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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Lie Fan gestured toward the heavy oak doors of the study.
"I will allow you to go back to your home briefly today. You will pack your belongings, say your farewells, and prepare your minds. But before the sun sets tonight, you will return to the palace gates, and the strict isolation begins," Lie Fan concluded, crossing his arms behind his back.
Hearing these incredibly heavy conditions, the psychological weight of their new reality finally crashing down upon them, the three Sima brothers swallowed their nervousness. It was a terrifying prospect. They were being asked to willingly walk into a crucible that would strip them of every privilege they had ever known.
But looking up at the towering, majestic figure of the Emperor, and remembering the oath they had just sworn, they found their courage. Sima Jin, Sima Tong, and Sima Min resolutely nodded their heads in unison, accepting the challenge with a fierce, unified determination. "We accept, Your Imperial Majesty," Sima Jin spoke for his brothers, his voice remarkably steady despite the tremor in his hands.
Lie Fan then looked directly past the boys, fixing his gaze upon Sima Yi.
The Minister of War stood silently near the wall, his face a mask of perfectly controlled stoicism. He knew exactly what Lie Fan was doing.
The Emperor was not just testing the boys, he was taking them as high value hostages to ensure the eternal good behavior of the Sima clan, while simultaneously neutralizing any undue political influence the clan might try to exert over the Crown Prince's future advisors. It was a political masterpiece.
Meeting the Emperor's gaze, Sima Yi deeply nodded his head as well.
He lowered his eyes in a gesture of profound, absolute submission, showing how he completely agreed with these strict terms. He was a man who understood the brutal mathematics of power better than anyone alive.
Sacrificing the comfort of his brothers was a small price to pay to weave his bloodline into the very fabric of the imperial succession. His nod communicated that he would faithfully follow whatever His Majesty ordered, without any complaints, and most importantly, without any back channel interference.
"Then the pact is sealed," Lie Fan stated softly. "Go. The sun is already high, and you have much to leave behind."
After that momentous meeting concluded, Sima Yi and his three younger brothers were escorted out of the inner palace. The carriage ride back to the sprawling, opulent Sima family manor in the high born district of Xiapi was spent in an absolute, suffocating silence.
The boys sat rigidly in the plush, velvet lined carriage, their minds racing. Sima Min stared at his hands, his youthful excitement slowly giving way to a creeping, cold apprehension. Sima Tong was staring out the window, his analytical mind already trying to calculate the layout of the palace and the political dynamics of the scribes he would be working alongside.
When they arrived at the manor, the reality of the Emperor's edict took physical form.
Sima Yi did not allow them to linger. He marched them directly to their private wings and ordered the servants out.
"You heard the Son of Heaven," Sima Yi commanded, his voice sharp and utterly devoid of brotherly coddling as he stood in the doorway of Sima Jin's room. "You are packing for a military campaign of the mind. Leave the embroidered silks. Leave the jade hairpins. Leave the poetry scrolls that praise the ancient kings. Pack sturdy linen, thick wool, and comfortable boots. You are going to be on your feet until they bleed."
For the next two hours, the Sima brothers stripped away the physical manifestations of their aristocratic wealth. They packed simple, unadorned wooden trunks with plain, functional clothing. They traded their silver lined belts for plain leather straps.
Before they departed, Sima Yi gathered his three brothers in the private ancestral hall of the manor. The heavy scent of burning sandalwood incense filled the dim room.
Sima Yi looked at the three boys, his expression intense and fiercely protective, yet unyielding.
"Listen to me, and listen carefully," Sima Yi hissed, his dark eyes locking onto each of them in turn. "You are walking into the center of the world. His Imperial Majesty is not a mortal man, he is a force of nature. He sees everything. He hears everything. If you attempt to contact me, if you complain about the work, if you show even a hint of the arrogance that comes with your surname, he will crush you, and the fallout will destroy this entire family."
