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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Lie Fan continued to read the scroll, a cold, predatory smile slowly spreading across his face as the geopolitical map of the northwest crystallized in his mind. The warlords were fractured, paranoid, and hesitating. It was the absolute perfect moment to strike.
He rolled the silk scroll back up, the smooth fabric sliding easily through his fingers, and tapped it thoughtfully against the polished surface of his mahogany desk. He looked across the room at the Chancellor, whose face remained a mask of placid, dangerous serenity.
"With things standing as they currently are," Lie Fan said, his voice dropping into the quiet, calculating rhythm of a supreme commander planning his next conquest, "how long do you think we should wait to begin the campaign? The central plains are quiet, but without Liang Province securely under our banners, our dynasty has not yet fully reclaimed the united lands of the previous Han dynasty. The map is incomplete. And an incomplete map is an open invitation for future chaos."
He stood up from his chair, walking over to a massive, detailed map of the continent pinned to the wall of his study. He traced a finger along the winding, mountainous borders of the northwest, tracing the ancient, vital arteries of the Silk Road that disappeared into the western deserts.
"If we wait too long," Lie Fan mused aloud, "Yan Xing and Cheng Li might resolve their internal disputes with the others. Paranoia is a hot fire, Wenhe, but it burns out if it is not fed with new fuel."
Jia Xu did not hesitate. The spymaster had already run the brutal calculus of war a thousand times in his mind before stepping into the study.
"We do not wait at all, Your Majesty," Jia Xu stated, his raspy voice echoing with chilling certainty. "We can mobilize the western army right away. We do not need to launch a blind, bloody invasion into the mountains. We simply need to apply an overwhelming, terrifying amount of physical pressure to the borders."
Jia Xu stepped up to the map, pointing a long, bony finger at the heavily fortified city of Chang'An, which served as Hengyuan's westernmost shield.
"If we march a massive host out of the gates of Chang'An and array them across the plains, the threat of absolute annihilation becomes a physical reality staring them in the face," Jia Xu explained, his eyes glittering. "Yan Xing and Cheng Li are currently sitting on the fence because they are weighing abstract risks. We must make the risk tangible. The moment they see our banners darkening the horizon, they will fold. They will panic, they will accept our agents' hidden deals, and they will turn their cloaks."
The Chancellor traced two sweeping arrows from the territories held by Yan Xing and Cheng Li directly into the heart of the lands held by the rest of the league.
"And when they fold," Jia Xu concluded, "they will attack the remaining warlords, Lu Kan, Mang Xing, and Yang Qiu, from the inside and from the rear. The remaining three lords will be entirely overwhelmed by an attack from two sides simultaneously. They will be fighting our vanguard at their gates, and their own supposed allies in their bedchambers. The League of Northwestern Lords will shatter into dust within a month, and Liang Province will fall into your hands with minimal Hengyuan casualties."
Lie Fan stared at the map, visualizing the magnificent, treacherous trap Jia Xu had laid out. It was flawless. It utilized the sheer terror of the Black Dragon's reputation to trigger a civil war among his enemies.
Lie Fan nodded his head, a deep, satisfied agreement settling in his chest. "Do it exactly according to what you have just outlined, Wenhe. Begin the logistical preparations immediately. Draft the imperial edicts tonight."
He turned back to face the Chancellor, his mind already deploying the pieces on the board. "Inform Marshal Huang Zhong and Army Strategist Chen Deng at Chang'An. Tell them to immediately raise the garrison's alert status, requisition the necessary grain from the regional storehouses, and prepare the army so that they can begin the charge into Liang Province at a moment's notice. I want the ground to shake with our march."
"It shall be done, Your Majesty," Jia Xu bowed deeply. "I will dispatch my fastest, most reliable courier hawks to Chang'an before the sun sets. The western garrisons will be ready to loose the arrow."
Jia Xu paused, lingering for just a fraction of a second before taking his leave. A new, brilliant thought had just surfaced in his endlessly calculating mind, a thought that perfectly bridged his own espionage with Zhuge Liang's earlier administrative concerns.
