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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"Under my imperial decree," Lie Fan proclaimed, his voice echoing out into the freezing winds of the north, signaling the true, permanent end of the old world and the birth of a new era. "Your old names are dead. Your old alliances are dust. From this day until the end of time, this newly forged, highly regulated nomadic alliance will officially be called the Confederacy of the Northern Tribes. You belong to Hengyuan. Do not disappoint me."
Hearing the profound words and grand, terrifying vision pouring from the lips of Lie Fan, the five tribal representatives respectfully nodded their heads. Pressed against the cold, hard earth of the pavilion, they felt the overwhelming, crushing weight of their new reality settling over their shoulders.
They had walked into the imperial tent as broken refugees, men who had watched the sky rain fire and their societies violently tear themselves apart from the inside. Now, they were leaving as the foundational stones of a completely new geopolitical entity. They completely accepted the monumental decision made by Lie Fan regarding the establishment of the new confederacy.
They understood that the old world of the steppes was permanently dead, and this highly regulated, imperial alliance was the only sanctuary left on a burning continent.
However, the fragile peace that had just been brokered in the shadow of the Black Dragon did not last long at all.
The silence in the grand pavilion stretched for a few heavy moments, punctuated only by the crackle of the roaring charcoal braziers and the whistling of the northern winds outside the heavy canvas flaps. The men remained on their knees, processing the immense, dangerous game of political survival that the Emperor had just laid out before them.
It was the shrewd, one eyed chieftain from the Xianbei splinter group who broke the silence. He was a man who had survived the chaotic, bloody downfall of Khan Kuitou not through raw physical strength, but through a cunning, opportunistic instinct that rivaled a starving desert fox. His mind was already turning the Emperor's words over, recognizing the massive, glaring gap in the grand proclamation.
The Emperor had stated that the ruling tribe would be evaluated every ten years, but he had deliberately left the immediate present entirely blank.
Slowly, testing the boundaries of the Emperor's patience, the Xianbei chieftain suddenly stepped forward from the line of prostrate men. He rose to a half kneeling posture, keeping his head bowed in a show of deep deference, but his single eye burned with an intense, unquenchable ambition.
He boldly asked the Emperor the one crucial, burning question that was secretly on the minds of every single barbarian leader in the tent, exactly who will he choose to become the very first head of the federation, Your Majesty?
The chieftain's voice, translated into flawless Han dialect by the scholars standing nearby, echoed in the tense air. But the Xianbei leader did not stop at merely asking the question.
Without missing a single beat, recognizing that hesitation was death in the bloody arena of steppe politics, the chieftain shamelessly suggested that his own tribe, the Xianbei, should logically be appointed as the head of the federation for the first term.
He smoothly, aggressively argued his case, gesturing with his calloused hands. He claimed that the Xianbei were the most adaptable of the northern peoples, that they had already proven their worth by previously maintaining lucrative trade relations with the Hengyuan Dynasty before the great war had broken out.
He argued that his people possessed the bureaucratic understanding and the surviving herds necessary to immediately stabilize the massive, starving refugee camps, making them the absolute perfect, most rational choice to guide the newly formed Confederacy of the Northern Tribes under the Emperor's divine mandate.
Seeing this blatant, shamelessly arrogant power grab unfolding right before their very eyes, the other four tribes' representatives, the Xiongnu, the Wuhuan, the Yuezhi, and the Fuyu,of course became instantly, explosively furious.
The fragile veneer of their shared subjugation completely shattered in a fraction of a second. The ancient, boiling hatreds and the fierce, tribal pride that Lie Fan was attempting to systematically eradicate flared back to life with a vengeance.
The aged, heavily scarred Xiongnu elder angrily stepped forward, his face twisting into a mask of pure, venomous outrage. He pointed a trembling, accusing finger directly at the Xianbei chieftain's face.
