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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Taking a deep breath of the crisp morning air, Lie Fan stepped over the threshold, leaving the armed escort behind, save for two silent Yellow Ghosts who trailed him like shadows. He was walking into a den of the most brilliant, stubborn, and bitter men in the world, intent on breaking their silence and forcing them to help him build the future.
Stepping inside the heavily guarded small mansion, the situation was actually surprisingly very serene and peaceful, a stark contrast to the busy, euphoric imperial capital outside its walls.
The manicured gardens were pristine, the stone pathways were swept clean of fallen leaves, and the gentle trickling of a central koi pond provided a tranquil, almost meditative soundtrack.
There were a couple of quiet, diligent servants working there, moving with purposeful invisibility. Their true identities, of course, were elite Oriole Agents secretly keeping watch on the captives' every move, word, and sigh.
Upon seeing Lie Fan enter the courtyard, unannounced and exuding a suffocating aura of absolute authority, the disguised agents immediately stopped their work. They dropped to their knees, greeting their Emperor highly respectfully in hushed, reverent voices so as not to alert the entire compound at once.
With a subtle, dismissive wave of his hand, Lie Fan signaled them to rise and lead the way. He did not want a grand assembly, he wanted intimate, psychological warfare. The agents obediently brought him toward the private rooms of each of the captive advisors, one by one.
Lie Fan's overarching goal for today was crystal clear in his mind. He will begin to systematically persuade them to finally pledge their absolute allegiance to him, urging them to cast off their stubborn loyalties to Cao Cao, a man who was already long gone from this world. He planned to bluntly tell them that the Cao Clan would inevitably be extinct in the future as well.
Why would brilliant minds like them choose to stay behind and rot in this tiny mansion, waiting for an executioner's blade or the slow decay of old age, rather than go outside and see a vast new world they have never seen before? He would offer them the chance to carve out their own grand legacies in this new age of Hengyuan.
The first door the Oriole agent opened belonged to Xu You.
Lie Fan stepped into the comfortable, sunlit room to find the man pacing restlessly, a half eaten plate of pastries on a low table.
Xu You was notoriously brilliant, but he was also the most pragmatic and fiercely opportunistic of the lot. He had once betrayed Yuan Shao to hand Cao Cao the keys to victory at Guandu, driven by a thirst for recognition and wealth.
As Lie Fan entered, the door clicking shut behind him, Xu You froze. He looked at the dark silk robes, the terrifying composure of the man who had conquered the known world, and swallowed hard.
"Xu You," Lie Fan said, his voice casual, almost conversational. "You are pacing like a caged merchant who knows the market is passing him by. Cao Cao is dead. Wei is ash. My armies have just returned from conquering the northern steppes, and the world is being carved into new, fertile territories as we speak. Why are you sitting in this room?"
Xu You blinked, his incredibly sharp, opportunistic mind instantly calculating the angles. He had been waiting for an opening, a ladder to climb out of his disgrace. He knew loyalty to a dead man paid no silver.
"Your Majesty," Xu You stammered slightly, testing the waters. "I... I am a prisoner of the state."
"You are a prisoner of your own pride," Lie Fan corrected him smoothly, offering a wealthy, intoxicating promise. "The Hengyuan Dynasty is expanding. I am restructuring the entire logistics of the continent. There is a new age dawning, Xu You. An age of unprecedented wealth, vast new ministries, and immortal legacies. I need men who know how to calculate the risks. Are you going to rot in this tiny mansion, clinging to a ghost, or are you going to walk out that door, put on an official's robe, and help me rule the earth?"
It took less than ten seconds for the pragmatism to completely override any lingering attachment to the past. The sheer, overwhelming reality of Lie Fan's power, combined with the golden carrot of relevance, was all it took. Xu You immediately fell to his knees, pressing his forehead against the floorboards.
"This humble servant has been waiting for the sun to pierce the clouds!" Xu You declared, quickly agreeing and bowing after being persuaded by Lie Fan's promises of a new age. "My life, my mind, and my absolute loyalty belong to the Hengyuan Dynasty, Your Majesty!"
Lie Fan smiled a thin, knowing smile. One down. It had been almost too easy, but Xu You was merely the warm up. He ordered the guards to take Xu You to the Ministry of Personnel to be processed, and walked down the hall to his next target.
The second one he visited would be Jia Kui.
