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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Lie Fan sat atop his magnificent warhorse, Pangu. The beast was a mountain of muscle and dark hair, radiating an aura of raw power that perfectly mirrored its rider. Lie Fan was dressed in his full, bespoke armor, his halberd resting casually across his saddlebow. To his right rode Crown Prince Muchen, sitting tall and proud, flanked by Zhang Liao and Taishi Ci.
Standing on the ground before the Emperor's horse were the men tasked with holding the western frontier, Huang Zhong, Zhang Ren, Chen Deng, Zang Hong, Fa Zheng, and Meng Da.
Lie Fan looked down at them, his gaze hard and uncompromising.
"Do not lower your guard for a single night," Lie Fan ordered, his voice carrying clearly over the rustle of the banners. "The fact that we are marching east does not mean the west is safe. The League of Northwestern Lords are opportunistic scavengers. If they smell weakness, they will bite."
"We will fortify the passes, Your Majesty," Zhang Ren promised, his face a mask of disciplined stone. "Not a single rat will slip through."
"Good. But do not engage them in open combat yet," Lie Fan instructed, looking specifically at the ambitious Fa Zheng. "Keep your swords sheathed, but let your words be daggers. Begin sending envoys to their mountain strongholds immediately. Demand their unconditional surrender."
"Use intimidation, use psychological pressure, use the sheer, undeniable reality of what we did to the walls of Chang'An behind you. Fracture their fragile alliance with fear. Let them turn on each other in their panic before we ever have to march on them."
"It will be my absolute pleasure, Your Majesty," Fa Zheng smiled, his eyes gleaming with the promise of diplomatic cruelty. "We will make them dread the rising of the sun."
Lie Fan gave a final, approving nod. He pulled back on Pangu's reins, the great horse rearing slightly before settling into a powerful stance.
"Hold the west!" Lie Fan shouted, raising his hand. "We march for Xiapi!"
The war drums beat a deep, rhythmic cadence, and the massive, more than hundreds of thousands strong column began to move. It was a spectacle of unparalleled military might, a slow moving river of steel and black banners winding its way out of the Guanzhong plain and heading east toward the rising sun.
The march back to Xiapi was not the rapid, forced forced march of a conquering army eager to strike. It was a slow, deliberate, incredibly protracted procession.
Lie Fan had explicitly ordered the vanguard to keep the pace moderate, limiting their daily mileage to ensure that the rugged terrain of the central plains did not excessively jostle the heavily guarded medical carriages at the center of the column.
The journey would take more than a month and a half, stretching into the early, biting cold of the changing seasons. The landscape slowly transformed from the scarred, fortified valleys of the west to the sprawling, fertile agricultural heartlands of the Hengyuan Empire.
They passed through the former capital of eastern hand and also Wei, Luoyang, which was under renovation, making it a stark reminder of the chaos they were leaving behind, and navigated the strategic choke points of Hulao Pass, now safely garrisoned by their own troops.
For the soldiers, it was a joyous, relaxed march. They sang songs of victory around the campfires, their bellies full of Wei grain, their pockets heavy with the spoils of the campaign.
But for the prisoners traveling in the heavily guarded center of the formation, the march was an agonizing, psychological torture.
The entire surviving Cao clan was transported in a caravan of barred, windowless carriages. Cao Pi, Cao Zhang, Cao Zhi, Cao Ang, and the weeping women of the harem were kept separated, forbidden from speaking to one another, their days measured only by the rhythmic, monotonous creaking of the wooden wheels and the constant, heavy presence of Hengyuan cavalry riding directly outside their wooden cages.
The only carriage afforded any measure of true comfort was the massive, custom built medical wain carrying Cao Cao. Suspended on thick leather straps to absorb the shock of the rutted dirt roads, the interior was lined with soft furs and warmed by small, carefully managed charcoal braziers.
The intense, round the clock medical care mandated by Lie Fan was yielding miraculous, if agonizing, results. The potent ginseng broths, the skilled acupuncture, and the sheer, stubborn refusal of the warlord's constitution to finally shatter meant that Cao Cao did not die on the road.
In fact, as the weeks bled into a month, his condition stabilized. The terrifying, wet rattling in his lungs subsided, and a faint, sickly pallor of life returned to his gaunt cheeks. He was still a bedridden, dying man, but his mind had cleared, trapped within the failing cage of his own body.
During this long, slow march across the continent, the immense boredom and the isolation of the road offered a rare, surreal opportunity.
Every few days, when the massive army made camp for the evening, Lie Fan would dismount from his horse, hand the reins to his squires, and walk purposefully toward the center of the encampment.
He was always accompanied by an incredibly heavy, intimidating escort. The Yellow Ghost Bodyguard, Zhang Mancheng, walked like a shadow at his right shoulder, his hands resting lightly on the pommels of his twin blades.
Behind them marched the elite generals Chao Bo, Chao Bai, and the towering, muscular behemoth Huang Chao, their eyes scanning the perimeter with lethal intent.
The Hengyuan guards would snap to attention, unlocking the heavy iron deadbolts on the back of the medical carriage. Lie Fan would step inside the warm, cramped interior, taking a seat on a small wooden stool beside the bed, while his bodyguards filled the doorway, blocking out the light of the campfires.
