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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Thwip. Thwip. Thwip. Every time a Wei officer tried to rally a broken formation, an arrow with white fletching suddenly appeared in his eye socket.
Every time a defender tried to light a pot of boiling oil to pour down upon the Hengyuan troops still scaling the ladders, Huang Zhong's arrow found their throat, sending the oil spilling harmlessly across the stone. He was an angel of death, ensuring that Lie Fan and the vanguard generals could operate without fear of organized, coordinated counter attacks.
Within minutes of the drawbridge dropping, the section of the eastern wall immediately surrounding Lie Fan was transformed into a slaughterhouse. The Wei soldiers, already demoralized and shell shocked by the bombardment, found themselves facing martial gods. They broke.
Panic spread like a virus along the eastern battlements. Seeing their captains killed with effortless ease, seeing the monstrous Dian Wei tossing grown men like ragdolls, and seeing the terrifying, blood soaked figure of Lie Fan advancing without taking a single scratch, the will of the Wei defenders evaporated.
They began to throw down their weapons, turning and fleeing toward the inner stairs, desperate to escape the meat grinder.
Lie Fan stood amidst the carnage, his halberd dripping with crimson. He did not pursue the fleeing soldiers, he left that to the regular infantry who were now pouring over the walls in an unstoppable black tide. He looked out over the city of Chang'An, past the immediate smoke and blood, his eyes fixed on the distant, towering roofs of the imperial palace.
The outer shell of the capital had been cracked. The elite vanguard had secured the high ground, and the gates would soon be thrown open from the inside.
The age of Cao Cao was bleeding out on the stones of the eastern wall, and as the sounds of victory began to rise from the southern and western fronts as well, Lie Fan knew that the unification of the land was no longer a dream. It was a reality, forged in fire, paid for in blood, and secured by his own hand.
But a beast as vast and deeply rooted as the Wei Dynasty does not die without a final, desperate thrashing of its claws.
While Lie Fan, Dian Wei, Zhang Liao, Taishi Ci, and Zhang Mancheng anchored the primary breach, drawing the bulk of the terrified defenders into a meat grinder of their own making, a specialized detachment of elite Hengyuan shock troops broke away from the main melee.
Their objective was clear and critical, push southward along the battlements, breach the heavily fortified gate control room, and sever the massive iron chains that held the eastern gates shut.
Below them, the colossal Hengyuan battering rams were already hammering against the thick oak, the rhythmic, booming impacts shaking the very foundations of the wall. If the control room fell, the gates would open, and the hundred thousand men waiting on the plains would flood into Chang'an like a dark ocean.
The Hengyuan elites, clad in heavy black iron and wielding short swords and heavy tower shields, battered their way down the narrow stone walkway.
They moved with mechanical efficiency, shoving aside the demoralized Wei conscripts. They reached the heavy, iron banded doors of the gatehouse, their weapons raised to shatter the hinges.
Suddenly, the doors were violently kicked open from the inside.
A disciplined, terrifyingly silent wall of Wei's most elite heavy infantry, the remnants of the the elite tiger soldiers, spilled out onto the walkway, their shields locking perfectly together, their spears thrusting forward in a lethal, synchronized wave.
The Hengyuan vanguard, caught off guard by the sudden organized resistance, was forced to halt, raising their own shields to absorb the punishing blows.
Stepping out from the shadows of the gatehouse, moving with a fluid, deadly grace, were two figures who instantly anchored the wavering Wei defense.
It was Zhang He and Yu Jin.
"Hold the line!" Yu Jin roared, his voice cutting through the chaos with the practiced authority of a master tactician.
He did not charge blindly into the fray, instead, he directed his elite soldiers with precise commands, shifting their formation to maximize the narrow chokepoint of the walkway, turning a simple corridor into an impassable fortress of spears.
Beside him, Zhang He was a whirlwind of lethal elegance. Wielding his signature spear, he moved like a dancer performing a deadly waltz.
Every thrust of his spear found a gap in the Hengyuan armor, every sweep of his shaft sent a man tumbling over the high stone edge. He fought not with brute rage, but with a terrifying, calculating joy.
Together, the two Wei generals proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. The Hengyuan elite soldiers, accustomed to cutting through panicked conscripts, suddenly found themselves outmaneuvered by Yu Jin's flawless defensive formations and butchered by Zhang He's peerless martial skill. They were being pushed back, step by bloody step, away from the control room mechanisms.
Further down the wall, Lie Fan and his immediate retinue were entirely consumed by their own bloody work. The sheer volume of bodies pressing against them, desperate defenders trying to push the Emperor back into the siege towers, obscured their line of sight. They did not yet notice that the critical objective of opening the gates was failing.
But someone else did.
Perched high atop the protective wooden canopy of the largest Climbing Tiger's ladder, Huang Zhong stood like a weathered statue of a war god.
His sharp, hawkish eyes scanned the battlefield through the thick, swirling clouds of black powder smoke and burning pitch. He saw the momentum stalling at the gatehouse. He saw the distinct, elegant movements of Zhang He and the tactical shouting of Yu Jin.
The old tiger snorted, a plume of white breath escaping his lips in the cool afternoon air. He reached into his quiver, drawing two heavy, armor piercing arrows with distinctive white fletching.
