud lineage slowly wither into extinction over the next fifty years within the walls of a gilded cage.
Cao Pi stared at the ground in absolute shock, his mind reeling. Cao Zhang roared, thrashing wildly against his hemp bonds, his face purple with rage. "You demon! You geld us without a blade! Better to kill us all now with a sword in our hands than subject us to this living death!"
But it was Cao Cao who spoke, his voice a raspy, desperate wheeze that silenced his son.
"Lie Fan..." Cao Cao struggled, trying to push himself up on his elbows, his face contorted in agony. "You... you cannot do this. A man's legacy... his blood... it is the only true immortality we possess. To extinguish a noble line so methodically... it is an affront to the natural order of Heaven!"
"Do not speak to me of Heaven's order, Brother Mengde," Lie Fan replied calmly, leaning his weight against the haft of his heavenly halberd. "Heaven is silent. We are the ones who write its will in blood. If you had conquered Xiapi, would you have allowed my sons to breed? Would you have allowed Muchen to raise an army a decade from now? We both know the brutal truth of the path we walk."
"I would have absorbed them!" Cao Cao argued, coughing weakly. "True power... true imperial majesty... is a river that absorbs all tributaries! I took in Zhang Ji! I took in Zhang He! I forgave my enemies and made them my swords! You are a conqueror, Lie Fan, but this... this is the act of a man governed by fear, not majesty!"
And so began a debate that would be meticulously recorded by the trembling historians hiding in the shadows of the courtyard, a profound, philosophical exchange destined to be known as the 'Final Debate of the Two Dragons.'
"I am governed by foresight, not fear," Lie Fan countered, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "I have absorbed many generals. Zhang Liao and Taishi Ci stand by my side today because martial talent is a tool that can be repurposed. But royal blood is not a tool, Brother Mengde. It is a poison. It carries the memory of a crown. You forgave generals, but did you forgive the heirs of Yuan Shao? Did you let the sons of your enemies live? Do not dress your past pragmatism in the robes of boundless mercy."
Cao Cao's eyes burned with a feverish intensity. "But they are innocent of this war! My younger sons... Cao Zhi... he is a future poet, a scholar! He has no love for the battlefield! To deny him a family, to deny him descendants... it is a cruelty that history will never forgive you for. They will write of you as a tyrant who smothered a bloodline in its cradle out of paranoia!"
"Let them write what they will," Lie Fan said, his face an unreadable mask of stone. "If history calls me a tyrant for preventing a civil war a century from now, I will gladly bear that title. A merciful fool who leaves the roots of rebellion intact is responsible for every life lost when that rebellion eventually blossoms. You cultivated your power through endless warfare. I am ending the era of warfare. To do that, the old roots must be pulled. Your sons are brilliant, too brilliant to be left as wild variables in my new empire. Cao Pi has the mind for a coup. Cao Zhang has the charisma for a revolt. Cao Zhi has the intellect to inspire a revolution with a single brushstroke. I respect their talents too much to leave them unchecked."
"Then you are a slave to your own conquest!" Cao Cao wheezed, his chest heaving. "If you cannot trust your own laws, your own heirs, to outshine the remnants of my family... then your Hengyuan Dynasty is already brittle! Let my bloodline continue! Let them be commoners! If your son, Muchen, is a true Emperor, he will have nothing to fear from farmers who share my name! Do you have so little faith in the boy standing behind you?"
It was a masterstroke of psychological manipulation, aimed directly at Lie Fan's pride as a father and an Emperor. Lie Fan looked over his shoulder. Muchen was watching him intently, absorbing every word of this lethal philosophical duel.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0