In his guttural, harsh native tongue, he roared that the Xianbei were nothing but treacherous dogs who had murdered their Chanyu, Batu, in the snow. He fiercely suggested himself and the Xiongnu for the supreme position, arguing that despite their losses, they still possessed the largest number of surviving cavalrymen and the fiercest warriors to serve as the Emperor's vanguard.
The massive, imposing Fuyu warlord did not let the Xiongnu elder finish his sentence. He aggressively shoved his way forward, his massive chest heaving with indignation. He screamed in his own distinct, booming dialect that the central tribes were weak, broken cowards who had lost their lands, whereas the Fuyu were strong, disciplined, and possessed the heavy infantry required to keep the peace in the cramped, volatile barracks of the refugee city.
The Wuhuan clan leader, wearing his battered furs, furiously joined the fray, shouting that his eastern archers were the most skilled and the most loyal, while the wealthy Yuezhi merchant lord waved his hands frantically, screaming that his people possessed the hidden silver and the logistical expertise to manage the winter grain distributions far better than any illiterate herdsman from the central plains.
This immediate, violent clash of egos caused a massive, chaotic shouting match inside the grand command tent.
The five men completely lost their composure, reverting to the screaming, chaotic warlords they had been before the Han artillery had broken them.
They hurled vile, blood curdling insults at one another, bringing up ancient massacres, stolen women, and broken treaties. They threatened each other with violent retribution, their faces turning red with sheer, unadulterated fury, entirely forgetting for a terrifying moment that they were standing in the very heart of the Hengyuan war machine.
The noise was deafening, a cacophony of guttural roars, rapid clicks, and rolling desert accents, with so many different dialects being yelled at once that it created a localized tower of Babel right in front of the Dragon Throne.
It caused even the elite, highly trained Oriole translators and the formal imperial scholars to become completely overwhelmed and deeply confused. The translators, men who prided themselves on their flawless linguistic mastery, were physically sweating as they frantically tried to listen to five different, furious men screaming over each other simultaneously.
They began tripping over their own words, stuttering as they attempted to translate the overlapping, venomous insults into coherent Han sentences for the Emperor, their voices blending into a panicked, useless drone.
Lie Fan, sitting upon his heavy mahogany throne, watched this pathetic, screaming display of barbarian politics unfold. He did not feel amused by his successful psychological manipulation; he only felt a deep, profound sense of disgust.
He was in the end made to have a throbbing, pulsing headache with this senseless bickering. He was the Emperor of a unified, industrialized continent. He commanded cannons that could shatter mountains and millions of disciplined men who marched in absolute silence.
To be subjected to the petty, screaming squabbles of defeated men fighting over the scraps of a world he had just destroyed was deeply insulting to his imperial patience.
Losing his patience entirely, Lie Fan's dark eyes narrowed into slits of pure, lethal focus. He did not shout over them to be heard. He did not ask his guards to intervene.
Instead, he violently slammed his heavy, gauntleted hand down on the solid, thick wooden armrest of his chair.
BANG.
The loud, explosive bang echoed through the quiet confines of the canvas tent like the sudden, terrifying crack of a Black Dragon Cannon. The sheer kinetic force behind the blow actually cracked the thick mahogany wood of the armrest.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
The loud noise terrified the shouting chieftains into immediate, breathless submission. The screams died in their throats. The five men froze exactly where they stood, the blood draining from their furious faces as they suddenly remembered exactly where they were and exactly who they were speaking in front of.
The paralyzing, suffocating aura of the Black Dragon washed over the room, crushing the air from their lungs. They immediately dropped back to their knees, pressing their faces hard into the dirt floor, trembling violently in fear of immediate execution.
The elite translators immediately fell silent, dropping to their knees alongside the barbarians, terrified that they had failed in their duties.
Lie Fan stared down at the trembling men, his expression a mask of cold, unyielding stone. He let the terrifying silence stretch for several long, agonizing heartbeats, ensuring that the sheer weight of his authority was permanently branded into their minds.
Lie Fan then coldly stated his final, irrevocable decision regarding their petty power struggle.
