books44 Chapter 1163 - 1104. A Month & A Half Passed By
Chapter 1163 - 1104. A Month & A Half Passed By
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(A/N: Don’t forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"We will gift them the luxury variants in their guest quarters," Lie Fan decreed. "We will let them experience this miracle of cleanliness themselves. We will let them become completely addicted to the scent and the status it brings. And when the celebration ends, and they beg to know how to acquire more... we will open the state monopolies, and we will bleed their treasuries dry."
Jia Xu and Mi Zhu, the two pillars of Hengyuan’s economic and covert supremacy, listened to their Emperor’s predatory, brilliant strategy with absolute, synchronized understanding. They recognized the flawless trap being laid for the arriving dignitaries. It was not a trap of iron and blood, but one of luxury and inescapable desire.
Both men rose smoothly from their chairs. In perfect unison, they brought their hands together, cupping them respectfully and bowing deeply from the waist.
"We understand your vision completely, Your Imperial Majesty," Mi Zhu declared, his voice trembling slightly with the sheer, intoxicating thrill of the impending commercial monopoly. "I will personally oversee the logistical scaling. We will have the warehouses stocked to the rafters with these soaps and shampoos, perfectly packaged in exquisite cedar boxes, ready to be unveiled and distributed to the guest quarters before the first vassal king even sets foot in the capital."
"And I shall ensure that the cage remains entirely impenetrable while the stockpiling occurs," Jia Xu added, his raspy voice dropping to a whisper of absolute finality. "The secret of this purity will remain in the dark until Your Majesty commands the dawn."
Lie Fan offered them both a slow, deeply satisfied nod of approval. "See to it. You are both dismissed. Go and build our new mountain of gold."
As the heavy rosewood doors clicked shut behind the departing ministers, the absolute, profound silence of the imperial study settled back over the room. The frantic, high stakes energy of military and economic planning finally ebbed away, leaving Lie Fan alone with the staggering reality of what he had just accomplished earlier in the day.
He stood up from behind the massive mahogany desk. His movements were slow, deliberate, unburdened by the crushing weight of endless war.
He walked past the towering shelves of historical texts and bamboo scrolls, pushing open the intricately carved wooden lattice doors that led out onto the grand, sweeping terrace of his private quarters.
Lie Fan stepped out into the crisp, bright sunlight.
From this elevated vantage point, the entirety of Xiapi was laid bare before him. It was a sprawling, magnificent beast of a city, a labyrinth of glazed tile roofs, bustling marketplaces, wide paved avenues, and towering defensive walls.
He could see the distant glint of the Si River, choked with merchant barges and naval patrols. He could see the faint, grey plumes of smoke rising from the massive iron foundries in the eastern districts, churning out the steel that had conquered the world.
He rested his hands on the cool, white marble balustrade, closing his eyes and taking a long, deep, shuddering breath. The air smelled of spring blossoms, woodsmoke, and the faint, unmistakable scent of human industry.
He opened his eyes, looking out over the horizon. A profound, overwhelming wave of emotion swelled in his chest, so intense it brought a sudden, stinging warmth to his eyes.
Unification.
It was a word that had been whispered in dark tents, prayed for in burning temples, and bled for on a thousand different battlefields. And now, it was real. It was no longer a desperate ambition; it was a geographic and political fact.
As he looked out over the capital, Lie Fan’s mind drifted backward, bridging the impossible, surreal chasm between his two lives.
He remembered the sterile, concrete world of his past life, a world of modern convenience where the bloody history of the Three Kingdoms was nothing more than a collection of novels, television dramas, and strategic video games. He had been a man fascinated by the titans of antiquity, by Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan.
And then, he had been violently thrust into their reality. He had been forced to survive in a world where disease, starvation, and the casual brutality of warlords were the daily currency of existence.
He had started with nothing, fighting in the dust of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, building his strength inch by bloody inch. He had outmaneuvered the brilliant minds of history, he had shattered the greatest armies of the era, and he had forged a dynasty that now stretched from the frozen northern steppes to the steaming southern jungles.
