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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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The terrifying, unquenchable liquid flames turned the mock naval ship into ashes within seconds. The sails vanished in a flash of light, the rigging melted, and the thick wooden hull cracked and collapsed in on itself, utterly consumed by a heat that seemed to defy nature itself. When the deafening, earth shaking demonstrations were finally done, and the last of the fiery wreckage smoldered into blackened, hissing ruins, a heavy, profound silence fell over the Imperial Workshop.
Lie Fan stood at the forefront, lowering his arm from his face. He looked at the shattered wood, the burning embers, and the hissing steam engine in the distance. He was thoroughly satisfied with the results. More than satisfied, he felt the thrilling rush of absolute supremacy. His vision of an unstoppable empire was physically manifesting right before his eyes.
Meanwhile, everyone present on the council was struggling to comprehend the new reality of warfare they had just witnessed. The strategists were whispering frantically to each other, recalibrating every doctrine they had ever known. But it was the utterly shocked naval admirals who broke the silence.
Zhou Yu, a man known for his elegant, flawless tactical mind, stepped forward, his eyes wide and completely devoid of their usual calm refinement. He looked at Lie Fan, then at the hissing steam engine, and excitedly gave his own awe struck opinions.
"Your Majesty," Zhou Yu breathed, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and sheer exhilaration. "Do you realize what this means for the eastern seas? With ships that do not rely on the wind, I can dictate the angle of every single engagement. I can sail directly into the wind, flanking an enemy fleet that is entirely immobilized by nature. And with those... those Fierce Fire Cabinets mounted on our prows? We don't even need to board them. We can incinerate entire armadas from a distance. The enemy's wooden fleets will be nothing more than floating kindling before us."
Gan Ning, the rugged, heavily scarred pirate turned admiral, practically shoved his way to the front, his fists clenched in pure, aggressive excitement. He stared at the shattered remnants of the target hit by the Water Dragon.
"Forget the wind, Commander Zhou!" Gan Ning barked, a savage, predatory grin splitting his face. "Look at that pressure pump! If we mount that Water Dragon on our heavier galleons, we can sweep the enemy decks of their archers and spearmen before we even throw the grappling hooks! It'll snap their masts, shatter their morale, and wash their blood into the sea. And if we get flanked? We turn the fire on them. This technology could be devastatingly powerful. It will make the ocean ours. Completely ours. No one will dare sail against the Hengyuan flag."
Lie Fan listened to their passionate tactical outbursts, a small, knowing smile touching the corners of his mouth. The Eastern Expansion was no longer just a strategic goal, it was a guaranteed slaughter.
Just as the council was finally recovering from the sheer shock of the steam technology, the water pressure, and the liquid fire, the atmosphere shifted. The heavy, booming demonstrations had seemingly concluded, and the council began to relax their tensed muscles.
But Huang Yue Ying was not finished.
She confidently stepped forward, her hands holding a meticulously crafted, rectangular box made of polished mahogany and lined with velvet. The older engineers, Zhuge Liang, Liu Ye, and Huang Chengyan, stepped back, giving her the floor. This was the project assigned to her by Lie Fan.
She opened the box, drawing the immediate, curious eyes of the Emperor and his top generals. Inside rested two objects made of heavy iron and beautifully carved dark wood. They were small, completely unlike the massive siege engines they had just witnessed.
Yue Ying reached in and pulled them out. She showed the very first working prototypes of the flintlock pistol and the hand held blunderbuss to the assembled men.
The flintlock pistol was sleek, featuring a beautifully machined iron barrel, a curved wooden grip, and a highly complex, spring loaded firing mechanism utilizing a piece of sharp flint held in a steel jaw. The blunderbuss was larger, though still meant to be held in two hands, featuring a flared, trumpet-like iron barrel designed to scatter its payload over a wide area.
"Everything you have seen today," Yue Ying carefully explained, her voice dropping to a serious, academic tone, "is meant to destroy ships, walls, and formations. But warfare ultimately comes down to the land combat. It comes down to the individual soldier holding the line."
She held up the flintlock pistol, letting the torchlight gleam off its polished steel barrel. "These handheld weapons are still actively under testing. The metallurgy required for the barrels to prevent them from bursting under the pressure is incredibly demanding. These aren't the final, perfected prototypes yet. They misfire, the powder can get wet, and the springs can break."
She looked directly at Lie Fan, her eyes burning with an obsessive, visionary fire. "But I passionately wanted it to be live fired and demonstrated right now. I needed it to be shown to everyone on the strategic council, and also to you, Your Majesty. Because while they are imperfect today, you are looking at the death of the sword, the spear, and the bow."
