Reborn In The Three Kingdoms

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(A/N: Don’t forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)

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Mang Xing joined the chorus of absolute hatred, glaring venomously at Cheng Li. ”You absolute pieces of filth! You led their cavalry into our rear! My men died looking over their shoulders, thinking you were coming to save them! May your ancestors curse your names! May the heavens strike you down and let your bloodlines rot in the yellow springs for all eternity!”

​Yan Xing and Cheng Li stood perfectly still. They did not flinch, they did not argue, and they did not offer a single word of defense. They simply looked down at the kneeling, screaming men with cold, detached, and entirely indifferent eyes, completely ignoring the torrential downpour of curses.

They had made their horrific, pragmatic choice, and the screaming of dead men would not change the fact that they were breathing while their former allies were bound for the executioner’s block.

​Chen Deng stepped forward, raising a single, elegant hand. The sheer authority radiating from the strategist instantly cut through the warlords’ hysterical screaming, forcing a tense, heavy silence to fall over the hall.

​”That is quite enough,” Chen Deng said, his voice smooth, cold, and echoing with the absolute finality of an imperial judge. He looked down at the three bound men. ”The time for alliances, oaths, and petty squabbles is entirely over. The League of Northwestern Lords is dead. You have been utterly defeated. I ask you now, formally and for the last time, will you surrender your pride, bend your knees, and pledge your absolute allegiance to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hongyi?”

​Yang Qiu let out a harsh, barking, entirely humorless laugh. He looked up at Chen Deng, his eyes burning with a stubborn, unbreakable pride that had been forged decades ago.

​”Surrender? Pledge allegiance?” Yang Qiu sneered, his chest heaving. ”We do not want to surrender to you. We do not want your mercy.”

​He spat on the ground again, looking with utter disgust at Yan Xing and Cheng Li. ”We decided long ago, when the world fractured, that we would not serve any master. We betrayed Cao Cao and the entire apparatus of Wei to form this League in the first place! We abandoned the central plains specifically so we could rule ourselves in these mountains. We fought for independence alongside these two treacherous dogs... who, in the end, betrayed us just as easily as we betrayed the Emperor of Wei.”

​Yang Qiu looked directly into Chen Deng’s eyes, accepting his death with a bitter, profound finality. ”If we would not bow to Cao Cao when he was at the height of his power, we will certainly not bow to the tyrant who murdered him. And we will absolutely never serve alongside the spineless, backstabbing filth who sold our men to your swords. We will serve no one. Do your worst, Imperial dog.”

​Fa Zheng, standing beside Chen Deng, nodded his head slowly. He had expected exactly this response. There was a certain respect to be found in their stubborn consistency, but respect did not alter the geopolitical necessity of their eradication.

​”Since it is like that,” Chen Deng sighed softly, adjusting the cuffs of his aristocratic robes. He turned his gaze away from the warlords, delivering the final, fatal decree without a single ounce of hesitation. ”You have chosen your path. The mandate leaves no room for independent lords.”

​Chen Deng looked toward the captain of the guards. ”Take the three of them outside. Have them executed immediately. Sever their heads and place them in boxes, we will send them to the western tribes as a final, absolute warning that the era of rebellion is over.”

​”And what of their families, Master Chen?” the captain asked, standing at attention.

​Fa Zheng stepped forward, his sharp eyes glinting with a cold, calculated mercy. ”Their families are allowed to live. We are not butchers who slaughter innocents for the sins of the fathers without reason. However, they are entirely stripped of their noble status. They will be placed under strict, permanent house arrest, and they will remain here, confined to a designated settlement on the Qinghai Plateau. They will never be allowed to descend into the lowlands, and they will remain under constant surveillance by the Orioles. If they ever attempt to raise a banner of revenge, the mercy ends.”

​”Understood, my Lords!” the captain saluted.

​The guards stepped forward, hauling the fiercely struggling, cursing forms of Lu Kan, Mang Xing, and Yang Qiu to their feet. The three lords of the League, having maintained their stubborn pride to the bitter end, were unceremoniously escorted out of the grand hall. Their curses faded down the cold stone corridors, eventually silenced forever by the swift, brutal swing of the executioner’s blades in the courtyard outside.

​As the echoes of their final moments faded, the heavy wooden doors of the hall opened once more.

