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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"The North, Xun You? The steppes are vast, freezing, and hold no cities of gold or vast agricultural wealth. Why throw our legions into the frozen grass when the south offers endless riches?" Xun You's eyes hardened. He was a man who looked past the immediate wealth to see the shadows gathering on the horizon.
"Because, Your Majesty, the south offers wealth, but the North offers an existential apocalypse," Xun You explained, his tone gravely serious. He traced the vast territories held by the nomadic confederations. "The Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Wuhuan, the Jie... they have been fractured and squabbling for decades, much like the central plains were. But they breed in the saddle. They are born warriors who require no supply trains because their herds move with them. While we have been bleeding each other in the civil wars, they have also been in their own wars, especially the Xiongnu and Xianbei. Now, they have begun testing our borders again."
Xun You looked around the table, meeting the eyes of the veteran Huangfu Song, who nodded in grim, absolute agreement.
"We need to completely, ruthlessly clear out these nomadic tribes now, while our armies are at their absolute peak of veteran efficiency," Xun You continued, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "If we do not break them now, if we allow a single, charismatic Khan to unite those tribes under one banner while we are busy counting southern gold... they will sweep down upon the central plains with a million cavalrymen. They will not seek to conquer us, Your Majesty, they will seek to graze their horses on our farmlands."
Xun You tapped the wooden representation of the Great Wall.
"I know many scholars in the court believe the Great Wall is our ultimate shield," Xun You said, a hint of disdain for civilian naivety in his voice. "But you and I know that a wall is only as strong as the men guarding it. It is a static defense. If they strike it in enough places, eventually, it will shatter. It is infinitely better to eliminate the danger at its root. We must march past the wall, burn their encampments, scatter their herds, and permanently break their ability to wage war before they become a massive, unstoppable threat to the Empire."
As Xun You finished his brilliant, ruthless strategic assessment, the other commanders stepped forward in unified support.
"The cavalry is ready, Your Majesty," Zhang Liao rumbled, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. "The heavy cataphracts have been itching to test their lances against the light riders of the steppes. We will crush them on the open plains."
"The logistical lines can be secured through the northern commanderies," Sima Yi added smoothly, his mind already calculating the grain required to feed a northern expedition. "If we strike them in the autumn, before the deep snows trap us, we can cripple their winter food supplies. They will starve before spring."
Lie Fan stood at the head of the table, listening to the unified voices of his high command. He looked down at the map, at the vast, empty expanse north of the Great Wall.
He slowly nodded his head in profound, absolute agreement.
Inwardly, a bright, fiercely triumphant smile bloomed within Lie Fan's chest. He was genuinely, overwhelmingly happy that his top military minds possessed the terrifying clarity to see the looming threat the nomadic tribes possessed. They had deduced through sheer strategic brilliance what he knew as a horrific historical fact.
As Lie Fan stared at the wooden markers representing the Xiongnu and the Xianbei, the memories of his past life, his knowledge of the original timeline, flashed through his mind like a nightmare.
He knew exactly what would happen if he ignored the North. In the original history of this world, the Three Kingdoms would eventually exhaust themselves. The Jin Dynasty would briefly unite the land, only to immediately collapse into internal squabbling during the War of the Eight Princes.
And then, the nightmare would descend.
The Uprising of the Five Barbarians, the Wu Hu Hua Hua. Lie Fan remembered reading the horrifying historical texts. He knew that if left unchecked, these very tribes Xun You was pointing at would unite, pour over the Great Wall, and plunge the Chinese heartland into nearly three hundred years of absolute, apocalyptic darkness.
They would sack the ancient capitals of Luoyang and Chang'an. They would slaughter millions, reducing the Han people in the north to a fraction of their population, treating them as nothing more than "two legged sheep" to be hunted and consumed. The cultural and physical genocide that awaited the central plains in the original timeline was the darkest, bloodiest chapter in human history.
Lie Fan had sworn, upon taking his very first breath in this era, that he would absolutely, violently refuse to let that dark future come to pass. He would not allow the civilization he had just unified to be drowned in blood by the riders of the steppes.
He looked up, meeting the expectant eyes of his five brilliant commanders. They saw only a tactical necessity. He saw the salvation of a species.
Lie Fan placed his large hands flat on the edges of the sandbox table. His eyes hardened into chips of obsidian, radiating a terrifying, absolute aura of conquest that made even Sima Yi hold his breath.
