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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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The information was a physical blow. Xiahou Dun absorbed it, his broad shoulders slumping slightly. The fight wasn't just moving, it was transforming into a different kind of war, one of survival and grim trade offs.
After a long moment, he gave a slow, heavy nod. "I… understand. I will follow His Majesty's order. I will inform the other generals, Yuan, Zhang He, Xu Huang, the others. We will prepare our units for disengagement."
As Xun Yu turned to leave, Xiahou Dun's voice, roughened by dust and emotion, stopped him. "Master Xun Yu… wait."
Xun Yu paused.
The general's face was a landscape of frustration and bewildered grief. "Why has it come to this? A few years ago… we held the heart of the land. We had the men, the grain, the authority. We contended with Yuan Shao and even this… this Lie Fan, as equals. How did we fall so far, so fast?"
Xun Yu turned fully, his own elegant features etched with a profound and rueful weariness. He looked at the loyal, straightforward warrior, a man of battles and banners, and gave him the philosopher's bleak truth.
"Because, General Xiahou, all of us, myself included, His Majesty included, we looked at Lie Fan and saw a talented warlord, a formidable rival. We measured his armies, his territory, his alliances. We did not see the depth of the well. We did not see the patience of the glacier, the scale of the ambition. He was not just building a kingdom, he was forging a new kind of empire, with new tools, new ideas, and a will that bends reality itself. By the time we understood the depth of the water we were in… we were already drowning."
Xiahou Dun's hand, resting on his sword hilt, clenched into a white knuckled fist before slowly releasing. A bitter, self recriminating smile touched his lips. "I should have put an arrow through his heart when he was just a upstart from Huai'An my cousin's camp all those years ago during the crusade against Dong Zhuo. When he was young and his thunder small."
Xun Yu offered a sad, almost imperceptible shake of his head. "If many had known, General, many would have tried. Emperor Ling to an extend, the Ten Attendants, He Jin, Dong Zhuo, his Imperial Majesty, Wang Yun, Yuan Shao, Liu Bei… a dozen powerful men crossed paths with the young Lie Fan. They saw a sharp tool, a potential ally, or a minor nuisance. None saw the earthquake in the boy's shadow. Now, of all those who met him in his youth and held real power, only two remain, your cousin, our Emperor, who still fights him, and Sun Jian, who bowed and became his vassal. It is a sobering thought."
With that, he gave a final, respectful nod and melted into the chaotic passages of the fortress, leaving Xiahou Dun alone with the thunder and the ghosts of missed opportunities.
The bombardment, after what felt like an eternity, finally ceased with the rising sun. The sudden silence was a physical relief, but also a portent. In that ringing quiet, the final act of Tong Pass began.
Cao Cao, with Cao Pi at his side, emerged from the inner keep. They were no longer the stationary commanders of a defense, they were now the moving heart of a retreat. Their advisors fell in around them, a somber procession.
Without fanfare, without a final look at the broken walls they had called home for weeks, they turned and moved westward, into the labyrinthine rear sections of the pass, towards the hidden routes that would take them to Chang'an. Behind them, they left a fortress that was now a tomb in waiting for ten thousand chosen men.
At the same moment, across the shattered field, Lie Fan led the Hengyuan assault. Today felt different. There was a crackle in the air, a sense of imminent culmination.
He had woken with the resolve to end it, to personally spearhead the final conquest of the left courtyard and storm the inner keep. His movements were even more ferocious, a controlled hurricane of violence, his halberd clearing paths with an efficiency that was terrifying to behold.
But as he fought deeper, a dissonant note began to sound in his strategic mind. The resistance was… thinner. The desperate, packed masses of Wei soldiers were still there, fighting with a grim, almost robotic determination, but the quality was different. He saw no brilliant counter moves, no coordinated pushes from flanks. More tellingly, he saw no generals.
Where was Xiahou Dun, barking orders? Where was the flash of Zhang He's agility, or Xu Huang's solid presence? The battlefield, while still deadly, had lost its character.
It was no longer a contest of wills between champions, it had degraded into a messy, brutal cleanup operation against a foe that was fighting to die, not to win.
Lie Fan cut down a Wei captain and paused, his enhanced senses stretching out. He could hear the faint, organized sounds of movement far to the west of the fortress, the clatter of many wheels, the distant beat of drums not of battle, but of march. The sounds were muffled, trying to be stealthy, but to his attuned hearing, they were as clear as shouts.
A cold, calculating smile touched his lips beneath his helmet. The absence of generals, the thinning, fanatical resistance in front of him, the sounds of mass movement behind the lines, it painted an unmistakable picture.
They're running.
"A retreat," Lie Fan whispered. "He is abandoning Tong Pass."
Cao Cao was cutting his losses. The fall of Tianshui, news of which had surely reached him yesterday like him, had forced his hand. He was abandoning Tong Pass, sacrificing a rear guard to save his main army.
