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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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The halls here were not quiet, they echoed with the sounds of shouting foremen, the clatter of raw materials, and the constant unrolling of massive architectural blueprints. When Lie Fan arrived, he did not stand in a pristine entry hall. He stood amidst towering piles of cut limestone, raw iron ingots, and massive timber beams destined for the new wagonway expansions. He looked like a god of the forge, his dark eyes taking in the sheer, monumental scale of the empire's infrastructure.
But beneath the glorious noise of progress, Pang Tong found the quiet, insidious scratching of the parasites.
The high ministers were completely innocent, entirely focused on the grand designs of steam and iron. But the middle management supply quartermasters, the men tasked with purchasing the raw materials from the provincial guilds, were exposed. The green robed censors poured over the procurement ledgers, cross referencing the weight of the incoming iron with the gold dispersed from the treasury.
They uncovered a massive, decentralized network of skimming. Quartermasters were subtly inflating the invoices for southern timber, pocketing the difference in silver.
The censors rooted out blatant nepotism in the awarding of imperial guild contracts, discovering that the exclusive rights to supply crushed gravel for the rail beds had been awarded to a guild master who just so happened to be the father in law of the Deputy Director of Acquisitions.
The sheer terror of the structural directors was a sight to behold. Men who oversaw the construction of bridges that spanned massive gorges were reduced to trembling, hyperventilating messes as Pang Tong casually tossed their falsified invoices at their feet.
The Emperor watched in silence, his expression hardening. The Ministry of Work, despite its glorious outward facade of mechanical innovation, was infested with the exact same mundane, petty thievery as the others.
And finally, on the fourth day, the Emperor's gaze turned to the absolute epicenter of the dynasty's wealth, the Ministry of Revenue.
This was the colossal financial engine run by Mi Zhu, the man currently coordinating the influx of unimaginable wealth from the newly established soap and shampoo monopolies. The Ministry of Revenue was a palace of gold, where the air literally smelled of freshly minted copper and polished silver.
When Lie Fan and the Censorate arrived, Mi Zhu was standing at the top of the grand marble staircase, waiting for them. The Minister of Revenue was completely unbothered. He bowed deeply, a serene, welcoming smile on his face, understanding perfectly that he was immune to the fire because he did not steal from the sun.
"Your Imperial Majesty. Master Pang," Mi Zhu greeted them smoothly. "The ledgers of the empire are entirely open to you. Please, leave no stone unturned."
Mi Zhu's calm acceptance, however, did not extend to the hundreds of junior accountants, tax assessors, and provincial treasury auditors working the massive abacus desks on the lower floors. When the green robes flooded the room, the collective panic was so intense that several clerks physically fainted, collapsing onto the piles of silver they were counting.
The Emperor stood on the elevated balcony beside Mi Zhu, looking down at the frantic, scrambling ants below.
Pang Tong did not disappoint. He unleashed his censors into the archives of taxation, and within hours, the pristine mathematical illusion of the Ministry was shattered. They uncovered elaborate, highly sophisticated schemes of skimming raw copper during the minting process.
They found altered tax receipts from the minor, far flung provinces in the deep south, where ambitious local auditors were under reporting the grain yields and selling the surplus on the black market before the caravans even reached the capital.
Even here, in the most heavily guarded, meticulously calculated sector of the Hengyuan government, the exact same amount of petty problems, small corruptions, and bureaucratic rot was found thriving in the dark corners. The cockroaches were truly everywhere.
Throughout these several, agonizing days, the routine was unyielding. Lie Fan personally followed the inspections step by step. He did not need to shout. He did not need to draw his sword. He merely needed to exist in their space.
His silent, but overwhelmingly overbearing presence acted as a physical weight upon the chest of every single official in the capital. He was the living embodiment of the Mandate of Heaven, a conqueror who had slaughtered warlords and united the earth, now standing silently in their mundane offices, watching them attempt to explain away a few missing silver pieces. The psychological juxtaposition was completely, utterly devastating.
By the end of the week, the entire bureaucracy of the newly unified dynasty was left to tremor in absolute, unadulterated fear. The purge had been brutal, methodical, and highly public. Hundreds of corrupt clerks had been chained and dragged to the dungeons, dozens of mid level directors had been stripped of their wealth and exiled.
The people of Xiapi, the vibrant, pulsating heart of this new world, were the direct, front row witnesses to the brutal, unyielding aftermath of the Emperor's wrath. And their reaction was one of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.
When the heavy, iron studded doors of the various ministries were thrown open, the common citizens gathered along the wide, paved avenues to watch the procession of the condemned. They saw men who had previously walked through the capital cloaked in the finest imported silks, men who had looked down their noses at the blacksmiths and the bakers, now stripped of their opulent wealth.
