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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"When we conquered the central plains, did I execute Cao Cao's officers? Did I chain Liu Bei's advisors in the dungeons? No. I gave them robes, I gave them salaries, and I gave them commands. If these surrendered nomads are not given a genuine, honorable chance to show their loyalty to the Hengyuan banner, then how could they ever truly be loyal to us?"
He looked deeply into Lingqi's eyes, his expression turning solemn as he delivered a profound, wise warning about the fragile nature of multi ethnic domains, a lesson derived from the catastrophic collapses of past dynasties in his previous life.
"If they are treated differently as second class citizens, if their customs are spit upon, and if they are constantly being forced and pressured by prejudice from our Han officials, then we are not building a state, we are simply building a bigger cage," Lie Fan warned, his voice dropping into a stern, prophetic register.
"Prejudice breeds silence, silence breeds deep, unyielding resentment, and resentment eventually erupts into rebellion. If we treat their children as slaves, those children will grow up with hatred in their marrow. They will accept our grain today because they are starving, but they will silently wait for the perfect, opportune moment for them to strike back. They will wait for the day the dynasty grows weak, or the day a less capable Emperor sits upon the throne, and they will burn our cities to the ground in the name of their grandfathers."
He slammed his fist lightly against the mahogany table, the red markers rattling against the wood. "I am not here to create a temporary truce that will last for thirty years. I am here to forge a single, indestructible entity. They will bleed for Hengyuan, they will rise through the ranks of our military based on their merit alone, and within two generations, their grandsons will look at the Dragon Throne not as the seat of their conquerors, but as the protector of their homes."
Hearing that profound, continent shaping wisdom, Lu Lingqi let out a soft, breathy exhale. The sheer scale of her husband's mind never ceased to fill her with awe. He did not think like the kings of old, who measured victory by the number of heads cut off, he thought like a god building a new world from the foundations up. She nodded her head in deep, silent respect at her husband's words, her loyalty to his vision permanently cemented.
Hearing that profound, continent shaping wisdom, Lu Lingqi let out a soft, breathy exhale. The sheer scale of her husband's mind never ceased to fill her with awe. He did not think like the kings of old, who measured victory by the number of heads cut off, he thought like a god building a new world from the foundations up. She nodded her head in deep, silent respect at her husband's words, her loyalty to his vision permanently cemented.
Meanwhile, on the outside of the massive imperial camp, the desperate race for survival had finally reached its chaotic, breathless conclusion.
The pale winter sun was beginning to dip toward the jagged western mountains, casting long, bruised shadows across the vast plains of permafrost. Through the swirling, freezing mist, the first of the nomadic caravans broke over the southern ridges. It was a staggering, heart wrenching sight.
Thousands of simple wooden carts, their axles screaming and groaning under the weight of heavy fur blankets, bundles of firewood, and weeping infants, poured down into the valley. Draft horses, their coats white with frozen sweat, gasped for air, their lungs straining against the sub-zero temperatures.
The leaders of these splinter groups, Xiongnu chieftains whose armor was missing its ornate plates, Xianbei elders carrying the ancestral totems of their clans, and Wuhuan riders who had abandoned their weapons in the frantic dash, whipped their mounts one last time, desperate to be the first to reach the lines.
But as the distance fully closed, their frantic momentum ground to a sudden, paralyzing halt. They were completely, utterly surprised to find that they had already been anticipated and waited for by the heavily armed Han soldiers.
The Hengyuan camp did not scramble in panic at the sight of the approaching horde. There were no frantic alarms sounded, no chaotic shifting of infantry ranks. The imperial army stood like an immovable wall of black iron and polished steel, completely expected, completely prepared. Rows of heavy shield bearers had already formed a massive, semi circular blockade outside the stone gates of the fortress.
Behind them, the repeating crossbowmen stood on reinforced wooden platforms, their weapons leveled with terrifying, mechanical precision. The dark, cold muzzles of the field cannons peered down from the battlements, a silent, indisputable promise of absolute annihilation should a single rider draw a bow.
The refugees reined in their horses, the stampede of desperation fracturing against the cold discipline of the empire. The silence that settled over the valley was thick, broken only by the crying of hungry infants and the heavy, ragged breathing of thousands of exhausted beasts.
Before the tribal leaders could even process their terror, the iron ranks of the shield bearers parted with practiced efficiency.
Translators immediately stepped forward from the Han lines. They wore the simple, coarse brown robes of clerks, but they walked with the steady, straight backed confidence of military officers. These were the elite Oriole Agents, their eyes sharp and calculating behind their submissive hoods, fluent in every subtle dialect and slang of the northern steppes.
They stood before the trembling chieftains, their voices booming across the frozen earth as they spoke in the native tongues of the horse lords.
"People of the steppes!" the head translator barked, his voice clear and unyielding. "The Supreme Emperor of the Hengyuan Dynasty knows why you have fled the northern fires. The Dragon Throne offers sanctuary, but it does not offer blind entry. You could fully enter the safety of the camp, you will receive grain for your children and shelter from the blizzards, only after thorough, absolute interrogations are done. Drop your remaining daggers. Disarm your young men. Line your carts by clan. Any man who lies about his lineage, or any clan that conceals a weapon, will be executed before the sun sets."
Of course, all of this highly complex, monumental processing was meticulously, ruthlessly overseen by the four brilliant advisors, Sima Yi, Xun You, Xu Shu, and Lu Xun.
The four advisors did not remain inside the warmth of the command pavilion. They had descended directly into the frozen mud outside the gates, establishing a massive, highly organized administrative gauntlet that every single refugee had to pass through.
