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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones everyone!)
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Flanking him were the stalwart Ma Chao and the ever vigilant Zhao Yun, their presence a silent statement of the prince's security and growing importance. Behind them, the venerable scholar Lu Zhi and the astute Zhuge Jin completed the entourage, the Crown Prince's tutors in both war and statecraft.
Lie Fan leaned back against the map table, the weariness momentarily forgotten as he regarded his son. "Muchen. The hour is late. What brings you to the war tent?"
Muchen bowed deeply before straightening, his expression one of earnest determination. "Imperial Father, I have come to ask… to ask if I may assist you. The documents, the logistics reports, the dispatches from the rear… they must be a mountain after a day such as this. I wish to help shoulder the burden. Let me work through them, under the guidance of my masters, so you may have more time to rest and plan for tomorrow."
Lie Fan studied his son. This was not a child seeking to play at administration. The set of Muchen's jaw, the clear, unwavering look in his eyes, this was the first, tentative step of a prince claiming his birthright, not in ceremony, but in service. It was a move that filled Lie Fan with a fierce, quiet pride.
"You understand what you ask?" Lie Fan's voice was gentle but probing. "These are not simple scrolls. A misread number in a grain report could leave a battalion hungry. A misplaced order for arrows could strand a unit without defense. The weight you wish to lift is the weight of men's lives and the momentum of a campaign. Are you ready for the responsibility? For the consequences of a mistake, however well intentioned?"
Muchen did not flinch. He met his father's gaze squarely. "I am ready, Imperial Father. I have studied the theories of statecraft and logistics with Master Lu Zi. I have observed the flow of this army with Master Zhuge Jin and experienced brutal siege and the suffering of our soldiers. I will not act in haste or arrogance. Every decision, every annotation, will be reviewed and discussed. I wish to learn by doing, as you have always taught me, to feel the weight so I may one day bear it properly."
Lie Fan's smile returned, broader this time. He looked past his son to the two advisors. "Master Lu Zhi. Master Zhuge Jin. You hear the conviction of your student. Will you guide his hand? Will you ensure that his desire to help does not inadvertently hinder this important campaign?"
Both men bowed deeply. Lu Zhi, his voice like aged parchment, spoke first. "Your Majesty, the Crown Prince has a keen mind and a sincere heart. We will be his compass and his balance. No document will leave his hands without our scrutiny."
Zhuge Jin added, his tone respectful but firm, "We will treat each paper as a lesson, Your Majesty. He will learn the cost of a cart of grain, the timing of a courier, the geography of supply. It is the perfect education for the night before a battle's end."
"Good," Lie Fan said, the decision made. He gestured to the piles of scrolls and ledgers on a side table. "Then the mountain is yours, Muchen. Climb it carefully." He placed a hand briefly on his son's shoulder, a silent communication of trust and expectation. "I leave it in your hands, and in the wise hands of your teachers."
Turning to the adjutants standing by, he said, "All non urgent logistical and administrative documents for the next twelve hours are to be presented to the Crown Prince and his advisors for review and preliminary endorsement. Only matters of immediate tactical urgency are to come to me."
With that, he gave his son a final, approving nod, exchanged a glance of mutual understanding with Zhao Yun and Ma Chao, and left the command tent.
The weight of paperwork was lifted, replaced by the heavier, more personal weight of the day's loss and the impending climax. He sought the solitude of his own tent, not for paperwork, but for the few hours of restless quiet he could steal before the final storm.
Sleep was a fleeting visitor. Lie Fan had barely drifted into a shallow, dream haunted doze when the world outside erupted. Not with the chaotic noise of battle, but with the deliberate, earth shattering BOOM of the artillery resuming its symphony. It was before dawn, the sky still a deep velvet black. The targeted bombardment on the inner keep's foundations had begun.
There was no point in trying to sleep through it. The vibrations trembled through the ground, a constant, physical reminder of the violence being wrought.
He rose, dressed in a simple warrior's tunic and trousers, and strode out into the pre dawn gloom. The camp was a landscape of silhouettes and moving shadows, men rushing to their positions, the air electric with anticipation.
He made his way to the artillery lines. The scene there was one of controlled inferno. In the flashes of each cannon's discharge, he could see teams of men moving like demons, swabbing barrels, ramming fresh charges, heaving stone shot into place. And at the center of it all, a calm figure in scholar's robes that seemed absurd amidst the violence, stood Sima Yi.
Lie Fan approached silently, observing. Sima Yi was not just watching, he was conducting. He held a detailed diagram of Tong Pass's inner structures, illuminated by a shielded lantern.