He reached out, gripping Sima Jin's shoulder tightly. "You will be exhausted. You will be humiliated. You will be asked to perform tasks that the lowest scullery maid in this manor would complain about. You will do it with absolute perfection, and you will thank the heavens for the privilege."
"We understand, brother," Sima Jin nodded, his jaw set with stoic resolve.
"Do not let the other court officials bait you," Sima Yi turned to the calculating Sima Tong. "They will know who you are. They will test you to see if you can be used to gain favor with me. Your silence is your armor. You speak only when the Emperor or his designated masters command it."
Finally, Sima Yi looked at the youngest, Sima Min. He softened his grip slightly, placing a hand on the boy's cheek. "You are young, Min. But the palace does not care about age. Do not let your awe make you careless. Be a ghost. Observe, learn, and survive."
As the afternoon sun began to dip toward the western walls of the capital, a modest, unadorned horse drawn cart carried the three brothers and their plain wooden trunks away from the sprawling luxury of their ancestral home. They looked back only once, watching the heavy iron gates of the Sima manor close behind them. The invisible tether to their past had been severed.
They arrived at the side gates of the Imperial Palace just as the sun set. They were met not by an honor guard, but by a sour faced, elderly Imperial Maid who inspected their modest trunks with a critical eye.
"Follow me," the Imperial Maid grunted, not bothering to address them by their noble titles.
They were led away from the magnificent, gilded corridors of the inner sanctum, winding their way deep into the utilitarian, stone-walled labyrinth of the palace's servant quarters. They were shown to a single, modest room. It contained three hard wooden cots, a single writing desk, a washbasin, and a small charcoal brazier.
It was clean, dry, and perfectly functional, but it was a staggering, jarring contrast to the feather beds and silk tapestries they had slept in just the night before.
They unpacked in silence. The grand test had begun, and the silence of their new reality was deafening.
The very next day, the long, arduous days for the grand test of the three Sima brothers officially began.
They were violently awakened an hour before dawn by the sharp, echoing strike of a wooden clapper outside their door. They washed in cold water, dressed in their plain, dark blue linen robes, and were immediately marched to the secondary administrative courtyards.
Emperor Lie Fan did not greet them. He did not offer them a grand speech to motivate them for the day. In fact, they did not see the Emperor at all. They were handed over to the Senior Overseer of the Imperial Archives, a ruthless, humorless man who cared nothing for their prestigious bloodline and everything for their penmanship and physical endurance.
Their illusion of becoming high level political advisors overnight was instantly shattered. The reality of imperial governance was a grinding, agonizingly slow machine fueled by an ocean of parchment, and the Sima brothers were thrown directly into the deepest part of the gears.
Because the massive northern outward expansion expedition was currently being mobilized, the logistical burden on the capital was astronomical.
Sima Jin, being the oldest and physically strongest, was stripped of any scholarly duties entirely.
"You," the Overseer barked, pointing a thick finger at Jin. "The Ministry of Revenue requires the historical grain taxation records from Ji Province for the last ten years to calculate the staging ground supply lines. The records are in the third subterranean vault. Fetch them."
For the next fourteen hours, Sima Jin was subjected to grueling, back breaking physical labor. The bamboo scrolls of the old Han archives were incredibly heavy, bound in thick, dusty bundles. He carried towering stacks of wood and bamboo up three flights of steep, narrow stone stairs, his muscles screaming in protest.
The dust coated his throat, and splinters dug into his hands. When he finished one stack, another clerk would immediately hand him a requisition slip for a different province. There was no rest, no tea breaks, and absolutely no recognition of his status. He was a pack mule for the state.
By midday, his plain robes were soaked in sweat and stained with centuries old dust. But true to the oath he had sworn to the Emperor, Sima Jin did not utter a single word of complaint. He gritted his teeth, hoisted the heavy wooden crates onto his shoulders, and kept moving. He was determined to show the Black Dragon that his spine was made of unbreakable steel.
Meanwhile, in a cramped, windowless scriptorium entirely illuminated by flickering oil lamps, Sima Tong was subjected to a psychological and analytical torture specifically designed to test his mental endurance.
