If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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They had positioned their remaining elite horse archers on the high ridges, planning to use the harsh, freezing terrain to bleed the Han infantry dry. They had rallied their courage, singing the ancient war songs of their ancestors, convincing themselves that the initial defeat was merely a surprise, and that now, facing a prepared steppe defense, the southerners would break against their resilience.
They thought they understood the war they were fighting.
They never knew what hit them.
The sheer, overwhelming firepower and the brilliant, ruthlessly modern tactics of the Han forces proved to be completely, utterly out of their realm of understanding.
As the sun crested the horizon, Lie Fan, mounted once more upon Pangu, gave the unified, merciless order to advance.
The three massive imperial armies violently started the attack once again across all fronts, and they did not attack like a traditional ancient army.
The nomads braced themselves on the ridges, drawing their composite bows, waiting for the Han infantry to march into range.
Instead, the Han infantry halted completely, far beyond the range of any nomadic arrow.
The silence stretched for a terrifying moment. And then, the earth itself was ripped apart.
Lie Fan did not send his men into the waiting trenches. He sent the artillery.
The mobile batteries of the Cannons, carefully positioned overnight by the engineers, unleashed a sustained, rolling barrage of high explosive shells.
This was not the solid iron balls of the initial shock attack, these were advanced, hollow cast iron spheres packed with highly refined, tightly compacted gunpowder and fitted with timed fuses, a technological leap born entirely from Lie Fan's otherworldly knowledge.
The shells arched high into the gray sky, shrieking like descending demons, before plunging directly into the heart of the nomadic defensive lines.
They did not bounce, they detonated in mid air and upon impact.
The explosions were apocalyptic. The hidden trenches, meant to trap horses, became mass graves as the high explosive shells blew the frozen earth apart, burying hundreds of warriors alive under tons of debris.
The elite horse archers positioned on the ridges were completely engulfed in roaring spheres of orange flame and jagged, supersonic shrapnel that shredded through their leather armor and shattered their bones before they could even notch a single arrow.
The nomadic warlords stared in absolute, paralyzing horror as their carefully laid defenses were systematically, mechanically erased from existence from a distance they could not even comprehend, let alone counterattack.
And as the artillery barrage lifted, leaving the nomadic lines smoking, deafened, and completely disorganized, the Hwachas unleashed their secondary payload. Thousands of rocket propelled, flaming arrows screamed into the surviving ranks, setting the frozen grass and the riders' thick furs ablaze.
The psychological devastation was absolute. The nomads realized, with crushing, mind breaking despair, that courage and martial skill meant absolutely nothing in the face of industrialized slaughter. They were not fighting an army, they were fighting the wrath of the heavens.
Only then, when the enemy was completely broken, blinded by smoke, and deafened by the thunder, did Lie Fan unleash the leviathan.
"Forward!" Lie Fan's voice roared over the din of the battlefield, a sound that carried the absolute, unyielding mandate of the Dragon Throne.
The war drums beat a terrifying, rapid tempo. The heavy infantry advanced like a moving wall of iron, their halberds lowering in perfect, lethal synchronization.
But it was the vanguard that delivered the killing blow.
Lie Fan kicked Pangu into a terrifying gallop, charging straight into the smoke choked remnants of the nomadic center. Lu Lingqi rode directly by his side, her halberd spinning, her eyes alight with the intoxicating thrill of absolute victory, her Soaring Valkyries screaming their war cries as they crashed into the shattered lines.
The Yellow Ghost Bodyguards fell upon the surviving chieftains like shadows, their broadswords severing heads before the nomadic leaders could even draw their curved blades.
On the western front, Taishi Ci's heavy shock cavalry swept over the dunes, completely bypassing the ruined trenches and driving their lances straight through the panicked, fleeing Xiongnu riders.
On the eastern front, Huang Zhong's infantry advanced methodically, their repeating crossbows, yet another devastating innovation supplied by the Emperor, unleashing a continuous, unbroken hail of steel bolts that pinned the Wuhuan forces against the mountains, executing them with cold, mechanical efficiency.
The desperate, unified horde of the steppes did not even last an hour against the renewed assault.
