If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
______________________________
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
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. You tore the throne from its foundations. You defied the will of Heaven by breaking the ancient order!"
"The ancient order was a rotting corpse that fed on the starving masses!" Lie Fan roared, his voice shaking the timber of the room, matching Tian Feng's fury with an overwhelming, imperial wrath. "Where was your Mandate of Heaven when the Yellow Turbans starved? Where was your righteousness when Dong Zhuo almost burned Luoyang to ash? The Heavens do not give their mandate to cowards who hide behind ancient titles, Tian Feng! The Heavens give their mandate to the man who can actually stop the chaos and bleeding!"
Lie Fan marched across the room, towering over the seated scholar. "I unified the central plains. I fed the poor. I sponsored technologial innovations that improves life quality. I shattered the northern steppes so that Han farmers will never be slaughtered by barbarians again. I hold the Mandate of Heaven because I forged it in iron and blood, while you sit in a cage and read about morality!"
Tian Feng stood up, his chest heaving, prepared to argue the ancient texts. "True legitimacy comes from lineage and virtue, not mere conquest!"
"Virtue is feeding the hungry!" Lie Fan snapped, cutting him off completely. "Virtue is ensuring a mother does not have to sell her child to pay a corrupt magistrate! I am building a bureaucratic machine to govern the known world, and I need men of unyielding principles to ensure it does not become corrupt. If you stay here and die for the ghost of Cao Cao, you are actively choosing to let the common people suffer just so the historians will write that Tian Feng was 'loyal.' That is not righteousness. That is the ultimate, disgusting peak of selfishness!"
Tian Feng opened his mouth to shout back, but the words died in his throat. The sheer truth of Lie Fan's argument struck him like a physical blow. He had always prided himself on serving the realm, serving the people through absolute moral clarity.
Lie Fan had brilliantly flipped his own moral compass against him, exposing his martyrdom as a selfish abandonment of the very people he claimed to care about.
Tian Feng's hands began to tremble. His entire worldview, built upon the rigid structures of the past, was crumbling under the crushing weight of Lie Fan's pragmatic benevolence. He looked at the Emperor, realizing that this man truly cared for the realm more than anyone he had ever served.
Slowly, the rigid scholar broke down. Tears of bitter realization and profound surrender welled in his eyes. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor, prostrating himself completely.
"I... I have been blind to the true virtue of heaven," Tian Feng wept, his rigid pride shattered. "I submit, Your Imperial Majesty. I will serve the people under your banner."
Lie Fan took a deep, shuddering breath, stepping out of Tian Feng's room. Five down. He felt entirely exhausted, his mind drained from engaging in five distinct, incredibly intense philosophical and psychological wars.
But the final door loomed at the end of the corridor.
Xun Yu. "国王的助手(Guowang De Zhushou) - The King's Assistant." The absolute cornerstone of loyalty. The man who had managed Cao Cao's entire rear guard, who had kept the Han Emperor fed until the end when he pledged his full allegiance to Cao Cao, and a man who possessed a moral and administrative compass so flawless it was terrifying.
It have become muhc, much harder to convince the next person each time Lie Fan finally succeeded in his previous persuasion. The arguments become progressively longer, deeper, and more emotionally exhausting. But this... this was the ultimate, seemingly impossible challenge.
Lie Fan pushed the door open.
The room was immaculate. It smelled faintly of expensive incense, a habit Xun Yu kept to mask the scent of politics. Xun Yu was dressed in flawless Wei court robes, seated perfectly at a tea table. He looked up, his handsome, dignified face showing absolutely no emotion.
"Emperor Hongyi, Emperor Lie Fan," Xun Yu said, his voice calm, respectful, but entirely distant.
Lie Fan sat across from him. He knew that threats, promises of wealth, appeals to strategy, or even appeals to the people would not work here. Xun Yu was the soul of the old world. Lie Fan had to break down Xun Yu's worldview entirely to make him finally submit to the Hengyuan Dynasty.
