If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
____________________________
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
Immediately, the eastern wall of Chang'an was engulfed in a maelstrom of destruction. The cannonballs struck the reinforced outer gates and the lower masonry with sickening, concussive thuds. Splinters of ancient oak the size of javelins exploded outward, and chunks of stone were pulverized into blinding dust.
The trebuchet boulders crashed down upon the battlements, crushing defensive hoarding and shattering the parapets where Wei archers desperately tried to seek cover. The Hwacha rockets rained down in a continuous, shrieking downpour, exploding amongst the secondary barricades just behind the walls, filling the air with shrapnel and fire.
For the Wei soldiers huddled on the walls and in the gatehouses, the nightmare had returned. They had endured this terrifying, overwhelming bombardment at Hongnong, and they had barely survived it at Tong Pass.
To face it a third time, knowing there was no retreat left, was a psychological torture that broke men's minds before it broke their bodies.
If this were a conflict in a much later era, the sheer, unrelenting concussive trauma and the inescapable rain of fire would have resulted in entire battalions rendered catatonic by severe traumatic stress.
But in this brutal age, there was no terminology for the shattering of the soul, there was only the desperate, whimpering prayer for survival amidst the deafening roar.
With this horrifying symphony of destruction, the final siege of Chang'an had officially begun.
And it was not only the east that burned.
Miles away, on the western front, the army led by Fa Zheng, Zhang Ren, and Yan Yan unleashed their own hell. While they lacked the devastating, wall shattering power of Lie Fan's cannons, their bombardment was no less terrifying.
Hundreds of Hengyuan trebuchets and Hwachas opened fire simultaneously, pounding the western gate and its surrounding defenses with a relentless barrage of heavy stone and screeching rockets.
To the south, the impact was less physically devastating but added to the suffocating pressure. Zhang Lu's forces, lacking the advanced siege engineering of the Hengyuan core, utilized older, smaller catapults.
While they could not shatter the thick southern walls, the constant, rhythmic thudding of stones against the masonry and the occasional lobbed pot of burning pitch ensured that the Wei defenders on the southern perimeter could not rest, could not reinforce the other gates, and could not escape the feeling that they were entirely surrounded by death.
Inside the imperial palace of Chang'An, the sound of the bombardment was muffled by thick stone walls, but the concussive shockwaves vibrated through the floorboards, rattling the teacups on the council table.
Cao Cao sat at the head of the table, his hands gripping the armrests of his chair so tightly his knuckles were white. The 'Hedgehog Plan' was irrelevant now. Strategy had dissolved into mere survival.
He looked at the pale, the solen faces of his advisors, Xun Yu, Guo Jia, Xi Zhicai, Jia Kui, Cheng Yu, Tian Feng, and Xu You, men whose brilliant minds were currently useless against the sheer, overwhelming physical force raining down upon their city.
"Do whatever you must," Cao Cao rasped, his voice cutting through the distant, muffled booms. "Pull the men back from the outer parapets to avoid the cannons. Reinforce the inner street barricades. Hold the choke points. We must make them bleed for every inch of stone they step upon."
He paused, a dark, venomous fury temporarily piercing through his exhaustion. He looked directly at Jia Kui.
"And draft a message," Cao Cao ordered, his voice trembling with rage. "Send it by our fastest, most evasive raves and riders through the northern mountain paths. Send it to Yan Xing, to Cheng Yi, to those traitorous dogs of the Western Garrisons. Tell them... tell them I condemn them to the deepest hells for their betrayal. Tell them that when I survive this battle... when I break Lie Fan's siege... I will not march east. I will march west. And I will burn their army to the ground before I come for them personally."
It was a hollow threat, a desperate boast from a man standing on the edge of the abyss, but it was the only defiance he had left.
However, as the final word left his lips, a sudden, agonizing spasm seized Cao Cao.
He gasped sharply, his eyes rolling back slightly. He brought both hands up, clutching the sides of his head as if trying to hold his skull together. The headache, the terrifying, pulsing agony that the physicians had warned would be his end, struck with the force of an executioner's axe.
"Agh!" Cao Cao groaned, his body contorting in the heavy wooden chair.
"Imperial Father!"
Cao Pi, who had been standing anxiously near the doorway, sprinted across the room. He slid to his knees beside the chair, grabbing his father's trembling hands.
"Physicians!" Cao Pi screamed, his voice cracking with sheer panic, echoing loudly in the high ceilinged hall. "Father! Hold on! PHYSICIANS! SUMMON THE IMPERIAL PHYSICIANS IMMEDIATELY! BRING THE MEDICINE! HURRY!"
But the agonizing spike of pain was too severe, the accumulated stress of the past month too heavy a burden for the aging warlord's body to bear. Cao Cao's breathing turned shallow and frantic. He looked at Cao Pi, his vision blurring, the faces of his advisors spinning around him. He tried to speak, to issue one last command, but only a wet gasp escaped his throat.
His eyes rolled back completely, and Cao Cao slumped forward, his heavy body collapsing against his son, entirely unconscious.
"NO, NO, NO! FATHER!" Cao Pi yelled, struggling to hold the Emperor upright.
Total panic erupted in the council chamber. The brilliant strategists of Wei, men who could calmly calculate the deaths of thousands, scrambled wildly. Xun Yu rushed forward to help support the Emperor, Guo Jia grabbed a cup of water, his own hands shaking violently, Cheng Yu bellowed for the guards to clear a path.