She turned and marched confidently toward a new set of targets that had been quietly erected at the side of the courtyard. They were life sized wooden mannequins, each clad in thick, high quality iron chainmail and heavy leather lamellar armor, the standard protective gear of their most elite enemies.
Yue Ying pulled a small, brass powder flask from her belt. In complete silence, the council watched her meticulously pour a measured amount of fine, black powder down the iron barrel of the pistol.
She dropped a small, spherical lead ball into the muzzle, using a thin iron ramrod to pack it tightly against the powder. She then poured a tiny pinch of powder into a small pan near the rear mechanism and snapped a metal cover shut over it.
The sheer complexity of the loading process made some of the traditional generals frown in skepticism. A skilled archer could have fired five arrows in the time it took her to prepare the small device.
But Yue Ying was unbothered by their murmurs. She raised the pistol with one hand, pointing it directly at the chest of the armored mannequin twenty paces away. She pulled back the small hammer holding the piece of sharp flint. It locked into place with a sharp, audible click.
"Observe," she said quietly.
She squeezed the curved iron trigger.
The mechanism snapped forward with blinding speed. The flint struck a piece of serrated steel, sending a shower of bright white sparks directly into the priming pan.
BANG!
The sharp, deafening crack of the explosion was entirely different from the deep, rolling boom of the Fierce Fire Oil Cabinet. It was a sharp, ear splitting report that made several seasoned generals physically flinch. A thick cloud of acrid, white sulfurous smoke instantly erupted from the barrel of the pistol, obscuring Yue Ying's face for a brief moment.
Before the smoke could even clear, the sound of tearing metal and splintering wood echoed across the courtyard.
The council rushed forward, completely abandoning their formal formations, to examine the target. They stopped, staring in pure horror.
The heavy iron chainmail, armor that would have stopped a heavy broadsword or deflected a standard arrow, was completely completely pierced. A neat, perfectly round hole had been punched straight through the thick iron rings, through the leather backing, and deep into the solid wood of the mannequin beneath. The kinetic force delivered to a single, concentrated point was unlike anything they had ever seen from a handheld weapon.
"Heavens..." Xu Shu whispered, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the shattered armor. "No armor can stop this. A peasant with a few hours of training could kill a heavily armored general who trained his entire life."
Yue Ying wasn't done. She calmly set the smoking pistol down on a table and picked up the heavier, flared blunderbuss.
"The pistol requires precision," Yue Ying explained, raising her voice over their shocked murmurs as she rapidly loaded the blunderbuss. She poured a much larger charge of powder down the wide barrel. But instead of a single lead ball, she poured a handful of jagged, irregularly shaped lead scraps, iron nails, and thick metal bearings into the muzzle, packing it all down with a thick cloth wad.
"The blunderbuss requires no precision whatsoever. It is designed for the chaotic, terrifying close quarters of naval boarding actions, or for repelling a sudden cavalry charge right at the front lines."
She stepped up to a cluster of three unarmored wooden targets standing shoulder to shoulder, replicating a tightly packed enemy infantry formation.
She brought the heavy wooden stock of the weapon firmly to her shoulder, bracing her feet in the dirt. She pulled back the heavy flintlock hammer, aimed at the center of the wooden group, and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The recoil was massive, pushing Yue Ying back a half step, but she held her ground. The explosion from the flared barrel was accompanied by a massive, blinding flash of fire and a cloud of white smoke so thick it momentarily blinded half the courtyard.
When the wind finally swept the sulfurous cloud away, the devastation was staggering. The three wooden targets hadn't just been pierced, they had been absolutely shredded.
Hundreds of jagged holes, splinters, and deep gouges covered the wood from the waist up. Any men standing in that formation would have been instantly ripped apart, their unarmored bodies pulverized by the scattered metal storm.
The silence that followed this final demonstration was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating quiet, born of the terrifying realization of what this technology meant. The rules of war had not just been bent, they had been completely rewritten in a matter of seconds.
Yue Ying lowered the smoking blunderbuss, turning back to face the Emperor and the council, giving them a terrifying glimpse into the future of infantry warfare. The smell of burnt powder hung heavy in the air, a scent that would soon define the battlefields of the entire world.
Lie Fan stepped forward slowly, his boots crunching on the gravel. He walked past the shocked generals, past the wide eyed naval admirals, and stopped directly in front of Huang Yue Ying. He looked at the smoking iron barrel in her hands, and then he looked into her defiant, brilliant eyes.
