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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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And so, while these foolish, unskilled warlords were still deeply embroiled in their pathetic, screaming argument, completely isolated from the harsh reality of the freezing winds outside, the earth suddenly began to violently shake.
It was not a subtle tremor. It was a deep, rhythmic, terrifying vibration that started in the very bedrock of the plains and traveled up through the frozen dirt, rattling the ornate silver wine cups on the council table and causing the stolen tapestries to sway violently.
The screaming warlords froze, their mouths hanging open in sudden, uncomprehending shock.
Outside the command tent, the sprawling, chaotic encampment of the nomads descended into instant, paralyzing terror. Men who had been sharpening their swords, women who had been tending to the starving fires, and the few remaining veteran warriors who actually understood what that sound meant all turned their eyes toward the southern horizon.
The massive, industrialized leviathan of the Hengyuan imperial armies had swiftly arrived at the edges of the open plains.
They had not marched to the sound of boasting horns or chaotic war cries. They had advanced with the terrifying, silent discipline that was the hallmark of Emperor Lie Fan's command. Over a million men, completely enveloping the southern, eastern, and western horizons, stepped into view in absolutely perfect, unbreakable formation.
It was an awe inspiring, blood chilling spectacle of supreme military dominance. The vast plains, which the nomads had believed would be the stage for their glorious cavalry charge, were suddenly walled off by an endless sea of black iron armor, towering steel shields, and a forest of razor sharp halberds that stretched as far as the human eye could see.
The deep crimson and gold banners of the Hengyuan Dynasty snapped in the freezing wind, casting a long, apocalyptic shadow over the disorganized, sprawling nomadic camp.
Lie Fan had not simply marched an army to meet them; he had constructed a continent spanning cage of iron, fully trapping their final stronghold against the jagged peaks of the northern mountains. There was absolutely no avenue of escape.
In the center of the imperial formation, mounted upon the monstrous black warhorse Pangu, sat Lie Fan. His dark, bespoke armor absorbed the pale winter light.
He looked out over the sprawling, pathetic camp of the holdouts, his eyes utterly devoid of mercy, pity, or the desire for a glorious, drawn out duel. He did not see worthy adversaries, he saw a festering disease that needed to be surgically, permanently cauterized from the face of the earth.
According to all the ancient, unwritten rules of warfare that the arrogant nomadic nobles were currently debating in their tent, an army of this size was supposed to halt.
They were supposed to send an envoy under a flag of truce to demand a formal surrender. They were supposed to wait for the enemy to hastily mount their horses, form their ranks, and present a proper, honorable line of battle before the first horn was blown.
But Lie Fan was the Black Dragon. He did not play by the rules of dead men.
Without even giving a single word of warning, without dispatching a single envoy to demand their surrender, and without waiting for a fraction of a second for the panicked nomads to form their ranks or mount their starving horses, Lie Fan simply raised his heavily gauntleted hand.
He held it suspended in the freezing air for a heartbeat, and then brought it down in a sharp, merciless slashing motion.
The execution was instantaneous.
Deafening, world shattering roars suddenly echoed across the sky.
From the elevated ridges just behind the Hengyuan heavy infantry lines, hundreds of Black Dragon Cannons, perfectly sighted and loaded with high explosive shells, fired in perfect, terrifying synchronization. A massive wall of blinding white smoke and roaring orange flame erupted from the imperial lines, stretching for miles across the horizon.
A split second later, the sky itself darkened as the artillery crews ignited the fuses on the massed batteries of the Hwacha rocket launchers.
Thousands upon thousands of screaming arrows, propelled by thick, highly combustible black powder, tore into the heavens. The high pitched, unearthly shrieking of the rockets completely drowned out the frantic, terrified screams of the nomads on the ground.
The arrogant Yuezhi noble and the bloated Fuyu warlord barely had time to stumble out of their command tent, their swords half drawn, their eyes wide with incomprehensible terror, before the sky fell upon them.
Devastating explosive shells from the heavy cannons slammed directly into the densely packed, disorganized center of the nomadic encampment. The concussive blasts were devastating.
Entire clusters of leather tents, supply wagons, and huddled warriors were instantly vaporized into clouds of red mist and splintered wood. The ground heaved and shattered, throwing men and horses dozens of feet into the air like broken dolls.
