The name of Luo Wen had made the entire continent tremble. To his contemporaries, he was the Undefeated Chancellor—the man who in barely a decade crushed the Four Families, contained the barbarians of the north, bent the Western Kingdom of Wei Lian to its knees in its own capital, and finally crowned himself emperor in Guangling. His reign was built upon ruins and corpses, but no one could deny the magnitude of his military and political talent.
However, just a few years after the proclamation of the State of Anyi by Xu Ping, and the unstoppable growth of Wei Lian's fleet among the islands, the emperor's body began to fail. He was barely thirty-two years old when physicians recorded the first symptoms: intermittent fevers, weight loss, persistent chest pains. Some attributed it to excessive campaigns, others to slow poisons administered by hidden enemies. The truth was that while his armies struggled to hold the Empire together, Luo Wen himself fought an internal enemy he could not defeat.
The court of Guangling was marked by a sepulchral silence. Luo Wen, who had once ridden at the head of a hundred thousand men, could barely sustain long council sessions without coughing blood. Chroniclers describe how his generals found him at night, bent over maps, with a burning gaze but a hunched body.
And yet, he refused to accept defeat.
"The body may fail," he declared, "but the will of the Empire will not fall with me."
Before the illness manifested, Luo Wen had proclaimed a surprising policy: suspend massive campaigns and dedicate twenty or thirty years to reconstruction. The people must breathe, fields must flourish again, villages must repopulate.
But the Undefeated Chancellor did not limit himself to declarations. With the same determination he had shown on the battlefield, he undertook a series of reforms that would transform the foundations of the Empire:
The Great Legal Simplification: The codes of ancient dynasties, transformed into a labyrinth of contradictions after centuries of additions, were reduced to a coherent set of laws. Each province received the same legal framework, eliminating regional privileges that had fragmented the realm.
The Administrative Purge: Luo Wen established severe punishments against corruption. Officials caught embezzling funds lost not only their positions but also their properties. Imperial inspectors, answering directly to the throne, watched every corner of the territory.
Tax Reform: Taxes on the peasantry were drastically reduced, while the nobility saw their tax burdens increased. "Whoever possesses more land owes more to the Empire," the emperor declared. This measure revitalized agriculture and reduced rural tensions.
Military Control: Perhaps the boldest reform was the centralization of the army. Noble troops were limited to small ceremonial guards, while all significant forces came under direct imperial control. Generals swore personal loyalty to the throne, not to their feudal lords.
Economic Stimulation: Large infrastructure projects were initiated: roads connecting provincial capitals, canals facilitating river transport, markets protected by imperial garrisons. Commerce flourished as it had not done in decades.
It was, without doubt, the work of a political genius. In barely three years, Luo Wen had laid the foundations of a modern, centralized State.
But then came the illness.
When physicians announced that his condition was grave and that his life was shortening, Luo Wen faced the cruelest reality of his reign. His reforms needed decades to consolidate. His son Luo Ji, though promising, lacked the experience and talent necessary to face enemies like Xu Ping and Wei Lian.
The emperor knew perfectly well the consequences of abandoning his reconstruction policy. Each campaign would drain resources the Empire needed to heal. Each soldier killed would be an irreplaceable loss for a kingdom still convalescing.
But he also knew what his death would mean: Xu Ping and Wei Lian would not hesitate to exploit his successor's inexperience. The State of Anyi would expand without resistance, while the Maritime Kingdom would consolidate its naval dominance.
After nights of solitary deliberation, Luo Wen made a decision that contradicted all his political wisdom: he would launch a series of limited campaigns, not to completely destroy his enemies, but to weaken them enough before his death. It was a calculated sacrifice: exchanging the Empire's long-term future for a chance of short-term survival.
"I prefer to bequeath an impoverished but secure Empire than a prosperous but doomed realm," he murmured to his closest advisors.
The State of Anyi had consolidated itself around improvised fortresses, reinforced mountain passes, and villages transformed into garrisons. Xu Ping had made the terrain his greatest weapon, and each valley was a stronghold of the People's Army.
Luo Wen knew he could not gather a hundred thousand men again. He chose the opposite: he selected thirty thousand veterans, hardened by countless battles, and sent them north in a lightning campaign.
The impact was immediate. Several peasant fortresses, raised with wood and rammed earth, burned under imperial siege. Entire garrisons were massacred, and the dragon standard waved again over strategic enclaves.
But Xu Ping did not fall into the trap. He avoided direct combat, withdrawing toward deep valleys. His troops, though battered, remained intact. Each lost fortress was replaced by another farther back, each razed village was replaced by peasants who joined with renewed fury.
Imperial chroniclers recorded the emperor's frustration:
"The Chancellor conquered on the battlefield, but the State of Anyi was like water: it allowed itself to be struck, fragmented, and then reunited with greater strength."
On the sea, the threat of Wei Lian was even more dangerous. Its fleet expanded, harassed the imperial coasts, and dominated trade routes. Here, however, Luo Wen achieved his greatest success, as naval battles did not require large armies and mass mobilizations.
The emperor reorganized what remained of the imperial navy with an efficiency that recalled his best days. He gathered shipyards in Guangling, reinforced ancient galleys with new naval construction techniques, and sent his finest admirals and even himself at times to command the renovated fleet.
The naval campaigns were devastating for Wei Lian. The imperials were not limited to minor raids: they launched a coordinated offensive on three fronts that recovered practically all the islands near the continent. Major islands like Qingyu, with its natural shipyards; Baishui, with its deep ports; and the strategically crucial fortress of Langshan, which controlled the passage between the continent and the outer archipelago, fell one after another under imperial power in a series of perfectly coordinated amphibious assaults.
