If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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The sun was only just beginning to dip toward the western horizon, casting long, spectacular streaks of orange, bruised purple, and vibrant crimson across the sky when the massive stone walls of Xiaopei finally came into view. They had arrived smoothly in the late afternoon, almost early evening.
As the colossal draft horses were expertly slowed by their handlers, the heavy brakes of the carriages engaged with a loud, metallic screech, bringing the imperial convoy to a flawless, gentle halt at the newly erected Xiaopei terminus station.
The Governor of Xiaopei, a fiercely loyal and highly competent administrator appointed personally by Lie Fan years ago, had received news of the impending arrival via the fast riding relay couriers of the Oriole network days in advance. He, of course, already awaited the Emperor and the Imperial Family upon the wooden platforms.
The local reception was nothing short of magnificent. The Governor stood at the absolute forefront of his own official entourage, flanked by the city's highest ranking magistrates, the wealthiest local merchants, and the commanders of the regional garrison. They were all dressed in their finest ceremonial silks, their faces a mixture of profound awe and deep seated, respectful terror.
Their awe was not merely directed at the massive iron-wheeled carriages, but at the legendary, terrifying escort that secured them. As the carriage doors opened, the elite Yellow Ghost Bodyguards swarmed the platform, securing a perimeter with cold, mechanical efficiency.
Then came the titans. Zhao Yun dismounted his white stallion, his silver armor glowing in the twilight, his mere presence radiating an aura of lethal, unyielding loyalty. Ma Chao and Pang De rode up to secure the flanks of the station, their heavy cavalry and infantry locking down every single street leading to the tracks. Zhang He expertly managed the rearguard, his sharp eyes missing nothing.
For the local officials of Xiaopei, seeing these four legendary deities of war in person was enough to make their knees tremble.
When Lie Fan finally stepped down onto the platform, followed gracefully by Empress Ying Yue and the Imperial Concubines, the entire regional entourage immediately collapsed to their knees in a flawless, sweeping prostration, their voices joining in a unified, echoing chorus that praised the Son of Heaven and welcomed him to their humble city.
After being grandly, ostentatiously welcomed by the local officials, Lie Fan gracefully cut the bureaucratic pleasantries short, prioritizing the rest and comfort of his family after the journey.
The heavy, impenetrable escort reformed, guiding the imperial procession through the wide, impeccably cleaned streets of Xiaopei. They did not head toward the Governor's manor, which was the traditional protocol for traveling royalty. Instead, they moved toward the commercial heart of the city, stopping before a massive, beautifully constructed, five story building of dark wood and glowing paper lanterns.
It was the Xiaopei branch of the Serenity Inn.
The Serenity Inn was widely recognized across the continent as the absolute pinnacle of luxury lodging, a franchise of hospitality that catered exclusively to the wealthiest merchants and the highest nobility. But what the general public did not know, and only several select of people who knew and understood, was that this flourishing, continent spanning business technically belonged entirely to the Imperial Family.
It was one of the many shadow monopolies established by Lie Fan years ago to covertly funnel unimaginable wealth directly into Lie Fan's private war chests and also as the homebase of the Oriole Agents.
The imperial family smoothly transitioned into the inn, where they, of course, took over the entire third floor. They had not rented it, naturally, they simply used it, bypassing the ledgers entirely. The third floor had been completely cleared out days in advance, scrubbed until the wooden floors gleamed, and filled with the scent of fresh pine and imported jasmine.
As the children ran excitedly down the wide, carpeted hallways, exploring the luxurious, expansive suites, Lie Fan stood by a large window overlooking the bustling city streets of Xiaopei. He took a deep breath of the cool evening air. His family was safe, his infrastructure was flawless, and his empire was thriving. The first phase of his iron dream had been a complete, undeniable success.
Meanwhile, far outside the bustling capital of Xiapi, hidden deep within a heavily forested, geographically isolated valley guarded by two full cohorts of the elite Black Guard, a very different kind of historical moment was unfolding.