Jia Kui was a vastly different creature. He was a master administrator, a man who believed deeply in the structure of the state and the sacred duty of governance. Lie Fan found him sitting perfectly upright at a small desk, meticulously writing out complex logistical formulas on bamboo slips, keeping his mind sharp even in captivity.
"A brilliant mind, endlessly turning a wheel connected to nothing," Lie Fan remarked as he approached the desk.
Jia Kui set his brush down respectfully but did not immediately kneel. He stood up, offering a stiff, highly formal bow. "Emperor Lie Fan. I am merely passing the time until my fate is decided. My duty was to the state of Wei, and to Emperor Cao."
"And Wei is gone," Lie Fan countered, pulling up a chair and sitting across from him. This required more effort and a deeper debate about his duty to the realm. "Jia Kui, you are not a warlord. You are a builder of roads, a manager of granaries, a protector of the common people. Your true loyalty was never just to Cao Cao the man, it was to the order he promised to bring to end the chaos."
"He gave me the authority to govern, Your Majesty," Jia Kui argued stubbornly. "To abandon his memory the moment he falls is the act of a traitor."
"To abandon the people because your preferred master fell is the act of a coward," Lie Fan shot back, his voice hardening, appealing directly to Jia Kui's sense of duty. "The Cao Clan is extinct, Jia Kui. There is no Wei. But the people of the central plains are still here. They still need laws, they still need grain, and they still need brilliant men to administer them. I have just ordered millions of below average economic situation citizens to migrate to the northern steppes. The administrative burden is monumental. Are you going to let those people starve and freeze because your pride will not let you wear a different colored robe?"
Jia Kui's eyes widened slightly. The sheer scale of the demographic shift Lie Fan mentioned triggered the administrator within his soul.
"You see yourself as a loyalist," Lie Fan continued relentlessly. "But true loyalty is to the realm itself. The realm is now Hengyuan. If you stay in this room, you are useless. Come outside. See the vast new world. Build it with me."
Jia Kui stared at the desk for a long, agonizing minute. The conflict between his personal honor and his intrinsic need to govern raged behind his eyes. But the undeniable logic of Lie Fan's argument, that the people still needed him, was a battering ram that finally shattered his resistance.
Slowly, Jia Kui stepped out from behind the desk, his shoulders sagging, and dropped to his knees, finally yielding.
"For the sake of the realm... and the people... I offer my service to Your Majesty."
Lie Fan nodded, satisfied. Two down. But the psychological trenches were getting deeper.
The third one he visited was Xi Zhicai.
When Lie Fan entered the dimly lit room, he found one of Cao Cao's earliest, most cherished strategic geniuses staring out the window at the willow trees.
The emotional attachment to Cao Cao made the conversation significantly heavier here. Cao Cao had plucked Xi Zhicai from obscurity, recognizing his peerless strategic intellect when others had ignored him. There was a bond of deep, brotherly love there that transcended mere politics.
Xi Zhicai turned, coughing slightly into his sleeve. He looked at Lie Fan with tired, sorrowful eyes. "You have come to collect the remnants, Emperor Lie Fan. But my heart died at the defeat of Wei with my lord."
"I am not here for your heart, Xi Zhicai. I am here for your mind," Lie Fan said, his voice softer, recognizing the grief but refusing to let it dictate the future. This required Lie Fan to appeal deeply to his strategic intellect. "Cao Cao was a man who worshipped talent above all else. He despised waste. Tell me, what would Mengde say if he saw one of the greatest strategic minds of this era staring at a pond, waiting to die?"
Xi Zhicai flinched, the mention of Cao Cao's name striking a nerve. "He would say I am remaining loyal to my vows."
"He would call you a fool," Lie Fan corrected him bluntly. "Cao Cao understood the mechanics of power. He knew that when the board is cleared, a new game begins. He did not elevate you so you could be a martyr, he elevated you because you could see ten moves ahead. And right now, Xi Zhicai, you are refusing to even look at the board."
Lie Fan stepped closer, his presence expanding to fill the room. "The board is no longer just the central plains. I am looking east, across the ocean, to the Kingdom of Yamato. I am looking at naval invasions, at logistical nightmares across churning seas, at the complete consolidation of the steppes. It is a strategic puzzle unlike anything the world has ever seen. Cao Cao is dead, and his bloodline will fade into dust. But your intellect does not have to. Will you deny your own genius the chance to orchestrate the conquest of a new world?"