"Your assessment is flawlessly accurate, Grand Commandant," Lie Fan decreed, his voice resonating with the heavy, unyielding weight of the imperial mandate. "The southern jungles offer gold, and the western deserts offer silk. But the North offers us an existential blade aimed directly at the throat of our children."
Lie Fan reached out and grabbed a handful of the small, red wooden markers representing the Hengyuan legions. With a sweeping, violent motion, he pushed them entirely past the Great Wall, flooding the northern steppes on the map.
"The Great Wall was built by cowards who wished to hide from the storm," Lie Fan roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls of the strategy room like a war drum. "The Hengyuan Dynasty does not hide behind stone! We are the storm!"
He looked at Zhang Liao and Huangfu Song. "Prepare the heavy cavalry. Double the production of the heavy crossbows. Inform the foundries that the Cannons are moving north, mounted at the Great Walls and also to be brought for the campaign."
He then looked at Xun You, Sima Yi, and Lu Xun. "Draft the logistical routes. I want staging grounds established in Ji Province, You Province, and Bing Province immediately. We do not just march to repel them. We march to eradicate their capacity for war. We will burn the grass, we will scatter their herds, and we will break their Khans so thoroughly that the steppes will whisper the name of Hengyuan in terror for ten thousand years."
The five titans of war slammed their fists against their breastplates, their eyes burning with the absolute, intoxicating thrill of the coming slaughter.
"We receive Your Majesty's command!" they roared in perfect unison, the sound vibrating with the promise of a continent shattering war.
Lie Fan looked down at the map, his mind flashing to the steam engines being forged in the dark, the muskets being drafted on parchment, and the hundreds of thousands to a million of veteran soldiers waiting for his word.
Lie Fan then looked up, and because he stood at the head of the colossal sandbox table, his dark eyes sweeping over the five men who represented the absolute zenith of military genius in this era. He could see the fires of war already igniting in their minds.
He could see Sima Yi calculating the grain yields required to feed a million men in the snow. He could see Zhang Liao visualizing the horrific, beautiful shock of heavy cataphracts smashing through lines of lightly armored nomadic horse archers.
The strategic assessment had been made, and the absolute necessity of the campaign was unquestionable. However, as the supreme sovereign of the unified world, Lie Fan knew the profound difference between a warlord who led every charge and an Emperor who commanded the heavens.
"Everyone," Lie Fan spoke, his voice breaking the tense, blood pumping silence that had settled over the room. He stepped back from the edge of the sandbox, slowly crossing his arms behind his back. "The mandate has been given. The objective is the absolute, permanent eradication of the northern threat. However, I am a sovereign, not a squad commander. I will not stand over your shoulders and dictate the width of your marching columns or the specific deployment of your vanguard."
The commanders blinked, a collective ripple of surprise and profound respect washing over them. In an era where paranoia ran deep and rulers constantly second guessed their generals out of fear of rebellion, the Emperor was handing them the reigns of the largest military apparatus in human history with absolute, unyielding trust.
"I know and I trust that you five will forge the best, most ruthlessly efficient tactical strategies for this northern campaign," Lie Fan continued, his tone carrying the heavy, empowering weight of total delegation. "You are the finest military minds this continent has ever produced. If I micromanaged your troop movements, I would be insulting your brilliance and hindering the wrath of my own empire. The execution of this war belongs to you."
Xun You and Huangfu Song exchanged a look of deep, overwhelming gratitude. To be given such absolute trust by a conqueror like Lie Fan was the ultimate honor a strategist could receive.
"However," Lie Fan said, raising a single, authoritative finger. The room instantly grew taut with absolute attention. "I have one specific, non negotiable condition for this campaign. A directive that you must execute alongside the slaughter."
He walked back to the map, pointing directly into the sprawling, uncharted territories of the far north, deep into the lands held by the fractured nomadic confederations.
"When you march past the Great Wall, when you shatter their armies and bring their chieftains to their knees, you will not simply tally the dead and seize their horses," Lie Fan ordered, his eyes narrowing with a dark, terrifyingly specific focus. "You will deploy your scribes and your census officials directly behind the vanguard. I want you to meticulously, obsessively make documents and records of every single tribe you encounter and subjugate."
