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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones everyone!)
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For the next two hours, the war outside ceased to exist. There was only the father and the son, discussing grain yields, supply wagon axles, and the complex mathematics of empire. Lie Fan listened, corrected gently, and praised often. He saw in Muchen not just a successor, but a mind that was quickly sharpening into a weapon as potent as any halberd.
He pointed out discrepancies in grain shipments, identified a unit that had not received its promised arrow resupply, and suggested a more efficient routing for medical supplies based on casualty patterns. His voice sometimes wavered, and he occasionally glanced at his tutors for reassurance, but his analysis was sound, his reasoning clear.
Lie Fan asked questions, pointed, probing ones that tested not just Muchen's knowledge but his judgment. "Why do you believe the grain estimate is optimistic? What evidence supports this conclusion? If we adjust the ration, what is the risk to morale?" Muchen answered each one, sometimes hesitantly, but never faltering entirely.
When the review was complete, Lie Fan sat back in his chair. The hall was silent, everyone waiting for the emperor's verdict.
"You have done well," Lie Fan said. The words were simple, but they carried the weight of absolute sincerity. "Your analysis is sound. Your recommendations are prudent. And your willingness to question the assumptions of your elders—" here he glanced at Lu Zhi and Zhuge Jin, both of whom inclined their heads in acknowledgment, "—shows that you understand the difference between respect and blind obedience."
Muchen's face flushed with pleasure. "Thank you, Imperial Father. I only wished to be useful."
"You have been," Lie Fan said. "More than you know." He paused, then added, "The campaign will continue. The burden of command will not lessen. But tonight, knowing that the work is in capable hands… it is lighter."
Muchen bowed deeply, his heart full. Beside him, Lu Zhi and Zhuge Jin exchanged a glance of quiet satisfaction. The Crown Prince had passed his first true test of ensuring ghis position and also self confidence.
While the Emperor and Crown Prince secured the logistics of victory in the East, far to the West, in the dusty, wind swept city of Tianshui, a different kind of work was underway.
Tianshui was the anchor. If Tong Pass was the sword thrust at Chang'an's throat, Tianshui was the shield blocking Cao Cao's flank.
The city was a hive of activity under the moonlight. Fa Zheng and Meng Da, the architects of this western consolidation, were awake and moving.
Fa Zheng stood on the newly reinforced western wall, his telescope trained on the dark horizon. Behind him, the city was transforming. Torchlight illuminated work crews repairing gates, reinforcing weak points, and sealing the secret passages that Deng Liang had so thoroughly catalogued.
The rhythm of hammers and the creak of winches filled the night air, not the sounds of war, but of preparation. He also held a map of the city's defensive grid, his eyes critical and unblinking.
"That section of the wall," Fa Zheng pointed a long, slender finger toward the southern curtain wall. "It was patched hastily during the initial siege. It is not sufficient."
Meng Da, standing beside him with a lantern, nodded. "I have masonry teams working in shifts. It will be reinforced with stone and compacted earth by sunrise."
"And the sewers?" Fa Zheng asked, his voice sharp. "The water inlets?"
"Grates have been installed," Meng Da replied confidently. "Double layered iron bars. And I have placed tripwire alarms in the larger tunnels. No one is sneaking into Tianshui, and no one is sneaking out."
Fa Zheng nodded, satisfied. He was a man who believed that paranoia was merely a synonym for preparedness. "Good. We knew that Cao Cao will not just sit in Chang'an. His western garrisons will come, the Qiang tribes, the border guards... they have no choice. Their emperor has called them, and they are loyal men. They will try to force their way through, or find a path around."
Meng Da stood beside him, his usual swagger tempered by the gravity of the task ahead. "Can we hold against two hundred thousand?"
"We don't need to hold forever," Fa Zheng replied. "We only need to hold long enough. Every day they spend battering against our walls is a day they are not reinforcing Chang'an. Every soldier they lose here is one less defending Cao Cao's last stand."
He paused. "And when His Majesty's main army arrives at Chang'an, the momentum will shift entirely. The western garrisons will have to choose: continue their futile assault, or turn back to save their own lands from a now unstoppable conqueror."
He turned his gaze to the vast training grounds below the city walls. Even at this late hour, the grounds were illuminated by hundreds of bonfires. The air was filled with the guttural shouts of drill sergeants and the rhythmic thud of feet hitting the earth.
The army gathering here was a strange, dangerous chimera. There were veteran Hengyuan elites, mountain troops familiar with the rough terrain, and thousands of surrendered Wei soldiers who had been captured in the initial taking of the region.
Integrating these surrendered men was a task that required a heavy hand and a terrifying presence. Fortunately, Lie Fan had assigned the perfect jailers and trainers.
Down in the mud of the drill yard, Zhang Ren walked the lines. His face was granite, his reputation as a strict disciplinarian well earned. He stopped in front of a phalanx of surrendered Wei spearmen who were holding their formation sloppily.
