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Lie Fan's eyes gleamed. Talent. He was a collector of talent, as was Cao Cao. To strip a rival of his land was one thing, to identify and acquire the minds that made that land function was another and he also knew of Yan Pu from his past life as well.
"Yan Pu… note the name. When this is over, I will want to meet him. A man who understands the tide and knows when to swim with it is a man who can help build a stable shore."
He looked from the captured walls of Tong Pass in the west, to the imagined map in his mind where Fa Zheng's army now stood unopposed in Hanzhong to the south. The pincer was not just a concept, it was a reality, its two arms strong and growing stronger. The noose was not just around Tong Pass, but around the very heart of what remained of Wei.
"So," Lie Fan said, his voice settling into a tone of final preparation. "We have the south secured. We have Cao Cao's army demoralized before a single ladder is raised. We have cannons and a army yearning for a victory feast. And we have a week until the new year to remind the world why the Hengyuan Dynasty is the future."
He turned, his gaze sweeping over his son, his strategist, and the generals who had followed him to the edge of the enemy's wall and back. "Tomorrow, we begin the last act. Not with a roar, but with a thunder that does not cease. Let Cao Cao have his two days of quiet dread. We will make sure it is the loudest silence he has ever known."
The victory in Hanzhong, the tightening of the strategic vise, and the masterful manipulation of the 'truce' had injected the Hengyuan encampment with a palpable, electric energy. It was the energy of an army that could taste the end, not as a desperate hope, but as a foregone conclusion.
As the sun set on the day of the parley, laughter and the smell of roasting meat (a special dispensation from the imperial stores) began to fill the air.
The news of Zhang Lu's surrender was more potent than any rousing speech, it was proof. Proof that the enemy's foundations were sand, proof that the war was indeed winding down. For the common soldier, it translated to a simple, beautiful thought, I might see my family again.
Muchen observed this shift from a slight distance, standing beside his father as the camp transformed around them. He saw a grizzled sergeant clap a young recruit on the back, pointing south and saying something that made the boy grin.
He saw engineers checking the massive wheels of a trebuchet with a proprietary pride, not the grim duty of before. The fear was still there, but it was now edged with a fierce, collective anticipation.
He moved closer to Lie Fan, who was watching the same scene, a satisfied but contemplative look on his face. "Father."
Lie Fan glanced down, the hard lines of the emperor softening into the more familiar planes of a parent. "You heard everything."
"Yes." Muchen searched for the right words. The lessons were coming fast now, layers of strategy, psychology, and human nature piling atop one another. "Zhang Lu surrendering… it makes the war shorter, doesn't it? It means… less fighting from now on."
Lie Fan placed a hand on his son's shoulder, the weight both comforting and instructional. "It does. And in doing so, it saves thousands of lives on both sides. That, Muchen, is a victory as important as any taken by force. A ruler who only understands the sword will die by it. A true emperor knows when to accept an open gate, for it spares his own men's blood and grants him the loyalty of those who opened it."
Muchen absorbed this. It was a different calculus from the one he'd learned on the walls of Hongnong, but it felt just as vital. "Cao Cao… he won't see it that way."
A grim smile touched Lie Fan's lips. "No. He will not. He will see it as betrayal. As weakness. He will see the walls, both stone and allegiances, closing in around him."
He turned his gaze westward, where the brooding mass of Tong Pass was silhouetted against the twilight. "And that is exactly what they are."
Inside the cold, stone heart of Tong Pass, the atmosphere was a mirror image of the Hengyuan camp, but inverted, a pit of sinking dread where hope had once flickered.
After the disastrous parley, Cao Cao found himself wrestling not just with military catastrophe, but with a personal one. The fracture with Cao Pi was a splinter in his own soul, a distraction he could ill afford yet could not ignore.
With a heavy heart, he made his way to the austere quarters where he had confined his second son. The corridor was silent but for the echo of his own boots. He paused before the door, the words he needed to say tangling in his throat, apologies, explanations, a father's love warring with an emperor's rage. He knocked.
"Enter," came Cao Pi's voice, flat and resigned.
Cao Cao pushed the door open. Cao Pi was seated at a simple table, a scroll of Sun Tzu's Art of War open before him. At the sight of his father, he stood swiftly, performing a perfect, formal bow. "Imperial Father."
"Be at ease," Cao Cao said, his voice rougher than he intended. He gestured to the scroll. "What are you reading?"
"Sun Tzu, Imperial Father. 'Know the enemy and know yourself.'" Cao Pi's tone was carefully neutral, devoid of the warmth or rebellion of a normal son.
