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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Meng Huo shook his head. "They are like rabbits declaring themselves wolves because the tiger is busy elsewhere. They wouldn't last long. His Majesty will crush Cao Cao, and then he will turn his head and poof, the 'League of Lords' will be nothing but a footnote. Stupid! Bravely stupid!"
Wu Lan and Zhang Ni nodded in agreement.
"General Meng Huo is right," Zhang Ni said. "A divided northwest cannot stand against the full might of Hengyuan. They have bought themselves time, but they have sold their futures."
Fa Zheng stepped away from the table. He looked at the blueprints for the trench, weeks of labor, thousands of man hours.
"Stop the digging," Fa Zheng ordered quietly.
"Master Fa Zheng?" Zhang Ren asked.
"Cancel the work on the ditch," Fa Zheng said, his voice stronger. "We no longer need to withstand a siege of two hundred thousand. We need to be ready for something else entirely."
He walked to the window, looking east toward where the Emperor was. "The Oriole message says to await further instructions. We hold Tianshui. We keep the door locked. But we do not need to bury ourselves in the earth anymore. We wait for His Majesty to tell us how to pluck these ripe fruits when the time comes."
Time flowed like the river, indifferent to the schemes of men. The sun set over Tianshui and rose over the eastern mountains. The raven carrying the second scroll flew through the night and the following day, pushing its wings to the limit.
It arrived at Tong Pass in the late afternoon.
The inner fortress of Tong Pass was a hive of intellectual energy. Lie Fan sat at the head of a long table, surrounded by the finest minds of his era. Sima Yi sat to his right, his eyes dark and brooding as he contemplated supply lines. Next to him was Chen Deng, ever the pragmatist. Zang Hong, Pang Tong, and Xu Shu completed the circle.
They were deep in the weeds of a complex strategy session.
"If Cao Cao receives the Western Garrisons," Xu Shu was saying, moving a marker on the map, "he will likely deploy them to harass our supply lines coming through the pass. We need to establish a secondary perimeter here, near the foothills."
"It will stretch our forces thin," Pang Tong noted, his unique face scrunching in thought. "But we have no choice. Two hundred thousand men is not a number we can ignore. If they reinforce Chang'An's walls, our siege will be prolonged and much more deadlier for our soldiers."
Sima Yi tapped his finger on the table. "We must also consider the possibility that Cao Cao uses them as a sacrificial vanguard. He has no love for the western troops. He might throw them at us just to dull our blades."
Lie Fan listened, nodding. The burden of the coming battle was heavy. The numbers were daunting. Even with his numerous elite forces and superior, facing the combined might of Cao Cao's core army and the Western reinforcements would be a bloody, grinding affair in a siege warfare, since he doesn't want to destroy Chang'An's walls with cannons.
At that moment, a shadow flickered across the table.
A raven swooped in through the open high window. It circled once, the sound of its wings interrupting Xu Shu's analysis, before landing gracefully on Lie Fan's broad shoulder.
The room went still. The advisors watched, their analytical minds instantly shifting to this new variable.
"A messenger," Chen Deng observed. "From the west."
Lie Fan reached up, his movements gentle despite his armored gauntlet, and retrieved the scroll from the bird's leg. He stroked the creature's feathers absentmindedly as he broke the seal.
"Let us see what Fa Zheng or the Orioles have to say," Lie Fan said.
He unrolled the scroll.
The room watched him. They saw his eyes scan the text. They saw the furrow in his brow vanish, replaced by a look of genuine surprise. And then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.
It started as a chuckle, a low rumble in his chest, and then erupted into a full, hearty laugh. It was a laugh of relief, of incredulity, and of triumph.
"Hah! Hahaha!"
Lie Fan tossed the scroll onto the map, right on top of the marker representing the Western Garrisons that Xu Shu had been so worried about.
Sima Yi, who hated not knowing things, leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "Your Majesty? What is the content of the letter? Has the enemy surrendered?"
"Better, Zhongda. Better!" Lie Fan grinned, looking around at his advisors. "You are all brilliant men. You calculate every angle. You predict every move. But tell me, did any of you predict this?"
He gestured to the scroll. "The Western Garrisons are not coming."
Pang Tong blinked. "Not coming? Have they been delayed by weather?"
"They have been delayed by treason!" Lie Fan announced, his voice ringing with amusement. "Yan Xing, Cheng Li, and the others... they have burned Cao Cao's orders. They have declared independence! They call themselves the 'League of Lords of the Northwest'!"
For a moment, the room was stunned into silence.
Xu Shu's jaw dropped slightly. "Independence? Now? With the empire crumbling around them?"
