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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Xun You looked up, his eyes meeting the dark, omniscient gaze of the Black Dragon. He asked Lie Fan what this unprecedented spirit of a unified ethnic identity will be called. "What name shall we give to this fire, Your Majesty? What word will be powerful enough to replace the names of their ancestors?"
Lie Fan did not answer immediately. He slowly turned away from his council, walking to the very edge of the platform. He rested his heavy, gauntleted hands on the wooden railing and looked out over the vast, conquered northern plains.
Below him, the smoke from the ruined nomadic encampments was finally beginning to clear, revealing the endless, disciplined ranks of his million man army managing the three hundred thousand terrified captives. It was a canvas of blood and snow, waiting for him to paint the future upon it.
When Lie Fan finally spoke, his voice resonated with a profound, undeniable power that seemed to vibrate in the very timber of the platform beneath their feet.
He boldly says that it will be called the spirit of "Nationalism."
"Nationalism," Lie Fan repeated, letting the completely foreign, impossibly heavy word hang in the freezing air, allowing his advisors to taste the terrifying, absolute weight of its meaning.
He turned back to face them, his crimson cape billowing violently behind him, his dark eyes burning with the fires of a visionary sovereign who was dragging an ancient world kicking and screaming into the future.
"It is not merely a name, Xun You. It is an unyielding, unbreakable condition of the heart and mind," Lie Fan passionately elaborated, stepping back into the center of his council. "It is an unwavering, patriotic spirit dedicated entirely, completely, and without reservation to the Hengyuan Dynasty. Nationalism means that the state becomes the father and the mother of the people. It means that when a man looks at the imperial banner, he does not see a piece of cloth representing a distant Emperor in Xiapi, he sees his own home, his own blood, and his own ultimate purpose."
Sima Yi's eyes widened, his mind instantly racing through the terrifying administrative implications of what Lie Fan was suggesting. To weaponize the very identity of the populace, to turn their loyalty from a fragile, coerced obedience into a fanatical, self sustaining devotion, it was the ultimate, flawless mechanism of permanent control.
"But to forge this," Lie Fan continued, his voice dropping into a register of strict, calculating pragmatism, "we cannot rely on rhetoric and philosophy alone. Nationalism cannot be built if a man from the northern borders cannot speak to a man from the southern coasts without the aid of a translator."
Lie Fan looked directly at Lu Xun and Xu Shu, the two advisors who deeply understood the cultural mechanics of the empire. He passionately elaborated that this monumental, generational cultural project will also necessitate the creation and ruthless enforcement of a unified, standardized national language.
"We will standardize the spoken tongue, just as Qin Shi Huang once standardized the written script and the weights of the market," Lie Fan commanded, his vision sweeping across the entire continent. "Every school that we build, every imperial edict that is read in the village squares, every merchant who wishes to trade on the wagonways, and every soldier who holds a spear in my army will speak this one, unified language. We will drill it into the minds of the children until it becomes as natural as breathing."
Lie Fan explained that this linguistic unification was the absolute, non negotiable cornerstone of his new world order. He knew that language was the ultimate barrier to true assimilation.
By forcing a singular, overarching tongue upon the populace, he would make that deep sense of brotherhood and belonging even more absolute across the vast empire.
If the captured nomadic children in the north grew up speaking the exact same words, singing the exact same patriotic anthems, and reading the exact same imperial histories as the children in the southern jungles, the illusion of their differences would completely evaporate.
However, Lie Fan was a master of psychological balance. He was not a clumsy tyrant who sought to eradicate the past through blind, heavy handed destruction. He knew that forcing people to abandon their native tongues entirely would only breed resentment, secret rebellions, and an underground preservation of the very tribal identities he was trying to supersede.
Therefore, he immediately issued a brilliant, vital caveat to his grand cultural decree.