Cao Cao nodded, the mundane conversation a fragile bridge over a chasm. "Good. Learning is the armor of the mind." An awkward silence stretched between them, thick with everything unsaid, the slap, the accusation, the shared, horrifying image of Cao Ang in chains.
Finally, Cao Cao forced the words out, low and strained. "I… apologize. For my actions several days past. I should have been grateful for your safe return. My anger was for Lie Fan, for the situation… it should not have fallen upon you."
Cao Pi kept his head slightly bowed. "There is no need for apology, Imperial Father. I understand. My own failure… abandoning Elder Brother… it warranted your disappointment. I accept it."
It was the dutiful, self flagellating response of a son who had built walls of his own. Cao Cao took a step closer, wanting to say more, to break through the formal shell, to tell him that in the frantic calculus of survival, his son's life had mattered, that the choice, however bitter, had been tactically sound. That he was still his son.
But before he could speak, a frantic knocking shattered the fragile moment. The door flew open without waiting for permission, revealing Xun Yu and Cheng Yu. Their faces were pale, their expressions carved from bad news.
Cao Cao's paternal concerns vanished, replaced by the icy grip of command. "What is it? What requires such intrusion?"
Xun Yu bowed hastily. "Your Majesty, forgive us. A report. From the south. From Hanzhong."
The two words, from Hanzhong, sent a jolt through Cao Cao. His face hardened into its familiar mask of stern control. "Speak."
Xun Yu's voice was clipped, delivering the blow with surgical precision. "After several days of intense siege, Governor Zhang Lu has surrendered the city to Fa Zheng. The surrender includes his entire military force. Approximately fifty thousand men have now been absorbed into the Hengyuan Southern Army."
Silence.
It was a silence so complete it seemed to suck the air from the room. Cao Cao did not move. He simply stared, as if the words were physical objects he was trying to identify. Then, the dam broke.
"WHAT?!" The roar was raw, explosive, shattering the quiet of the room. "That fat, pious idiot! That sanctimonious sect leader! All his talk of loyalty, of divine mandate, of standing with Wei, it was all lies! Empty, cowardly lies!"
His rage, already simmering from the parley, now boiled over. He lashed out, his boot connecting with a heavy ceramic urn beside the door. It toppled with a deafening crash, shattering into a hundred pieces that skittered across the stone floor like fleeing insects.
Cao Pi flinched but moved forward instinctively, a hand half raised as if to calm the storm. "Imperial Father, please—"
Cao Cao ignored him, whirling back to Xun Yu, his chest heaving. "And Wudu? What of Wudu?"
Xun Yu's expression was grim. "It holds Your Majesty… for now. But with Hanzhong fallen and Fa Zheng's army swollen by fifty thousand fresh troops, its fall is a matter of days, not weeks. The strategic assessment… is that Fa Zheng could be at the gates of Chang'An before the battle here at Tong Pass is decided."
The implications unfolded with terrifying clarity. The southern pincer wasn't just a threat, it was a reality, its jaws already closing on his capital, his family, his last administrative center. He was not just defending a pass, he was trying to outrace an avalanche descending upon his home from behind.
The anger didn't subside, it crystallized into a cold, hard knot of desperation in his gut. The day ended not with plans, but with a suffocating sense of walls, of stone, of betrayal, of time, closing in from every direction.
The next dawn brought no respite. It brought thunder.
True to Lie Fan's word, before the the 'truce' period happened, the siege become an exercise in psychological torture. As the sun rose, the deep, earth shaking BOOM of the cannons erupted from the Hengyuan lines.
Not a sporadic test, but a relentless, rhythmic bombardment. Five cannons, fired in staggered sequence, then reloaded, then fired again.
The shots weren't all aimed to destroy, some slammed into the thick walls of Tong Pass, shaking them to their foundations, sending showers of dust and chips of stone onto the defenders below.
Others screamed overhead to explode in the courtyards and barracks behind the walls, not causing mass casualties but denying any place of peace, any moment of quiet.
Between the cannon blasts came the ripping HISSSS CRACK of the hwachas, their volleys of fire arrows arcing over the walls to pepper roofs and stored supplies, forcing men to scramble to put out blazes instead of resting.
The trebuchets added their own deeper, slower THWUMP CRASH, hurling stones that gouged great wounds in the ancient fortifications.
It was hell. A calculated, continuous hell. The Wei soldiers, already reeling from the news of their captured princes and the surrender of Hanzhong, now lived in a world of permanent, deafening violence. There was no assault to fight, no enemy to grapple with, just the impersonal, omnipresent fury of superior technology.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 35 (202 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 9)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 966 (+20)
VIT: 623 (+20)
AGI: 623 (+10)
INT: 667
CHR: 98
WIS: 549
WILL: 432
ATR Points: 0