"Give him space!" Tian Feng roared, pushing back the crowd. "Let him breathe!"
Cao Pi held his father, tears streaming down his face. "Father, please... please hold on. Don't leave me. Not like this. Not now."
They all knew the terrifying reality. The physicians had been explicitly clear, another severe attack could be fatal. If Cao Cao died now, while the city was under apocalyptic bombardment, the Wei Dynasty would instantly dissolve into chaos, and Chang'An would fall before sunset.
A swarm of terrified guards and breathless imperial physicians burst into the room moments later, their satchels bouncing against their hips. They descended on Cao Cao with practiced urgency, feeling his pulse, examining his eyes, forcing a vial of bitter medicine between his lips.
But the emperor had already fainted, his body slack, his breathing shallow and irregular. "Take him to his chambers," the lead physician commanded. "Immediately! We need him lying down, we need warmth, we need—"
They quickly and carefully lifted the unconscious Emperor, carrying him out of the council chamber and rushing him toward the secluded safety of his private bedchambers in the inner palace. The advisors followed in a frantic procession.
the palace, to the imperial bedchamber. Along the way, word spread like wildfire. Concubines emerged from their quarters, their faces pale with fear. Grand Concubine Bian hurried from her rooms, her robes still disheveled from hurried dressing, her eyes fixed on the prone form of her husband.
When they reached the chamber, the physicians barred all but the most essential from entering. Grand Concubine Bian was allowed in, along with Cao Pi and a handful of senior advisors. The others crowded in the hallway, their whispers a constant, anxious murmur.
Inside, the physicians frantically began applying acupuncture needles and brewing potent, foul smelling herbal concotions, monitoring Cao Cao's pulse and breathing. Grand Concubine Bian sat beside her husband, holding his hand, her face a mask of desperate hope.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Cao Pi, still trembling, answered. "The stress. The news about the western garrisons. The bombardment. It was too much. Imperial Father headaches... the physicians warned us. Another attack could be fatal."
Grand Concubine Bian closed her eyes, tears leaking from beneath her lids. "And Empress Ding? Has she been told?"
A servant shifted uncomfortably. "We... we sent word, Noble Consort. But she has not... she has not responded."
The room fell silent. Everyone understood.
She remained in her own isolated quarters, staring blankly at the wall. The bond that had held her to Cao Cao for decades, a bond forged in the fires of their youth and the shared ambition of building a dynasty, had finally shattered.
The loss of her beloved adopted son, Cao Ang, captured and held by the demon at their gates because he had been left behind to secure the Emperor's escape, had been a blow too deep to heal.
In the bed, Cao Cao stirred slightly, a low moan escaping his lips. But his eyes remained closed, his consciousness far away in some dark place where even the thunder of cannons could not reach him.
While the father of the dynasty lay hovering between life and death, the mother of the dynasty mourned alone, her heart already dead to the man who had failed to protect her boy.
As the heart of the Wei Dynasty was suffering a catastrophic internal collapse within the gilded halls of the imperial palace, the physical body of the capital was being ruthlessly flayed alive on the outside. The bombardment continued without a moment of respite from the east, the west, and the south.
For the civilian populace trapped within the sprawling metropolis of Chang'An, this was no longer a battle; it was the end of the world.
They huddled in the darkest corners of their cellars, under heavy wooden tables, and within the deepest alcoves of the ancient temples, clutching their children and praying to ancestors who seemed deaf to their pleas.
The people of Chang'An had lived through rebellions, famines, and the tyranny of warlords like Dong Zhuo, but they had never, in all their generations, lived in such absolute, paralyzing fear.
The city had never been bombarded with such a terrifying velocity of attacks. The sheer volume of projectiles darkening the sky was incomprehensible, but it was the sounds that truly broke their spirits.
These were not the familiar, rhythmic thuds of catapult stones that they had read about in histories of past sieges. The sounds of Hengyuan's advanced weaponry were entirely alien and deeply unnatural.
The cannons produced a deafening, chest rattling roar that felt like the earth itself was splitting open, while the Hwachas unleashed a continuous, high pitched screeching that tore at the eardrums and frayed the nerves.
To the terrified citizens, these sounds were the shrieks of iron nightmares, mythological beasts brought to life by the demonic Emperor of Hengyuan to consume their homes.
Miles away from the weeping civilians, out on the eastern front where the air was thick with sulfur and pulverized stone, Lie Fan sat atop Pangu.
He watched the devastation unfold with the cold, calculating eyes of a supreme predator. The eastern wall of Chang'An, once a proud testament to Wei's architectural might, was rapidly being reduced to a jagged, smoking ruin.
Through the billowing clouds of grey dust and orange flame, Lie Fan's mind worked furiously, calculating the probability of the casualties the Wei defenders had already suffered.
He watched the patterns of the falling masonry, noted the infrequency of returning arrow fire, and observed the chaotic movements of the surviving defenders desperately trying to plug the gaps in their shattered barricades.
The psychological toll had been extracted, the physical defenses were critically compromised. The anvil had been struck enough times. It was time for the hammer.
Lie Fan slowly raised his right hand, the polished steel of his gauntlet catching the afternoon sun through the haze of smoke. It was a simple gesture, but it held the weight of hundreds of thousands of lives. He held it high, signaling for the immediate halt of the artillery bombardment and the commencement of the infantry advance.
______________________________
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