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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Lie Fan stood up from the Dragon Throne. The sheer, physical presence of the Emperor rising to his feet acted as an immediate command. The frantic whispering ceased instantly. The thousands of guests turned their faces upward, granting him their absolute, undivided attention.
"I see the wonder in your eyes, and I hear the questions on your lips," Lie Fan's voice boomed, projecting effortlessly across the cavernous space. "You hold in your hands a luxury, yes. But it is far more than a mere vanity. I stand before you not just to present a fragrant gift, but to introduce a fundamental shift in the way we preserve human life and vitality."
Lie Fan stepped to the very edge of the dais, his dark, majestic Mianfu robes sweeping behind him. He raised a hand, pointing toward the cedar boxes.
"Let us first speak of the hard bars you hold, the Soap," Lie Fan commanded, shifting seamlessly into the role of a visionary educator. "Its primary purpose goes far beyond merely leaving a pleasant smell upon the skin. When rubbed with water, this soap binds to the heavy, rancid oils that our bodies naturally produce. It binds to the invisible grime, the dust of the road, and the deep, embedded dirt that mere water simply washes over. When you rinse the lather away, the dirt is entirely stripped from your pores."
He looked out over the sea of nobles, his gaze intense. "Consider the benefits to the skin of the body. How many of you suffer from uncomfortable rashes beneath heavy silk? How many of your soldiers suffer from boils and sores when marching in armor for weeks on end? These afflictions are born of trapped filth. By cleansing the skin entirely, this soap prevents the rot from ever taking root. It eradicates the foul smell of the body naturally, not by choking the air with incense to hide the stench, but by entirely removing the source of the stench itself."
The guests listened with rapt attention. For an era plagued by chronic, painful skin conditions caused by poor sanitation, the Emperor's words sounded like a promise of physical salvation.
"And most importantly, it grants a profound health benefit," Lie Fan declared firmly. "A body free of entrenched dirt is a body fortified against the invisible ailments that plague our seasons."
Lie Fan then gestured with his other hand, mimicking the shape of the small ceramic vials holding the liquid variants.
"Now, consider the Shampoo," he continued, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "For generations, we have washed our hair with harsh, abrasive ash, or we have let it grow heavy and thick with grease. The shampoo is a specialized formulation. It penetrates deeply into the scalp. It nourishes the very root of the hair, removing the suffocating layers of oil and dead skin."
Lie Fan looked at the foreign emissaries and the wealthy lords. "It restores a natural, healthy shine to the hair, leaving it soft, manageable, and carrying the lingering scent of mint or ginseng. But again, the cosmetic beauty is secondary to the health of the individual. A clean scalp prevents the breeding of lice and fleas. It stops the itching, the scratching, and the subsequent infections that can bring a grown man to his knees with a fever."
Lie Fan brought his hands together, his expression turning deeply serious, his eyes sweeping over the different factions within the hall.
"Let this be the new wisdom of the Hengyuan Dynasty," Lie Fan proclaimed, his voice echoing with philosophical weight. "A clean, good smelling body is a fundamentally healthy body."
He pointed toward the tables occupied by the wealthiest, most sedentary landlords and bureaucrats. "Many of you spend your days in studies and grand halls. You lack the physical, rigorous exercise of the military. Your bodies become stagnant, and without proper, deep purification, that stagnation breeds sickness. This soap is your shield."
He then pivoted, pointing directly at the tables where his hardened, battle scarred generals sat, Zhang Liao, Diaan Wei, Ma Chao, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Xu Huang, and the rest.
"And to my warriors," Lie Fan said, his voice laced with profound respect. "You possess bodies hardened by exercise and combat. But a strong sword arm does not make you immune to the rot of the earth. If you exercise, if you sweat, if you bleed in the mud... and you do not wash properly afterward, you will fall sick just as quickly as the softest merchant. A dirty body, no matter how muscular, is a vulnerability. These products will ensure that the men who fight for this empire do not die in their beds of preventable fevers."
As the Emperor concluded his detailed, highly logical explanation, a wave of profound comprehension washed over the grand hall. The guests looked at the soap not just as a pleasant luxury, but as a vital necessity for survival and longevity. The Emperor's words made perfect, undeniable sense.