This moment, standing on the marble terrace, was the absolute culmination of this lifetime’s brutal, exhausting work, and the miraculous fulfillment of his past lifetime’s wildest, most impossible dreams. He was no longer a student of history. He was its absolute master.
Lie Fan let out a long, contented exhale, allowing the warm afternoon sun to bake the tension out of his shoulders. He would allow himself this one quiet moment of reflection. Tomorrow, the monumental task of preparing the greatest celebration the world had ever seen would begin.
Time, no longer measured in the desperate, frantic hours of military campaigns, began to flow with a steady, peaceful rhythm. The weeks slowly melted away, turning into a month, and then a month and a half.
The logistical machinery of the Hengyuan Dynasty, repurposed from war to diplomacy, operated with a terrifying, breathtaking efficiency.
Within days of the Emperor’s decree, the great foundries of the capital had paused their weapon production to cast thousands of exquisite, commemorative bronze tokens. The imperial calligraphers had worked until their fingers bled, drafting hundreds of magnificent, gold leafed invitations on the finest white silk.
And then, the Oriole agents and the elite imperial couriers were unleashed upon the continent.
They rode out from Xiapi like a flock of golden birds, carrying the Emperor’s summons to the absolute furthest corners of the known world. The reach of the Hengyuan Dynasty was staggering, and Lie Fan demanded that every single soul who paid tribute to the Black Dragon bear witness to the dawn of the new era.
The invitations were carried south, penetrating the dense, malarial jungles and crossing the churning rivers of Southeast Asia. They reached the vassal lords of Jiaozhi, Linyi, and the disparate tribal kings of the deep south.
They were carried north, braving the freezing winds to reach the nomadic chieftains of the steppes who had bent the knee. They traveled east, crossing the treacherous, storm tossed seas on massive Hengyuan naval galleons, arriving at the mountainous, fortified courts of the Korean Peninsula, to the king and court of Goguryeo.
The brilliance of the invitations lay not just in their opulence, but in their profound diplomatic respect. Through the unparalleled intelligence network of the Orioles and the scholarly translation bureaus established by Lie Fan, every single invitation was drafted bilingually.
The elegant, commanding Han calligraphy dominated the right side of the silk, while the left side was meticulously translated into the native tongues and local scripts of the specific vassal or tributary lord receiving it.
When a tribal king in the deep south or a noble lord in the Korean mountains opened the golden tube, they did not just see the arrogant demands of a foreign conqueror, they saw their own language recognized and respected by the supreme ruler of the earth. It was a masterstroke of psychological integration, binding their pride directly to the prestige of the Hengyuan throne.
The response was absolute and immediate. No one dared, or wanted, to refuse the summons of Emperor Lie Fan.
A massive, unprecedented migration of wealth, power, and nobility began to flow toward the central plains. From the southern jungles, massive, multi decked river barges adorned with colorful banners and carrying exotic tributes of ivory, spices, and rare beasts began the long journey up the Yangtze River.
From the northern and western frontiers, heavily guarded, opulent caravans stretching for miles crawled across the newly paved imperial highways.
The rivers and the roads were choked with the converging elite of the world. They traveled by land or by water, pushing their retinues to their absolute limits to fasten their journey, desperate not to be late for the greatest political and social event in human history.
Meanwhile, the capital city of Xiapi was undergoing a miraculous, frantic metamorphosis.
The preparations required to host tens of thousands of foreign dignitaries, high ranking nobles, and the returning victorious armies were staggering.
However, because Minister of Rites Lu Su had anticipated this exact scenario for months, the necessary materials, the lumber, the silk, the lanterns, the wine, had already been stockpiled. The execution of the festival preparations happened at a blisteringly fast rate.