​Striding into the room with the heavy, confident steps of victorious titans were the two supreme commanders of the western theater, Marshal Huang Zhong and Marshal Zhang Ren.

​The old tiger, Huang Zhong, looked exhausted, his armor battered and his white beard stained with soot, but his eyes shone with a brilliant, undeniable triumph. He slammed his heavy longbow onto the stone floor, resting his hands on his hips as he looked at the gathered strategists.

​”The blood has stopped flowing,” Huang Zhong announced, his booming voice carrying a profound, historic weight. ”The final barricades have been secured. The remaining loyalist pockets have either surrendered or fled into the deep glaciers. I formally report to you, Master Chen Deng, Master Fa Zheng... all of the Qinghai Plateau has been completely subjugated.”

​Chen Deng and Fa Zheng exchanged a look of deep, overwhelming satisfaction. The sheer magnitude of the accomplishment settled over the room like a heavy, golden cloak. They both turned to the Marshals, bowing their heads in profound respect.

​”You have done truly great work here today, Marshals,” Chen Deng praised them softly, his voice thick with emotion. ”You, and all the men who bled on this ice. Because of the swords you raised today, the map is finally complete. The land has been fully, entirely united under His Imperial Majesty’s banner. There is no corner of the continent that does not answer to the Black Dragon.”

​Fa Zheng nodded, walking over to the scarred wooden table where the warlords had planned their doomed defense. He smoothed out a wrinkled map of the plateau.

​”The conquest is over,” Fa Zheng declared, pivoting seamlessly from the mindset of war to the mindset of governance. ”Now, the true, agonizing work begins. We must consolidate both Liang Province and the Qinghai Plateau immediately. We establish martial law, we secure the supply lines, and we integrate the surrendered forces into our auxiliary ranks. We must make absolutely sure that both of these volatile areas are fully integrated, at least militarily, so they would not even entertain the thought of rebellion.”

​”Agreed,” Chen Deng concluded, turning to look out the narrow, frozen windows of the citadel at the sprawling, conquered expanse of the roof of the world. ”Once the military boot is firmly on the neck of the province, the bureaucratic consolidation will be much easier. We bring the law, we bring the roads, and we bring the peace.”

​The era of chaos, a nightmare that had drowned the continent in blood for decades, had finally, definitively ended on the freezing, jagged cliffs of the Qinghai Plateau. The Han Dynasty was nothing but a memory, and the sun now rose exclusively upon the eternal, unified glory of Hengyuan.

The conquest was complete, but the subjugation had only just begun.

​The heavy, suffocating silence that descended upon the Qinghai Plateau following the execution of the three rebellious lords was not the silence of peace; it was the tense, breathless silence of an occupied territory waiting for the hammer to fall.

​Fa Zheng and Chen Deng, operating with the ruthless, synchronized efficiency of a finely tuned machine, did not allow the Hengyuan war drums to rest. The Black Dragon had claimed the map, but the map was still infested with deep rooted, fiercely independent factions that recognized no authority other than the edge of a blade.

​Their first target for total pacification was the myriad of indigenous tribes that inhabited the harsh, unforgiving badlands of Liang Province and the icy fringes of the Qinghai Plateau. These were the Di, the Qiang, and dozens of smaller, nomadic clans that had thrived in the chaos of the Warlord Era. They had traded with the warlords, raided the weak, and existed entirely outside the laws of the central plains.

​Chen Deng’s directives were absolute, the concept of tribal sovereignty was to be permanently eradicated.

​”They may keep their customs, their languages, and their bloodlines,” Chen Deng commanded the vanguard generals, unrolling a fresh map of tribal territories in the command hall. ”But their nationality will be exclusively Hengyuan. There will be no independent chieftains levying their own taxes. There will be no independent tribal laws. They will pay tribute to the Emperor, they will obey the imperial magistrates, and they will surrender their arms. If they refuse, you are to break them.”

​The pacification campaign was swift and, in many cases, exceedingly brutal.

​The Hengyuan strategy was a masterclass in the carrot and the stick. Emissaries, accompanied by massive, heavily armed escorts of central infantry, rode into the tribal encampments. They offered the chieftains silver, silk, and the promise of guaranteed grain shipments during the brutal winters, a temptation that many pragmatic elders eagerly accepted, bowing their heads and pledging their clans to the Black Dragon.