"We will enforce the national language as the absolute law of public life, commerce, and governance," Lie Fan stated, raising a gauntleted finger to emphasize his point. "But, we will of course carefully not abandon the rich local languages and native dialects of the provinces. I do not care if they speak Qiang, Baiyue, or Xianbei inside the privacy of their own homes, around their own dinner tables, or in the songs they sing to their infants."
He looked at his advisors, ensuring they grasped the delicate genius of this dual identity system.
"By allowing them to keep their native dialects in private, we offer them the illusion of cultural preservation," Lie Fan explained, a cold, calculating smile touching his lips. "They will not feel as though their heritage is being violently erased, which removes the desperate, emotional catalyst for rebellion. But by ensuring that all power, all wealth, all education, and all military advancement is strictly locked behind the mastery of the national language, we guarantee that their native dialects will naturally, slowly fade into irrelevance over the coming centuries, becoming nothing more than quaint, harmless regional accents."
It was a masterstroke of geopolitical and sociological engineering. It was a slow, invisible, and completely unstoppable poison designed to kill the ancient tribal factions with comfort and assimilation rather than the sword.
The four brilliant advisors stood in absolute, breathless silence. They were frantically trying to process this world changing concept.
Their minds, usually so sharp and immediate in their tactical responses, were completely redlining as they tried to visualize the sheer, staggering logistical nightmare of implementing a standardized spoken language and forging a unified 'Nationalism' across an empire of millions of people who had spent thousands of years hating each other.
Sima Yi opened his mouth to speak, likely to ask about the immense number of scholars and academies that would need to be commissioned to even begin such a task, while Xu Shu's brow was furrowed in deep, troubled thought regarding the immediate pushback they would face from the stubborn regional nobles.
Seeing his brilliant advisors frantically trying to process this world changing concept, their faces a mixture of profound awe and administrative terror, Lie Fan simply chuckled. It was a low, dark sound that briefly cut through the heavy tension on the platform.
He waved his gauntleted hand dismissively, cutting off their incoming barrage of panicked logistical questions.
"Do not break your minds attempting to solve a century long problem in a single afternoon, my friends," Lie Fan said, his tone softening slightly, granting them a momentary reprieve from the staggering weight of the future. He turned away from the edge of the platform and walked back toward the stairs leading down to the encampment.
He said that they will speak much more of this highly complex, generational political endeavor later, when they finally return back to the warmth and safety of the imperial capital. The freezing, blood soaked steppes were the place for breaking the old world, not for writing the detailed laws of the new one.
For now, returning to his role as the supreme military commander, Lie Fan's demeanor instantly hardened back into the absolute, uncompromising focus of the Black Dragon. He looked at Sima Yi and Xun You, his eyes dark and commanding.
He firmly commanded them to clear up the battlefield area and formally conclude the northern campaign.
"The blood has dried, the Khans are dead, and the threat is extinguished," Lie Fan ordered strictly, his voice carrying the final, undeniable mandate of the war. "I want every single corpse processed. I want every single usable weapon stripped from the mud. I want the three hundred thousand prisoners organized, bound, and prepared for the long march south. Because after everything is fully secured, and not a single rebellious ember remains in this freezing wasteland, we will begin the long, triumphant march back to Xiapi."
Hearing the finality of the imperial decree, the four advisors snapped out of their sociological shock and instantly reverted to the flawless, terrifyingly efficient military administrators they were.
They bowed deeply to their Emperor, their voices ringing out in perfect unison.
"It shall be done exactly as you command, Your Imperial Majesty!"
And so, immediately after that imperial decree was given, the massive, chaotic, and incredibly complex logistical cleaning up of the encampments was in full progress.
The entire million man Hengyuan leviathan shifted gears from an instrument of apocalyptic destruction into an army of scavengers and organizers.
Thousands of heavy infantrymen were deployed across the cratered, burning plains, tasked with the grim duty of mass burials to prevent the outbreak of disease when the eventual spring thaw arrived.
Massive trenches were dug into the permafrost using explosives and heavy iron spades, and the broken bodies of the five nomadic tribes were unceremoniously dumped into the earth, their ancient rivalries finally ending in a shared, anonymous grave.
