If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
______________________________
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
Out on the choppy, unpredictable swells of the eastern sea, the tests were a terrifying spectacle. The warships, belching black smoke from their steam stacks, maneuvered flawlessly against the tides. The pressurized Water Dragons fired massive, solid columns of seawater across the waves, demonstrating their ability to sweep an enemy deck clean of boarding parties even while the ship was pitching violently in the swells.
But it was the Fierce Fire Oil Cabinets that truly horrified and delighted the naval commanders. Firing a stream of highly refined, sticky petroleum across the water, the liquid flame did not extinguish when it hit the ocean. It floated, burning furiously on the surface of the sea itself, turning the water into a literal lake of unquenchable fire.
When directed at decommissioned, empty target hulks drifting in the bay, the liquid fire turned them into blazing infernos within seconds, the heat so intense it could be felt from ships anchored a mile away. The eastern ocean, once a barrier of unpredictable terror, was rapidly becoming Lie Fan's personal, industrialized killing field.
And lastly, back in the fortified weapons foundries of the capital, the future of infantry warfare was being hammered into existence. The highly anticipated Flintlock pistols and the heavy, wide barreled Blunderbuss were finally entering into their rigorous fourth phase of testing.
The initial prototypes had proven their devastating armor piercing capabilities, but they were deeply flawed. The springs had snapped under tension, the flint mechanisms had failed in the rain, and, most terrifyingly, several of the iron barrels had violently ruptured under the intense pressure of the black powder, sending lethal shrapnel tearing through the testing grounds.
This fourth phase was strictly to make sure that the volatile black powder mechanisms are completely safe for the infantry. Lie Fan knew that a weapon was worse than useless if the soldiers were more afraid of their own guns than the enemy's swords.
Huang Yue Ying pushed her metallurgical teams to the brink of exhaustion. They experimented with different folding techniques, blending high carbon steel with softer iron cores to create barrels that possessed both the hardness to contain the explosion and the flexibility to prevent shattering.
They subjected the weapons to the most brutal, unforgiving environments imaginable. The pistols were dropped in mud, submerged in water, and then immediately fired to test the sealing of the flash pans. The blunderbusses were loaded with double charges of powder, deliberately over pressurizing the chambers to find their exact breaking points.
This phase was ensuring that even after continuous, rapid use on a chaotic, blood soaked battlefield, where a panicked soldier might load too much powder or fail to clean the barrel properly, the metal barrels wouldn't catastrophically blow up in the soldiers' hands.
Day after day, the sharp, deafening cracks of the firearms echoed from the testing pits. Yue Ying personally fired hundreds of rounds, her shoulder bruised black and blue from the massive recoil of the blunderbuss, her face permanently smudged with black powder residue.
She would not rest, and she would not approve mass production, until the weapons were as reliable as the setting sun.
The Hengyuan Dynasty was undergoing a metamorphosis of unprecedented scale. From the philosophical reprogramming of the human soul in the academies, to the forceful mixing of bloodlines in the freezing north, to the terrifying, mechanical beasts of war being birthed in the smoke choked foundries, Lie Fan was forging an empire that the world was entirely unprepared to face.
As all of this massive political maneuvering and heavy, world altering technological testing was actively happening across the sprawling breadth of the empire, a far more delicate and beautiful situation was quietly unfolding in the very heart of industry.
Deep inside the scorching, noisy confines of the Imperial Workshop, amidst the violent hissing of high pressure steam engines and the loud, rhythmic clanging of heavy steel hammers, a genuine romance between Zhuge Liang and Huang Yue Ying began to naturally blossom.
It was a profound connection born not of political arrangement or superficial courtly flirtation, but due to their incredibly close daily work. They spent their waking hours side by side in the trenches of invention, their faces smudged with soot, their hands stained with grease, entirely united by a shared, fanatical devotion to Emperor Lie Fan's mechanical vision.
Zhuge Liang, the brilliant, silver tongued Minister of Personnel whose intellect could manipulate entire armies and outmaneuver seasoned warlords, was actually the one who had caught the feelings first.
Ever since they had first met within these fiery walls, and he had witnessed her unparalleled intellect and her fiery, obsessive passion for innovation, he was deeply, fundamentally captivated.