Massive wooden scaffoldings were erected overnight along the primary avenues. Thousands of workers draped miles of brilliant, unblemished red, black, and gold silk from the eaves of every building, transforming the city into a vibrant ocean of imperial colors.
Tens of thousands of intricately painted paper lanterns were strung across the streets, ready to turn the night into a second day. Grand, tiered viewing platforms were constructed in the central squares for the impending military parades, and the sweet, heavy scent of roasting meats and blooming flowers saturated the air.
At first, the common people of Xiapi were entirely bewildered by the sheer, explosive scale of the preparations.
The merchants in the bazaars, the blacksmiths at their anvils, and the farmers bringing their carts through the gates stopped to stare at the miles of silk being hung from the watchtowers.
Rumors ran wild through the teahouses and taverns. Was the Emperor taking a new Empress? Had a new heir been born? Was this a religious festival to appease the river gods?
The confusion lingered for two days, until the imperial magistrates finally stepped out onto the balconies of the city squares, unrolling the massive edicts stamped with the Emperor’s Jade Seal.
When the town criers cleared their throats and read the decree aloud, when the words echoing across the squares explicitly stated that the League of Northwestern Lords had been annihilated, that the Qinghai Plateau was subjugated, and that the celebration was for the absolute, permanent unification of the land, the reaction was unlike anything the capital had ever seen.
For a few seconds, the city of Xiapi fell into a stunned, breathless silence.
The common people, many of whom had been born into a world of endless war, struggled to process the concept. Decades of warlords burning their fields, conscripting their sons, and plunging the continent into a perpetual, bloody nightmare... it was over. There were no more enemies on the borders. There were no more rival emperors.
And then, the city erupted.
It was not just a cheer, it was a primal, seismic explosion of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. Men and women wept openly in the streets, falling to their knees and embracing total strangers.
Veterans who bore the scars of the Anti Dong Zhuo coalition and the wars against Yuan Shao raised their cups in the taverns, their voices cracking as they roared praises to the heavens. Children who had never known the fear of a siege danced through the avenues.
The people of Xiapi cheered so loudly that the sound literally shook the dust from the rooftops. They poured into the streets, aiding the workers in hanging the lanterns, offering free food to the laborers, and transforming the state mandated preparation into a massive, city wide outpouring of joyous, voluntary labor.
The capital was alive, buzzing with an electric, intoxicating euphoria that promised to make the upcoming celebration the stuff of eternal legend.
While the outer city rejoiced and the foreign dignitaries crawled toward the capital, the inner sanctuary of the Harem Palace was a whirlwind of frantic, highly organized, and exquisitely beautiful chaos.
The political pacification of the realm belonged to the Emperor, but the logistical nightmare of presenting the massive, complex imperial family to the world belonged exclusively to Empress Ying Yue.
As the supreme matriarch of the inner court, Ying Yue had taken absolute command of the preparations for the imperial household. This was not a minor banquet, this was the presentation of the dynasty’s bloodline to the vassal kings of the earth.
Every single one of Lie Fan’s children, from the eldest Crown Prince down to the infants who were still nursing, was required to attend the grand ceremonies, and they all had to look absolutely, flawlessly divine.
The grand receiving hall of the Harem Palace had been temporarily transformed into a massive, high end tailor’s workshop. Dozens of frantic palace maids darted back and forth, carrying bolts of priceless shimmering silk, trays of jade ornaments, and velvet boxes filled with pearls and gold hairpins.
Standing in the center of the room, looking over a sprawling table covered in fabric swatches and measurement ledgers, Empress Ying Yue issued orders with the precise, unyielding authority of a frontline general.
"The cut on Prince Muchen’s ceremonial robes is entirely too loose around the shoulders!" Ying Yue instructed a terrified master tailor, pointing sharply at a magnificent piece of black and gold silk. "He is the Crown Prince. He will be standing at his father’s side during the military review. He must not look like a boy swimming in his father’s clothes, he must look like a young dragon! Take it in by two inches and reinforce the collar with heavier gold threading!"
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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