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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Dawn broke on the fourth day, casting a pale, gray light over the sprawling administrative districts of the inner city. The imperial holidays were officially over. The bureaucracy was mandated to awaken. But long before the great bronze bells of the city tolled to signal the opening of the government ministries, a massive, unprecedented human tide had already formed in the grand plaza directly before the Ministry of Revenue.
It was a chaotic, staggering assembly. There were hundreds of people, packed shoulder to shoulder, their breath pluming in the crisp morning air. But these were not common peasants seeking tax relief. This crowd was composed entirely of the most elite, highly trusted servants, seconds in command, and grand stewards belonging to the wealthiest nobles, the grandest merchant guilds, and the foreign vassal kingdoms.
The visual contrast within the crowd was jarring.
Standing near the front, flanked by heavily armed personal guards bearing heavy chests of raw silver, was the chief steward of a noble family in the Wu territory, dressed in the fine, embroidered silks of Jiangdong.
Right beside him, looking distinctly uncomfortable but fiercely determined, was the second inin command of a subjugated Qiang tribal chieftain, wrapped in heavy furs and carrying a leather sack bulging with unrefined gold nuggets.
Further back, the meticulously dressed chamberlains of the former Luoyang aristocracy bumped shoulders with the tattooed emissaries from the deep southern jungles.
They had all been sent by their masters with one absolute, non negotiable directive, Secure the Soap. Do not return empty handed.
The tension in the plaza was electric. The stewards clutched thick, meticulously drafted purchasing ledgers in their hands, their eyes locked obsessively on the massive, iron studded oak doors of the Ministry building. Whispered arguments broke out over places in the queue, accompanied by the subtle, threatening jingling of coin purses as men attempted to bribe their way closer to the front.
"Step back, you southern savage," a snobbish butler from a central plains estate hissed, elbowing a tribal emissary. "My lord has requisitioned three hundred bars of the Lotus variant! We have priority!"
"Priority is dictated by silver, not your silk robes!" the emissary snarled back in broken Han, clutching his sack of gold. "My King demands the Jasmine!"
Before the shoving match could escalate into a full-blown brawl, the heavy, terrifying sound of synchronized, iron-shod marching echoed across the plaza.
Three entire cohorts of the elite capital heavy guard, dressed in their imposing black armor, marched into the square. They moved with flawless, terrifying discipline, instantly forming an impenetrable, bristling wall of shields and halberds that corralled the frantic mob of buyers into a strict, orderly queue. The threat of immediate, lethal violence instantly silenced the squabbling stewards.
High above the plaza, standing on the sweeping stone balcony that overlooked the entrance to the Ministry, stood Mi Zhu.
The Minister of Revenue looked down at the massive, desperate sea of wealth waiting at his doorstep. He saw the chests of silver, the sacks of gold, and the frantic, greedy anticipation burning in the eyes of the servants. His Emperor had promised him a mountain of gold, and the mountain had delivered itself directly to his front door.
Mi Zhu smiled, a wide, brilliant, and ruthlessly predatory smile. He smoothed the front of his purple official robes and raised his hand.
As the great bronze bells of Xiapi finally began to toll, echoing across the awakened capital, Mi Zhu brought his hand down in a sharp, decisive chopping motion.
The massive iron studded doors of the Ministry of Revenue were hauled open.
"Welcome, gentlemen, to the new era!" Mi Zhu's voice boomed down from the balcony, officially unleashing the absolute economic dominance of the Hengyuan Dynasty. "The ledgers are open! Present your gold!"
The moment the massive, iron studded oak doors of the Ministry of Revenue groaned open, the absolute, suffocating tension that had gripped the grand plaza finally broke.
It was not a chaotic, trampling stampede, for the bristling wall of the capital's heavy guard ensured the mob maintained its structure, but the sheer, urgent kinetic energy of the crowd was palpable.
Hundreds of people, the highest ranking stewards, the fiercest tribal seconds in command, and the most trusted chamberlains of the continent's elite, surged forward into the cavernous interior of the Ministry building like a river of silk, fur, and leather breaching a dam.
The interior of the Ministry of Revenue had been entirely reorganized to accommodate the unprecedented economic event. The grand receiving hall, usually a place of quiet, methodical taxation and bureaucratic murmurs, had been transformed into a highly structured, impenetrable commercial fortress.
Dozens of wide, heavy mahogany desks were arrayed in a vast semicircle across the polished stone floor. Behind each desk sat three Hengyuan clerks.