With a calm voice, he called out adjustments to each battery commander. "Battery Three, elevate one degree. You are hitting the east face of the tower, we need the west foundation. Battery Seven, reduce powder by half a measure, your shots are overshooting into the courtyard. Remember, we must not endanger Marshal Zhang Liao's position."
His precision was surgical. This was no blanket bombardment. It was a deliberate dismantling, targeting the very footings of Cao Cao's last redoubt within Tong Pass.
Lie Fan watched, satisfied. The key was not to destroy the keep entirely, they would need it intact to secure the pass, but to render it indefensible, to crack its structural confidence so that the final infantry push would meet a shell ready to collapse.
Inside Tong Pass, in the shuddering heart of the targeted inner keep, there was no such precision, only a slowly dawning horror.
Cao Cao had not slept. He sat in a stone walled chamber, a single lamp guttering on the table, his face gaunt and etched with exhaustion so deep it looked like illness. The room trembled with every nearby impact, dust sifted continuously from the ceiling like a phantom snowfall.
Cao Pi entered, his face pale with worry. "Father. You must rest. If you do not sleep, the headaches… you know what the physicians said. The strain could…" He couldn't finish the sentence. A cerebral hemorrhage was the unspoken specter that haunted Cao Cao after his last headache.
Cao Cao waved a dismissive hand, but the gesture was weak. "Rest? How can I rest when each breath of this fortress is counted? The thunder… it is closer. They are not aiming at the walls anymore. They are aiming at the ground beneath our feet." He stared at the wavering flame of the lamp. "The question that claws at me, my son, is not how to hold, but whether to hold."
Cao Pi knelt beside his father's chair, his voice low and urgent. "What do you mean, Father?"
"The calculus has changed," Cao Cao whispered, as if afraid the very walls would hear his doubt. "We bought time with blood, time for the west to come. But the west…" He closed his eyes, a spasm of pain that was not physical crossing his features.
"The western garrisons must now pass through Tianshui. And Tianshui…" He let out a long, shuddering sigh. " We have received reports of its fall, but no reports of our troops passing through either. Silence. And in war, silence from a vital artery is the loudest alarm. What if… what if the door is already closed? What if every life we spend here, every hour we wrest from Lie Fan, is not buying strength for Chang'An, but merely digging our own grave deeper in this stone tomb?"
The admission was devastating. It was the unravelling of his entire desperate strategy. The "hedgehog" defense of Chang'an relied on those western troops swelling its ranks.
If they could not arrive, then Chang'an was not a fortified beast, but a penned animal waiting for slaughter. And if that was true, then every soldier who died in Tong Pass was dying for nothing more than pride and a delayed, inevitable end.
"Then… we retreat?" Cao Pi asked, the word tasting like ash. "Abandon Tong Pass now? But the casualties during a retreat under this pressure…"
"Would be catastrophic," Cao Cao finished. "But perhaps less catastrophic than losing the entire field army here, leaving Chang'An defended by only its garrison and a broken emperor. If we can extract even half of our remaining veterans, they become the core of Chang'An's defense. If we stay… we risk having no army left to defend anything."
He looked at his son, his eyes filled with a bitter, uncharacteristic uncertainty. "That is what I am thinking, my son. Whether to cut our losses now, to sacrifice this fortress in the hope of saving the army, or to stand and die here because the alternative seems like surrender."
The great strategist, the man who had carved a kingdom from chaos, was reduced to a terrible, binary gamble with no good answer. The thunder outside provided the relentless countdown to his decision.
Cao Pi watched his father, and a profound, unsettling shift occurred in his perception. The titan he had idolized all his life, the brilliant, ruthless architect of the Wei Dynasty, seemed to shrink before his eyes.
The man at the table was not an emperor radiating unshakeable will, but a desperate patriarch trying to clutch the sand of his empire as it streamed through his fingers.
The lines on his face weren't just from age or strategy, they were canyons carved by the erosion of hope. For the first time, Cao Pi saw not the invincible Cao Mengde, but his father, vulnerable and teetering on the brink of a decision that could end everything.
A heavy sigh escaped Cao Pi's lips, not of defeat, but of a son stepping into a void left by a faltering parent. "Father," he began, his voice steadier than he felt, "I believe... we must cut our losses. We retreat to Chang'an. We consolidate. We make our stand there, with the walls high and the resolve hardened by survival."
Cao Cao's weary gaze lifted, but there was no light in it, only a dull acceptance of the least terrible option.
Cao Pi pressed on, his mind, trained in tactics and geography, grasping for a lifeline. "And as for the western garrisons… we have been thinking of Tianshui as the only door. But it is not. They number over two hundred and twenty five thousand men. They are not a single column, they are an army. If the southern door at Tianshui is closed…"
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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