"Hold!" Zhang Ren barked. The line froze. "Is this how you hold a spear? Is this how you defend your lives? You are no longer Wei dogs! You are Hengyuan wolves! Or you will be, or you will be dead!"
Yan Yan, the old veteran with a beard as white as snow but arms as thick as tree trunks, walked beside him. He adjusted a soldier's stance with a forceful shove. "Brace your back leg, boy! If a cavalry charge hits you now, you'll be paste! Do you want to live to see your mother again? Then brace!"
Further down the field, the atmosphere was even more intense. Meng Huo, the barbarian king, was leading the physical conditioning. He was shirtless, sweating despite the cold, laughing as he easily out wrestled two surrendered soldiers at once, throwing them into the dirt.
"Weak!" Meng Huo roared, though there was a camaraderie in his voice. "You eat soft bread and sleep in soft beds! In the south, we fight bears for breakfast! Get up! Again!"
Li Yan and Wu Lan were overseeing the archery drills, their voices cutting through the night as they demanded volley after volley, ensuring that the Wei archers learned the Hengyuan rhythm of fire. They also command what remains of Wei's siege engine crews that surrendered, positioning the limited but still formidable collection of catapults and ballistae at optimal firing angles
And watching it all from a raised platform, arms crossed, was Zhang Ni. He was calculating the morale, watching for any signs of sedition among the new recruits. He knew that these men would soon be asked to fight their former comrades. They had to be broken down and rebuilt before the Western Garrisons arrived.
"They are improving," Meng Da observed from the wall, watching the dust swirl in the firelight.
"They have no choice," Fa Zheng replied coldly. "The Western Garrisons are coming. When they arrive, they must find a wall of iron waiting for them. We will not be the weak link in His Majesty's conquest. Tianshui will hold, and it will bleed anyone who touches it."
Fa Zheng turned away from the wall, his mind already moving to the next problem. "Double the patrols on the mountain paths. If a bird flies toward Chang'an, I want to know about it."
The gears of the war machine ground on, from the warm, scroll filled hall of Tong Pass to the freezing, sweat soaked mud of Tianshui. The net was tightening, and the dragon was preparing to swallow the west whole.
While Fa Zheng and Meng Da fortified Tianshui against a storm they believed was inevitable, the winds of war had already shifted direction, blowing towards a different, more treacherous path. The architects of Tianshui's defense remained unaware that the enemy they prepared to bleed was no longer marching toward their gates.
Two hundred miles to the east, in the fortified city of Xiping, the atmosphere was not one of martial determination, but of suffocating tension. The city, usually a quiet administrative hub for the western commandery, was now bursting at the seams.
It had become the unwilling host to the entire might of Wei's Western Garrisons, a colossal, sprawling beast of two hundred thousand men, thousands of horses, and a baggage train that clogged the streets for leagues.
Inside the Governor's Castle, the air in the main hall was thick with the smell of roasted meat, stale wine, and the sweat of desperate men. The heavy oak doors were barred against the intrusion of subordinates.
Only the five men who held the fate of the northwest in their hands were present, gathered around a massive table dominated by a sprawling map of the empire's western reaches.
These were not the legendary names sung of in taverns, they were not Xiahou Dun or Zhang He or Cao Ren. They were the wolves of the frontier, men who had spent their lives fighting Qiang tribes, sandstorms, and isolation. They were hardened, pragmatic, and currently, deeply conflicted.
At the head of the table stood Yan Xing, the Supreme Commander of the Western Garrisons. A man of fifty with a face like tanned leather and eyes that had seen too much death, he commanded the lion's share of the forces, sixty five thousand troops under his direct banner.
To his right were Cheng Li and Lu Kan, who were stationed at Gansu Corridor, sharp featured and quick to anger. To his left stood Mang Xing, a burly commander stationed at Qinghai Plateau, and YangQiu, the youngest of the five, though his hair was already streaked with gray from the stress of governing Wuwei.
Yan Xing's hand trembled slightly as he held a scroll of yellow silk, a direct edict from the Imperial Palace in Chang'an. The seal of Cao Cao was stamped in vermilion ink, looking like a fresh wound on the fabric.
"The orders are absolute," Yan Xing rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. He tossed the scroll onto the map, where it unrolled across the depiction of the Wei River. "His Majesty knows Tianshui has fallen. The survivors... those few who didn't surrender to Lie Fan... they brought the news yesterday. Fa Zheng has locked the main road."
"So we are to smash our heads against Fa Zheng's wall?" Lu Kan asked, leaning over the map, his knuckles white as he gripped the table edge. "I've heard reports of the defenses they're building. Trenches, reinforced walls, siege weapons turned inward. Attacking Tianshui now, with Lie Fan's main host approaching from the east... it's suicide."
"No," Yan Xing said, tracing a line on the map with a calloused finger. "His Majesty is not a fool. He does not ask us to retake Tianshui. He orders us to bypass it."
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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