These disgraced directors and corrupt archive clerks were bound together by heavy iron chains, wearing nothing but coarse, scratchy hemp garments, their heads bowed in absolute humiliation as the capital heavy guard marched them toward the subterranean dungeons.
The citizens did not watch in silence. They cheered.
They lined the streets, throwing handfuls of autumn leaves and shouting praises to the high heavens for the sovereign who sat upon the Dragon Throne. To the common laborer, the baker, the stone mason, and the merchant, there was nothing more beautiful than the sight of a corrupt bureaucrat facing the terrifying, absolute justice of the law.
Even though Lie Fan had been relentlessly, ruthlessly clearing up corruption, nepotism, aristocratic collusion, and criminal syndicates across the entire domain of his dynasty for years, the fact that he was still actively, personally doing it to this day brought the people of Xiapi an immeasurable, profound sense of joy. Most emperors in the long, bloody history of the continent would have grown lazy and complacent after unifying the earth.
They would have retreated into the deep, luxurious bowels of the Harem Palace, indulging in wine and women, completely ignoring the slow, creeping rot of their own governments as long as the tax wagons arrived on time.
But not Lie Fan. He was not a man who allowed his sword to rust in its scabbard. He was a sovereign who still possessed the fire, the energy, and the terrifying willingness to kick down the doors of his own ministries to protect the integrity of his realm.
This realization swept through the capital, and soon, through the rapid, unstoppable network of traveling merchants and regional town criers, the news spread outward.
The entirety of the common people of Hengyuan, from the farmers in the central plains to the fishermen on the eastern coasts, were very, very happy. They felt an overwhelming sense of security. The man at the very top of the world was actually looking out for the men at the very bottom.
However, the common citizens of the empire possessed a deeply ingrained, pragmatic, and highly cynical understanding of how power truly functioned outside the capital walls. As they celebrated the purging of the high ministries in Xiapi, a natural, highly logical thought began to permeate the taverns, the market stalls, and the village squares.
If the central government, the absolute highest, most heavily scrutinized echelon of power directly beneath the Emperor's nose, was infested with these crawling bureaucratic cockroaches, then what about the district governments?
What about the local, fat, comfortable provincial magistrates who operated hundreds of miles away from the capital, far from the terrifying gaze of the Fledgling Phoenix and the green robed censors?
The citizens naturally started to think that those remote, unchecked districts would surely be under investigation next. The local tyrants who over taxed the grain yields or accepted bribes from wealthy rural landlords had to be sweating in their silk robes.
True enough to the common people's hopeful predictions, Emperor Lie Fan did not allow the momentum of his purge to stall within the walls of Xiapi. He understood perfectly that a tree rotting at the roots would eventually topple, no matter how clean the high branches were kept.
Just three days after the final chained clerk was dragged from the Ministry of Revenue, Lie Fan stood in the grand morning court and issued a massive, sweeping, and entirely uncompromising official edict.
The heavy, gold threaded silk scrolls were dispatched by the fastest imperial relay riders to every corner of the known world. The town criers unrolled the Emperor's words in the bustling squares of Chang'An, Luoyang, Xuchang, and countless big and small towns across the continent.
The edict declared, in stark, unyielding calligraphy, that the Censorate was being unleashed upon the world. The green robed censors, armed with the absolute, unquestionable authority of the Dragon Throne, were to be sent to the entire corners of the Hengyuan Dynasty's domain.
They were commanded to begin rigorous, merciless inspections down to the absolute lowest level of the district governments. No village was too small, no provincial outpost too remote, and no local magistrate too insignificant to escape the audit.
But it was the specific tactical methodology outlined in the edict that truly showcased Lie Fan's terrifying, predatory genius.
The edict specified that the audit would not begin in the central plains and radiate outward. If the censors started in the center, the corrupt officials on the fringes of the empire would have weeks, perhaps months, to hide their stolen silver, burn their falsified ledgers, and flee beyond the borders into the deep mountains or across the oceans.
Instead, the inspections were ordered to start from the absolute far corners of the lands, from the humid, disease ridden jungles of Jiaozhi in the deep south, the freezing, snow swept commanderies of Liaodong in the northeast, the far east of Goguryeo, and lastly the rugged, newly pacified mountain passes of Liang Province and beyond in the far west.
From those extreme borders, the censors would slowly, methodically move inward. They would march province by province, district by district, closing in on the central plains like a massive, inescapable, tightening net, until they eventually returned back to the capital of Xiapi.
By starting at the edges and pushing inward, Lie Fan was physically trapping the corrupt officials. They could not flee outward into the wilderness because the censors were already there, blocking the exits.