The three massive imperial armies crashed down upon them like a tidal wave of black iron, shattering their formations, breaking their spirits, and driving the fractured, bleeding survivors deeper into the freezing oblivion of the north.
The Hengyuan Dynasty was not merely conquering the land, under Lie Fan's unified, merciless order, they were permanently, irrevocably cleansing the earth of its ancient fears.
On the bloody, smoke-choked battlefield, where the pristine white snow had been churned into a horrific, freezing mire of crimson slush and shattered bone, Lie Fan and Lu Lingqi quickly became the absolute God and Goddess of Death in the terrified eyes of the nomadic tribal warriors.
The steppes had known legendary warriors before; they sang songs of men who could shoot down eagles and wrestle bears. But they had never, in their darkest nightmares, conceived of the martial devastation that the Emperor of the Hengyuan Dynasty and his Empress were currently unleashing upon their vanguard.
Lie Fan was at the absolute epicenter of the slaughter, a terrifying, unstoppable singularity of violence. Mounted atop the monstrous black warhorse Pangu, he was ruthlessly taking out the enemy warriors left and right with a devastating, almost casual ease.
He did not fight like a man desperate to survive, he fought like an immortal entity executing a long overdue judgment. His dark, bespoke armor drank the ambient light, making him look like a shadow that had been given physical weight and a razor-sharp edge.
His terrifying strength was so immense, so completely beyond the biological limits of a normal human being, that the nomads could scarcely believe what they were witnessing. A group of heavily armored Xiongnu lancers, desperate to halt his advance, spurred their mounts into a suicidal charge, their spears leveled at the Emperor's chest.
Lie Fan didn't even bother to rein in Pangu. He simply tightened his grip on his legendary halberd, his muscles coiling like thick steel springs, and unleashed a horizontal sweep.
The sheer kinetic force of the blow tore the very air apart. A single swing of his heavy halberd could, and did, even kill their armored horses instantly, cleaving through man and beast alike with a sickening, wet crunch of snapping spines and shearing steel.
The heavy crescent blade did not halt or catch on bone; it passed through the charging lancers as if they were made of wet parchment, sending upper torsos and severed equine heads spinning into the bloody mud.
And it was not just his god like strength that broke the spirit of the horde. It was his terrifying, preternatural awareness. His otherworldly martial instincts, honed by a lifetime of war and elevated by the absolute perfection of his mysterious system's enhancements, allowed him to flawlessly block and parry all of their desperate, chaotic attacks.
When a dozen desperate Xianbei archers loosed armor piercing shafts at him from a flanking ridge, Lie Fan didn't even turn his head. He spun the shaft of his halberd with blinding speed, creating a literal wall of spinning steel that deflected every single arrow out of the air.
When a Wuhuan chieftain attempted to ambush him from his blind spot with a heavy spiked mace, Lie Fan ducked the blow by a fraction of an inch, his instincts warning him before the man even swung, and in the same fluid motion, drove the butt of his halberd backward, crushing the chieftain's chest cavity into a concave ruin.
He was untouchable. He was death incarnate.
As he became an unstoppable, psychological menace that systematically shattered their morale, spreading a freezing panic that was far more contagious than any disease, some of the surviving, panicked tribal chieftains realized they were on the precipice of total annihilation.
They knew that if the Emperor was not stopped, their armies would completely dissolve into a routing, cowardly mob. Desperate times called for suicidal measures. From the rear lines, they hastily coordinated via frantic horn blasts and hand signals, and sent their absolute best, most elite warriors, the heavily scarred, veteran champions who served as their personal Kheshigs, to completely surround Lie Fan in a coordinated attempt to trap and kill him.
Dozens of these elite steppe champions, massive men clad in overlapping iron lamellar and wielding heavy, two handed glaives and bone crushing war hammers, swarmed toward the Emperor. They ignored the rest of the battle, throwing themselves into a tightening, fatal ring around Lie Fan, determined to drag the Dragon down into the mud through sheer numbers.
But the ambush completely didn't work. The chieftains had made a fatal, blinding miscalculation. They had focused so entirely on the God of Death that they had forgotten the Goddess riding at his side.
There was Lu Lingqi, fiercely fighting right beside him, a tempest of dark silver armor and crimson silk. The moment the elite nomadic champions attempted to close the circle around her husband, she struck with the fury of a hurricane. She easily intercepted the attackers with her own deadly, flawless halberd skills.