This was the heavily guarded secret location where the Imperial Workshop's most classified division operated. The air here did not smell of luxury incense or fresh autumn breezes; it was thick, heavy, and choked with the scent of burning coal, sulfur, and searing hot metal.
Deep inside a massive, stone walled testing chamber that had been built partially into the side of a granite cliff to contain any potential explosive accidents, the very first practical experiment on the steam concept introduced by Lie Fan was currently being conducted.
Huang Yue Ying, having ridden the wagonway carriage only as far as the first major switching station to ensure the rail integrity before taking a fast horse back to the capital, had temporarily stepped away from her duties at the Wagonways Department. She had traded her fine traveling cloak for a heavy, soot stained leather blacksmith's apron.
She stood in the center of the chamber, her eyes locked with burning, obsessive intensity on the massive contraption dominating the room.
Alongside her stood her father, the venerable State Teacher Huang Chengyan, his scholarly robes tied back to prevent them from catching fire. To her left was Liu Ye, the Minister of Work, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.
And standing slightly apart, his white feather fan held perfectly still, was Zhuge Liang, his brilliant mind silently calculating the exact pressures and volumes occurring within the iron beast before them.
They were all present, intensely, silently overseeing the experiment. They deeply wanted, no, they needed, to see firsthand if the profound, almost mythical concept of the theory their Emperor had introduced could actually work in reality.
Before them stood the first prototype of the Atmospheric Water Pump, or as Lie Fan had named it, the Water Dragon.
It was an ugly, brutalist masterpiece of early industrial engineering. A massive, perfectly spherical boiler, cast from incredibly thick, continuous pour iron, sat suspended over a roaring, coal fed furnace.
A thick, reinforced copper pipe extended from the top of the boiler, connecting to a secondary, cylindrical iron vacuum chamber. From the bottom of this vacuum chamber, a much larger, heavy iron pipe plunged straight down into a deep, flooded subterranean cistern that had been specifically dug beneath the workshop floor for this test.
"The furnace has reached optimal temperature, Chief Engineer," a master blacksmith reported, his face shining with sweat as he stepped back from the roaring flames. "The water within the primary boiler is rapidly transmuting. The Qi is expanding."
Huang Yue Ying nodded, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She looked at Zhuge Liang, who gave her a single, affirming nod.
"Open the primary transfer valve," Huang Yue Ying commanded, her voice cutting through the roar of the fire.
Two burly apprentices grabbed a heavy iron wheel attached to the copper pipe connecting the boiler to the vacuum chamber. With a strained grunt, they turned the wheel.
Instantly, a terrifying, high pitched hissing sound filled the stone chamber.
The invisible, highly pressurized steam, the furious Qi of Fire and Water, rushed violently from the boiler into the empty cylindrical chamber. The iron walls of the cylinder grew dangerously hot to the touch within seconds, radiating waves of intense thermal distortion.
"The chamber is filled with the expanding Qi," Liu Ye noted, his eyes locked on a small, primitive pressure release pin they had installed. "It has pushed the stagnant air out of the release valve."
"Seal the transfer valve! Seal the release valve!" Huang Yue Ying shouted, her voice echoing off the granite walls.
The apprentices frantically spun the iron wheels in the opposite direction, sealing the cylindrical chamber completely. The steam was now trapped inside, a furious, boiling entity locked in an iron cage.
"Now," Huang Chengyan whispered, stepping closer, his scholarly mind desperate to witness the philosophical transaction between Yin and Yang. "Introduce the absolute cold."
Above the cylindrical chamber hung a massive wooden bucket, filled to the brim with freezing water drawn directly from a glacial mountain stream.
Huang Yue Ying reached out and grabbed a thick hemp rope attached to the bucket's tipping mechanism. She took a deep breath, praying to the heavens and to the brilliance of her Emperor, and yanked the rope hard.
The wooden bucket tipped forward, unleashing a torrential waterfall of freezing, icy water directly over the superheated exterior of the sealed iron cylinder.
The reaction was instantaneous, violent, and utterly terrifying.
