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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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They were currently managing the Wagonways Department, but their minds were flexible enough to absorb the Daoist alchemical translation he had written. They would begin constructing the very first copper and iron prototypes in the deepest, most secure wings of the Ministry of Work. With the steam engine and flamethrower seeds securely planted, Lie Fan rolled his neck, feeling a satisfying crack of his vertebrae. The night was growing incredibly late, but the visionary fire burning within his chest refused to be extinguished.
He turned his focus toward the other myriad technologies and items he could bring into this world to cement his dynasty's absolute invincibility on the land.
His mind naturally gravitated toward the open battlefield. He thought of his heavy infantry, his charging cavalry, and his artillery.
He was thinking of beginning to introduce muskets next.
It was the most logical, devastating progression of warfare.
The Hengyuan Dynasty already possessed a deep, fundamental understanding of gunpowder. His alchemists had perfected the chemical ratios of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal to fuel the terrifying Black Dragon Cannons.
Yet, as Lie Fan thought about the current state of his empire's personal arsenal, a deep furrow of annoyance creased his brow.
His alchemists, master craftsmen, and brilliant engineers had completely stagnated in their military thinking. They hadn't even begun to look in the direction of personal firearms. Instead, they were entirely obsessed with making massive, cumbersome explosives. They spent their days drafting new concepts for giant, heavy bombs, completely convinced that the future of war lay in simply creating a larger explosion.
In Lie Fan's mind, this was a complete waste of resources and an absolute lack of priority. They already had massive, wall-shattering cannons. They already possessed terrifying volley weapons like the Hwachas that rained explosive arrows upon the enemy.
They had the fierce Fire Lances that sprayed sparks and shrapnel, and they had mastered the deployment of signaling and incendiary fireworks, which were already advanced enough to terrify any remaining tribal rebellions into absolute submission.
What they lacked was a fundamental equalizer, a weapon that could pierce the heaviest, thickest plate armor at a distance, wielded by a single, relatively untrained conscript.
He let out a heavy sigh, genuinely a bit disappointed that not even the brilliant Liu Ye had made the conceptual leap. In Lie Fan's mind, the logic was incredibly simple, almost painfully obvious. If you can forge a massive, heavy bronze tube to fire a twenty pound iron ball using expanding gunpowder gases... why couldn't you forge a very small, thin iron tube to fire a tiny lead ball?
That was, essentially, exactly how the first muskets and hand cannons were historically made. It was just shrinking the artillery down to the size of a walking stick.
Refusing to let the stagnation continue, Lie Fan pulled out another fresh sheet of parchment. If his engineers lacked the imagination to shrink a cannon, he would simply have to draw it for them.
He began drafting the very early, rudimentary concepts of these hand cannons. He didn't jump straight to flintlocks or complex rifling, that would require precision machining that simply didn't exist yet in the foundries. He started with the basics, the smoothbore matchlock musket.
He sketched the long, hollow iron barrel, emphasizing the need for thick, reinforced metal at the breech where the explosive pressure would be highest. He drew the wooden stock, designed specifically to be braced against the shoulder to absorb the violent, backward recoil of the blast.
He meticulously detailed the firing mechanism, the serpentine lever that held the slow burning match cord, the small trigger that, when squeezed, lowered the glowing ember directly into a small pan of fine priming powder, setting off the main charge inside the barrel.
It was an ugly, heavy, cumbersome weapon compared to a master-crafted recurve bow. It would take a full minute to reload, and it would be utterly useless in a heavy rainstorm.
But Lie Fan knew exactly what it represented.
A peasant with a bow required ten years of grueling, back breaking training to develop the muscle memory and the sheer physical strength to draw a heavy war bow capable of piercing armor.
But a peasant with a matchlock musket? He could be trained in two weeks. He could stand in a line, point the iron tube, and pull a lever, and the resulting supersonic lead ball would shatter the chest plate of an elite, lifelong noble cavalryman as easily as it would shatter a clay pot.
As his brush danced across the parchment, drawing the precise schematics of the trigger mechanism, Lie Fan's mind began to synthesize all of the disparate technologies he was introducing tonight.
The pieces of the grand puzzle were snapping together with terrifying, brilliant clarity.
He looked at the blueprints for the atmospheric Water Dragon pump, then at the continuous Fierce Fire Oil Cabinet, and finally at the schematics for the matchlock musket.
To arm a military of hundreds of thousands of men with personal firearms required an astronomical, mind boggling amount of high quality steel. The current, human and water powered bellows pumping air into the imperial blast furnaces could never reach the sustained, roaring temperatures required to mass produce that much flawless, unblemished iron. The musket barrels would be brittle, they would explode in the faces of his own men.
But Lie Fan imagined the near future. He imagined what would happen when Huang Yue Ying and Liu Ye perfected the steam pump.