These visits were not interrogations. They were not gloating sessions. They were bizarre, oddly tranquil conversations between the two greatest titans of the era, suspended in a liminal space between the end of a war and the final judgment.
"The air grows colder tonight, Brother Mengde," Lie Fan observed mildly during one such visit, taking a cup of hot, steeped tea from an imperial physician, who bowed frantically and scrambled out of the carriage to give the Emperor privacy.
Lie Fan took a slow sip, looking down at the frail man bundled in furs. "We passed the borders of Yan province today. The wheat fields are already turning. It will be a harsh winter for the farmers, but with my crop system and the full granaries, it will help them massively."
Cao Cao turned his head weakly on the soft pillows. His eyes, though sunken, still retained a glimmer of their old, piercing intelligence. He looked at the pristine, magnificent armor of his conqueror, then at the heavily armed killers blocking the exit.
"You manage the logistics of peace... as well as you manage the logistics of slaughter, Lie Fan," Cao Cao rasped, his voice a dry, papery whisper. He coughed softly, a dry, hacking sound. "Yan province... I remember when the yellow turbans ravaged those fields. It feels like a lifetime ago. Another world."
"It was another world," Lie Fan agreed, resting his hands on his knees. "A world of chaos that we both tried to chain down. You used the Emperor as a rope. I used the mandate of the people as iron."
Cao Cao let out a weak, breathy chuckle. "We were both just men... trying to stop the sky from falling. We just disagreed on who should hold up the pillars."
They would converse like this for hours over the course of the journey. They discussed the nature of the Han dynasty's collapse, the brilliant, tragic figures like Yuan Shao and Lu Bu who had been ground to dust beneath their respective ambitions, and the intricacies of poetry and statecraft.
It was a profound, philosophical debriefing of an entire era, spoken by the only two men who truly understood the weight of it.
But beneath the polite, reminiscent surface of these miscellaneous conversations, there was always an undercurrent of desperate tension. Cao Cao knew his time was extremely limited. He knew that the moment they reached Xiapi, his fate would be sealed on an executioner's block.
And so, during every visit, the dying warlord would inevitably pivot the conversation, trying to use the shared nostalgia and mutual respect to pry open a sliver of mercy.
"You speak of the future, Lie Fan... of the peace you will build," Cao Cao murmured one evening, as the rain drummed softly against the wooden roof of the carriage. "A peaceful empire requires benevolence. It requires a sovereign who can show the continent that he is above the petty, bloody vendettas of the warlord era."
Lie Fan's eyes narrowed slightly, anticipating the angle. He set his teacup down.
"I have already shown benevolence, Mengde," Lie Fan replied coldly. "Your wives are fed. Your sons are clothed. Your wounds are treated by my own physicians. I have not put your family to the sword."
"A gilded cage is just a slower execution," Cao Cao pleaded, his bony hand reaching out from beneath the furs, trembling as it gripped the edge of the mattress. "Lie Fan... I beg you again. Reconsider the edict. Strip my sons of the Cao name if you must. Banish them to the furthest, most desolate southern islands."
"Make them peasants who must farm the dirt to survive. But please... do not sever the bloodline. Let my grandchildren be born, even if they never know they carry the blood of a king. Do not let my family tree end as a dead, barren stump in your capital."
It was a masterful, heartbreaking plea, delivered with the last shreds of a father's dying breath. It appealed to the core tenets of filial piety and the universal human desire for continuation.
But Lie Fan was an immovable mountain of ice.
He sat perfectly still, his expression hardening into an unreadable mask of imperial absolute. He looked at the trembling hand of his rival, and he felt nothing but the cold, calculating gears of his own dynasty's survival turning in his mind.
He remembered the bloody history of the Three Kingdoms in his past life. He remembered the revenges, the uprisings, the centuries of bloodshed caused by a single surviving heir holding a grudge.
Lie Fan slowly stood up from the wooden stool. He adjusted his heavy cloak, casting a long, imposing shadow over the bed.
"The rain is getting heavier," Lie Fan said, his voice completely devoid of emotion, entirely ignoring the desperate, agonizing plea he had just heard. He turned his back on the dying man. "Ensure you stay warm tonight, Brother Mengde. The physicians will bring you a new broth shortly. We have many miles yet to cover tomorrow."
"Lie Fan! Please!" Cao Cao gasped, a tear finally breaking free and rolling down his gaunt cheek. "Do not do this! Do not curse my descendants to the void!"
Lie Fan did not pause. He did not look back. He simply stepped out of the carriage, the heavy iron doors swinging shut with a loud, ringing CLANG, the heavy deadbolts sliding into place, sealing the former master of the central plains back into his dark, isolated misery.
The journey continued like this for six long, arduous weeks. Across the sprawling plains, through the dense, autumn colored forests, and over the wide, rushing rivers, the massive Hengyuan army marched ever eastward.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime on the road, the horizon gave way to a sight that made the exhausted soldiers roar with pure, unadulterated joy.
Rising from the fertile plains, dwarfing any other city on the continent in its sheer, monumental scale and architectural majesty, were the towering, impregnable walls of Xiapi.
The capital of the Hengyuan Empire was a testament to Lie Fan's vision, a sprawling, perfectly ordered metropolis of wide avenues, towering pagodas, and massive, bustling markets. And today, it was a city draped entirely in the colors of victory.
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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