These were not lowly scribes, they were hardened, meticulously trained bureaucratic veterans who had spent the last decade managing the staggering logistics of Emperor Lie Fan's war machine. They sat with perfect, unyielding posture.
Before them lay towering stacks of blank requisition ledgers, pots of fresh black ink, heavy bronze imperial seals, and the quintessential tool of their trade, long, wooden abacuses, ready to calculate the wealth of the world.
The stewards and emissaries practically sprinted toward the desks, their heavy chests of raw silver and leather sacks of unrefined gold clanking loudly against the stone floor. They were desperate to secure their purchasing orders, terrified that the fabled, intoxicating stock of soap and shampoo would somehow run dry before their master's names were stamped into the ledgers.
The chief steward of the wealthy Wu noble family, the man who had been aggressively posturing in the plaza just moments prior, was the first to reach the central desk. He slammed a heavy, iron bound chest of silver ingots onto the mahogany surface with a resounding, arrogant thud that made the inkstones rattle.
"I represent the Jiao Family in Yu Province!" the steward announced, his voice carrying the haughty, demanding cadence of a man who was accustomed to purchasing entire fleets of merchant barges on a whim. He unfurled a long, highly detailed silk scroll. "My master demands immediate priority. We are requisitioning five hundred bars of the Jasmine-infused luxury soap, three hundred bars of the Sandalwood variant, and two hundred ceramic vials of the ginseng shampoo. Here is the silver. Take it, stamp the ledger, and direct my porters to the loading docks!"
The senior clerk sitting behind the desk did not flinch at the loud demand, nor did he look with wide eyed awe at the chest of pure silver. He slowly dipped his brush into the inkpot, his face a mask of supreme, bored administrative indifference.
"Five hundred Jasmine, three hundred Sandalwood, two hundred ginseng," the clerk repeated, his voice completely flat, devoid of any inflection. He moved a few wooden beads on his abacus with a sharp clack. "Your requisition is noted. However, your approved allocation is as follows, you will receive fifty bars of the Jasmine, thirty bars of the Sandalwood, and twenty vials of the shampoo. The total cost is—"
"Fifty?!" the steward of Jiao Family interrupted, his eyes bulging from his skull as if he had just been physically struck. He planted his hands firmly on the desk, leaning aggressively over the wood. "Did you not hear me, scribe? I did not say fifty! I brought enough silver to buy this entire wing of the building! My master's harem alone requires a hundred bars a month! I said five hundred!"
"I heard you perfectly, steward," the clerk replied, entirely unbothered, his eyes remaining locked on his ledger. "And I said your approved allocation is fifty. You may take the fifty, or you may take your silver and step aside for the next gentleman. The choice is yours."
This exact, shocking scenario began playing out simultaneously across every single desk in the grand hall.
The emissaries and chamberlains, armed with the vast, practically limitless wealth of their respective lords and kings, were slamming down massive orders, attempting to buy the soap by the thousands. And at every single desk, the Hengyuan clerks were ruthlessly, unapologetically slashing those numbers by ninety percent.
It was a brilliantly cruel, perfectly calculated economic maneuver, designed directly by Emperor Lie Fan and strictly enforced by Mi Zhu.
The Emperor understood the fundamental, physical nature of the commodity he had created. A single, solid bar of properly cured, highly compressed lye and tallow soap did not melt away in a day. If kept dry between uses, a single bar could easily last a person for several weeks, if not a full month.
If Lie Fan allowed these fabulously wealthy nobles and merchant lords to simply walk into the Ministry and purchase five thousand bars of soap at once, they would immediately stockpile it.
They would fill their private manors with years' worth of supply. And while that would result in a massive, immediate influx of gold for the treasury on the very first day, it would also mean that those wealthy lords would not need to return to the market for a very, very long time.
A true monopoly does not survive on a single, massive purchase. A true monopoly thrives on constant, unyielding, recurring dependency.
By aggressively cutting the numbers of the orders, the Ministry was artificially manufacturing an atmosphere of extreme rarity. They were forcing the nobles to carefully ration the luxury within their own estates.
But the economic trap possessed a secondary, even more agonizing layer of control.
"Fine! Fine!" a Luoyang chamberlain shouted at an adjacent desk, his face red with frustration as his massive order was similarly butchered. "I will take the fifty bars! But I will return tomorrow with more gold, and I will bring my master's cousins to buy the rest!"
