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!)
...
"The wealth is inevitable, Zizhong," Jia Xu rasped softly, his voice carrying the chilling, serene peace of a world finally brought to heel. "But the true victory is the peace. The warlords are dead. The tribes are broken. The world smells of flowers, and the Black Dragon rests upon the throne."
"The treasury vaults will overflow before the month is out," Mi Zhu repeated, his wide, unrestrained grin entirely genuine. He crossed his arms, his mercantile mind already churning through the staggering logistical requirements of the coming week. "But, Master Wenhe, we must coordinate our immediate response. When the third day dawns and the holidays conclude, the Ministry of Revenue is going to be hit by a tidal wave of purchasing ledgers. It will not just be the lords who attended tonight, it will be the emissaries they send back to their provinces, demanding bulk shipments for their entire estates."
Jia Xu nodded slowly, his dark eyes reflecting the dying light of the lanterns. The spymaster's mind was already ten steps ahead, anticipating the inevitable attempts at corruption and theft that such a massive influx of wealth would attract.
"You will require a fortified perimeter around the Ministry," Jia Xu rasped softly, his tone shifting from celebratory to ruthlessly pragmatic. "I will deploy three entire cohorts of the capital's heavy guard to surround your administrative offices by midnight on the second day. We cannot have desperate merchants rioting or attempting to bribe your clerks to bump their ledgers to the top of the queue. The queue will be absolute. First to submit their gold, first to receive their shipment."
"Agreed," Mi Zhu said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I will need to draft a secondary tier of scribes immediately. The standard clerks will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of silver notes and raw gold bullion that will need to be counted and cataloged. And what of the transportation, Master Wenhe? We will have merchant caravans stretching from the capital all the way to the southern rivers."
"The transportation of the soap will be handled with the exact same military protocol we use to transport the Black Dragon Cannons," Jia Xu decreed coldly. "No independent merchant wagons will be allowed to haul the product from the secret foundries. The imperial military supply trains will bring the stock directly to your heavily guarded distribution centers in the outer city. The nobles will collect it from you, there. The location of the foundries must remain entirely isolated."
Mi Zhu nodded his head in absolute agreement. "It is a flawless system. We will bleed them dry, and they will thank us for the privilege. Let us retire for the night, Chancellor. We have two days of peace before the storm of gold hits our shores."
While the two ministers stood in the grand hall coordinating the defense of their new economic empire, Emperor Lie Fan was walking away from the suffocating weight of statecraft, seeking the one sanctuary where he could simply be a man.
The imperial procession moved through the sprawling, magnificent corridors that connected the central administrative wing to the Harem Palace.
The night air was incredibly crisp and clear, filled with the faint, joyous sounds of the capital city celebrating their newly won peace in the distant streets. The Yellow Ghost Bodyguards formed a wide, silent, and respectful perimeter, giving the Imperial Family the illusion of total privacy as they walked beneath the glow of the hanging silk lanterns.
Lie Fan walked at a slow, leisurely pace, the heavy jade beads of his Mian'guan crown clicking softly with his steps. Empress Ying Yue walked shoulder to shoulder with him, her hand resting gently in his, while Diao Chan, Cai Wenji, Lu Lingqi, and Zhen Ji trailed just a half step behind, chatting softly among themselves about the breathtaking events of the evening.
Just ahead of the Emperor and Empress walked Crown Prince Muchen, leading his younger siblings. The boy's mind was clearly racing.
He had just performed a sword dance before the entire unified world, he had recited a poem that had moved hardened generals to tears, and he had witnessed his father effortlessly manipulate the greatest financial minds on the continent with a bar of scented lye.
Muchen suddenly slowed his pace, allowing his younger twin and the other siblings to walk ahead with their nursemaids. He fell back, falling into step beside his father.
The Crown Prince looked up, his young face illuminated by the lantern light, his eyes burning with an intense, insatiable intellectual curiosity.
"Imperial Father," Muchen began, his tone a mixture of deep respect and genuine, boyish wonder. "If I may ask... how could this soap and shampoo possibly be made? It is a miracle of cleanliness. Who was the one who gave the recipe to you? Was it the grand master alchemists? Or the senior researchers in the Imperial Workshop?"
Lie Fan looked down at his brilliant son. The corners of his mouth twitched upward into a warm, deeply amused smile. He squeezed Ying Yue's hand gently before answering.
"The Imperial Workshop is filled with brilliant minds, Muchen," Lie Fan replied smoothly, his voice echoing softly in the quiet corridor. "But they did not discover this. To be entirely honest with you... it was my idea. I created the recipe myself."
The statement dropped into the quiet night air with the force of a falling anvil.
Muchen stumbled slightly, his eyes widening in absolute, unfiltered shock. He stared at his father as if the man had just casually claimed to have invented the sun.
But Muchen was not the only one caught entirely off guard. A collective, perfectly synchronized gasp of astonishment echoed from just behind the Emperor.
Ying Yue, Diao Chan, Cai Wenji, Lu Lingqi, and Zhen Ji all stopped dead in their tracks. The five most powerful women in the empire stared at the broad back of their husband in absolute, stunned disbelief.
They were entirely aware of Lie Fan's terrifying martial prowess. They knew his strategic mind could outmaneuver the likes of Cao Cao and Yuan Shao. They knew he was a master of logistics, statecraft, and poetry.
But chemistry? They had naturally assumed that such a delicate, specific, and revolutionary cosmetic creation was the product of a massive team of desperate alchemists laboring in the Imperial Workshop under his strict orders.
They knew their husband had given the directive to create a cleaning agent, but to possess the actual, foundational recipe as well? That was a level of diverse, specialized knowledge they had never even considered.