"Xun Yu," Lie Fan began softly, pouring himself a cup of tea. "The Cao clan is gone. The others have submitted. Xu You for gold, Jia Kui for duty, Xi Zhicai for strategy, Cheng Yu for blood, and Tian Feng for righteousness. But what is your price? What keeps you anchored in this room?"
"My loyalty, Your Majesty," Xun Yu replied calmly. "My life was dedicated to restoring the Han, before then serving the Wei for unification. Lord Cao was the vessel for that restoration that changed to unification. When he died, my purpose died with him."
"You lie to yourself, Xun Yu," Lie Fan said, his voice a scalpel, cutting directly into the man's soul. "You are too brilliant to be this blind. Cao Cao was never going to restore the Han and he have proven it. He kept the Emperor as a puppet, a hollow idol to justify his own conquests. You knew he wouldn't do it, yet you served him because you convinced yourself it was the only way to achieve peace and even then you changed your principles for him."
Xun Yu's hands tightened almost imperceptibly around his teacup. "He brought order to a fractured world."
"He brought a sword. I brought the plow," Lie Fan countered, leaning forward, initiating the most emotionally exhausting debate of his life. "In the past, you clung to the Han Dynasty because you believed the name 'Han' was the only thing standing between civilization and the abyss. But the Han died the moment Emperor Ling ascended to the throne, Xun Yu. It died when the eunuchs bled the treasury, it died when Dong Zhuo almost burned the capital, and it died when your Lord Cao turned the Emperor into a caged bird."
"You are a usurper!" Xun Yu suddenly raised his voice, a crack appearing in his flawless composure. "You destroyed the four hundred year legacy of the Liu clan! You destroyed Wei that tries to unified the chaos! You shattered the psychological anchor of the entire continent!"
"I shattered an illusion!" Lie Fan roared back, the emotional toll of the day finally spilling into his voice. "You loved a corpse, Xun Yu! You poured your genius, your sweat, and your soul into preserving the rotting skin of the Han Dynasty, while the maggots ate the country alive! Then you choose the powerful yet dying Wei! Now look out the window! Look at the capital! The people are not weeping for the Han nor Wei. They are cheering for Hengyuan because their bellies are full and the borders are safe!"
Lie Fan slammed his hand on the table, rattling the teacups. "You are the ultimate tragedy, Xun Yu. You dedicated your life to achieving universal peace, and now that the peace has actually arrived, you refuse to accept it simply because it does not carry the surname 'Liu' or 'Cao'!"
Xun Yu stared at Lie Fan, his breath hitching.
"I have done it," Lie Fan whispered fiercely, relentlessly deconstructing Xun Yu's psychological coping mechanisms. "I have achieved the dream you sacrificed your conscience for. The warlords are dead. The northern steppes are conquered. The laws are just. The empire is unified. I am the realization of your life's work, Xun Yu. But you sit here, choosing to die in the dark out of loyalty to a pupet emperor and a dead emperor who tries to unified the land but failed."
Lie Fan stood up, looking down at the broken scholar with a mixture of pity and absolute command. "If you truly loved the concept of peace and order more than you loved your own ego, you would fall to your knees right now. You would weep for the years you wasted serving a man who have big vision but to paranoid, and you would offer your mind to the dynasty that actually saved the world."
The silence in the room was deafening. It stretched for an eternity.
Xun Yu's flawless, dignified facade finally, completely fractured. The walls he had built in his mind to justify serving Cao Cao's atrocities, the desperate hope that the Han could be saved in the past, it all crumbled to ash under the searing, undeniable truth of Lie Fan's words. He had been holding onto a dead tree while the forest bloomed around him.
Tears, hot and bitter, spilled from Xun Yu's eyes, ruining his pristine appearance. He covered his face with his trembling hands, letting out a ragged, agonizing sob that carried the grief of a wasted lifetime. He wept for the Han, he wept for Cao Cao, and he wept for his own blindness.
Slowly, agonizingly, the cornerstone of loyalty slipped from his chair.