He had spent his life surrounded by men of genius and women of refined, passive beauty, but he had never encountered a soul quite like Huang Yue Ying's. She did not merely understand the physical mechanics of the world; she commanded them.
When she spoke of metallurgical tolerances and steam cylinder pressure ratios, her eyes lit up with a brilliant, intoxicating fire that made the young prodigy's heart skip a beat.
Deciding not to wait any longer, recognizing that a woman of her caliber would not simply fall into his lap through passive observation, the usually composed and deeply measured strategist boldly took a step forward. He actively tried to pierce through the thick, professional layer of purely academic boundaries that existed between the two of them.
He began arriving at her specific workbench earlier than necessary, bringing her specialized, high grade tea to cut through the sulfurous air of the forge. He would find excuses to review blueprints by her side, leaning in close enough that their shoulders would brush, his usually calm demeanor replaced by an intense, focused warmth directed entirely at her.
However, despite his brilliant, calculated romantic maneuvers, Huang Yue Ying at first was completely and utterly oblivious to all the subtle, romantic attempts done by Zhuge Liang to get closer to her.
This was not out of coldness or rejection; it was entirely because she was always far too hyper focused on her complex engineering tasks. While Zhuge Liang was admiring the way the forge light caught the curve of her cheek, her mind was constantly swimming with mathematical equations, structural stress tests, and complex steam pressure theories.
She was an anomaly in her era. Unlike the typical, delicate young noble ladies and women of this time, who spent their luxurious, heavily sheltered days leisurely doing fine embroidery, hosting elegant tea parties, cooking, baking sweet pastries, and having plenty of idle time to sit by the meticulously manicured gardens and daydream about sweeping romances while reading poetry books, Yue Ying was fiercely focused solely on crafting and making mechanical things.
Her world was measured in iron and gunpowder, not silk and sonnets. Because her hands were constantly covered in heavy grease and black soot, and her ears were perpetually ringing from the sound of detonating blunderbusses, she simply didn't have the free time or the traditional mindset like the other aristocratic ladies to recognize a gentleman's courting, even when that gentleman was one of the most desired men in the capital.
But slowly, as the days turned into weeks, the thick, iron walls around her heart began to break.
After all, she is a very smart and highly perceptive lady. The constant warmth he radiated, the lingering gazes that lasted just a fraction of a second too long over the drafting tables, and the gentle, unspoken care Zhuge Liang showed her, wiping a smudge of ash from her forehead, or ensuring her workspace was perfectly lit, eventually clicked in her brilliant mind.
When she finally realized his true, romantic intentions, she suddenly found herself in completely uncharted territory. She could dismantle a volatile flintlock mechanism blindfolded, but she genuinely didn't know how to react to these sudden, intensely foreign emotions.
Her initial defense mechanism was to desperately try to act like usual, burying her face deeper into her complex blueprints and demanding more coal for the furnaces. But human nature, especially the pull of genuine affection, is far stronger than any mechanical logic. Her racing heart simply couldn't allow her to do so.
She found herself stuttering when he leaned close to point out a flaw in a gear ratio, her cheeks blushing deeply under the soot when he handed her a heavy iron tool, his fingers deliberately grazing hers. She found herself subconsciously listening for the sound of his footsteps amidst the roar of the machinery, eagerly looking forward to his daily arrivals with a nervous, fluttering excitement she had never experienced before.
And so, their previous dynamic of two stoic, highly professional inventors dramatically began to change. It wasn't an abrupt shift, but rather organically shifting into a sweet, undeniable dance of a determined man passionately chasing after the brilliant lady he wanted.
The Imperial Workshop, despite its blinding heat and suffocating smoke, became the backdrop for a deeply intimate courtship.
Her father, the venerable, sharp eyed Huang Chengyan, of course, quickly noticed this shifting dynamic in the workshop. He was a master of observation, and the sudden, charged tension between the two lead engineers was impossible to miss.
Watching from afar as Zhuge Liang gently wrapped a bandage around a minor burn on his daughter's wrist, the old master simply stroked his white beard and allowed it to happen with a warm, deeply satisfied smile.
He was seeing one of his most prized, brilliant students, who also happened to be one of the most powerful, highly respected, and handsome men in the entire empire, earnestly and respectfully courting his beloved daughter. It was a match forged not by political convenience, but by absolute intellectual equality.