The massive, ornate command tent, where the cowardly nobles had just been arguing over the crown of the north, took a direct hit from a hollow cast iron sphere. It detonated with a blinding flash, instantly incinerating the warlords and erasing their petty, arrogant ambitions from existence in a fraction of a second.
And immediately following the earth-shattering impacts of the artillery shells came the merciless, unyielding storm of fire and iron from the Hwachas.
The explosive, incendiary arrows rained down upon the sprawling camp like a localized monsoon from hell. The highly combustible chemicals ignited the moment they struck, turning the freezing, snow covered plains into a boiling ocean of fire. Tents erupted into roaring infernos.
The few remaining nomadic cavalrymen, desperately trying to mount their panicked, deafened horses to initiate the glorious charge they had dreamed of, were instantly pinned to the frozen earth by dozens of flaming shafts, cooking alive inside their own armor.
There was no battle. There was no glorious last stand. There was no crossing of blades or tests of martial prowess.
It was an absolute, industrialized slaughter.
The Hengyuan artillery ruthlessly, mechanically pounded the trapped encampment, breaking the earth, shattering the ice, and completely erasing the last, defiant remnants of the Five Barbarian Tribes in a blinding, unending tempest of explosive violence that signaled the permanent, terrifying dawn of Lie Fan unifying the northern steppes.
The heavy, earth shattering bombardment continued without a single shred of mercy, transforming the once pristine, freezing northern permafrost into a literal vision of hell. For what felt like an eternity to the trapped nomads, the sky did not stop screaming.
The massive main encampment of the five tribes' remnants, the sprawling, disorganized collection of leather yurts, timber longhouses, and supply corrals that they had foolishly believed would be the staging ground for their glorious final stand, was being completely, methodically destroyed.
It was drowning in a boiling sea of localized fire and splintered wood. High explosive shells from the Black Dragon Cannons plunged into the earth with terrifying, rhythmic precision, each detonation throwing massive geysers of frozen mud, pulverized bone, and burning debris dozens of feet into the smoky air.
The rapid fire Hwachas unleashed wave after wave of incendiary rockets, blanketing the remaining tents in highly combustible chemicals that burned so hot they melted the iron rims of the nomadic wagon wheels. Men, horses, and the arrogant dreams of the surviving warlords were all indiscriminately ground into a blackened, bloody ash.
The overwhelming heat of the concentrated artillery barrage actually caused the deep winter snows to flash boil, creating a suffocating, scalding mist that trapped the surviving warriors in a blinding, chaotic nightmare where the very ground beneath their feet was exploding.
Finally, after the sheer volume of destruction had reached a point of absolute, mathematical perfection, ensuring that the command structures and central defenses were entirely liquefied, Lie Fan made his move. Standing perfectly still amidst the organized, bustling activity of his command lines, the Black Dragon raised his heavily gauntleted right hand into the freezing air.
He held it there for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes observing the burning ruin of the nomadic world, and then gave the definitive signal.
Instantly, the massive, hide bound command drum positioned at the absolute center of the Hengyuan formation was struck by a team of bare chested, muscular veterans wielding heavy wooden mallets.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The deep, bass-heavy shockwaves of the drumbeat rolled across the lines, cutting through the high pitched shrieking of the rockets. It was the absolute, unquestionable order to halt.
Immediately, the relentless, earth shaking bombardment of the heavy cannons and the rapid fire Hwachas came to a complete, synchronized stop. The imperial engineers, moving with flawless mechanical discipline, stepped back from their smoking bronze tubes and hot wooden rocket frames, dousing their slow matches in buckets of sand.
As the deafening, world-shattering explosions finally ceased, an incredibly eerie, ringing silence fell over the smoky, blood soaked battlefield. It was a heavy, suffocating quiet, entirely devoid of the proud war cries or the thundering hooves that had defined the steppes for millennia.
The only sounds that remained were the fierce crackle of the raging infernos consuming the tents, the sickening hiss of burning flesh, and the pathetic, broken groans of the dying men who were bleeding out in the craters. The smoke began to slowly drift and part in the bitter winter wind, revealing a flattened, charred wasteland where a massive army had stood just an hour prior.
