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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"The Weaver of Mats," Cao Cao chuckled, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye, shaking his head. "He would weep for a trampled peasant while secretly plotting to steal his sworn brother's province. He painted himself in the colors of a saint, which made him infinitely more detestable than a man who simply admits he wants the crown. You and I, Lie Fan... we never lied about what we were."
"We were tigers," Lie Fan agreed, pulling back a heavy wooden chair. "And tigers do not apologize for eating the deer."
With the shared amusement settling into a comfortable, profound camaraderie, Lie Fan took his seat at the table. He did not wait for the Oriole servants to approach. Instead, the Emperor of Hengyuan reached out with his own hands, picking up one of the elegant, long necked porcelain jugs of aged plum wine.
He poured the rich, dark amber liquid into a delicate jade cup and slid it across the polished mahogany toward Cao Cao. He then poured a second cup for himself.
Lie Fan raised his jade cup, holding it out toward the center of the table. "To the past, Brother Mengde. And to the paths we walked."
Cao Cao looked at the cup, and then at the man who had poured it. He reached out with a steady hand, lifting the jade to eye level. "To the tigers," Cao Cao replied softly.
The jade cups clinked together with a soft, clear chime that seemed to ring with the finality of an era. They both drank, savoring the incredibly complex, sweet, and tart notes of the finest vintage the capital had to offer.
As Cao Cao set his cup down, he looked at the lavish spread of roasted pheasant, venison stew, and steamed dumplings. He picked up a pair of silver chopsticks, the animosity between them seemingly dissolving entirely into the ether, replaced by the surreal, quiet intimacy of two veterans trading war stories.
"It feels like a lifetime ago," Cao Cao murmured, selecting a piece of ginger glazed pheasant. "But I still remember the dust of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. I remember watching your banners cutting through the chaotic masses. You were a young, ferocious commander serving under the stubborn old boar, Zhu Jun. And I was desperately trying to hold the lines under Huangfu Song."
Lie Fan nodded, taking a piece of the delicate river shrimp. "We were practically children playing with real swords. I remember watching your cavalry maneuvers near Yingchuan. You didn't just fight the rebels, you herded them. You used the terrain like a seasoned veteran while the rest of the Han commanders were just blindly charging into the mud. I knew then, watching your formations, that the Han Dynasty was dying, but the men who would replace it were already on the field."
"And then came the coalition against Dong Zhuo," Cao Cao scoffed, shaking his head as he chewed. He poured himself another cup of plum wine, the alcohol bringing a faint flush of color back to his pale cheeks. "Nineteen warlords gathered at Suanzao. The greatest assembly of martial might the continent had ever seen. And what did they do? They drank wine, wrote bad poetry, and argued over who got to sit at the head of the tent."
"Yuan Shao's vanity was larger than his supply train," Lie Fan chuckled, swirling his wine. "We both sat in those council meetings, listening to them bicker over titles while Dong Zhuo trues to burn Luoyang to the ground. I remember looking across the tent at you. We shared a glance when Yuan Shu refused to send grain to Sun Jian. We both knew, in that exact moment, that the alliance was a rotting corpse."
"It was a farce," Cao Cao agreed, leaning forward, his eyes alight with the memory of his own burgeoning ambition. "We both knew it wouldn't last the winter. That was the moment we truly separated from the pack, Lie Fan. While the rest of them were busy preening for the Han court, you and I quietly slipped away from the table. We focused entirely on empowering our own foundational power. You consolidated the east, and I secured the center."
"The dawn of the Warlord era," Lie Fan mused, looking out over the tranquil koi ponds of the estate. The afternoon breeze rustled the weeping willows, a stark contrast to the bloody history they were recounting. "The board was swept clean, and the game truly began. It was a time of pure, chaotic expansion. We devoured the smaller warlords like whales swallowing fish."
Cao Cao's gaze sharpened, a hint of the old, combative fire returning to his eyes. "And that was when our borders began to touch. That was when the skirmishes began. I remember the campaign against Lu Bu."