​However, many of the younger, prouder chieftains, high on the arrogant independence of the mountains, fiercely resisted. They viewed the Hengyuan soldiers not as liberators, but as foreign tyrants.

​They attempted to unite their scattered warbands, sounding their bone horns and gathering their desert cavalry to repel the invaders.

​But their resistance was entirely, tragically futile.

​They were not fighting a disorganized coalition of squabbling warlords, they were fighting the absolute apex of military evolution. When the Qiang tribes attempted to ambush a Hengyuan supply train in the narrow valleys, they were met not with panic, but with the terrifying, disciplined shield walls of Yu Jin and the devastating, rapid fire crossbow volleys of the central army. When the Di tribes tried to hold the high ground, the Cannons simply blasted the mountainsides into lethal shrapnel, obliterating their camps from miles away.

​Even if every single tribe in the northwest had managed to unite under a single banner, their numbers were absolute dust compared to the hundreds of thousands of heavily armored, perfectly supplied Hengyuan soldiers currently occupying the province.

The rebellions were crushed with a ruthless, industrialized efficiency that left the surviving chieftains completely paralyzed with fear. Within three weeks, the tribal resistance was entirely broken, and the nomadic clans were officially integrated into the administrative registry of the empire.

​With the tribes pacified, the Hengyuan war machine turned its gaze toward the final, stubborn pockets of resistance: the small, isolated mountain kingdoms situated deep inside the Qinghai Plateau, and the minor, fiercely independent states bordering the vast western deserts and the southern jungles.

​These small kingdoms had survived the chaos of the era by hiding behind their towering, natural fortifications and relying on the treacherous terrain to deter invaders. But the Hengyuan vanguard, currently led by men who had just scaled the Serpent’s Spine in the dead of night, possessed no fear of terrain.

​Guan Yu and Zhang Fei led massive columns of heavy infantry against the fortified cities of the plateau. Pang De and Xu Huang terrorized the southern borders, while Zhang He utilized his masterful deception tactics to draw the western desert kings out of their strongholds.

​The choice presented to these minor kings was stark and unforgiving, ’open your gates, surrender your crowns, and accept positions as imperial governors under the Hengyuan banner, or watch your walls crumble under artillery fire and your bloodlines end on the executioner’s block.’

​Seeing the sheer, overwhelming devastation wrought upon the League of Northwestern Lords, many of the small kingdoms chose survival. They opened their gates, offering tribute and absolute submission.

Those few who stubbornly chose to fight found their ancient stone walls shattered by cannons and their armies slaughtered by the ghosts of Wei.

​The western frontier, a region that had been a bleeding wound of rebellion and chaos for centuries, was finally, violently cauterized and sealed under the iron grip of Emperor Lie Fan.

​Thousands of miles to the east, far removed from the freezing winds and the blood soaked ice of the Qinghai Plateau, the capital city of Xiapi basked in the warm, golden light of the morning sun.

​Within the colossal, breathtakingly opulent main hall of the Imperial Palace, the highest echelons of the Hengyuan government were gathered for the grand morning court session. The massive room was a sea of vibrant silk and gleaming jade, filled with hundreds of ministers, provincial governors, and high ranking bureaucratic officials.

​Sitting upon the towering, intricately carved golden Dragon Throne at the apex of the hall was Lie Fan.

​He wore his formal, magnificent Mianfu robes of state, deep, abyssal black silk heavy with the embroidery of golden dragons ascending toward the heavens. The heavy, jade beaded Mian’guan crown rested upon his head, the clicking of the beads adding a rhythmic, commanding cadence to his every movement.

​The court session was deep into the mundane, yet absolutely vital, machinery of global governance.

​Lie Fan sat patiently, listening to the Minister of Agriculture read a detailed, numerical report regarding the massive grain yields from the newly dredged irrigation canals in the southern Jing Province.

It was dry, bureaucratic work, but Lie Fan knew that the true strength of an empire was measured in full granaries, not just sharp swords.

He interjected occasionally, asking highly specific, piercing questions about tax yields and crop rotations that forced the sweating officials to constantly double check their ledgers. As the agricultural report concluded and Chen Gong, Minister of Law, stepped forward to present a petition regarding maritime law in the eastern ports, a subtle, almost invisible shift occurred at the periphery of the throne.

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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