He nocked them both onto the thick string of his massive composite bow. In one fluid, practiced motion, he drew the string back past his ear, the wood of the bow groaning under the immense tension, calculating the wind, the distance, and the chaotic movement of the melee in a fraction of a second.
He released. The twin arrows snapped forward, tearing through the air with a vicious hiss, aimed perfectly at the exposed throats of Zhang He and Yu Jin.
Down on the walkway, Zhang He was in the middle of executing a sweeping parry when his supernatural battlefield instincts suddenly flared to life.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, a cold chill running down his spine. He didn't think, he merely reacted. Abandoning his offensive strike, Zhang He spun, snapping his spear shaft upward in a blindingly fast arc.
Clack! Clack!
The wooden shaft of his spear struck the incoming arrows perfectly out of the air, shattering their shafts just inches before they could bury themselves into his and Yu Jin's flesh.
Up on the siege tower, Huang Zhong's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. It had been years since anyone had casually swatted his arrows from the sky. A fierce, predatory grin spread across the old general's face. He snorted again, taking the display of skill not as a frustration, but as a direct, personal challenge.
He reached back to his quiver to draw another arrow, intent on pinning Zhang He to the stone doorframe, but before his fingers could even touch the fletching, his own legendary instincts screamed a warning.
A sharp, high-pitched whistle cut through the din of battle, coming not from the wall below, but from an entirely different elevation.
Huang Zhong threw his upper body to the left, dropping his shoulder violently. A black fletched arrow streaked past his cheek, so close he felt the wind of its passage, before embedding itself with a heavy, vibrating THUD into the thick wooden post of the siege canopy right where his head had been a heartbeat prior.
Huang Zhong's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. He snapped his head around, tracing the trajectory of the arrow through the smoke filled sky. His gaze sailed past the immediate slaughter on the wall, past the inner courtyard, coming to rest on the peaked, tiled roof of a tall watchtower situated deep within the city's secondary defensive ring.
Standing atop the sloped ceramic tiles, his silhouette stark against the bruised sky, was Xiahou Yuan.
The Wei general held a massive, beautifully crafted war bow in his left hand. Even from this immense distance, Huang Zhong could see the deep, furious frown etched into Xiahou Yuan's face.
Xiahou Yuan was a master archer, a man who prided himself on never missing his mark. Seeing the old Hengyuan general effortlessly dodge his lethal sniper shot had clearly bruised his immense pride.
Through the haze of war, across a chasm of screaming men and burning buildings, the two master archers locked eyes.
When Xiahou Yuan saw that Huang Zhong had not only survived but had instantly pinpointed his exact hidden location, the frown on the Wei general's face slowly morphed into a dark, arrogant smirk.
He stood up straight, raising his great bow high into the air so it caught the light, and pointed the tip of it directly at Huang Zhong. He then made a sharp, sweeping gesture with his hand, a universal, undeniable challenge. An invitation to a duel of the bowstrings, right here, right now, above the heads of the dying.
Huang Zhong looked at the distant figure, looked at the arrow quivering in the wood beside him, and threw his head back. A loud, booming laugh erupted from his chest, a sound so full of pure, martial joy that it briefly startled the Hengyuan soldiers fighting on the ladders below him.
He raised his own bow high, returning Xiahou Yuan's gesture with a sweeping, dramatic wave of his hand, signaling his absolute, enthusiastic acceptance.
In another life, in a timeline unwritten, these two titans of the bow were destined to meet upon the rugged, forested slopes of Mount Dingjun many years in the future.
In that original tapestry of fate, they would have clashed leading massive armies, engaging in a grueling campaign of attrition and complex terrain tactics that would ultimately end with Huang Zhong cutting down the Wei general in a desperate, muddy melee.
But the threads of destiny had been violently rewoven by Lie Fan's conquest. The battle of Mount Dingjun would never happen. Instead, their fated duel was manifesting here, amidst the apocalyptic siege of Chang'An. And it was not a battle of armies, but a pure, unadulterated test of their greatest individual skills.
Furthermore, this was not the Huang Zhong of the original timeline, an elderly warrior fighting against the dying of the light. Thanks to Lie Fan's intervention and the trajectory of the Hengyuan Dynasty, Huang Zhong was still firmly in the prime of his immense strength, his muscles unyielding, his eyesight as sharp as an eagle's. Even as an old man, he had defeated Xiahou Yuan. In his prime, he was a force of nature.
The siege battle raging beneath them instantly faded into white noise. The sprawling, burning city of Chang'an became nothing more than the backdrop for their personal arena.
Xiahou Yuan struck first. He moved with blistering speed, his hands a blur as he drew and fired three arrows in rapid succession. The volley arched high into the sky, utilizing the plunging trajectory to drop down upon Huang Zhong's position behind the wooden canopy.
Huang Zhong did not just cower. He stepped out from the cover, his eyes tracking the black dots against the sky.
He sidestepped the first arrow, deflected the second with the thick wooden limb of his own bow, and caught the third arrow mid air with his bare, calloused hand, the friction burning his leather glove. "Too slow, boy!" Huang Zhong roared across the distance, tossing the captured arrow aside.
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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