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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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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.
Soon, each of the spies returned to the grand manors, slipping through the side doors to deliver their breathless reports. The noble ladies gathered in their private chambers, dismissing the guards, and heard and knew all about the existence of these mysterious, revolutionary undergarments.
Their initial fiery anger, the burning desire to have the courtesans heavily punished by the local magistrates, then, of course, quickly morphed into an intense, burning curiosity.
Human nature, especially the deeply ingrained competitive nature of the aristocratic hierarchy, took over. If a mere courtesan could command the absolute, undivided attention of their husbands simply by wearing a new type of structured silk, then the noblewomen could not afford to be left behind.
They desperately wanted to know what kind of magical garments could have such an effect. They realized that their traditional, flat bound, restrictive clothing was putting them at a severe, undeniable disadvantage. And so, swallowing their immense, traditional pride, they decided they personally went out to investigate what exactly this thing the courtesans and ladies of the red light districts were wearing.
Anticipating this exact, highly predictable psychological reaction, the cunning Oriole Agents had already perfectly prepared the tracks.
They dropped carefully placed rumors, "accidental" slips of the tongue by silk merchants in the marketplaces, and subtle breadcrumbs to slowly, deliberately lead the furious, curious noblewomen directly to the source. The whispers guided them through the maze of the capital, directly to the secret Undergarments Business that was masterminded by the Empress and Concubines.
The exclusive, highly classified shop was strategically located deep in the affluent northern district of the inner city, far away from the sordid red light districts where the product was originally tested. Its exact address was a highly guarded secret passed only by word of mouth among the elite, spoken in hushed tones behind painted fans.
From the outside, the building was completely unassuming. It was just a normal, quiet, high walled aristocratic mansion with no signage whatsoever, featuring a simple, dark lacquered gate and a few weeping willows trailing over the gray stone walls. It looked exactly like the residence of a retired, reclusive minister, drawing absolutely no unwanted attention from the patrolling city guards or the rigid Confucian scholars.
But when the very first brave lady from a prominent noble clan, the proud, highly influential wife of a top military general, finally knocked on the heavy wooden doors and cautiously entered inside with her nervous, wide eyed handmaidens, she was completely and utterly shocked.
The transition from the unassuming, quiet street to the interior of the mansion was like stepping into a hidden, unimaginable paradise. The interior was breathtakingly luxurious, designed specifically to cater to the impossibly high standards of the capital's elite. The air was perfumed with rare, imported floral scents. The floors were covered in thick, woven southern rugs, and the walls were draped in the finest, shimmering silks.
She was immediately mesmerized by the beautiful, incredibly crafted intimate garments that were elegantly put on display inside the private, velvet lined rooms. The craftsmanship was unlike anything she had ever seen. There were garments of deep crimson, pure white, and soft gold, featuring intricate, supportive lacework and soft, flexible structural bindings that promised absolute comfort.
Immediately, highly professional and polite women clerks, all handpicked, fiercely loyal operatives trained by Zhen Ji and Diao Chan, stepped forward to serve the wealthy customers.
They moved with flawless courtly grace, offering the noblewoman premium tea and sweet delicacies, making her feel completely safe and deeply respected.
The clerks expertly measured the noblewoman in complete privacy, carefully and scientifically explaining the incredible, liberating comfort of the garments, assuring her that she would never again suffer the crushing pain of traditional chest bindings or the heavy, sweltering heat of layered linen skirts.
The noblewoman, completely won over by the luxury, the logic, and the undeniable aesthetic beauty of the garments, bought dozens of pieces in pure silver.
And she was only the first.
Within weeks, the unassuming mansion in the northern district became the most heavily trafficked, yet completely unspoken, location in the entire capital.
Wives of the highest officials, daughters of wealthy merchants, and the matriarchs of ancient clans flooded through the doors, eager to abandon their archaic, uncomfortable traditions in favor of this hidden, luxurious revolution. The coin flowed in like a torrential river, generating an obscene, staggering amount of wealth that completely dwarfed the revenues of traditional silk merchants.
But despite this booming, completely revolutionary business completely changing the fashion and the daily comfort of the era, the true masterminds behind the velvet curtain maintained absolute discipline.
Ying Yue, Diao Chan, Cai Wenji, Lu Lingqi, and Zhen Ji would never, ever show up in person. They remained perfectly hidden behind the scenes within the impenetrable walls of the imperial palace.