Xun Yu collapsed onto the floor, pressing his forehead against the cold wood at Lie Fan's feet. His shoulders shook violently as he finally, entirely submitted to the new world.
"You... you are the true sovereign," Xun Yu wept, his voice entirely broken. "The Han is dead. The peace is real. I... I pledge my absolute allegiance to the Hengyuan Dynasty, Your Imperial Majesty."
Lie Fan looked down at the greatest administrative mind of the era, now kneeling in a puddle of his own tears. It had been the most exhausting, grueling morning of his life, a masterpiece of psychological and political debate. But he had won.
The last ghosts of the Wei had been exorcised. The wolves of Wei were now the hounds of Hengyuan, and with their peerless intellects bound to his throne, he knew that his empire could build a foundation that truly last for ten thousand years.
After that grueling but ultimately successful psychological battle, Lie Fan took a slow, deep breath, allowing the heavy, oppressive air of the private room to settle. He looked down one last time at Xun Yu, the man who had just surrendered the very foundation of his soul to the new era. Leaving the broken but liberated scholar to compose himself, Lie Fan turned and stepped out into the sunlit corridor.
He walked with a measured, deliberate pace, stopping for quite some time looking at the sky, his dark charcoal gray silk robes whispering against the polished wooden floorboards, before then he made his way toward the main living room of the mansion.
When he arrived, pushing past the sliding latticed doors, he was met with a scene that would have been unimaginable just a few years prior. All of those brilliant advisors, Xun Yu, Guo Jia, Xi Zhicai, Cheng Yu, Tian Feng, Jia Kui, and Xu You, were now standing there together.
The atmosphere in the spacious, elegantly furnished living room was incredibly heavy, thick with an almost suffocating tension. They were not looking at each other, nor were they talking. Each man stood isolated within his own mind, staring at the floor, out the window, or at the blank walls.
Their faces were drawn, full of the heavy, deeply pensive thoughts running through their minds as they violently processed their new reality. They had all, in their own distinct ways, just crossed the rubicon. They had abandoned the banners of Wei and Han, effectively severing their ties to their past lives, and were now struggling to mentally anchor themselves to the colossal leviathan that was the Hengyuan Dynasty.
Lie Fan stood at the threshold for a moment, observing this gathering of generational genius. He allowed a small, deeply satisfied smile to grace his handsome features. He had not just defeated an enemy army today, he had successfully harvested the finest intellects of the age.
He stepped fully into the room, the sound of his boots immediately causing the six men to stiffen and turn toward him. He raised his hand gently, calling for their attention without needing to raise his voice.
"Gentlemen," Lie Fan began, his tone remarkably soft, stripped of the terrifying imperial wrath he had wielded earlier. He looked at each of them, projecting an aura of magnanimous understanding. "I deeply understand the immense weight of what has transpired this morning. I know that you will need time to mentally readjust your morality, to mourn the past you have left behind, and to come to terms with your shifting loyalty. The mind is not a banner that can simply be swapped in the wind. Take the time you need to heal your spirits."
He paused, letting the genuine empathy in his voice wash over them, before his tone shifted to the pragmatic reality of their new existence. "But I genuinely hope you can get to work soon. The empire is vast, the challenges are unprecedented, and millions of common people are waiting for the stability and prosperity that only minds like yours can engineer. Do not linger in the shadows for too long; the light of the new world requires your brilliance."
As he spoke those encouraging words, Lie Fan narrowed his eyes slightly. Deep within his mind, he secretly activated his divine ability, the Eyes of Erlang Shen.
Hovering above the dignified, still trembling form of Xun Yu, the undisputed king's assistant, were the highest numbers in the room
•Xun Yu
INT: 905 WIS: 94 VIT: 80 CHR: 93
Lie Fan's heart leaped. Xun Yu was an absolute administrative god, a man whose wisdom and intellect were perfectly balanced to manage the entire rear guard of an empire without a single flaw.