He imagined how the new, massive steam powered engines could be hooked up to gigantic, mechanical bellows. The tireless, unyielding power of the trapped Qi would pump massive torrents of oxygen into the blast furnaces, day and night, without ever needing rest.
The furnaces would burn hotter than the surface of the sun. The metallurgical prodigies like Pu Yuan, fostered by the state, would oversee this industrialized hellscape, purifying the molten metal to absolute perfection.
Those steam powered blast furnaces could eventually mass produce the flawless steel needed to forge a million musket barrels.
Lie Fan leaned back in his chair, the brush hovering above the finished blueprints. The quiet, flickering shadows of the study seemed to dance around him.
He saw a future where his empire was bolted together by iron wagonways, where his navies breathed continuous, unquenchable fire across the oceans using technology ripped from the tenth century, and where his armies did not just march with spears and shields, but advanced behind a deafening, smoke filled wall of supersonic lead.
Several days passed by in a blur of relentless, sweeping administrative action. The grand unification celebrations had officially concluded, the streets of Xiapi had been swept clean of the festival debris, and the colossal bureaucracy of the Hengyuan Dynasty roared back to life with a terrifying, revitalized efficiency.
In the center of this administrative whirlwind, Emperor Lie Fan made his next monumental move. Staying entirely true to the promises he had made in the quiet sanctuary of his imperial study, he issued a formal, continent spanning edict.
The heavy, gold threaded silk scrolls were unfurled in the grand court and simultaneously read aloud by imperial heralds in every major city square from the coastal ports of the east to the newly subjugated mountain passes of the west.
The edict formally and officially established the Wagonways Department. It was no longer a theoretical pursuit or a minor experimental wing; it was now a heavily funded, entirely independent, and massively powerful bureau operating strictly under the umbrella of the Ministry of Work.
However, it was not the creation of the department itself that sent the empire into a collective, breathless shock. It was the specific name etched in bold, black ink right beside the title of Chief Engineer.
Lie Fan had officially appointed Madam Huang Yue Ying to the position.
With a single strike of his imperial seal, Lie Fan effectively made her the first ever female official in the recorded, thousands of years long history of the land.
This monumental, entirely unprecedented move was immediately highlighted by all statures of class. The news did not just ripple; it crashed like a tidal wave, sending absolute shockwaves from the highest, most secluded manors of the ancient nobility all the way down to the crowded, muddy streets of the common marketplaces.
In the teahouses and the taverns, the common people gossiped with wide eyed disbelief. For generations, the societal hierarchy had been set in stone, men ruled the courts and the battlefields, while women ruled the inner chambers and the hearth.
To hear that a woman had been elevated to a position of supreme bureaucratic and engineering authority, commanding thousands of male laborers, managing vast sums of the imperial treasury, and directing the construction of the empire's new iron arteries, was a concept so alien it bordered on the mythical.
But while the common people merely gossiped with curious fascination, the reaction among the old guard aristocracy and the deeply traditional Confucian scholars was one of pure, unadulterated, and suffocating panic.
To the old ways nobles, this was not just an administrative appointment, it was a direct, lethal strike against the very foundational pillars of their culture. It went entirely against their deeply ingrained patriarchal norms.
If a woman could hold office based purely on her intellectual merit, what other ancient traditions were vulnerable? What other hierarchies would the Black Dragon tear down? Their entire worldview was predicated on a strict, unyielding order, and Emperor Lie Fan had just casually tossed a lit torch into the center of it.
Naturally, the old guard nobles, the wealthy patriarchs of ancient clans, and the conservative scholars immediately attempted to mobilize.
They gathered in secret, hushed meetings within their lavish, heavily guarded private estates. They drafted lengthy, incredibly verbose petitions quoting ancient philosophers and citing centuries of historical precedent, attempting to logically argue why a woman in the imperial court would bring down the wrath of the heavens.
They tried to lobby the senior ministers. They sent discreet messengers with heavy chests of silver to the gates of Chancellor Jia Xu, Minister Lu Su, and even to the military commanders, trying to find out if this horrific breach of tradition could be rolled back, altered, or at the very least, severely limited in its scope.
However, their frantic, desperate efforts were completely, violently blocked.
When they tried to submit their petitions to the Ministry of Rites, the clerks flatly refused to accept them. When they attempted to bribe the imperial censors to speak out against the appointment in the morning court sessions, the silver was thrown back in their faces, accompanied by a stark warning that speaking against the Emperor's edict was tantamount to high treason.
The old nobles found themselves slamming headfirst into an impenetrable, invisible wall of pure imperial authority. They couldn't do a single thing. Their political leverage, which had once dictated the rise and fall of the Han Dynasty, was absolute zero under the reign of the Black Dragon.
