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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Instantly, they would drop to one knee and begin the frantic reloading process, while the second rank stepped forward to unleash the next volley. It was a continuous, rolling wave of thunder and lead that required absolute, unflinching discipline to maintain. A single panicked soldier stepping out of line could disrupt the entire formation. This explosive, deafening training was, of course, done entirely in the remote outskirts of Xiapi for one critical reason, to strictly ensure the weapons' secrecy.
Lie Fan and Zhuge Liang wanted to keep it completely hidden, at least before it was officially introduced to the main army on the frontlines. They knew the political landscape of the capital better than anyone. The ancient aristocratic families, the wealthy merchants, and the ambitious provincial nobles were always looking for ways to increase their own power.
If they found out prematurely about a weapon that could allow a peasant to kill an armored knight, they would cunningly try to use their immense wealth and deep political influence to get their treacherous hands on these revolutionary weapons.
They would attempt to bribe factory workers, steal the black powder formulas, and secretly build their own private arsenals to challenge the throne. By isolating the troops and the factories, Lie Fan ensured that when the thunder finally broke across the continent, it would belong entirely to the Emperor.
While this secretive, deeply transformative military revolution was actively happening in the north, a completely different kind of monumental struggle was taking place in the deep south of the empire.
Huang Yue Ying, her face smeared with dirt and her simple, practical clothes stained with sweat, was still tirelessly overseeing the massive, continent wide placement of tracks for the imperial wagonway network. The construction was still heavily in progress, an ambitious, earth shattering infrastructure project that was aggressively pushing to expand to the absolute entirety of Hengyuan's vast domain.
In the central plains, laying the heavy iron tracks and the thick wooden ties had been a relatively straightforward process. But expanding to the deep south, pushing the network toward the borders of Jiaozhou and the untamed frontiers, had suddenly become a massive, logistical hassle.
The geography of the south actively fought against the empire's expansion. The terrain was defined by treacherous, towering mountainous regions that pierced the sky, and incredibly dense, suffocatingly humid forest areas that grew much thicker and deeper the further south the engineering corps went. The heat was oppressive, breeding strange fevers and swarms of insects that tormented the labor camps.
The workers, tens of thousands of conscripted laborers and specialized military engineers, had to painstakingly blast through solid, unforgiving rock to carve out level paths for the tracks. They used highly controlled, dangerous charges of black powder to shatter the mountainsides, filling the humid air with choking dust and the constant threat of deadly cave ins.
When they weren't blowing apart mountains, they were forced to bridge massive, dizzying ravines and deep, rushing jungle rivers, driving massive wooden pylons deep into the muddy riverbeds to support the weight of the heavy iron rails. It was a grueling, agonizingly slow process that claimed lives and tested the absolute limits of human endurance.
Yet, even while actively managing this colossal infrastructure nightmare, dealing with supply shortages, collapsing bridges, and the sheer physical exhaustion of the southern climate, Yue Ying's brilliant mind never rested.
When the sun set over the humid jungle, casting long, dark shadows over the sprawling construction camps, she did not sleep. Inside her large, heavily guarded command tent, illuminated by the flickering, warm glow of multiple oil lanterns, she was passionately researching.
She was not alone. Alongside her brilliant, aging father, Huang Chengyan, and the genius pragmatic Minister of Work, Liu Ye, who had traveled south specifically for this endeavor, she was pouring over massive, complex blueprints spread across heavy wooden tables.
Their top secret, highly ambitious project was heavily focused on a concept that seemed ripped straight from the realm of mythology. They were looking at the massive, steam powered engines that currently propelled the Vanguard warships across the eastern oceans, and they were asking a revolutionary question: Could they put that engine on the land?
They were attempting to utilize the immense, raw power of the newly invented steam engine to creatively design and create some sort of a massive, self moving iron carriage.