Cao Cao pointed a silver chopstick at Lie Fan. "The Flying General. A beast of a man with the loyalty of a starving stray dog. I marched toward him to finally put that rabid animal down. I had him cornered. And then... you intervened."
Lie Fan smiled a perfectly unapologetic, highly strategic smile. "I helped him, Brother Mengde. Because a rabid dog is highly useful if he is biting your enemy's leg. I needed Lu Bu to keep your forces occupied, to bleed your vanguards and stall your eastern expansion while I secured my own southern flanks. I funneled him supplies and offered him just enough hope to keep him fighting."
"And he died for it anyway," Cao Cao laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "I manages to corner him and his family. But your interference cost me thousands of men and a full year of campaigning. It was the first time I truly felt the sheer, suffocating weight of your strategic mind pressing against my borders."
"It was a necessary friction," Lie Fan replied smoothly, pouring them both more wine. "We were expanding too fast. We had both become more than just regional powerhouses. We were leviathans. Our shared borders stretched for hundreds of miles, a massive, bleeding fault line across the center of the world. Two tigers cannot share one mountain."
"No, they cannot," Cao Cao agreed softly. He took a slow sip of the wine, savoring the taste. "But before the tigers fought each other, they had to deal with the bear in the north. Yuan Shao."
Lie Fan's eyes gleamed with the memory of his most audacious campaign. "The man controlled four provinces. He had a hundreds of thousands armored soldiers, thousands of cavalry, and enough grain to feed them for a decade. The entire continent thought he was invincible. They thought he would sweep south and crush us both."
"But he was indecisive. He listened to sycophants and ignored his true strategists," Cao Cao sneered, his disdain for his old childhood friend still palpable even now. "And you, Lie Fan... you didn't wait for him to cross the river. You launched a preemptive strike that shattered the heavens."
"I hit him before he could draw his sword," Lie Fan said, his voice dropping to a low, intense register. "I tore through his vanguards and burned his supply depots at Wuchao. I broke the myth of Yuan Shao."
Cao Cao let out a hearty laugh, slapping his hand against the mahogany table. "And while you were busy shattering his main host and chasing him across the plains, I took absolute, unapologetic advantage of the chaos! You broke the jar, and I swept up the spilled honey. I marched my legions north and seized massive tracts of his western territories, absorbing hundreds of thousands of his routed soldiers into my own ranks before you could claim them."
"You opportunistic thief," Lie Fan grinned, raising his cup in a mock toast. "You stole the fruits of my labor."
"I am a warlord, Your Majesty. Opportunity is my religion," Cao Cao countered, clinking his cup against Lie Fan's. "But that campaign... that was the moment the world truly shrank. Yuan Shao was dead. The north was broken. The lesser lords were kneeling. Suddenly, there was no one left on the board but you and me."
The atmosphere in the pavilion shifted. The nostalgic warmth of their early days faded, replaced by the heavy, titanic gravity of their final, apocalyptic wars.
"The first big clash," Lie Fan murmured, setting his chopsticks down, his appetite suddenly gone as he recalled the sheer, terrifying scale of the bloodshed. "The war for the central plains."
Cao Cao's face tightened. The memory of that campaign was a wound that had never truly stopped bleeding. "I thought my defenses were impenetrable. I had fortified every river crossing, every mountain pass. I had the finest heavy infantry in the world, commanded by Xiahou Dun, Cao Ren, and Xu Chu. But your war machine... Lie Fan, it was something entirely alien."
Cao Cao looked at him, his dark eyes filled with a mixture of resentment and profound, awe struck respect. "Your logistical supply chains moved faster than my cavalry. You didn't just outfight me, you out engineered me."
"It was the hardest campaign of my life," Lie Fan admitted quietly, offering his rival the absolute truth. "Your generals fought like demons. I lost tens of thousands of men trying to break your lines. But when the walls of Xuchang finally fell..."