Lie Fan had, of course, entirely anticipated this exact, frantic pushback. He was a master of human psychology, and he knew that ripping out the rotting roots of thousands of years of patriarchy would not happen without the old trees screaming.
He did not wait for the dissent to fester. He struck back immediately, utilizing the most terrifying, omnipresent tool in his vast arsenal.
Lie Fan ordered the drafting of a series of stern, uncompromising letters of warning. These were not public edicts meant for the town squares, these were deeply personal, highly targeted missives stamped with his private imperial seal.
In these letters, he did not politely argue theology or tradition. He commanded them, with the absolute, crushing weight of a sovereign who had just conquered the known world, not to go against his decision.
He declared, in sharp, unyielding calligraphy, that this appointment was not an experiment or a temporary whim. He stated that this has already been made reality. He boldly proclaimed that the elevation of merit over gender will be a core, fundamental part of the new culture he is currently forging in the fires of the new era.
And finally, he made it explicitly clear that having highly capable, brilliant women in positions of official power will become the absolute, unquestionable norm in the future of the Hengyuan Dynasty. If they could not adapt to this new reality, they would be left behind, or worse, crushed beneath the iron wheels of progress.
The delivery of these letters was a masterpiece of psychological terror.
This message didn't just arrive at the doorsteps of those who had openly protested or publicly submitted petitions. That would have been expected.
Instead, the letters arrived on the private desks of those who had only protested behind closed doors. They appeared on the pillows of nobles who had only whispered their disdain to their wives in the dead of night. They were slipped into the ledgers of scholars who had merely thought about drafting a complaint, but hadn't even said a single word out loud yet.
Almost everyone of significant status, especially the powerful, entrenched scholars and the ancient aristocratic families who secretly clung to the old Han traditions, received the warning letter.
A wealthy patriarch in Ye City woke up to find the Emperor's sealed letter resting perfectly atop his breakfast tray in his heavily guarded, locked bedchamber. A conservative minister in Luoyang found the missive tucked neatly inside a freshly opened scroll in his private, windowless study.
This terrifying, impossible display of surveillance and distribution was executed flawlessly through the Oriole Agents network. The shadows of the empire had deeply expanded across all of Hengyuan's newly unified domains, infiltrating every manor, every teahouse, and every inner courtyard.
When the nobles read the letters, their blood ran cold. The realization hit them with the force of a physical blow. It proved to them, once again, and in the most intimate, horrifying manner possible, that Lie Fan's eyes and ears were literally everywhere. He knew what they said in their locked rooms. He knew what they plotted in the dark. The sheer, suffocating dread of the Oriole network's omniscience completely broke the spirit of the old guard.
The whispers of rebellion died instantly. The petitions were burned in panicked hearth fires. The traditionalists bowed their heads, swallowed their ancient pride, and accepted the terrifying new reality. The Black Dragon had spoken, and the shadows had enforced his will. The first female official in history would remain exactly where he had placed her.
On the other hand, far removed from the suffocating, terrified silence of the old aristocratic estates, the atmosphere back at the newly designated headquarters of the Wagonways Department was one of explosive, vibrant, and industrious energy.
The department had been granted a sprawling, heavily fortified compound situated near the massive iron foundries in the outer industrial ring of Xiapi. The air here did not smell of delicate incense or aged wine, it smelled of burning coal, hot iron, and the sharp, metallic tang of progress.
Inside the primary administrative hall, which had been cleared of the usual plush carpets and replaced with massive, sturdy drafting tables, Madam Huang Yue Ying stood firmly at the helm.
She did not wear the flowing, heavily embroidered, restrictive silks typical of a high born lady of the court.
Instead, the new Chief Engineer wore practical, tailored robes of deep, austere blue, the sleeves tightly bound at the wrists with leather bracers to prevent them from catching on machinery. Her hair was pulled back into a severe, utilitarian knot, held in place by a pair of simple iron hairpins.
She looked radiant, fiercely intelligent, and entirely in her element. The societal shockwaves crashing against the outer walls of her department meant absolutely nothing to her. She cared only for angles, tensile strength, friction coefficients, and the Emperor's mandate to eradicate distance.
Accompanied and fully supported by the Minister of Personnel, Zhuge Liang, and the Minister of Work, Liu Ye. Huang Yue Ying was currently engaged in the most critical, foundational task of any new government bureau, she was busy appointing and assigning positions to their new staff.
The hiring process for the Wagonways Department was unlike anything the imperial bureaucracy had ever seen. The standard civil service examinations, which heavily prioritized the rote memorization of Confucian poetry and ancient historical texts, were entirely thrown out the window. A man who could recite the Analects perfectly was useless if he didn't understand the load bearing capacity of a reinforced timber tie.
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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