He was seated at a small, cramped desk, surrounded by literal mountains of raw, unorganized logistical reports pouring in from the northern commanderies.
"Cross reference the requisitioned cavalry horses from Bing Province against the reported fodder yields of the local farming hamlets," a senior scribe ordered him, dropping a massive stack of silk ledgers onto Tong's desk. "If there is a discrepancy greater than three percent, flag it. If you miss a discrepancy and an army starves, your head will be the first one on a spike. Have it done by sunset."
Sima Tong stared at the impossibly dense columns of numbers. He realized, with a sudden, sinking feeling in his stomach, that he was auditing the supply lines for his own brother's army. Sima Yi was the Minister of War, commanding these very logistics. Sima Tong was now an isolated, nameless cog, entirely responsible for ensuring the math of his brother's war was flawless.
He picked up his writing brush. His analytical mind, usually reserved for grand strategic theories, was forced to hyper focus on the agonizing, microscopic details of grain weight, hoof rot statistics, and wagon axle degradation.
He worked for hours, his eyes burning, his fingers cramping into tight claws around the brush. He calculated and recalculated, his mind pushed to the absolute edge of exhaustion, terrified of missing a single grain of rice that could spell disaster for the empire.
And out in the sprawling, massive expanse of the imperial palace grounds, the youngest brother, Sima Min, was discovering exactly how large the Emperor's domain truly was.
He was assigned to the internal courier relay.
"Take this sealed dispatch to the Wagonways Department in the outer industrial ring," the dispatcher ordered him, handing Min a heavy, leather bound tube. "Then proceed to the Ministry of Law to collect the daily penal reports, and deliver them to the Censorate before the noon bells ring. Run."
Sima Min ran.
He possessed no horse, and the imperial carriages were strictly forbidden for low level pages. He ran across the massive cobblestone plazas, dodging heavily armored guards and rushing bureaucrats. He ran through the bustling, noisy corridors of the outer ministries. His lungs burned, and the soft, leather soles of his aristocratic boots provided little protection against the hard stones.
By the time the afternoon sun began to sink, Sima Min's feet were covered in painful blisters. He was gasping for air, his pristine, youthful energy completely drained. But every time he felt like collapsing, every time he wanted to stop and rest by a fountain, he remembered the terrifying, majestic aura of Lie Fan standing in the study. He remembered that he was carrying the parchment that changed the world.
He tightened his grip on the leather tubes and forced his small, aching legs to keep moving.
As the sun finally set over Xiapi, casting long, dark shadows across the palace courtyards, the grueling first day of the grand test drew to a close.
The three Sima brothers, physically exhausted, mentally drained, and emotionally battered, dragged themselves back to their modest, stone walled quarters. They did not speak as they entered the room. They were too tired for words.
Sima Jin sank onto his hard wooden cot, staring at his bruised, splinter filled hands. Sima Tong sat at the small desk, aggressively massaging his cramping fingers and rubbing his burning, bloodshot eyes. Sima Min simply collapsed onto his bed, burying his face in his thin woolen blanket, trying desperately not to cry from the pain in his blistered feet.
Suddenly, a small, heavy leather pouch was tossed through the open doorway. It landed on the floor with a loud, metallic clink.
Sima Jin looked up. Standing in the doorway was the sour faced elderly Imperial Maid from the night before.
"Your daily wages," the Imperial Maid grunted, gesturing to the pouch. "Fifty copper coins each. You report back to the archives an hour before dawn tomorrow. Don't be late."
The Imperial Maid turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing down the cold corridor.
Sima Tong leaned over and picked up the pouch. He opened it, pouring the one hundred and fifty dull copper coins onto the desk. For boys who had grown up watching merchants trade chests of pure silver and gold ingots within their family halls, the meager pile of copper was a stark, undeniable physical manifestation of their new reality. They were at the very bottom of the imperial ladder.
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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