They envisioned a heavily armored, mechanical beast that could travel at incredibly high speeds across the continent without the need of a single horse pulling it. It was an iron beast that they can directly put onto the very wagon tracks she was currently building, effectively turning the entire continent into a single, interconnected, rapidly accessible grid.
Naturally, this unprecedented, world altering research was incredibly, agonizingly hard. The transition from a massive ship's boiler room to a compact, wheeled chassis was fraught with endless, highly dangerous engineering failures.
The space inside the tent was cluttered with heavy iron gears, shattered copper pipes, and small scale, twisted metal prototypes that smelled of burnt coal and grease. They had spent weeks trying to figure out how to transfer the vertical, pumping motion of the steam pistons into the rotational force needed to turn heavy iron wheels.
The trials were terrifying. Pressure valves, unable to handle the immense, concentrated buildup of steam required to move a heavy land vehicle, frequently exploded. Just two nights prior, a prototype boiler had ruptured violently in a reinforced testing trench outside the camp, sending boiling water and jagged shrapnel tearing through the wooden barricades.
Gears, forged from iron that wasn't quite strong enough to handle the sheer torque of the steam pressure, constantly shattered, grinding the mechanisms to a screeching, violent halt.
But Yue Ying, who originally got the spark for this world changing idea while watching the naval engines being assembled in Xiapi, stubbornly refused to just abandon it later on. When a pipe burst, she simply wiped the grease from her face, ordered the forge to burn hotter, and redesigned the pressure valve. When her father, coughing in the damp night air, suggested they delay the project until they returned to the safety of the capital's workshops, she fiercely shook her head.
She knew in her heart that the suffering was worth it. She knew that because such an unbelievable idea could truly, fundamentally benefit the empire's logistics and military mobility, it was worth all the sweat, tears, and exploding prototypes. A self moving iron carriage could transport thousands of soldiers from the northern steppes to the southern jungles in a matter of days, rather than months. It could move thousands of tons of grain before it could spoil. It would make the sheer, massive size of the Hengyuan Dynasty entirely manageable.
But more deeply, beneath her unwavering loyalty to the Emperor and her dedication to the state, there was a fiercely personal, burning motivation driving her through the sleepless nights.
Yue Ying fiercely wanted to make something that was truly, entirely built from scratch by her own intellect. She admired Lie Fan deeply, and she revered his visionary mind.
She knew that the foundational invention of the steam engine, the very concept of harnessing boiling water to create kinetic force, was only made possible because their Emperor was the one who originally provided the initial, divine schematics and mechanical theories. Lie Fan had handed them the fire of the gods.
But the Emperor had not drawn the plans for a land based locomotive. He had not figured out the complex gear ratios, the suspension systems required to keep an iron beast on the tracks, or the reinforced boilers needed to withstand the bumpy, uneven terrain of the southern mountains.
As she leaned over the drafting table, her compass tracing the arc of a massive driving wheel, a fierce, protective pride welled up inside her chest. She wanted this revolutionary "steam carriage" to be her own undeniable legacy to the world. She wanted history to remember that while the great Emperor Hongyi had conquered the earth and the oceans, it was Huang Yue Ying who had forged the iron beast that finally conquered time and distance itself.
"The torque ratio is still wrong on the rear axle," Liu Ye muttered, breaking the silence of the tent as he aggressively tapped a charcoal stick against the blueprint. "When the pistons reach maximum pressure, the sheer force is snapping the drive pins. The wheels lock up, and the boiler over pressurizes."
Huang Chengyan sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "Perhaps the iron we are smelting here is simply too brittle. The southern ores have impurities we aren't used to."
Yue Ying shook her head, her eyes locked on the complex web of lines and measurements. "No. The iron is fine. It's the distribution of force. We are trying to force a single, massive piston to do all the work."
She grabbed a fresh sheet of thick parchment and a graphite stick, her mind visualizing the mechanics with absolute, flawless clarity. She began to draw rapidly, her hand moving with a frantic, inspired energy.