"You told me these are not perfected yet," Lie Fan said, his voice low, vibrating with a dark, boundless ambition.
"They are not, Your Majesty," Yue Ying replied, bowing her head slightly, though her hands maintained a firm grip on the weapon. "The springs are brittle. The barrels warp after sustained firing. It will take time, money, and endless testing to make them reliable enough to outfit an entire army."
Lie Fan reached out and placed a heavy, reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"You shall have the treasury. You shall have the iron foundries. You shall have whatever, and whoever, you need," Lie Fan decreed, his voice echoing with absolute finality across the smoking courtyard. "Perfect them. Manufacture them. When our steam powered fleets cross the eastern sea, and when our soldiers finally step onto foreign shores, they will not carry spears. They will carry your fire, and they will bring the wrath of this new Nation down upon the world."
Hearing his generous praise, the intense, obsessive fire in Huang Yue Ying's eyes softened, melting into a bright, genuinely radiant smile that completely transformed her soot smudged face. She lowered her head, offering a deep, incredibly sincere bow, and deeply thanked Lie Fan for his absolute trust in her abilities.
"Your Majesty honors me beyond words," Yue Ying said, her voice steady but carrying a thick layer of emotion. She looked back up, holding the still warm blunderbuss with a profound reverence.
However, she was quick to deflect the sheer magnitude of the glory away from herself.
"The metallurgy and the spring tension were puzzles, yes," she explained, tracing the intricate flintlock mechanism with her calloused thumb. "But the vision... the sheer, brilliant conception of the enclosed flash pan, the frizzen, and the unified trigger mechanism... that was entirely yours, Your Majesty. Your blueprints were so mathematically perfect, so impeccably drafted, that the metal practically knew how to shape itself. I am merely the hammer, you are the architect."
Lie Fan just smiled warmly at that, stepping closer to gently counter her extreme humility. He knew that visionary ideas died every single day in the minds of men who lacked the hands to build them. He reached out, his heavy gauntlet resting gently over her soot stained hands holding the weapon.
"Do not sell your own genius short, Yue Ying," Lie Fan said, his voice carrying a gentle but firm authority. He looked around the smoking courtyard, gesturing to the massive steam engine and the ruined targets.
"If I had carelessly given these incredibly complex blueprints to ordinary people," Lie Fan continued, ensuring his words carried the weight of absolute truth, "to men who do not deeply understand the intricate arts of crafting, the bleeding edge of advanced engineering, and, most importantly, the bold, fearless spirit of innovating... it wouldn't have become anything more than wasted paper. A lesser smith would have looked at the flint mechanism and declared it impossible. A lesser mind would have feared the explosive pressure and abandoned the project."
He looked deeply into her eyes, ensuring she understood her irreplaceable value to his empire. "But since it was placed in your capable hands, it has truly become something marvelous. You took my ink and turned it into the fire that will secure our dynasty's eternal future. Never forget that."
After that deeply satisfying respectful exchange was done, the Emperor knew it was time to step back. The seeds of the future had been planted, and the master craftsmen needed the space to let them grow. With a final, commanding nod to the assembled scholars and generals, Lie Fan gracefully took his leave from the Imperial Workshop.
He turned his heavy, dark cape billowing behind him, and walked back toward his armored carriage, escorted by the silent, imposing ranks of his Yellow Ghost Bodyguards.
He deliberately allowed the brilliant minds of the Eastern Expansion Strategy Council to stay behind in the courtyard. As the heavy iron gates closed behind the Emperor's procession, the atmosphere in the workshop instantly shifted from imperial reverence to a chaotic, intensely passionate strategic frenzy.
The naval admirals, Zhou Yu, Gan Ning, Jiang Qin, and Huang Zu, immediately swarmed the four chief overseers. They began to talk far more deeply regarding the practical naval applications of these terrifying new weapons.
Zhou Yu was already rapidly sketching hull reinforcements to accommodate the heavy steam boilers with Liu Ye, while Gan Ning cornered Zhuge Liang and Huang Chengyan, aggressively demanding to know exactly how many blunderbusses could be manufactured before the fleet set sail, his mind overflowing with brutal, close quarters boarding tactics.
Following the world altering demonstrations at the foundries, several incredibly peaceful, quiet days passed in the capital city of Xiapi. The weather was turning beautifully warm, the skies clear, and the bustling city markets were overflowing with the rich bounties of the spring harvests.
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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