"Your Majesty, if I may offer one final suggestion regarding the deployment of this army," Jia Xu murmured, his hands folded neatly within his sleeves.
Lie Fan gestured for him to speak. "You always have the floor, Chancellor."
"Minister Zhuge Liang was just in this room expressing his entirely valid concerns regarding the newly surrendered Wei generals," Jia Xu noted, his tone smooth and persuasive. "He worried about their loyalties and where to station them. I suggest that Yue Jin, Li Dian, Yu Jin, Zhang He, Xu Huang, Pang De, and Gao Lan should be immediately dispatched to Chang'an to join this very campaign."
Lie Fan's eyebrows rose, instantly grasping the multifaceted brilliance of the suggestion.
"Think of the optics, Your Majesty," Jia Xu continued, painting the political masterpiece. "By sending them directly to the western front, you remove them entirely from the central plains, keeping them far away from their old power bases and any lingering Cao loyalists."
"Furthermore, you thrust them into a brutal, foreign terrain against a common enemy. It gives them an immediate, high stakes platform to gain merit, to bleed for your banner, and to prove their absolute loyalty to the new Dynasty they are serving."
Jia Xu offered a thin smile. "And let us not forget, Pang De is a native of the northwest. He knows the treacherous valleys and the arid plains of Liang Province better than any man in our ranks. To use the swords of Wei to carve out the final borders of Hengyuan... it is an undeniable strategic poetry."
Lie Fan threw his head back and let out a rich, booming laugh, profoundly impressed by his spymaster's ability to solve three massive imperial problems with a single troop movement.
"It is a magnificent idea, Wenhe. Truly magnificent," Lie Fan praised him, nodding his head in absolute approval. "It solves Kongming's dilemma, it bolsters Huang Zhong's vanguard, and it puts our new weapons to the ultimate test. Go. Inform Zhuge Liang of this immediately so that the official letters of deployment for each of these generals can be drafted and dispatched alongside your orders to Chang'An."
"I hear and obey, Your Imperial Majesty," Jia Xu bowed one final time, stepping backward toward the heavy rosewood doors. He turned and slipped silently out of the study, leaving the Emperor alone to his thoughts.
As the doors clicked shut, the profound silence of the vast study washed over Lie Fan.
The adrenaline of military planning slowly receded, leaving behind the quiet, lingering exhaustion of the day's earlier, darker deeds. He walked back around his desk and sank heavily into his high backed chair, running a hand over his face.
He had spent the morning ordering the deaths of his greatest rivals, and the afternoon planning the destruction of the western warlords. Destruction and conquest were the heavy, bloody tools of an Emperor, but they were not the foundation of a lasting golden age.
To build a true utopia, one had to create.
Lie Fan closed his eyes, centering his mind, and reached deep within himself. He bypassed the physical reality of the study and connected with the ethereal, otherworldly interface that had accompanied him across the boundaries of time and space.
He accessed his System Inventory.
With a subtle shimmer of distorted light that only he could perceive, a heavy, leather bound tome materialized upon the polished mahogany surface of his desk.
The Book of Knowledge.
It was the ultimate repository of modern human ingenuity, a compendium of science, agriculture, and industry from a world thousands of years in the future. It was the secret weapon that had allowed him to revolutionize farming, forge unparalleled steel, and build the Cannons.
Lie Fan reached out, running his fingers over the cover. Today, he was not looking for weapons of war or grand logistical infrastructure.
He was looking for something far more foundational to human civilization, something that would drastically improve the daily lives of his people while simultaneously filling the imperial coffers with an endless river of gold.
He opened the book, flipping past the sections on metallurgy and crop rotation, until he found the detailed, chemical schematics he was looking for.
Saponification. The chemical process of creating soap and modern hygiene products.