"Look," she said, her voice filled with a sudden, electric excitement. She pointed to her new sketch. "What if we don't use one massive cylinder? What if we use two smaller cylinders, mounted horizontally on the outside of the chassis? We connect them directly to the driving wheels on either side, using a dual action sliding valve. When one piston pushes forward, the other pulls back. The force is distributed evenly, continuous and balanced. It won't snap the drive pins because the torque isn't localized in the center."
Liu Ye leaned in closely, his eyes widening as he traced the mechanical logic of her drawing. He was a master of artillery, a man who understood the physics of force better than almost anyone, and he immediately saw the brilliance of the solution.
"By the heavens," Liu Ye whispered, a slow, amazed smile spreading across his face. "The continuous rotational force... it balances the chassis. It eliminates the dead center of the piston stroke."
Huang Chengyan looked at his daughter, his chest swelling with an immense, profound pride. "It will require entirely new forgings for the exterior mounts. The plumbing for the steam pipes will be incredibly complex."
"Then we forge them," Yue Ying stated with absolute, unyielding determination, rolling up the blueprint and turning toward the flaps of the tent. Outside, the first light of dawn was just beginning to break over the dense, humid canopy of the southern jungle. "We tell the blacksmiths to double the fires. We will build the dual cylinder prototype, and we will place it on the tracks by the end of the month."
She looked at the two men, her eyes burning with a relentless, undeniable fire. "We are not leaving this place until the iron beast breathes."
And so, while the Emperor managed the sprawling bureaucracy of a conquered continent in the north, and while the hidden musketeers drilled with the thunder of a new military era, the brilliant minds in the sweltering south continued to push the boundaries of human invention.
The Hengyuan Dynasty was rapidly evolving, transforming itself into an unstoppable, mechanized juggernaut that the ancient world was entirely unprepared for. The tracks were being laid, the guns were being forged, and the future was rushing forward with the unstoppable, terrifying momentum of an iron beast roaring down a mountain.
Deep inside the quiet, heavily guarded sanctuary of the imperial palace, Lie Fan sat alone behind his massive ebony desk. The warm light of the afternoon sun filtered through the lattice windows, illuminating the towering stacks of administrative reports, tax ledgers, and covert intelligence briefings that commanded his daily attention.
Lie Fan, of course, knew absolutely everything about Huang Yue Ying's top secret, highly ambitious research in the deep, sweltering jungles of the south. He knew about the exploding pressure valves, the shattered drive pins, and her recent, brilliant pivot toward a dual-cylinder exterior mount for the steam carriage.
He knew all of this because the invisible, omnipresent network of his fiercely loyal Oriole Agents kept constantly reporting every single mechanical trial, every agonizing failure, and every brilliant breakthrough directly to his desk. Their heavily encrypted, wax sealed cylinders arrived by fast rider on a near daily basis, painting a vivid picture of the grueling, world altering engineering struggle taking place hundreds of leagues away.
Reading these highly detailed, technically complex engineering reports, Lie Fan did not feel the anxiety of a ruler whose subjects were keeping secrets. Instead, he felt incredibly happy and deeply, profoundly satisfied.
This spontaneous, relentless innovation showed him exactly what he had always hoped to see. It proved that his brightest engineers had finally begun to naturally chart a bold, independent direction of research, a direction that he had always desperately wanted them to have, but knew he could not force. He had handed them the foundational theories, the fire of the steam engine, and they had taken that fire and were now attempting to forge their own lightning.
It beautifully proved that their brilliant minds had begun actively following the complex, demanding tracks of modern technological advancement. They were genuinely wanting to discover more on their own, to push the boundaries of physics and metallurgy, rather than just waiting passively for his divine, modern-world guidance to tell them what to build next.
Smiling proudly at the ambition written between the lines of the Oriole reports, he rolled the silk scrolls shut. He decided to completely let them be. He would not send a covert message offering the exact gear ratios they needed, nor would he send a diagram of a modern suspension system. He would allow them to struggle, to fail, and ultimately, to forge their own legacy. It was the only way true industrialization could take root in the soil of his empire.