And Lie Fan, sitting high on his golden dragon throne in the inner palace, of course soon knew all about this blossoming romance.
Nothing happened within the walls of Xiapi that the Black Dragon did not see. The highly detailed, daily reports of the Oriole Agents networks, delivered silently to his desk by Jia Xu, contained meticulous observations of the workshop's dynamic. Reading the reports detailing Zhuge Liang's stuttering attempts at poetry mixed with engineering jargon, Lie Fan just smirked, leaning back in his throne.
He allowed it to happen without a single ounce of interference, because after all, this was his grand, calculated purpose from the very start.
That was precisely the hidden, manipulative reason why he had specifically assigned Zhuge Liang to heavily assist in the Imperial Workshop in the first place. He had a million other bureaucratic tasks he could have assigned the prodigy, but he wanted to play matchmaker.
By throwing the two greatest minds of their generation into a high pressure, incredibly close working environment, he was carefully keeping a close eye on the romantic progress between the two geniuses to ensure they ended up together just like in history. It was a subtle, invisible manipulation of destiny, guaranteeing that the unparalleled loyalty and the combined, monstrous intellect of their future household would forever be bound to the Hengyuan Dynasty.
Meanwhile, far away from the flying sparks, the hissing steam, and the romantic tension of the workshop, a completely different kind of revolution was taking place. The highly secretive undergarments business that was masterfully created by Lie Fan's five wives, the Empress Ying Yue, and the four Imperial Concubines Diao Chan, Cai Wenji, Lu Lingqi, and Zhen Ji, began to take the capital by storm.
Operating completely in the shadows, far from the prying eyes of the rigid, conservative Confucian scholars of the court, their revolutionary, highly comfortable garments slowly began to spread. Just as Lie Fan had brilliantly advised, they targeted the very edge of high society first, introducing their creations around the high end brothels and the incredibly wealthy red light districts of Xiapi.
This clandestine, highly sensitive distribution was executed flawlessly with the direct, terrifyingly efficient help of the cunning spymaster Wang Yi. She utilized the beautiful, highly trained women Oriole Agents that are deeply embedded in those entertainment locations.
Under the guise of merchants trading in 'specialty southern silks,' these agents introduced the structured inner garments and the highly breathable lower attire to the most famous, sought after courtesans in the city.
The reaction was instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive. The courtesans, women whose livelihoods depended entirely on their aesthetic appeal and who spent hours enduring the suffocating, rib crushing traditional layers of Han clothing, found the new garments to be a literal breath of fresh air.
It supported their figures flawlessly, allowing them to move with a newfound, mesmerizing grace, all while maintaining absolute comfort in the sweltering, crowded pleasure houses.
Soon enough, the whispered words of these exotic, incredibly flattering, and comfortable new undergarments began to spread rapidly through the wealthy noblemen and scholars that frequently came to the pleasure houses.
Of course, it was all done entirely through the deliberate spread of secret, hushed conversations and bragging words over warm cups of rice wine. In the dimly lit, incense filled private rooms of the entertainment districts, the men marveled at the new attire of their favorite courtesans.
They spoke in hushed, awe struck tones about the incredible, structured silk that seemed to defy gravity, and the sheer, tantalizing comfort it provided the women wearing it.
Inevitably, these rampant, highly scandalous rumors and the rapidly changing habits of the men soon reached the pristine, heavily guarded inner courtyards of the aristocratic estates.
The proud, highly conservative noble ladies of the capital were incredibly angry, of course. It did not take long for them to notice and know that their men, whether it was their husbands, their sons, their brothers, their grandsons, or their cousins, were suddenly going to the red light districts and brothels much more frequently than ever before.
The domestic harmony of the elite clans was being violently disrupted. Wives found their husbands constantly making excuses to attend 'late night poetry readings,' while mothers scolded their sons for draining their silver allowances on entertainment.
Furious, deeply insulted, and intensely suspicious, these elite ladies immediately mobilized their own domestic intelligence networks. They sent their most trusted, stealthy servants and fiercely loyal handmaidens into the city to deeply investigate what exactly was going on to enchant their men so thoroughly. They suspected foreign aphrodisiacs, dark southern witchcraft, or perhaps a sudden influx of captured, exotic beauties from the conquered territories.
______________________________
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