They reviewed the staggering financial ledgers, directed the massive, covert supply chains of premium cotton and silk, and continually designed new, ever more comfortable variations of the attire from the safety of their pavilions.
They were the unseen queens of this highly lucrative new empire, wielding an economic and cultural power that quietly shifted the foundation of Han society, entirely undetected by the men who believed they ruled the world.
As all of this massive domestic and technological development was actively happening across the sprawling capital, Lie Fan received a highly classified, heavily encrypted missive. It was an urgent, deeply respectful invitation from Zhuge Liang, requesting the Emperor's immediate presence away from the political epicenter of Xiapi.
Lie Fan was specially invited to travel to the eastern coast, to a location just east of Xiapi that did not officially exist on any public imperial maps. It was a heavily guarded, highly classified secret imperial workshop harbor, nestled deep within a naturally concealed, crescent shaped cove carved into the rugged coastal cliffs.
The journey was swift, undertaken with a small, elite detachment of the Yellow Ghost Bodyguards. When Lie Fan finally crested the coastal ridges, the salty, biting wind of the eastern sea washing over his dark riding cloak, the sheer scale of the hidden facility revealed itself.
The secret harbor was a sprawling, industrialized fortress of maritime engineering. Thousands of laborers, shipwrights, and metallurgists crawled like ants over massive wooden scaffolds. The deafening sounds of sawing timber, clanging hammers, and the violent hissing of venting steam echoed off the cliff faces, completely drowning out the rhythmic crashing of the ocean waves.
Upon his arrival at the bustling, soot stained docks, he was met by the exhausted but fiercely determined trio of Zhuge Liang, Huang Yue Ying, and Liu Ye. They bowed deeply to their sovereign before proudly ushering him toward the deepest, most secure drydock in the facility.
There, resting upon massive wooden slips, was the culmination of their metallurgical madness. He was proudly shown the on progress steel ship. It was an awe inspiring, terrifying sight. The hull was not made of timber, but entirely plated in thick, overlapping sheets of forged iron and steel, riveted together with massive bolts.
It looked less like a vessel of the sea and more like a floating fortress, a metallic leviathan designed to be utterly impervious to any conventional weaponry the ancient world could throw at it.
"We are preparing for the deep water displacement test, Your Majesty," Liu Ye shouted over the roaring wind and the grinding of the harbor machinery. "The steam boilers have been installed in the lower decks. If the structural integrity holds, this ship will render every wooden fleet on the ocean entirely obsolete."
Lie Fan stood at the edge of the stone pier, his arms crossed, watching intently as the engineers signaled for the launch.
The massive wooden blocks holding the ship were knocked away. With a deafening, metallic groan that sounded like a wounded beast, the colossal steel hull slid down the greased slips and plunged into the deep, churning waters of the cove.
A massive geyser of white water erupted as the leviathan hit the sea. For a brief, agonizing, and incredibly hopeful few seconds, the steel ship settled into the water, rocking violently as the waves lapped against its cold, metallic sides. The engineers on the docks held their collective breath, their eyes wide with anticipation.
But then, the brutal, uncompromising laws of physics took over.
The engineers demonstrated that the prototype still showed clear signs of critical failure in the last moment. The massive metal hull simply cannot float. The sheer, overwhelming weight of the interlocking steel plates, combined with the colossal iron steam boilers nestled deep within its belly, completely overpowered the displacement of the water.
There was a horrific, buckling sound. The ship began to list violently to its port side. The dark ocean water began pouring over the reinforced gunwales, flooding the internal compartments with terrifying speed.
"It's taking on water! The displacement ratio is failing!" Liu Ye screamed, his hands tearing at his hair in sheer desperation.
They watched in helpless horror as the prototype rapidly sank. It did not go down slowly, it plummeted like a dropped anvil. Within less than a minute, the majestic, terrifying steel fortress had completely vanished beneath the choppy waves, leaving behind only a violently churning vortex of bubbles, a few floating wooden crates, and the crushing weight of absolute failure.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the docks, broken only by the indifferent crashing of the tide.
Yue Ying, Liu Ye, and Zhuge Liang, who was the one who actually invited Lie Fan to come here to witness the test, hoping to proudly present him with the ultimate naval weapon, looked deeply frustrated. The exhaustion of weeks of sleepless nights and endless mathematical calculations seemed to crash down upon their shoulders all at once.