Next, he looked at Guo Jia, the brilliant, unpredictable prodigy whose mind was a terrifying weapon of war and intellect.
• Guo Jia
INT: 902 WIS: 90 VIT: 68 CHR: 90
Guo Jia's sheer intellect was unmatched, a pure, chaotic brilliance that could foresee enemy movements before the enemy even conceived them.
Beside him stood Xi Zhicai, another master strategist whose deep analytical skills had kept Cao Cao alive in his earliest, darkest days.
• Xi Zhicai
INT: 885 WIS: 87 VIT: 72 CHR: 87
His numbers reflected a deeply reliable, profoundly wise military mind that could immediately step in to manage the grand logistics of the imperial vanguard.
Next to him stood Cheng Yu, a master advisor whose deep mind and analytics was outweighed by his stubborn and courgaues heart, which have supported Cao Cao to make the toughest decisiona he will made.
• Cheng Yu
INT: 869 WIS: 90 VIT: 68 CHR: 83
His numbers reflected a deeply courage and heart to make whatever decision need to be done, whether it will make a bad reputation for him, as long as he can achieve what needed to be done.
Then his gaze shifted to Tian Feng, the rigid, unyielding pillar of righteousness who had finally broken under the weight of pragmatic truth.
• Tian Feng
INT: 860 WIS: 90 VIT: 65 CHR: 91
Tian Feng's stats proved he was an exceptional censor and domestic manager, a man whose high intellect and unshakeable wisdom would root out corruption with terrifying efficiency.
Next was Jia Kui, the meticulous, duty bound builder of the state and military, standing with perfect, respectful posture.
• Jia Kui
INT: 785 WIS: 82 VIT: 79 CHR: 86
His balanced numbers, particularly his higher vitality compared to the sickly strategists, showed a man capable of surviving the grueling, day to day exhaustion of running the empire's vast agrarian and legal logistics.
And finally, standing slightly off to the side, was Xu You, the opportunistic survivor.
• Xu You
INT: 612 WIS: 73 VIT: 73 CHR: 77
While he was the lowest of the geniuses present, his numbers were still exceptionally high compared to any standard official. He was a man who could sniff out advantage and manage rapid, opportunistic expansion better than anyone.
Lie Fan deactivated his divine vision, the glowing numbers fading back into the mundane reality of the sunlit room. He was incredibly satisfied with the stunning result, of course. He had just integrated a powerhouse of administration and strategy into his court that would guarantee the Hengyuan Dynasty's supremacy for centuries to come.
Meanwhile, the advisors, entirely unaware that their very souls had just been mathematically quantified, respectfully nodded their heads. Moving as one, the six brilliant men bowed deeply, their hands clasped before them.
"We sincerely thank Your Imperial Majesty for your kind words and your boundless patience," Xun Yu spoke for the group, his voice finally steadying. "We shall not let your mercy go to waste."
Lie Fan smiled, a warm, genuine expression. He knew that to truly cement their loyalty, he had to give them back the one thing they feared they had lost forever.
"Your confinement is over," Lie Fan declared mercifully, his voice echoing in the quiet room. "You are no longer prisoners. I am allowing you to leave this small mansion immediately. Carriages are waiting outside. You may return back to the respective larger manors across the city where your families have been carefully put in. Go. Finally reunite with your wives, your children, and your parents. Assure them that the storm has passed, and that your bloodlines are forever safe under the Dragon Throne."
The impact of those words was immediate and profoundly moving. The stoic facades of the advisors finally cracked under the sheer weight of relief. Jia Kui let out a shuddering breath, his hands trembling as he realized he would see his son again.
Tian Feng closed his eyes in a silent prayer of gratitude, and even the cynical Guo Jia offered a deep, incredibly sincere bow. After months of terrifying uncertainty, imagining the worst fates for their loved ones, this emotional release was the final, unbreakable chain that bound them to Lie Fan's will. Leaving the geniuses to their relief and their frantic preparations to depart, Lie Fan turned and exited the mansion.
______________________________
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