"Cao Cao… you still have teeth."
Lie Fan immediately altered his tempo. He no longer sought to simply obliterate the defenders in front of him. He began to probe, to test the edges of their formation, looking for the brittle points, the places where the sacrificial wall was thinnest. He signaled his own generals, who had also sensed the shift.
"They seek to flee!" he shouted to Zhang Liao, who was nearby. "The fight here is a shell! Break through it! Pursue! Do not let their leadership escape! The hunt begins now!"
The siege of Tong Pass was over. The battle for its corpse remained, but the true objective had shifted. It was no longer about taking a fortress. It was about catching an emperor before he could reach his last burrow.
The final, bloody phase of the war had just accelerated, transforming from a siege into a desperate chase across the heartland of a dying empire.
Zhang Liao heard Lie Fan's words as though a war drum had sounded inside his chest. The realization that Tong Pass had already been abandoned, that they were no longer fighting to conquer, but to catch fleeing prey, changed the entire rhythm of the battlefield.
He turned his head, a battlefield roar in itself, echoed the command. "TAISHI CI! HUANG ZHONG! THE PASS IS ABANDONED! FULL ASSAULT! BREAK THE SHELL!"
The news was a spark to tinder. The Hengyuan marshals, seasoned veterans of countless engagements, didn't need detailed explanation.
They felt it in the air, the hollow desperation of the defenders, the absence of command. With a series of sharp orders, the disciplined pressure they'd been applying transformed into an all consuming avalanche.
The ten thousand Wei soldiers left behind, chosen for their loyalty not their luck, found themselves in a meat grinder that suddenly increased its speed tenfold. Dian Wei, a one man cataclysm, smashed through shield walls as if they were kindling.
Guan Yu's Green Dragon Glaive swept in mighty arcs, leaving no one standing in its wake. Zhang Fei's bellows were now war cries of triumph, his serpentine spear a blur of lethal intent. Ji Ling, Liao Hua, He Qi, Wen Pin, and the others of Lie Fan's champions, each a legend in their own right, unleashed their full fury.
What had been a grim holding action for the Wei rearguard became a slaughterhouse. They fought bravely, died stubbornly, but their purpose was delay, and delay against such concentrated, informed fury was measured in minutes, not hours.
Meanwhile, Lie Fan was a man on a mission. He fought his way not deeper into the fortress, but out of it. "THE GATES! OPEN THE MAIN GATES!" His voice, amplified, cut through the din. He needed a road, not a labyrinth.
He emerged from the left courtyard breach back into the open air, the scene a stark contrast to the confined carnage behind. His great warhorse, Pangu, a beast of midnight black coat and intelligent eyes, stamped impatiently nearby, held by a groom.
Zhang Mancheng, the sole remaining Yellow Ghost bodyguard with him in his campaign, was already mounting his own steed, his posture radiating a fierce, grieving vigilance. Chao Bo, Chao Bai, and Huang Chao gave sharp, piercing whistles. From a nearby picket line, three powerful horses answered, trotting briskly to their masters.
Before Lie Fan could fully mount, he saw movement from the main Hengyuan lines. Two distinct cavalry formations, each numbering ten thousand, were detaching and cantering towards him.
At their head were Zang Ba and Xu Rong, capable cavalry commanders whose units had been held in reserve for just such a moment of exploitation. Their arrival was fortuitous, almost prophetic.
They reined in before him, saluting crisply. "Your Majesty!" Zang Bo called out, his face curious beneath his helmet. "The battle is within the walls. Why do you come forth?"
Lie Fan swung himself into Pangu's saddle in one fluid motion. The horse sensed his rider's intent and pranced, eager. "Cao Cao is not within the walls," Lie Fan stated, his voice carrying to the officers around him. "He has fled. The fight inside is against the limbs he chose to sever. The head and the heart of his army are on the road to Chang'An, and they have a head start."
The implication was electric. Zang Ba and Xu Rong exchanged a glance, their eyes alight with the thrill of the hunt. A siege was bloody work, a pursuit was glory.
"Your orders, Your Majesty?" Xu Rong asked, hand already on his saber.
"You and your regiments are with me," Lie Fan commanded. "We ride through the pass, out the western gate, and we run them down. We are the arrow; the main army will follow as the shaft."
Just then, with a groan of protesting iron, the great main gates of Tong Pass, the very gates that had withstood weeks of bombardment and assault, swung ponderously inward, forced open from within by Hengyuan engineers. The path was clear.
Lie Fan didn't hesitate. He dug his heels into Pangu's sides, and the mighty stallion surged forward. Zhang Mancheng was a shadow at his right hand. Chao Bo, Chao Bai, and Huang Chao fell in just behind. Then came the thunder, the twenty thousand hooves of Zang Ba and Xu Rong's elite cavalry, a rolling wave of steel and speed that poured through the gates after their emperor.
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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