To cleanse the body of its stagnant filth to prevent illness was a philosophy that resonated with the deep rooted survival instincts of every human being present. The murmurs that rose from the tables were no longer just sounds of awe, they were sounds of absolute, universal agreement.
However, near the center of the hall, seated at a highly respected table reserved for the most elite scholars and contributors to the empire's internal stability, two men were experiencing a revelation that went far beyond mere hygiene.
Hua Tuo, the legendary, white bearded master physician of the era, and Zhang Zhongjing, the brilliant author of the treatise on cold damage and infectious diseases, sat side by side.
Both men held their bars of soap in their hands, their sharp, highly educated medical minds racing at a terrifying speed. They had spent their entire lives fighting a desperate, losing war against infections, plagues, and the mysterious fevers that decimated armies and cities alike.
As they listened to Emperor Lie Fan speak about stripping away "invisible grime" and preventing the "rot from taking root," a profound, earth shattering realization struck them both simultaneously.
Hua Tuo turned to Zhang Zhongjing, his eyes wide with an intense, almost feverish professional excitement.
"Do you hear what His Majesty is saying, Zhongjing?" Hua Tuo whispered urgently, his grip tightening on the bar of mint infused soap. "Do you remember the edicts he passed years ago, when he was just the Governor of Xu Province? He commanded us to boil all drinking water. He commanded the strict segregation of waste from the living quarters."
Zhang Zhongjing nodded his head rapidly, his mind connecting the historical dots. "I remember. And I remember the bizarre medical theory he proposed to us in private. The theory that we, the physicians of the realm, silently doubted."
Years ago, Lie Fan had explicitly challenged the prevailing medical dogma of the era. The greatest medical minds believed that sickness was caused by "miasma", bad, corrupted air that rose from swamps and battlefields. But Lie Fan had told them that this was false.
He had told them that sickness was caused by microscopic, invisible entities he called bacteria, tiny, living organisms that bred and multiplied in dirty environments, in stagnant water, and in the filthy wounds of soldiers.
At the time, the concept of invisible bugs causing plagues seemed like the fanciful imagination of a young warlord. But they had followed his orders to boil water and clean bandages regardless, and the mortality rates in Lie Fan's armies had miraculously plummeted.
Now, holding the soap, the ultimate validation of Lie Fan's theory slammed into their minds.
"The miasma theory is dead, Hua Tuo," Zhang Zhongjing muttered, looking at the soap with absolute, religious reverence. "His Majesty was right all along. The sickness does not come from the air, it comes from the filth. It comes from the invisible bacteria that clings to the skin and breeds in the sweat. By keeping the body perfectly clean, by chemically stripping away the breeding ground... he is literally washing the disease away."
"This is not a luxury good," Hua Tuo stated, his voice trembling with the magnitude of the discovery. He looked up at the Emperor on the dais, seeing Lie Fan not as a conqueror, but as the greatest medical visionary in human history. "This soap is a medicine. A preventative cure for half the ailments that plague our clinics."
Hua Tuo slammed his hand gently on the table, leaning closer to his colleague. "We cannot allow this to be restricted solely to the wealthy nobles and the harems of the vassal kings. Think of the battlefield hospitals. Think of the surgical tents. If I can wash my hands, my instruments, and the wounds of the soldiers with this soap before I stitch the flesh, the rates of gangrene and post surgical rot will disappear entirely!"
Zhang Zhongjing nodded in fierce, absolute agreement. "It makes perfect sense. A sterile environment. We must act on this immediately. The health of the peasantry and the military depends on it."
"We will not wait," Hua Tuo decided, his legendary stubbornness flaring up in the face of a medical breakthrough. "When the banqueting concludes and the formal court sessions resume, we will petition for a private audience with His Majesty. We will formally, publicly endorse his theory of using soap and shampoo, and we will request, no, we will demand, that a massive supply of this base lye soap be requisitioned and officially supplied to every single imperial hospital, clinic, and military medical tent across the entire land."
"He will agree," Zhang Zhongjing smiled, looking up at the sovereign. "A man who understands that a clean body is a healthy body will not deny his physicians the tools to save his people."
The two greatest medical minds of antiquity sat back in their chairs, a profound sense of hope washing over them. The grand unification banquet raged on around them, a festival of wine, poetry, and political triumph.