If they tried to run, they would be running directly toward the center of the empire, deeper into the heavily policed core of the Hengyuan military apparatus, where the capital heavy guard and the imperial garrisons would easily run them down. There was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run.
This massive, unprecedented announcement completely shook the entire government structure across the continent. The local magistrates, the provincial tax collectors, and the regional supply quartermasters who had spent years skimming copper and grain from the state were thrown into an absolute, suffocating panic. The net was closing, and they could feel the strings pulling tight around their throats.
However, Lie Fan was a man who never relied on a single weapon. The official Censorate, with their green robes and their loud, highly visible investigations, served as the terrifying, undeniable anvil of his justice.
But he still needed a hammer.
Deep within the windowless, highly secured archives of the Chancellor's office, Chancellor Jia Xu sat behind his desk. He was bathed in the dim light of a single oil lamp, reading the Emperor's public edict with a chilling, deeply satisfied smirk stretching across his scarred features.
The master of shadows knew exactly how desperate, cornered men behaved. When a corrupt magistrate knew the green robed censors were marching toward his district, he would not sit quietly and wait to be chained. He would scramble. He would attempt to desperately cover his tracks.
Jia Xu immediately reached for his ciphered brush and his specialized, dark parchment. In the shadows, completely hidden from the public eye and the official bureaucratic channels, the Chancellor quickly sent out a barrage of highly classified, secret orders to the vast, deeply embedded network of the Oriole Agents.
The orders were swift, ruthless, and highly specific. The Orioles, who were already positioned as tavern keeps, minor clerks, stable hands, and concubines in every single district across the empire, were commanded to be on the highest possible alert. They were to keep a strict, unblinking eye on their respective districts as the Censorate's net began to tighten.
Jia Xu explicitly commanded them to report back any sudden, suspicious activities. The agents were instructed to watch the chimneys of the magistrate's manors late at night, if a massive plume of black smoke suddenly rose from the archives, it meant a corrupt official was frantically attempting to burn his falsified ledgers and destroy the evidence.
They were told to watch the midnight caravans and the secret river docks, if heavy, unmarked chests of silver were suddenly being loaded onto barges under the cover of darkness, it meant a thief was attempting to move his stolen wealth before the auditors arrived.
Most importantly, the Orioles were commanded to watch the shadows for blood. Desperate men would attempt to silence any low level whistleblowers, honest clerks, or local peasants who might testify against them to the arriving censors.
"Watch the smoke. Watch the gold. Watch the knives," Jia Xu muttered to himself, stamping his black wax seal onto the final dispatch.
The trap was utterly, flawlessly perfect. If the corrupt officials did nothing, the green robed censors would find the discrepancies in their ledgers and hang them.
If the corrupt officials panicked and attempted to move or destroy the evidence before the censors could reach their hands, the invisible Oriole Agents would document the panic, intercept the gold, and hang them anyway. The Black Dragon had engineered a scenario where guilt was inescapable.
And as the entire land found itself suspended in a state of terrified shock and awe from the sweeping, relentless anti corruption purge, Lie Fan, having perfectly set the continent spanning machinery of justice into motion, effortlessly shifted his focus.
The bloody work of the law was being handled. It was time to look toward the future of iron and steam. Lie Fan decided it was time to officially, personally test the finished wagonways rails himself.
However, this would not merely be a cold, calculated engineering inspection filled with solemn ministers taking notes on friction coefficients. Lie Fan, recognizing the immense, suffocating pressure his family had endured during the chaotic unification wars and the subsequent, grueling months of political consolidation, decided to transform this historical milestone into something profoundly personal.
For this monumental test of the wagonways, he brought the entire Imperial Family alongside him.
It was to be a grand, joyous trip for the family, a massive excursion where they would travel the iron rails and stay in the opulent, highly secured imperial manors of Xiaopei for a couple of days.
The decision brought a wave of unprecedented excitement to the deepest, most secluded courtyards of the Harem Palace. For long time, Empress Ying Yue, Diao Chan, Cai Wenji, Lu Lingqi, and Zhen Ji had been largely confined to the magnificent, but ultimately restrictive, walls of the capital.
They were the most powerful women in the world, but their world had been defined by stone walls and silk screens, kept safely away from the chaotic violence of the warlord era.
Now, the world was at peace, and their husband wanted to show them the beauty of the empire he had bled to conquer for them.
Lie Fan wanted his wives to breathe some real, fresh air away from the heavy, political atmosphere of the palace. More importantly, he wanted to allow his children to finally see the breathtaking scenery of the world outside of Xiapi. Up until this point, only Crown Prince Muchen, who often accompanied his father on military reviews and formal state functions, had truly seen the rolling hills, the vast farmlands, and the dense, ancient forests of the central plains.
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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