"I lost my heartland," Cao Cao finished for him, his voice barely a whisper. He stared blindly at the feast before him, seeing only the burning banners of his former capital. "Losing the central plains... losing Xuchang... it broke the spine of the Wei Dynasty. I was forced to order a total, desperate retreat. We burned the bridges behind us, abandoned the fertile lands we had cultivated for a decade, and fell back to the ancient, renovated walls of Luoyang to make it my new capital."
"It was a brilliant, fighting retreat," Lie Fan praised him sincerely. "Any other commander would have been entirely annihilated. Your army was routed, your supplies were gone, but you somehow managed to hold your core command structure together and rebuild a fortified perimeter around Luoyang. It bought you years."
"Years that you spent tightening the noose," Cao Cao smiled bitterly, shaking his head. "I sat in Luoyang, trying to rebuild an army from stone and dust, while I watched you execute a sequence of expansions that defied human logic."
Cao Cao picked up a piece of fruit, turning it over in his fingers. "I received the intelligence reports, and I thought my spies were lying to me. You marched south and completely vassalized the Sun Clan. The impregnable Yangtze River, the great diplomatic maneuver to the south... you turned it into a Hengyuan shipping lane without fighting a decades long war."
"Sun Ce is a proud man, but he is not a fool," Lie Fan explained. "I offered him a choice between a potential enemy even if they are great lalies and friends with, a place of high honor within a unified empire. He chose the safe future for his family."
"And then you turned your eyes west," Cao Cao continued, his voice dropping as he recounted the final nails in his coffin. "You marched into the treacherous mountains of Yi Province. You ripped the 'Heavenly Kingdom' right out of Liu Bei's hypocritical hands. When the news reached Luoyang that Liu Bei had fallen, I knew it was over."
Cao Cao looked up, meeting Lie Fan's eyes. "I knew that you had surrounded me entirely. The east, the south, the southwest... everywhere I looked, I saw the banners of the Hengyuan Dynasty. My empire was reduced to a fortified island in a sea of your ambition."
"Which led to our final showdown," Lie Fan said softly. "The march on Luoyang, the butter fight in Hongnong, and your final, desperate retreat into the impenetrable fortress of Chang'An."
"I threw everything I had left at you," Cao Cao said, a profound, weary pride echoing in his words. "I commanded my men to bleed you for every inch of stone. We unleashed the fire ships, the rolling logs, the poisoned arrows. We fought until the rivers ran black with blood. But when your thunderous siege engines breached the inner gates, and your halberd shattered the sky... I knew the mandate had finally, truly passed."
The two emperors fell silent. The wind rustled through the weeping willows, a gentle, soothing sound that belied the monumental gravity of the moment.
They sat across from each other at the lavish mahogany table. The feast was mostly untouched, but the wine jugs were half empty. They had recounted a lifetime of unparalleled violence, staggering ambition, and world shaking strategy.
Lie Fan looked at Cao Cao. The Emperor of Wei was the loser of the greatest war in history, sitting in a gilded cage, waiting for the poisoned cup. Lie Fan was the victor, the undisputed master of millions, wearing the silk robes of a living god.
Yet, in this shaded pavilion, stripped of their armies and their banners, they were simply two men who had shared the singular, terrifying burden of trying to hold the world in their hands.
Cao Cao poured the last drops of the aged plum wine into their jade cups. He set the empty porcelain jug down and picked up his cup, holding it out with a steady, unshakeable dignity.
"You won the board, Lie Fan," Cao Cao said, his dark eyes clear and entirely at peace. "You were the better tiger. You have forged a dynasty that will likely outlast the stones of this estate."
Cao Cao offered a faint, respectful smile. "I do not regret the path I walked. And I do not curse the man who bested me. It was a magnificent game."
Lie Fan raised his jade cup, his heart heavy with the profound, melancholy respect that one apex predator holds for another at the end of their days.
"It was the greatest game ever played, Brother Mengde," Lie Fan replied, his voice steady and resolute. "And the world will never see our likes again."
They clinked their jade cups together one final time. In the quiet shade of the pavilion, surrounded by hidden assassins and the ghosts of their past, the victor and the vanquished drank the last of their wine, sealing the end of an era in absolute, undeniable silence.
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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