Lie Fan pulled a stack of blank, high quality bamboo scrolls and several sheets of precious, smooth silk paper toward him. He dipped his jade handled brush into the dark ink, his mind rapidly translating the complex, modern chemical jargon into practical, executable instructions that the artisans and alchemists of the Han era could actually understand and replicate.
Public health and hygiene were subjects of paramount importance to him. Years ago, when he was still merely the Governor of Xu Province, he had enacted strict, revolutionary edicts mandating the boiling of drinking water, the segregation of waste, and the basic washing of hands.
Those edicts had drastically reduced the mortality rates of seasonal plagues and dysentery in his territories, earning him the fanatical love of the commoners.
But basic washing with mere water and harsh, coarse ash was not enough. The people, and more importantly, the economy, were ready for the next massive leap forward.
Lie Fan's brush danced across the silk, drafting the primary recipe for hard soap. He detailed the process of extracting concentrated lye, the essential alkali, by passing water through the tightly packed, white ashes of specific hardwoods like oak and beech.
He then wrote precise, meticulous instructions on how to render animal tallows and press rich, plant based oils, such as camellia and olive oil imported from the far south.
He described the exact, dangerous process of heating the oils and slowly introducing the lye water, stirring the caustic mixture over a steady fire until it achieved 'trace', the moment the chemical reaction bound the fats and the alkali together into a thick, purifying paste.
But Lie Fan was not merely creating a utilitarian cleaning agent; he was engineering an empire wide luxury monopoly.
On a separate silk sheet, he began detailing the infusion of scents. He wrote instructions for extracting essential oils from the vast flower gardens of the southern provinces.
Jasmine, lotus, sandalwood, lavender, and sweet orange. By folding these precious, aromatic oils into the soap just before it cooled and hardened in the wooden molds, he would create a product that did not just clean the skin, but left it smelling like a divine garden.
Next, he turned his attention to the creation of shampoo. He adapted the hard soap formulas into liquid variants, combining them with naturally occurring saponins found in crushed soapberries and the bark of specific indigenous trees.
He added detailed notes on infusing the liquid with crushed mint leaves for a cooling sensation on the scalp, and herbal extracts like ginseng and ginger to promote thick, healthy hair.
As the ink dried on the scrolls, Lie Fan leaned back, looking at the formulas with a profound, visionary satisfaction.
This was not just about making people clean and smell good, though the health benefits of eradicating lice, fleas, and skin infections across the peasant population would be astronomical. This was an economic masterstroke.
He knew human nature perfectly. The moment the wealthy, status obsessed nobles of the capital and the fabulously rich merchant lords of the southern trade routes smelled a bar of jasmine infused soap, they would lose their minds.
The era was defined by heavy, pungent perfumes meant to mask the smell of unwashed bodies. A product that actually cleaned the skin and left a lingering, natural, beautiful scent would become the most sought after luxury item on the continent overnight.
Lie Fan envisioned the future. Having these two new, massive industries, soap and shampoo, would allow him to establish a strict, state controlled monopoly for decades to come. Historically, dynasties relied heavily on the taxation and state control of salt and iron, and the export of silk, to fund their massive armies and bureaucracies. But salt was a necessity, and over taxing it caused peasant rebellions.
Soap, however, could be tiered. A cheap, unscented, basic lye and tallow soap could be sold for pennies to the commoners, massively elevating public health. Meanwhile, the exquisitely scented, oil rich luxury bars could be sold at exorbitant, astronomical markups to the nobility and foreign dignitaries.
The revenue would rival the silk trade, funding his future northern and western campaigns without ever having to raise the grain tax on the peasantry.
But to protect this new, limitless river of gold, absolute secrecy was required.
Lie Fan added a final, heavily codified addendum to the scrolls. He outlined the establishment of heavily fortified, secretive Imperial Workshops entirely dedicated to this new industry. The recipes would be strictly compartmentalized.
The workers who extracted the lye would never see the rendering of the oils, and the workers who mixed the scents would never know the base ratios. The entire operation would be overseen only by a handful of fiercely loyal, hand picked artisans who had been with him since his earliest days in Xu Province.
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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