Dozens of wide interrogation tents had been pitched in a long, flawless line, their interiors illuminated by the harsh, flickering orange light of large oil lamps and small charcoal braziers. Sima Yi sat at the central desk of the primary tent, his dark robes draped in thick wool, his writing brush moving across the blank sheets of parchment with a speed that looked almost mechanical.
He was the ledger of the empire, his mind instantly organizing the chaotic oral histories of the nomads into structured, mathematical columns of data.
To his left, Xun You managed the physical movement of the masses, his hand signals directing the armored guards as they separated the cattle from the sheep, and the young men from the elderly.
Xu Shu stood near the disarming stations, his sharp eyes observing the physical demeanor of every chieftain who surrendered his blade, looking for any sign of hidden defiance or falsified titles.
Beside them, the young Lu Xun coordinated the distribution of the initial survival rations, ensuring that the moment a family was fully documented, they were immediately handed a bowl of steaming rice broth and a thick, wool lined blanket, a brilliant psychological tactic that broke any remaining desire to resist.
The terrified splinter groups of tribes, completely broken by the trauma of the artillery and the violent civil wars tearing their homes apart, meekly obeyed whatever it was told to them by the Han officials. The ancient, legendary pride of the horse lords had been entirely extinguished. They did not dare to resist.
Proud warriors who would have rather died than surrender their ancestral daggers months ago now submissively unbuckled their belts, dropping their iron tipped weapons into massive wooden crates with trembling hands. They allowed the Han guards to search their wagons, to count their sheep, and to inspect the teeth of their children.
And so, the intense, incredibly deep new rounds of interrogations officially began.
The process was grueling, exhaustive, and entirely relentless. Inside the tents, the Oriole translators acted as the perfect bridge across the cultural chasm, their ears catching every micro deviation in the prisoners' speech.
"Name your father," a scribe would command, his brush hovering over a fresh bamboo slip.
The Xiongnu herder, his face hollow with hunger, his hands shaking as the warmth of the brazier hit his frostbitten skin, would swallow hard. "My father was Borte... of the Red River clan."
The translator beside him would instantly narrow his eyes, recognizing the subtle accent of the western deserts rather than the northern valleys. He would lean in, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous whisper in the native Xiongnu tongue. "The Red River clan does not use the dialect of the western wastes, herder. Do not lie to the scribes of the Hengyuan Dynasty. Who was your grandfather?"
The prisoner would pale, dropping to his knees, his forehead pressing against the cold dirt floor of the tent. "Mercy! My grandfather was Tömör... we took the name of the Red River clan because our own chieftain was slaughtered by the Xianbei three moons ago! We only want to live!"
"Record his true lineage as Tömör of the western wastes," Sima Yi would state without looking up from his parchment, his brush scratching against the silk. "Assign his family to ledger four, quadrant C."
Hour after hour, the interrogation continued as the night deepened. The advisors worked through the freezing cold, their fingers stiff around the brushes, their breath pluming in the tents. They cataloged the family trees, documented the maternal links, and recorded every minor sub tribe and clan name with an accuracy that the steppes had never seen since the dawn of time.
Every single individual was given a designation, a number, and a place within the grand imperial machine. The anonymity of the horde was being systematically, permanently erased.
When the long, mentally exhausting interrogations were finally done, and the final seals of the four advisors were stamped onto the master registries, the true social engineering of Emperor Lie Fan took physical form.
The various, disparate tribes, who had spent the last several miles racing against each other in a desperate bid for priority, and whose ancestors had fought bitter blood feuds for generations, were not allowed to maintain their old encampments. Lie Fan did not permit the Xiongnu to build their tents in one area, or the Xianbei to isolate themselves in another.
They were strictly ordered and forced to live closely together in one massive, heavily fortified, and designated area under Lie Fan's direct, absolute command.
The layout of this massive refugee city had been brilliantly designed by the Emperor himself before the first wagon had even arrived. It was organized in a rigid, geometric grid of concentric circles, entirely surrounded by a towering palisade of sharpened timber and guarded by the silent, omnipresent sentries of the Han heavy infantry.
Within this grid, the families were deliberately, calculatedly mixed. A Xiongnu herder's tent was pitched directly beside a Xianbei leatherworker's cart, a Wuhuan family shared a communal cooking brazier with a refugee from the distant western Yuezhi.
He intentionally did this because he wanted them to strip away their old, divisive, and highly destructive clan loyalties.
Lie Fan knew that if he allowed them to remain isolated within their traditional tribal structures, the old hatreds would fester in the darkness, and the power of the minor chieftains would slowly recover.
By forcing them to live shoulder to shoulder, by forcing them to share the same imperial grain, drink from the same wells, and rely on the same Han guards for protection against the civil wars still raging in the deep north, he was mathematically dissolving the boundaries of their past.
They could no longer afford the luxury of their ancient blood feuds when their neighbor's child was crying from the same cold, and when both families were dependent on the same imperial ledger for their daily survival.
The old clan names, the ancient tribal banners, and the regional rivalries that had kept the north in a state of perpetual, bloody chaos were systematically ground down into nothingness by the sheer weight of daily proximity and imperial bureaucracy.
They were forced to learn a new way of existing. They now had one singular, unified identity, an identity that was being forged in the freezing permafrost under the watchful eyes of the Black Dragon. And that identity was simple, absolute, and unyielding, they were no longer the wild, sovereign riders of the independent steppes, they were simply the nomadic tribes that will be fully, permanently assimilated into the great, eternal domain of the Hengyuan Dynasty. Their past belonged to the grass, but their future belonged entirely to the Throne.
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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