"You will not return tomorrow, sir," the clerk responded smoothly, making a sharp, decisive mark in the ledger. "Under the direct decree of the Ministry of Revenue, this purchase places your master's estate on a mandatory requisition cooldown. Because the demand across the unified empire is so vast, and the chemical curing process is so delicate, you are strictly forbidden from placing another order for exactly three months."
"Three months?!" the chamberlain shrieked, his voice cracking with sheer panic. "Fifty bars for an entire aristocratic estate for a full season?! Do you know how many concubines my lord maintains?! They will tear me to pieces if I tell them they must ration their jasmine soap for three months!"
"That sounds like an internal domestic issue, sir, not a Ministry concern," the clerk replied dryly. "Next."
When the reality of the situation fully set in, that their massive purchasing power had been completely neutered, that their orders had been slashed, and that they would be locked out of the market for months at a time, the grand hall of the Ministry of Revenue erupted into absolute, unprecedented chaos.
These were the stewards of the elite. They were men who wielded the delegated authority of kings, warlords, and dukes. They were entirely unaccustomed to being told "no" by anyone, let alone by a middle ranking bureaucrat sitting behind a wooden desk.
The protests were instantaneous, loud, and incredibly aggressive.
"This is an outrage! An absolute insult!" the steward of Yu Family bellowed, slamming his fist onto the desk so hard the inkpot jumped. "You greedy little pen pusher! I demand to speak to Minister Mi Zhu! I demand to see the Chancellor! You cannot artificially restrict the free trade of my master's gold! I will have you whipped for your insolence!"
"You dare cut the order of the Qiang King?!" the tribal second in command roared at another desk, his hand dropping menacingly toward the heavy, curved hunting dagger strapped to his waist. "I will not return to the mountains with a handful of colored blocks! Stamp the ledger for five hundred, or I will cut your hands off and stamp it myself!"
The shouting escalated into a deafening roar. Several stewards physically grabbed the edges of the mahogany desks, attempting to overturn them. The emissaries of the deep south began screaming curses in their native tongues, while the chamberlains of the central plains hurled threats of political retribution, promising that their lords would petition the Emperor directly to have these clerks executed for their sheer, unadulterated arrogance.
The clerks, to their immense credit, did not flinch. They did not shout back. They simply stopped writing, placed their brushes down on their jade rests, and waited.
They did not need to defend themselves. The defense was already moving.
The heavy, terrifying, rhythmic sound of iron shod boots slamming against stone suddenly cut through the chaotic shouting.
From the shadowed alcoves and the heavy side doors of the grand hall, the Black Guard emerged. They were the most elite, heavily armored, and fanatically loyal enforcers of the capital, tasked directly by Chancellor Jia Xu to maintain the absolute sanctity of the state monopolies.
They moved with a chilling, synchronized lethality, their heavy halberds lowered, their faces entirely obscured by terrifying, emotionless iron masks.
Within seconds, the guards had flooded the floor, physically separating the frantic, threatening stewards from the mahogany desks. The sharp, metallic shing of a dozen heavy broadswords being drawn from their scabbards echoed through the hall, a sound that instantly poured ice water over the boiling rage of the crowd.
A towering Captain of the Guard, his armor gleaming with the dark polish of a veteran killer, stepped directly into the center of the room. He did not shout, but his voice possessed the deep, resonant, gravelly authority of a man who was fully authorized to turn the grand hall into a slaughterhouse if the situation demanded it.
"Silence," the Captain commanded.
The sheer, overwhelming threat of immediate, lethal violence achieved what bureaucratic logic could not. The shouting stewards and the furious tribal emissaries instantly clamped their mouths shut. The man with his hand on his hunting dagger slowly, carefully pulled his fingers away, raising his empty hands in the air.
They suddenly remembered exactly whose building they were standing in. They were not dealing with a weak, corruptible bureaucracy magistrate, they were standing in the beating heart of the Black Dragon's empire.
The Captain slowly paced the length of the desks, his cold eyes sweeping over the terrified faces of the crowd.
"You seem to be suffering from a profound misunderstanding of your current reality," the Captain stated, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "You believe you are in a marketplace, haggling over the price of grain. You are not. You are standing in the Ministry of Revenue, and you are being granted the immense, unparalleled privilege of purchasing a restricted imperial commodity."
He stopped directly in front of the arrogant steward of Wu, who was currently sweating profusely, suddenly very aware of the razor sharp halberd hovering mere inches from his throat. "If any man in this room raises his voice to an imperial scribe again," the Captain continued, his words falling like heavy stones, "if any man utters a single threat, or attempts to draw a weapon... you will not merely be physically thrown from this building and beaten in the streets."
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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