The generals listened intently, though a few furrowed their brows in mild confusion. Recording conquered populations was standard imperial practice, but the Emperor's intensity suggested something far deeper than a simple headcount for taxation.
"I do not just want broad names like 'Xiongnu' or 'Xianbei,'" Lie Fan commanded, his voice dropping into a register of absolute, chilling precision. "Nomadic confederations are built like woven ropes, comprised of dozens of smaller clans, tribes, and familial bloodlines. I want that rope unraveled. I want to know the exact groups. I want to know the familial lineages, the ancestral names, and the specific tribal offshoots living inside those larger umbrellas. I want the genealogy of every single tent that bows to our banners recorded, cataloged, and sent directly to my private study."
"It shall be done exactly as you command, Your Imperial Majesty," Xun You bowed immediately, masking his curiosity with flawless obedience. "The scribes will ride with the vanguard. No clan will escape the imperial registry."
"See that they do not," Lie Fan nodded.
As the generals absorbed the order, Lie Fan maintained his stoic, commanding facade, but inwardly, his mind was racing through centuries of future history that only he possessed.
He was not ordering this exhaustive ethnographic survey out of a scholarly curiosity about nomadic cultures. He was ordering it to hunt a ghost.
While Xun You and Sima Yi correctly identified the immediate threat of the Xiongnu and the Xianbei, Lie Fan knew that the true, world ending apocalypse would not come from them. Empires rose and fell on the steppes.
The Xiongnu would fade, the Rouran would rise, the Turkic Khaganates would sweep across the plains. But centuries from this exact moment, if the geopolitical soil of the north was left untended, a specific clan would eventually rise from the unforgiving dust of the Mongolian plateau.
The Borjigin clan.
Through these detailed, obsessive records, Lie Fan intended to comb through the bloodlines of the north to find and identify the specific, ancient ancestral tribes of the father and mother that would eventually, centuries down the line, give birth to Temujin. Genghis Khan.
Lie Fan knew the horrifying legacy of the Mongol Empire. He knew of the mountains of skulls, the burning of entire civilizations, and the apocalyptic cavalry waves that would eventually stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the heart of Europe. The riders of the Mongol Empire would turn the world into a graveyard.
'Not in my timeline,' Lie Fan swore silently, his jaw clenching with lethal resolve. 'I will find the ancestral roots of the Khamag Mongol. I will monitor their bloodlines. If they prove peaceful, they will be assimilated into the Hengyuan bureaucracy. But if the spark of the world conqueror begins to show in their ancestors... I will neutralize that threat centuries before Temüjin is even a thought in the womb. The only world conqueror this earth will ever know is the Black Dragon.'
Having delivered his grand directive and planted the seeds to alter global history for the next millennium, Lie Fan stepped back from the table.
"The north belongs to you, my generals," Lie Fan said, his voice echoing with finality. "Draft your plans. Send out the ravens. Awaken the legions."
Without another word, Emperor Lie Fan turned on his heel, his dark Mianfu robes sweeping dramatically around him, and strode out of the Grand Military Strategy Room. The heavy oak doors boomed shut behind him.
The moment the Emperor was gone, the air in the strategy room crackled with kinetic, violent energy. The five brilliant minds did not pause to drink tea or discuss the weather.
They immediately descended upon the sandbox table like starving wolves upon a carcass.
"Sima Yi," Xun You barked, his demeanor instantly shifting into the ruthless efficiency of the Grand Commandant. "I need three distinct logistical arteries established through Bing and You provinces. We cannot rely on a single supply line; if the autumn snows hit early, the vanguard will starve."
"Already calculating the grain requirements, Commandant," Sima Yi replied, his eyes dark and hungry as he moved wooden markers across the map. "I will requisition the entire autumn harvest of the northern commanderies. We will build forward operating bases every fifty miles past the Wall."
"Huangfu Song, Zhang Liao," Lu Xun called out, his young, brilliant mind weaving tactics at a blinding speed. "We must coordinate the heavy crossbow divisions with the cataphract charges. We cannot let their horse archers kite us on the open plains. We must pin them against the rivers."
The couriers were summoned. The wax seals were melted. The mobilization orders, detailed, terrifyingly precise directives demanding the immediate assembly of hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers, the requisition of endless warhorses, and the movement of the massive Cannons, were rapidly drafted, stamped, and sent flying out of the capital on the fastest relay horses the empire possessed.
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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