In Guangling, heralds proclaimed victories that this time were completely real: "The imperial dragon has reclaimed its dominion over the waters! The rebellious islands have returned to the imperial fold!"
Wei Lian's losses were catastrophic in strategic terms. Although it retained approximately 60% of its maritime territory—mainly the islands farthest from the continent, where imperial logistics could not sustain permanent garrisons—it lost crucial strategic bases and saw its capacity to harass the imperial coasts severely limited. Its kingdom, once a direct threat to the heart of the Empire, was confined to a distant archipelago from where it could only launch occasional raids.
It was, without doubt, the greatest military achievement of the twilight campaigns, a demonstration that Luo Wen's tactical genius remained intact despite the illness consuming his body.
The twilight campaigns had mixed but significant results in the continental balance of power. Against Xu Ping, though not decisive, they demonstrated that the People's Army could be struck and contained, that it was not the invincible force some believed. Against Wei Lian, the victories were crushing, reducing the maritime kingdom to a shadow of its former threat and returning to the Empire control of waters crucial to its commerce.
But the cost was enormous, both material and human. Resources destined for reforms were diverted toward war: gold that should have financed roads was spent on warships; iron destined for agricultural tools was forged into swords; men who should have rebuilt villages died on distant islands. The imperial coffers, which were beginning to recover thanks to flourishing commerce, were emptied once again. The veterans who had survived decades of conflict, the Empire's most experienced and loyal soldiers, died on distant islands or mountain valleys, taking with them irreplaceable military knowledge.
And most serious for Luo Wen: his own health deteriorated rapidly under the stress of directing two simultaneous wars. Nights planning campaigns, studying naval maps and coordinating troop movements; days riding toward fronts when his condition permitted, inspecting fortifications and rallying soldiers; the constant tension of directing complex military operations while fighting a body that failed day after day—all this exhausted what remained of his vital forces.
Later historians would debate eternally whether the twilight campaigns were an act of strategic genius or desperation. Some would see them as the last glow of a military genius, a demonstration that even dying, Luo Wen could alter the destiny of continents. Others would condemn them as the error of a man who sacrificed the future for the present. What is certain is that they definitively changed the balance of power: Wei Lian never fully recovered from its troop losses, and Xu Ping, though intact as a military force, had learned to respect imperial power and measure his ambitions.
At thirty-six years old, Luo Wen finally succumbed to his illness. His body, exhausted by the effort of sustaining an Empire in arms, could resist no longer.
He died in Guangling, in his palace blackened by the fires of ancient wars, surrounded by generals and scribes. His final gaze was toward the maps of the continent, where imperial borders had stabilized for the first time in years.
Imperial chronicles relate that on his deathbed, he murmured:
"I have bought time for the Empire. May my son know how to use it."
With the death of the Undefeated Chancellor, the throne passed to his son Luo Ji, barely twenty-one years old. The initial contrast was brutal and obvious to the entire court: from a father who embodied war and iron will, to a young man apparently without the experience or political talent necessary to govern a complex and threatened empire. The coronation ceremony was somber, celebrated under the threat of enemies awaiting any sign of weakness.
The nobility, repressed for years by Luo Wen's relentless reforms, immediately saw the opportunity to recover lost influence. Internal factions began to tear the court of Guangling apart, with lords who had remained silent during the father's reign now openly challenging imperial reforms. Some generals directly questioned the authority of the young emperor, arguing that he lacked the military experience necessary to lead armies.
Xu Ping, with his ever-alert political instinct, immediately perceived the weakness of the transition and launched limited offensives to test imperial resistance and the new emperor's capacity to respond. Wei Lian, though severely weakened by the twilight campaigns, attempted to exploit the confusion to recover some of the lost islands, sending reconnaissance fleets toward imperial bases.
The first two years of Luo Ji's reign were chaotic and confirmed the worst fears of those who doubted his ability. The young emperor seemed to justify all his father's concerns: indecisive in council when quick answers were needed, timid before the generals when he should have imposed authority, unable to impose his will over the rebellious nobility that openly challenged imperial reforms. But gradually, as he matured under pressure, he managed to control the internal struggles against the nobility and stabilize the front through a combination of calculated concessions and firmness when necessary.
After some initial limited offensives to test imperial power and confirm their suspicions about the weakness of the new regime, the Western Kingdom and the State of Anyi exploited what they perceived as a unique opportunity to counterattack massively against the Empire while its leadership consolidated. Wei Lian managed to completely retake everything lost during the twilight campaigns and even captured some additional islands that had previously been indisputed imperial territory. Xu Ping was even more successful, managing not only to recover lost territories but to expand his control to nearly double his previous territory, before the imperial situation finally stabilized under Luo Ji's mature leadership and the borders returned to a stable equilibrium.
Later chroniclers interpreted the end of Luo Wen as a lesson about the price of absolute power. He was the emperor who won the most wars and at the same time sacrificed the most for the Empire's survival. He founded a new Empire on ruins, left reforms that would endure centuries, and died having ensured that his enemies could not destroy his work.
His twilight campaigns, especially the devastation of Wei Lian, definitively altered the destiny of the Empire. That weakening of his enemies prevented them from destroying the Empire during the transition period after his death through their earlier strengthening. The continent remained divided into three States, but none any longer had the strength to destroy the others. A tense but lasting balance had been established.