"They are hoarding their soldiers," Lie Fan explained, leaning back in his chair. "They think to sit out the storm in their mountains. They have abandoned Cao Cao to save their own skins."
Sima Yi sat back, a look of profound shock on his face. He picked up the scroll and read it quickly, verifying the words.
"This..." Sima Yi muttered, his mind racing to reconfigure the entire strategic landscape. "I did not calculate this. I assumed... I assumed fear of Cao Cao would hold them. Or honor. Or simple inertia."
"Fear of us was greater," Lie Fan said, his eyes gleaming.
"This is..." Pang Tong shook his head, a smile starting to form on his own face. "This is a catastrophe for Cao Cao. He loses his reinforcements, his western flank, and his credibility in one stroke."
"It significant reduce the risk to us during the siege," Chen Deng said, his voice rising with excitement. "We no longer need to hold our forces in their advance during the siege. We can bring the full weight of our army to bear on Chang'An."
"Exactly," Lie Fan said, slamming his hand on the table decisively. "Fate has dealt us a winning hand, my friends. Cao Cao is alone. The Western Garrisons have taken themselves off the board. We do not need to fight them yet. We can let them play at being kings for a few months."
He looked at the map, at the isolated city of Chang'an.
"The road is clear," Lie Fan said softly. "The final domino is wobbling. Now, we just need to push it over."
Sima Yi's mind was already racing ahead, calculating implications. "This changes everything, Your Majesty. The western garrisons were his only hope for meaningful reinforcement. Without them, Chang'An will be defended by whatever remnants escape from Tong Pass, perhaps twi hundred or two hundred twenty thousand men at most, plus the city's own garrison. Against our main army and Fa Zheng's southern force, they will be outnumbered at least three to one."
Chen Deng, on the other hand, frowned. "But this League of Lords... they are still a potential threat to our flank. Two hundred thousand men, now independent and holding the entire northwest. If they decide to ally with Cao Cao after all, or if they attack our supply lines while we besiege Chang'An..."
"They won't," Pang Tong said confidently. "They've already made their choice. They burned the order. They declared independence. There's no going back from that. Even if they wanted to return to Wei, Cao Cao would never trust them again. They're committed."
"Pang Tong is right," Lie Fan said, rising from his chair and walking to the large map of the region that hung on the wall. He traced the western territories with his finger. "Xiping, Gansu, Qinghai, Wuwei, and Xingping, they control all of this. And they know that if we defeat Cao Cao, we will eventually turn our attention west. Their best hope for survival is to stay neutral, fortify their positions, and hope we are too exhausted by the siege of Chang'an to attack them immediately."
He turned back to his advisors, the strategist in him fully engaged. "But they have made a critical miscalculation. They think we will be weakened by Chang'an. They don't understand that Chang'an is already half defeated, that its defenders are demoralized and its supplies limited. When we take the capital, which we will, we will not be exhausted. We will be emboldened. And then we will have two hundred thousand men sitting in the northwest, waiting to be dealt with."
Xu Shu stroked his chin. "So we let them sit. We take Chang'an first. Then we offer them a choice: submit or be crushed. They will have watched us destroy their former emperor. They will know resistance is futile."
"Unless," Sima Yi interjected, "they decide to attack us while we are occupied with Chang'an. A two front war is never ideal."
Lie Fan shook his head. "They won't. They've already demonstrated their primary motivation, survival. Attacking us would be the opposite of survival. No, they will wait. They will watch. And when the time comes, they will negotiate."
He paused, a glint in his eye. "But we don't have to wait for them to come to us. The Orioles are already watching them. We know their names, their forces, their territories. We can begin now to sow division among them, to exploit their inevitable rivalries. Five lords ruling a league? That is not stability. That is five potential enemies of each other, waiting for the right pressure to fracture."
Pang Tong grinned. "Divide and conquer. The oldest strategy in the book Your Majesty, but it works because men are predictable."
Sima Yi nodded slowly. "Your Majesty's insight is correct. We should instruct our agents to observe, to identify weaknesses, to find those among the five who might be... amenable to persuasion. A promise of continued rule under Hengyuan suzerainty might be enough for some of them. And if we can turn one, the others will fall like dominoes."
Lie Fan returned to his seat, the scroll still in his hand. "Send word to Fa Zheng. He needs to know this immediately. His mission at Tianshui just became much simpler, he no longer has to prepare for an assault by two hundred thousand men. But he should remain vigilant. The League may decide to probe our defenses, to test our strength. He should make sure they find those defenses very, very solid."
He looked at his advisors, the smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. "Gentlemen, we have just witnessed the collapse of Cao Cao's last hope. Not by our hand, but by the simple, human desire to survive. It is a reminder that even the most loyal subjects will choose themselves over their lord when the choice is stark enough."
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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