Yue Ying's hands were trembling slightly, her brilliant mind furiously running through a thousand different variables, trying to understand where the physics had betrayed them.
Approaching the Emperor, their heads bowed in shame, the three of them respectfully asked for his divine direction. They knew that Lie Fan possessed a mind that often seemed to transcend the era itself, having conceptualized the steam engine and the flintlock mechanism out of thin air.
They desperately hoped to know if he had any way, any hidden knowledge, or any divine insight in finding the perfect material composition or the exact structural design required to make heavy steel float.
"Your Majesty," Zhuge Liang pleaded softly, his usually unshakeable composure fractured by the sinking of their life's work. "The math tells us that a vessel displaces its own weight in water, yet the steel is too dense, the volume too constrained. We are missing a fundamental truth of the ocean. Please, if you hold the key to this physical impossibility in your mind, we beg you to share it."
Lie Fan looked at the bubbling water where the ship had vanished, and then he looked down at the three greatest minds of his generation.
He simply shook his head.
Feigning total ignorance, he offered them a warm, sympathetic smile, humbly saying that this complex naval architecture is far out of his expertise.
"I am a commander of men, a conqueror of the steppes, and a unifier of the land," Lie Fan lied smoothly, his voice carrying a gentle, comforting tone. "I can tell you how to break a cavalry charge, and I can envision the power of steam. But the absolute, unforgiving physics of the deep ocean? The exact ratios of steel density to water displacement? That is a realm of science that the Heavens have not blessed me with."
Inwardly, however, he still held true to the silent, firm oath he had made to himself long ago. He knew exactly why the ship had sunk. He understood the Archimedes principle, the precise mathematical necessities of hull volume, drafted buoyancy, and watertight compartmentalization. He could have grabbed a charcoal stick, knelt on the stone pier, and drawn them the exact schematic needed to make the steel float perfectly on their next attempt.
But he refused. He deeply wanted them to be the ones to find the scientific solution themselves.
He knew he had already given more than enough help and modern shortcuts for the era's technology advancement. He had handed them the concepts of firearms, steam power, and mechanized industry on a silver platter. But if he continuously played the role of an omniscient god, simply handing them the answers every time they hit a wall, they would never become true scientists.
They would merely remain brilliant mechanics following his divine recipes. For true, lasting progress, for an empire whose technological supremacy would outlive his own mortal lifespan, he wanted to see them finding the answers by themselves through the grueling, agonizing, and ultimately triumphant process of trial and error.
Hearing his denial, the three brilliant minds were, of course, visibly disappointed. Their shoulders slumped a fraction further. But because of his perfectly executed humility, they also quickly understood and accepted that their great Emperor doesn't know absolutely everything. He was a mortal man of supreme vision, not an infallible deity of mathematics.
So, in the end, they accepted that they could only be the ones to solve this massive engineering hurdle by themselves. The realization seemed to reignite a stubborn, unyielding fire within Yue Ying's eyes. She wiped a streak of grease from her cheek, her jaw setting with a fierce determination. If the Emperor did not have the answer, then they would simply have to tear the answer from the fabric of reality itself.
Pushing aside their deep frustration, they respectfully bowed to Lie Fan once more, while they continued the grand harbor tour for him. They led him away from the sunken steel failure, showing him the rest of the shipyards where the proven, wooden hulled steam warships were being mass produced with terrifying, industrialized efficiency.
After the insightful, highly revealing harbor inspection was complete, Lie Fan boarded his carriage and returned back to the capital of Xiapi. The salty air of the coast was replaced by the dense, political atmosphere of the imperial center.
He did not rest upon his return. He immediately convened and met with the Eastern Expansion Strategy Council in the heavily guarded, subterranean imperial war room.
Inside the dimly lit chamber, surrounded by massive topographical maps of the eastern seas and the unknown archipelagos, the atmosphere was thick with aggressive anticipation.
Under the meticulous, flawless lead of the grand tactician Xun You, the council confidently reported to him that absolutely everything was already in place for the upcoming invasion. Xun You stood before a massive table, moving small wooden blocks representing fleets and divisions. They detailed that the grand logistics, an undertaking of a scale previously thought mathematically impossible, were fully ready.
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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