Xi Zhicai closed his eyes, a single tear escaping to trace a path down his cheek. He was a creature of strategy, addicted to the intellectual thrill of the grand campaign. Lie Fan was offering him the greatest military puzzle in human history. The loyalty to his dead friend fought bitterly against the undeniable lure of his true nature.
Taking a shuddering breath, Xi Zhicai realized that Lie Fan was right. Cao Cao would have hated to see him rot. Slowly, clutching his chest, the strategic genius sank to his knees, bowing his head in submission.
"Your Majesty's vision... is blinding. My mind is yours to command."
Lie Fan left the room, his own mental fatigue beginning to build. Three down. But the next room held a monster. Cheng Yu.
The room was pitch black, the heavy wooden shutters closed against the spring sun. Cheng Yu sat in the dark, his presence radiating a cold, palpable malice.
Cheng Yu was a man of ruthless, terrifying extremes, a man who had once famously fed human flesh to Cao Cao's starving army to keep them fighting. His stubborn nature made the debate incredibly fierce, forcing Lie Fan to appeal to his dark pragmatism.
"You smell of victory, Lie Fan," Cheng Yu rasped from the shadows, not bothering to stand. "It is a sickeningly sweet scent. You want me to bow? I do not bow to men who try to win with morality. I only bow to the butcher."
"I am the butcher who just slaughtered the entire northern hemisphere," Lie Fan replied coldly, stepping into the darkness. "Do not speak to me of ruthlessness, Cheng Yu. You fed peasants to your soldiers to win a battle. I dropped artillery fire on the combined Khans of the steppes and erased three hundred years of history in an afternoon to win a continent."
Cheng Yu chuckled, a dry, grating sound. "And yet you come begging for my help. Cao Cao had the stomach to do what was necessary. You are building a golden cage of peace. I have no place in a peaceful world."
"You are a fool if you think peace is maintained with smiles and poetry," Lie Fan countered, his voice dripping with an absolute, terrifying pragmatism. "I am assimilating hundreds of ethnic groups. I am migrating millions of the poor. Do you think they will all go willingly? Do you think the shadows of this empire will not breed rebellion, corruption, and treachery? I do not need you to write songs, Cheng Yu. I need you to be the axe in the dark."
Lie Fan leaned over him, his eyes boring into the older man's soul. "You thrive on the harsh, brutal realities of human nature. The Cao clan is a dead, rotting corpse. I am a living, breathing power, and I have need of wolves with iron teeth to tear out the throats of my internal enemies. Will you sit in the dark and wait for the maggots, or will you come outside and help me enforce the most terrifying peace the earth has ever known?"
Cheng Yu looked up, staring into Lie Fan's eyes, searching for a trace of weakness, a trace of soft hearted hypocrisy. He found none. He found only the bottomless, calculating abyss of the Black Dragon.
A terrifying, jagged grin slowly spread across Cheng Yu's face. He respected absolute, unapologetic power. He slowly rose from his chair and knelt, bowing his head.
"Point me at your enemies, Your Majesty. I will show them the true cost of your peace."
Four down. Lie Fan stepped back out into the sunlit corridor, feeling the heavy, emotional toll of constantly shifting his psychological tactics. He was sweating slightly under his dark silk robes.
If Cheng Yu was the darkness, then next, Tian Feng was the blinding, uncompromising light of rigid righteousness. He had famously preferred death in prison over compromising his principles under Yuan Shao, and he carried that exact same unyielding arrogance into his captivity here.
Lie Fan found him sitting in a perfectly meditative posture, reading a bamboo scroll on Confucian ethics. Tian Feng did not look up when the Emperor entered.
"I will not serve a usurper," Tian Feng stated flatly, his rigid, unyielding principles immediately erecting an impenetrable wall. "You may kill me, Emperor Lie Fan. But my honor will remain spotless."
"Your honor is a vanity project, Tian Feng," Lie Fan fired back instantly, showing no respect for the man's martyrdom. This would result in a fiery clash of ideals about the mandate of heaven. "You sit there, polishing your own moral superiority while the world outside bleeds and rebuilds. You think it makes you righteous to die for a lost cause?"
Tian Feng slammed his scroll down, his eyes blazing with fury. "It makes me a man of principle! The Cao clan, despite their flaws, were the appointed ministers of the Han before proclaiming themselves Emperor to follow your lead. You tore the throne from its foundations. You defied the will of Heaven by breaking the ancient order!"
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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