The moment the freezing water struck the hot iron, a massive cloud of external steam exploded into the room, blinding them for a fraction of a second. But it was the sound that made their blood run cold.
BANG.
It sounded as if a giant had struck the side of the iron cylinder with a massive sledgehammer. The thick metal groaned and warped slightly inward. Inside the chamber, exactly as Lie Fan had written, the freezing temperature had instantly defeated the furious hot Qi. The steam violently condensed, shrinking back into a few drops of liquid water in a fraction of a heartbeat.
Because the chamber was sealed, it left behind a perfect, absolute void.
"The void is created," Zhuge Liang said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual serene calm, replaced by a raw, breathless awe. "Nature despises the emptiness."
"Open the bottom valve to the cistern!" Huang Yue Ying roared, pointing down at the pipe leading into the flooded pit.
A blacksmith kicked the heavy iron lever at the base of the cylinder, opening the connection between the total vacuum inside the chamber and the water resting fifty feet below them.
For two agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The silence in the workshop was so profound they could hear the embers popping in the furnace.
And then, they felt the earth shake.
It was a deep, guttural, rhythmic thumping sound, echoing up from the bowels of the deep pipe. Thump... thump... THUMP.
Suddenly, the heavy iron pipe violently shuddered.
With a deafening, roaring crash, thousands of gallons of water from the deep cistern were violently, uncontrollably sucked straight up the pipe, defying all known laws of gravity, and exploded into the vacuum chamber, filling the void instantly. The force was so immense that a small stream of excess water burst through the seams of the upper release valve, spraying the ceiling of the workshop.
The four brilliant minds stood absolutely frozen in the damp, steam filled room.
They stared at the water that had just been pulled up from the deep earth by nothing but fire, cold, and empty space.
It had worked. The theory was not a myth. It was not a philosophical metaphor. It was real, physical, undeniable power.
Huang Chengyan fell to his knees, tears openly streaming down his wrinkled face. He reached out with trembling hands, catching a few drops of the water falling from the ceiling.
"The heavens..." the old scholar wept, completely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the discovery. "The Emperor has commanded the heavens. He has chained the breath of the universe to an iron wheel."
Liu Ye was gripping the edge of a heavy anvil, his knuckles white. His mind was rapidly, violently expanding. He saw the military applications Lie Fan had described, but he also saw so much more. "We can drain the flooded silver mines in the west," Liu Ye whispered, his voice trembling. "We can irrigate the highest plateaus. This... this single machine is worth an army of a million men."
Zhuge Liang slowly lowered his feather fan. The Sleeping Dragon, a man who prided himself on foreseeing all possibilities, looked at the iron pump with a look of pure, unadulterated intellectual reverence.
He fully realized that the brilliance of the military and industrial explanations given to them by Emperor Lie Fan were only the absolute forefront of this technology's vast, unfathomable potential.
If they could harness this pushing and pulling power, if they could attach it to a piston... they could power massive, automated looms. They could power gigantic mechanical hammers in the foundries. They could build a world that moved without muscle.
Huang Yue Ying walked slowly toward the cooling iron cylinder. She placed her soot stained hand against the metal, feeling the heavy, immense weight of the water resting inside it.
Of course, the experiment had worked phenomenally well due to the fact that Lie Fan had practically handed them the cheat codes to the universe, providing the exact schematics, the specific valve placements, and the profound theoretical explanations.
But as the Chief Engineer felt a slight, hissing leak escaping from one of the brass fittings, she knew her true work was only just beginning.
The theory and the practical application of it were two entirely different, yet intimately connected, matters. The iron was too brittle, the cooling process took too long, the valves needed a tighter seal to prevent the vacuum from degrading over time. They needed to forge better alloys, design automated release levers, and scale the beast up to an industrial size.
She turned back to face Minister of Personnel, her father, and the Minister of Work. The fire of the roaring furnace illuminated her face, casting her in the light of a new, terrifyingly bright future. "It breathes," Huang Yue Ying declared, a fierce, triumphant smile breaking across her face. "The Emperor's Dragon breathes. Now, we must teach it how to pull the weight of the world."
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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