Lie Fan did not give the survivors time to clear the ringing from their bleeding ears. He lowered his hand and nodded to his buglers.
He sounded the loud, massive brass war horns.
BWOOOOOOM.
The deep, mournful, and terrifying wail of the Hengyuan war horns echoed across the burning sky, a sound that promised absolute, inescapable doom. It was the definitive signal for the infantry and cavalry to move forward and harvest what the artillery had broken.
Down on the frozen plains, the peerless, legendary generals of the Hengyuan Dynasty immediately raised their weapons, their voices roaring over the ranks as they led the massive, overwhelming charges.
"Advance! Leave no armed man standing!" roared Zhang Liao, his scarred face set in a mask of stoic, terrifying determination as he swung his heavy blade forward.
"For the Emperor! Crush them into the mud!" bellowed the giant Dian Wei, his massive twin iron halberds catching the flickering light of the burning camp as he surged ahead of the central infantry block.
On the flanks, the swift, thundering cavalries charged first, moving with the terrifying speed and precision of a collapsing avalanche.
Zhao Yun, the Silver Dragon, led thousands of pristine light cavalrymen in a sweeping, flawless pincer movement, his white cape flowing behind him as his spear tipped forward, eager to sever the escape routes of the nomads.
Ma Chao, a vibrant blur of lethal energy, spurred his heavy shock cavalry directly through the smoking craters, his riders trampling the burning barricades beneath the iron-shod hooves of their massive warhorses.
Following immediately behind the cavalry came the true, unstoppable weight of the empire. The heavily armored infantries marched as a single, massive organism. Their polished steel tower shields formed an impenetrable, moving wall of iron, their long, razor sharp halberds lowered in perfect synchronization.
They stepped into the chaotic, burning enemy camp, their heavy boots crushing the charred remains of the nomadic legacy into the dirt.
Inside the blasted, smoky ruins of the encampment, the battered, bleeding warriors of what remained of the five tribes desperately tried to put up any kind of hasty defenses to protect their camp and their families.
It was a pathetic, deeply tragic display of futile courage. Men whose eardrums had been ruptured by the cannons, whose armor was blackened and fused to their skin by the incendiary rockets, scrambled over the splintered remains of their wagons to form a disorganized shield wall.
They clutched broken spears, chipped curved sabers, and half empty quivers, their eyes wide with the sheer, unadulterated terror of men who knew they were already dead. A group of Fuyu heavy infantrymen tried to lock their shields together near a burning granary, while a handful of dismounted Xiongnu horse archers desperately notched arrows with trembling, soot-stained fingers.
But their resistance was entirely meaningless. They were completely and effortlessly decimated by the fresh, high morale Hengyuan soldiers.
The imperial vanguard crashed into the hasty barricades like a tidal wave of black iron striking a crumbling sandcastle.
The exhausted, traumatized nomads stood absolutely no chance against soldiers who were perfectly fed, impeccably armed, and driven by a fanatical, burning devotion to their Emperor.
The Han halberdiers did not even break their marching rhythm. With cold, mechanical precision, they thrust their heavy polearms forward, the sheer kinetic force of the unified strike cleaving cleanly through the crude leather shields and battered iron armor of the steppe warriors.
The Fuyu defenders were instantly skewered, their bodies violently lifted from their feet and tossed aside into the freezing mud. The Xiongnu archers managed to loose a single, ragged volley that harmlessly deflected off the towering Han steel shields before Ma Chao's heavy cavalry smashed into them, the armored warhorses literally crushing the archers' skulls beneath their hooves.
The close quarters combat was visceral, intimately brutal, and entirely one sided. Hengyuan broadswords severed arms that desperately tried to parry, heavy iron boots stomped down on the chests of fallen chieftains, collapsing their ribcages with a sickening crunch.
The air grew incredibly thick with the coppery, suffocating stench of fresh arterial blood mixing with the sulfur of the artillery smoke.
Seeing the absolute, inescapable slaughter unfolding before their eyes, realizing that their martial pride was entirely useless against this industrialized meat grinder, the psychological breaking point of the horde was finally reached. Some of the broken, terrified nomadic warriors chose to drop their weapons. The curved sabers and bone handled daggers clattered uselessly against the frozen, blood slicked earth.
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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