She was faster than they were, her strikes possessing the lethal, inherited perfection of the Flying General, Lu Bu. When a massive Xiongnu champion raised his war hammer to crush Lie Fan from the side, Lu Lingqi spurred her warhorse forward, spinning her halberd in a tight, blinding arc that severed the man's hands at the wrists before driving the spear tip cleanly through his throat.
She fought with a cold, intoxicating joy, perfectly mirroring Lie Fan's rhythm. Wherever an enemy thought they saw an opening in the Emperor's defense, Lu Lingqi's blade was already there, reaping lives, protecting his flanks, and ensuring that no blade came within three feet of his armor.
And they were not alone.
The moment the elite nomadic warriors had attempted their ambush, the terrifying Yellow Ghost Bodyguards, who had been operating as a silent, rolling execution squad just behind the royal couple, seamlessly stepped in. They did not roar battle cries. They did not seek glory. They simply moved like liquid shadows, slipping through the gaps in the horses, their dark iron masks reflecting the fires of the burning steppes.
They took on the charging elite warriors with cold, mechanical precision, slaughtering them without mercy. An elite Xianbei swordsman found his blade parried by a Yellow Ghost's heavy broadsword, and in the next heartbeat, a second Ghost had stepped into his guard, sliding a dagger up through the gaps in his armor, directly into his heart.
The bodyguards operated as a single, hive mind organism, isolating the nomadic champions, ham stringing their horses, and butchering them in the freezing mud with clinical, horrifying efficiency.
Because of this unstoppable, utterly flawless vanguard, the center of the nomadic line was entirely liquefied. The sight of their greatest champions being effortlessly slaughtered by the Emperor, his wife, and his silent assassins finally broke the last remaining shards of courage within the tribal ranks.
The panic became absolute. The second wave of the imperial attack resulted in a massive, sweeping victory as well. The heavy Han infantry pushed forward like an inexorable wall of grinding iron, marching over the piles of the nomadic dead, while Taishi Ci and Huang Zhong's forces executed identical, crushing maneuvers on the western and eastern flanks.
The three big tribes of the Xiongnu, Xianbei, and Wuhuan were violently pushed back yet again, their formations shattering into thousands of fleeing, terrified fragments.
They were routed from the battlefield, forced to abandon their wounded, their supply trains, and their pride, losing even more of their vital, ancestral territories as the Hengyuan forces relentlessly marched forward, planting the crimson banners of the Emperor deep into the permafrost of the north.
Days later, far beyond the reach of the Cannons, deep within the harshest, most desolate stretches of the northern tundra, the howling winds masked the sounds of a defeated people.
The situation for the nomads had degraded from a tactical retreat into a full scale, apocalyptic exodus. The survivors were starving, freezing, and bleeding. Their numbers had been culled by tens of thousands, and the invincible Han army was methodically building forward operating bases in the very pastures they had just been driven from.
In a hidden, rocky gorge, shielded from the biting gales by towering walls of black stone, a secret meeting took place.
Realizing the apocalyptic dangers they are currently in, and recognizing with horrifying clarity that their individual forces are being systematically, mathematically annihilated by Lie Fan's war machine, the battered tribes finally, albeit very reluctantly, decided to swallow their bitter pride and their ancient blood feuds.
Inside a massive, patchwork tent made of scavenged furs and hides, the surviving leadership of the steppes sat in a tense, suffocating circle. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, dried blood, and centuries of ingrained hatred.
To the left sat the remnants of the Xiongnu leadership, scarred, battered warlords whose arrogance had been literally blown apart by high explosive shells.
To the right sat the Xianbei chieftains, men who had lost their great Khan Kuitou to the Xiongnu, yet now found themselves forced to share the same breathing air.
And at the far end sat the Wuhuan leaders, deeply mistrusted by both sides for their recent opportunistic backstabbing, yet accepted into the tent because every single bow was now a necessity for survival.
They had secretly contacted each other through desperate, night riding messengers, agreeing to a parley. For the first time in generations, no weapons were drawn in the meeting tent, though every hand rested tightly upon a hilt.
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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