"You... you created the recipe yourself, husband?" Ying Yue asked, her beautiful eyes wide, her mind struggling to reconcile the bloody conqueror of the central plains with the delicate creation of jasmine infused soap.
"Indeed I did, my Yue'er," Lie Fan chuckled, turning slightly to look at the stunned faces of his wives.
Muchen recovered his wits quickly, his curiosity now burning hotter than ever. "But how, Imperial Father? How could you possibly come up with such a specific, chemical idea amidst all the campaigns and the wars?"
Lie Fan resumed his slow walk, gesturing for his family to follow. He adopted the tone of a patient, deeply loving teacher.
"It is a matter of utilizing the resources you have, and observing the fundamental flaws of the world around you, Muchen," Lie Fan explained, weaving a flawless, entirely plausible narrative to cover the otherworldly origin of his knowledge. He looked fondly at Ying Yue. "You know that your mother, the Empress, is the adopted daughter of Master Hua Tuo, the greatest medical mind of our age. When she is learning under Master Hua Tuo, she brought with her a vast, unparalleled library of ancient medical texts, herbal treatises, and biological studies."
Ying Yue blinked, suddenly remembering the heavy wooden chests of scrolls she had indeed brought with her to the palace years ago.
"I have always possessed my own deep, unyielding views concerning the health of my armies," Lie Fan continued, his voice taking on a serious, philosophical weight. "I watched men survive a horrific sword wound on the battlefield, only to die three weeks later in their tents from a fever caused by the filth on their own skin. I realized that true martial strength was useless if the body was rotting from the outside in. And so, during the quiet hours of the night, when the maps were put away, I began to read your mother's books. I began my own research."
Lie Fan held up a hand, tracing the invisible concepts in the air. "I studied the ancient properties of hardwood ash and alkaline. I studied how animal fats could be rendered and bound to these alkalines to create a purifying paste. That is how I found the foundational recipe. I experimented, calculated the ratios, and ensured that what was inside the compound was scientifically approved to provide massive health benefits. It strips the invisible bacteria from the skin."
"But what of the scent, Imperial Father?" Muchen asked, utterly fascinated. "Why the jasmine and the lotus? Why not just use the base paste if it cures the ailments?"
Lie Fan smiled a broad, incredibly sharp smile, a look that conveyed decades of psychological mastery over human nature.
"Because, my son, no one desires to use a cure if it makes them repulsive," Lie Fan said sagely. "The good smell helped massively. Think of it like a bitter medicine prescribed by a physician. A bitter root may be incredibly good for a man's liver, but not many people like it. They will avoid it, they will spit it out, and they wouldn't drink it unless it were the absolute last attempt to save their lives. Human beings are inherently driven by vanity and comfort."
Lie Fan gestured back toward the direction of the banquet hall. "If I had handed those wealthy lords a lump of gray, foul smelling animal fat and told them it would save their lives, they would have thrown it in the river. But by infusing it with the essential oils of rare flowers, by making it a luxurious, intoxicating cosmetic experience... I didn't have to force them to use it. They are now begging me to let them buy it. The health benefits are delivered in a Trojan horse of vanity."
Muchen walked in silence for several long paces, his young mind rapidly processing the sheer, multi layered brilliance of his father's strategy. He saw the synthesis of medical necessity, psychological manipulation, and economic domination perfectly rolled into a single bar of soap.
Slowly, the Crown Prince nodded his head, looking up at his father with an expression of profound, absolute realization.
"Then... as an Emperor," Muchen concluded, his voice steady and thoughtful, "knowing many different things across many different disciplines is just as vital as knowing how to swing a sword or read a map. A sovereign must possess a vast array of knowledge, then, Imperial Father?"
Lie Fan stopped walking. He turned to fully face his eldest son, his dark eyes filled with immense, towering pride. The boy understood.
"Precisely, Muchen," Lie Fan said, his voice dropping into a solemn, heavy register, imparting the deepest wisdom of the throne. "The world will tell you that being a leader simply means knowing how to manage your subordinates. They will tell you that your only job is to ensure that the right general is on the right battlefield, and the right minister is counting the right gold. And while managing men is indeed the foundation of rule... it is entirely insufficient on its own."
Lie Fan reached out, placing a heavy, warm hand on Muchen's shoulder.
"It is vitally, absolutely important for an Emperor to possess all kinds of knowledge. You must understand the basics of agriculture, the foundations of chemistry, the flow of currency, and the anatomy of the human body," Lie Fan instructed fiercely. "Why? Because if you only rely on the experts, if you do not understand the mechanics of the world yourself... you will become a hostage to your own court. You must know enough so that your ministers can never lie to you. You must know enough so that when an alchemist tells you a process is impossible, you can look him in the eye and tell him exactly how it is done."
Muchen absorbed the weight of the lesson, the gravity of the crown settling a little heavier upon his young shoulders. He brought his hands together, bowing deeply to his father.
"I understand, Imperial Father," Muchen said with absolute conviction. "I will not be a blind king. I will study the world until I understand every mechanism within it."
As the heavy, philosophical silence of the imperial lesson stretched through the corridor, it was suddenly, beautifully shattered by the sound of light, musical footsteps.
Empress Ying Yue stepped forward, her crimson and gold silk robes rustling softly. She reached out, gently but firmly placing her hands over both Lie Fan's and Muchen's clasped hands, breaking their intense, serious stare.
Ying Yue looked at her husband, her beautiful eyes sparkling with a mixture of profound love and a very distinct, unyielding maternal authority.
"That is quite enough," Ying Yue scolded them gently, a warm smile playing on her lips. "I will not have the two most important men in my life standing in a drafty corridor at midnight, discussing the heavy burdens of statecraft and the philosophies of rule. We have just unified the earth, husband. It is the time of the holidays. Stop talking about serious matters."
______________________________
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