But for Hua Tuo and Zhang Zhongjing, the true victory of the night was held in a small cedar box, a simple, brightly colored bar of soap that promised to permanently alter the history of human medicine, securing the health and longevity of the Hengyuan Dynasty for a thousand generations to come.
The grand banquet hall was entirely consumed by a frantic, buzzing energy that had nothing to do with the aged plum wine and everything to do with the small cedar boxes resting upon the tables. The initial shock of the Emperor's announcement rapidly gave way to intense, hushed, and feverish conversations.
From the highest echelons of the inner circle to the lowest ranking magistrates seated near the drafty wooden doors, the topic was singular, the sheer, unimaginable value of this new commodity.
Wealthy landlords leaned across their tables, their jade cups forgotten, speaking in rapid, hushed tones with the grand merchants of the south.
They debated the incredible dual nature of the product. It was not merely a cosmetic luxury, though its value as a beautifying agent was staggering, it was, as the Emperor and the physicians had so astutely noted, a medicinal necessity.
But for the vast majority of the men in the room, the immediate, visceral appeal was undeniably cosmetic and highly intimate.
The heavy, stifling reality of the era was that even the wealthiest nobles struggled with the inescapable scents of human existence. The finest silk robes in the world could not permanently mask the scent of stale sweat, and the traditional method of burning heavy, eye watering incense in enclosed chambers often left one feeling choked rather than clean.
But the soap... the soap was a revelation.
Dozens of high ranking officials and battle hardened generals found themselves privately, almost guiltily, captivated by the scent of the jasmine and lotus bars.
Their minds naturally drifted away from the geopolitical implications and settled firmly upon the women of their households. They thought of their wives, their sisters, their mothers, and their daughters.
They knew, with absolute certainty, that the women of their estates would absolutely adore this creation. The demand within the inner courtyards of the nobility would be instantaneous and ferocious.
And for many of the men, a deeper, much more primal excitement began to take root. They ran their calloused thumbs over the smooth, brightly colored bars of soap, closing their eyes and privately imagining the intoxicating, floral scent lingering on the soft skin of their wives and favored concubines.
The mere thought of retiring to their bedchambers and being greeted by the fresh, clean fragrance of a blooming spring garden, rather than the heavy musk of incense and sweat, caused a visible stir of excitement among the lords. It was a deeply personal, sensual promise wrapped in a state monopoly, and it made the commodity infinitely more desirable than gold or jade.
While the inner hall buzzed with these revelations, the distribution was simultaneously rippling outward.
Hundreds of imperial maids and palace servants, moving with the tireless, synchronized efficiency of a marching army, flooded the outer courtyards and the sprawling exterior pavilions. They navigated the sea of lower ranking guests, the minor provincial magistrates, the tribal chieftains who had not earned a seat in the main hall, and the mid level military officers. To every single man, they presented the exact same beautifully carved cedar box, stamped with the golden seal of the Hengyuan Dynasty.
The reaction outside mirrored the reaction inside, a cascading wave of gasps, widened eyes, and frantic, ecstatic murmurs as the lids were lifted and the scents of mint and sandalwood spilled into the cool autumn night air.
However, as the initial euphoria began to settle, the sharpest minds among the guests, the seasoned merchants who had built monopolies of their own, and the cynical warlords who understood the mechanics of power, began to notice a highly specific, very deliberate detail.
They eagerly counted the contents of their cedar boxes.
Five.
There were exactly five bars of the luxury soap, and exactly five small ceramic vials of the herbal shampoo.
For a minor official living alone, it was a generous gift. But for the men gathered at this celebration? These were patriarchs of massive, sprawling estates. They commanded households filled with dozens of wives, concubines, daughters, aging mothers, and hundreds of personal servants.
Five bars of soap and five vials of shampoo would not last a week in their sprawling manors. If a lord gave a bar of jasmine soap to his primary wife, his favorite concubine would demand one by nightfall. If he gave one to his eldest daughter, the younger sisters would weep until they received their own.
The realization hit the merchant lords and the nobles like a bucket of ice water, swiftly followed by a profound, grudging, and absolute respect for the man sitting upon the Dragon Throne. It was a brilliantly cruel, perfectly executed strategy. The Emperor had deliberately provided a number that was just large enough to addict them to the luxury, but entirely too small to satisfy the inevitable demand of their households. He had given them a taste of the heavens, only to yank it away, leaving them staring at a locked gate.
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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