As he placed the engineering reports into a locked drawer, he slowly turned his sharp, calculating imperial focus back toward the massive, turbulent socio political landscape of the Hengyuan Dynasty. He had conquered the land with iron and blood, but now he was fighting a much more complex, invisible war, the turbulent, continent wide progress of the Nationalism ideology.
Across the sprawling, incredibly diverse empire, the fierce, unifying Nationalism ideology had successfully rooted itself deeply into the passionate hearts of many common people. It was a wildly successful social experiment, heavily championed by the ambitious youth, the rapidly expanding middle class of merchants and artisans, and the veterans of the imperial army.
To them, the ideology was a grand, glorious unifier. It taught them that whether they were born in the freezing northern steppes, the fertile central plains, or the humid southern coast, they were all equal citizens of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Their primary loyalty was no longer to their local clan elder, their provincial warlord, or their ancestral village, but to the Dragon Throne and the concept of the Hengyuan nation itself.
However, it was not a bloodless, entirely smooth cultural transition.
Heavy, deeply troubling reports were continuously coming in to the capital from every single province, painting a grim picture of societal friction. Stubborn, fiercely traditional old people, the patriarchs of ancient families, and conservative Confucian scholars were violently going against this new nationalistic fervor.
They saw the ideology as a direct, insulting attack on filial piety, local autonomy, and the rigid, centuries old social hierarchies that gave them power.
The generational clash was incredibly brutal, tearing through the very fabric of society. Ancient families, proud, centuries old lineages, and tightly knit rural clans were almost, and in many cases, actually, breaking up due to this profound, irreconcilable ideological divide.
Reports detailed horrific, intimate violence. Progressive sons, filled with the fervor of imperial nationalism, vehemently turned against their conservative fathers who refused to pay imperial taxes over local clan dues. Daughters reported their own uncles to the local magistrates for hoarding grain.
In the marketplaces, young students wearing the black and gold colors of the empire physically clashed with older traditionalists who spat on the new imperial flags. The social fabric of thousands of villages was tearing itself apart from the inside.
Sitting on his dragon throne, the heavy silence of the study pressing in on him, Lie Fan read these tragic, often bloody reports with cold, calculating eyes.
He felt a pang of human sympathy for the families torn apart, but the Emperor within him remained absolute stone. He knew full well that this painful societal tearing was the heavy, necessary price that he had to pay to successfully forge an unbreakable, modern empire.
If he allowed the ancient clan loyalties to remain stronger than imperial loyalty, the dynasty would eventually shatter into a hundred warring states the moment he showed weakness, just as the Han Dynasty had done before him. The old, rotting wood had to be burned away so the new forest could grow.
Yet, he was not entirely without mercy. He recognized that the collateral damage of his social engineering was leaving many innocent, loyal citizens destitute.
He took up his writing brush and drafted a series of highly classified, covert orders. He secretly instructed the local magistrates and his network of Oriole Agents across the provinces to ensure that discreet financial and social help be quietly given to the vulnerable members of the families that were tragically broken up.
If a young man was disowned and thrown onto the streets by his father for swearing loyalty to the state, the local magistrate was ordered to secretly ensure that the young man found immediate, well paying employment in the imperial bureaucracy or the army. If a progressive mother was cast out by her conservative clan, she was to be quietly provided with a modest imperial stipend and housing.
He was ensuring the state took care of those who sacrificed their familial bonds for his new ideology. He was actively replacing the safety net of the ancient clan with the safety net of the Hengyuan Empire, cementing their loyalty forever.
Then, utilizing the absolute, unifying fervor of this new Nationalism ideology as his invincible, impenetrable political shield, Lie Fan struck his most radical and earth shattering blow against traditional society yet. He knew that to truly modernize his empire, he needed the absolute maximum potential of his population. He could not afford to have half of his citizens locked away in inner courtyards, their talents wasted on weaving and subservience.
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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