"You fight over a crown of ashes before the fires have even gone out," Lie Fan's voice was dangerously low, a smooth, freezing whisper that carried effortlessly through the silent pavilion. "You arrogantly demand the right to rule, yet you have offered me nothing but words and complaints."
He leaned forward, his gaze piercing through the shivering forms of the tribal representatives.
"I will appoint the official head of the confederation much later," Lie Fan declared, his decree echoing with absolute finality. "And it will happen strictly after this current bloody campaign against your former brethren has finally ended. The crown of the north is not a gift to be handed out to the man who shouts the loudest in my tent. It is a prize that must be bought."
He looked specifically at the shrewd Xianbei chieftain, and then at the Xiongnu elder.
"I am forcing you to earn your position through merit, through blood, and through absolute loyalty first," Lie Fan commanded smoothly. "When my armies march out tomorrow to hunt down the stubborn remnants of your people who refused to surrender, you will prove your worth. You will provide the scouts to guide my heavy infantry through the hidden mountain passes. You will provide the laborers to clear the snow for my artillery wagons. And when the time comes to secure the stragglers, you will prove that your loyalty to the Hengyuan Dynasty is stronger than the blood of your former kin."
Lie Fan rose from his throne, his towering, armored frame casting a long, dark shadow over the kneeling men.
"The tribe that proves themselves to be the most ruthlessly efficient, the most unquestioningly obedient, and the most valuable to my vanguard during this final purge," the Emperor concluded, his voice ringing like a struck anvil, "shall be the tribe I elevate to lead the rest. Until then, you are all equally beneath the dirt on my boots."
After delivering that final, terrifying verdict, Lie Fan did not wait for their sniveling responses or their frantic pledges of obedience. He abruptly took his leave from the command tent, sweeping past his silent, awe struck advisors and stepping out into the freezing northern winds, closely followed by Lu Lingqi and his heavily armored Yellow Ghost Bodyguards.
Left behind in the dim, smoky light of the grand pavilion, the chastised representatives all stayed completely silent in fear for several long minutes, too terrified to even lift their heads from the dirt. The fierce, screaming bravado of their earlier argument was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, desperate realization of the bloody, treacherous path they now had to walk to secure their survival.
Eventually, under the strict, uncompromising escort of the heavily armed imperial soldiers, they were hauled to their feet and marched back to their designated, cramped encampment area. They did not speak a single word to each other on the walk back.
The psychological wedge Lie Fan had driven between them was complete, they were no longer allies of convenience, they were vicious competitors in a deadly game of imperial favor, completely ready to betray their own former kin in the deep north just to win a smile from the demon Emperor.
The brief, highly engineered pause in the war was officially over.
As the sun crested the gray horizon the very next day, casting a pale, weak light over the frozen, blood stained steppes, the true, apocalyptic scale of the Hengyuan war machine roared back to life. The grand campaign officially continues, but this time, it was not a massive, singular clash of armies. It was a sprawling, methodical, continent spanning hunt.
Emperor Lie Fan firmly ordered for the entire massive imperial armies to relentlessly move forward. The logistics trains were fully stocked, the wagonways were secured, and the millions of heavily armored soldiers were well rested and burning with the fanatical momentum of total victory.
They marched out from the captured fortifications, a dark, consuming tide of black iron and polished steel spreading across the vast, white plains. They moved to violently attack the stubborn remnants of the five tribes, the isolated warlords, the fanatical holdouts, and the desperate bands of roaming cavalry that had arrogantly refused to join the massive migration of surrender.
His standing order to his high command, Sima Yi, Taishi Ci, Zhang Liao, and Ma Chao, was absolute, clear, and devoid of any political ambiguity.
"The time for offering the olive branch has passed," Lie Fan's mandate echoed through the ranks of the vanguard. "Either subjugate them completely, dragging them to the dirt in chains, or entirely eradicate them if they arrogantly do not want to surrender. Burn their remaining winter camps. Shatter their holdfasts. Drive them into the frozen rivers. Leave no warlord alive who can raise a banner of rebellion in the spring."
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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