Meanwhile, the quartermasters and the engineering corps executed a flawless salvaging operation. They swept through the charred ruins of the tribal command camps, breaking open hidden silver chests, cataloging the surviving herds of tough, winter hardened steppe ponies, and gathering thousands of intact composite bows, quivers, and heavy battle axes.
Everything of value was meticulously recorded in Sima Yi's massive ledgers, loaded onto the steam-forged imperial supply wagons, and officially claimed as the spoils of the Hengyuan Dynasty.
Simultaneously, the three hundred thousand terrified nomadic captives, the women, the children, the elderly, and the broken remnants of the surviving warriors, were aggressively processed. They were stripped of all remaining weapons, heavily guarded by the imposing Yellow Ghost Bodyguards and the elite shock cavalry, and organized into massive, tightly controlled marching columns.
The weeping of the captured women and the confused cries of the orphaned children filled the freezing air, a haunting soundtrack to the death of the nomadic world.
Then, after days of grueling, non stop labor in the freezing temperatures, after all the spoils, weapons, and prisoners were properly accounted for and it was all done, Lie Fan made his final, critical military arrangements for the steppes.
He knew that simply conquering a territory and leaving it empty was an invitation for future disaster. The steppes were vast, and there were undoubtedly tiny, isolated clans hiding deep in the Siberian forests who had not joined the grand alliance. If the imperial army simply marched away, those hidden clans would eventually creep back down, scavenge the ruins, and begin the cycle of raiding all over again.
To ensure that the newly forged Confederacy of the Northern Tribes remained absolutely subservient, and to permanently project the terrifying power of the Dragon Throne over the frozen tundra, Lie Fan issued one final strategic order.
He strategically ordered a massive, heavily armed garrison of around 200,000 men to permanently stay behind here.
This was not a token force of tired veterans, it was a fully functional, highly lethal occupation army. Lie Fan specifically selected a mixture of battle hardened heavy infantry, elite crossbowmen, and the toughest, most cold resistant cavalry units from the northern commands.
They were left with vast stockpiles of winter grain, thousands of tons of black powder, and a massive battery of Black Dragon Cannons.
Their orders were absolute: they were to firmly guard and pacify the new northern border. They were tasked with retrofitting the captured, sturdy Xianbei stone and timber fortifications into permanent Hengyuan citadels.
They were to oversee the assimilation of the remaining scattered tribes, violently crush any hint of rebellion before it could spark, and serve as the unyielding, iron fist of the Emperor in the deepest, darkest reaches of the north. They were the wardens of the frozen apocalypse, ensuring that the wolves of the steppes would never, ever howl against the central plains again.
With the newly expanded borders completely secured, the permanent garrisons established, and the ashes of the five tribes scattering in the northern winds, Emperor Lie Fan finally turned his monstrous black warhorse, Pangu, toward the south.
The grand campaign was over. The Black Dragon had won.
Lie Fan then brought the rest of his colossal, victorious army, a terrifying sea of polished black iron, deep crimson banners, and rumbling artillery carriages, and began the journey home.
Alongside the marching legions moved the massive, staggering caravan of the 300,000 nomadic captives, dragging their feet through the snow, leaving their ancestral homelands behind forever to be fed into the grand, assimilating furnace of the new empire.
The earth trembled under the synchronized boots of the returning leviathan. The freezing, biting winds of the steppes were slowly, gradually replaced by the slightly warmer, more forgiving breezes of the central plains as they crossed back past the fortified and renovated stones of the Great Wall.
The Emperor rode at the absolute center of this magnificent, world altering procession, his concubine Lu Lingqi riding proudly at his side, his peerless generals flanking him, and his brilliant advisors plotting the future of human civilization in his wake. They proudly marched back to the central mainland, not merely as an army returning from a successful border skirmish, but as the undisputed, absolute masters of the known world, carrying the bloody spoils of the north.
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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