If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!

______________________________

(A/N: Don’t forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)

...

"He has been in negotiations with us for the exact same duration as you, my lord," the agent lied smoothly, perfectly executing the script designed to breed absolute, permanent distrust. "He recognized the futility of the alliance. He has pledged his forces to Hengyuan. I tell you this so that you might coordinate your new loyalties."

But coordination was the absolute furthest thing from Yan Xing’s mind.

A sudden, violently bitter realization crashed over the warlord. Cheng Li. That treacherous snake! While Yan Xing had been agonizing over his honor, bleeding his men to hold the line, Cheng Li had been secretly cutting a deal with the Emperor to save his own skin! The paranoia that the Orioles had so carefully cultivated over the past month blossomed into a dark, impenetrable hatred.

Yan Xing looked at the Oriole agent, his political instincts suddenly sharpening through the haze of exhaustion. He saw the thin smile. He understood the game.

He knew, with absolute, terrifying clarity, that this was a deliberate plot manufactured by Jia Xu. The spymaster had intentionally corrupted them both, and then intentionally informed them of the other’s betrayal to ensure that they could never, ever trust one another again.

Even after they both entered the service of the Hengyuan Dynasty, they would view each other as backstabbing traitors who had sold out the League. They would never conspire together against the throne, they would be too busy watching their own backs against their fellow turncoat.

It was a brilliant, flawless, and deeply cruel psychological cage.

And there was absolutely nothing Yan Xing could do about it. He knew it was a plot, he knew he was a pawn, but he was a pawn who had just chosen to live. He had to bite the poisoned bait, because the alternative was the absolute annihilation of his bloodline.

"I understand," Yan Xing said, his voice dropping to a cold, dead register, forever severing his ties to his former brother in arms. "Cheng Li is a coward. I will never trust that snake again. What are my orders?"

Miles away, in the equally battered, heavily fortified desert keep of Cheng Li, an identical scene of psychological torture and political capitulation was unfolding to absolute perfection.

Cheng Li’s forces were disintegrating. The relentless, rotating columns of Yu Jin, Yue Jin, and Li Dian had proven to be an unstoppable, mechanical meat grinder. His soldiers had not slept for two days, they were exhausted, terrified, and on the absolute brink of open mutiny.

The sheer, overwhelming discipline of the Hengyuan infantry had shattered the wild, chaotic bravery of the desert warriors.

Sitting heavily in his command chair, surrounded by the moans of the dying and the relentless drumming of the Hengyuan war march echoing through the valley, Cheng Li finally snapped.

He looked at the Oriole agent standing patiently before his desk and threw his personal seal onto the wooden surface, the heavy thud signifying the end of his resistance.

"I yield," Cheng Li whispered, burying his face in his hands. "I will take the Emperor’s deal. Tell your dogs to call off their infantry. I will turn my cloak."

The Oriole agent stepped forward, placing the jade token of amnesty beside the discarded seal.

"The Dynasty welcomes you, Lord Cheng," the agent said smoothly. "And to demonstrate the transparency of your new masters, I have been authorized to share a vital piece of intelligence. Lord Yan Xing has also accepted our terms. He has already pledged his allegiance to the Black Dragon."

Cheng Li’s head snapped up, his bloodshot eyes widening in a mixture of profound shock and immediate, burning fury.

"Yan Xing?!" Cheng Li roared, slamming his fists onto the desk, his exhaustion entirely forgotten in the face of this monumental betrayal. "That hypocritical, lying bastard! He demanded we hold the line! He swore a blood oath to defend the western passes to the last man, and he was the first one to sell us to the executioner?!"

The agent simply bowed his head, offering no defense, allowing the toxic seed of betrayal to take deep, permanent root.

​Cheng Li slumped back in his chair, his chest heaving. Much like Yan Xing, the sharp, pragmatic mind of the warlord quickly cut through the emotional rage to see the underlying architecture of the manipulation.

He recognized the invisible hand of Chancellor Jia Xu pulling the strings, ensuring that the two most powerful surviving lords of the northwest would enter the new empire completely divided, viewing each other with absolute, venomous suspicion.

​They could never form a new bloc. They could never trust one another again. If Cheng Li ever even thought of rebelling against Hengyuan, he knew Yan Xing would be the first to sell him out to the Emperor for a pat on the head.

​"A masterstroke of poison," Cheng Li muttered bitterly, staring at the jade token, accepting his permanent subjugation. He had no other choice but to bite it. "Tell me what the Black Dragon requires of my sword."

​With the psychological spines of Yan Xing and Cheng Li permanently snapped, the strategic landscape of Liang Province shifted with violent, immediate whiplash.

​The two warlords, acting entirely independently but driven by the exact same desperate need to prove their new loyalty to Emperor Lie Fan, immediately issued the most shocking, unthinkable orders their respective armies had ever received.

​Runners were dispatched from the citadels, galloping furiously through the chaotic, blood soaked mountain passes, carrying the heavy, sealed scrolls of their lords.

​When the orders reached the frontline commanders of Yan Xing and Cheng Li’s armies, the confusion was absolute.

​A grizzled captain in Yan Xing’s vanguard, his armor covered in the mud and blood of fighting Guan Yu’s heavy cavalry, tore open the scroll. His eyes scanned the calligraphy, widening in utter, incomprehensible disbelief.

​’Halt all hostilities against the forces of the Hengyuan Dynasty immediately,’ the order read, stamped with Yan Xing’s personal, undeniable seal. ’Turn your formations. The true enemies of the province are the cowards who abandoned us. You are to immediately strike the flanks of Lu Kan, Mang Xing, and Yang Qiu. Show them no mercy.’

​The captain lowered the scroll, looking out over his exhausted, battered soldiers. They were men who had spent the last week watching their brothers get crushed by Hengyuan trebuchets and cleaved by Hengyuan halberds.

To suddenly tell them to stop fighting the monster in front of them, and instead stab their allies in the back, was a profound, almost paralyzing psychological shock.

​For a long, agonizing minute, the officers hesitated, caught in the chaotic whiplash of warlord politics.

​But the discipline of the desert warriors held. They were bound by absolute, unquestioning loyalty to their lord, Yan Xing. If their lord decreed that the alliance was dead, then the alliance was dead. If their lord demanded the blood of Lu Kan’s men, then they would deliver it.

​"Sound the horns!" the captain bellowed, his voice cracking with the strain of the sudden pivot. "Lower your shields! Turn the columns to the north! We march on Lu Kan!"

​Across the vast, fragmented battlefield of Liang Province, identical scenes played out within the ranks of Cheng Li’s forces. The soldiers, battered and terrified by the relentless grinding of Yu Jin and Yue Jin’s infantry, were stunned by the sudden command to disengage.

But the promise of turning their aggression away from the invincible, terrifying war machine of the Black Dragon, and instead unleashing their frustration upon the allies who had failed to support them, offered a grim, immediate relief.

​The armies of Yan Xing and Cheng Li executed a massive, coordinated about face. They physically turned their backs on the advancing Hengyuan vanguard and began to march with renewed, brutal purpose toward the territories of their former brethren.

​The resulting battlefield chaos was a masterpiece of orchestrated slaughter.

​The armies of Lu Kan, Mang Xing, and Yang Qiu were entirely, fatally oblivious to the backroom deals struck in the shadowy halls of the citadels. They were currently fighting desperately to hold their own defensive lines against the relentless feints of Zhang He and the terrifying, unexpected flanking maneuvers of Pang De’s White Horse Vanguard.

​In the northern passes, an entire division of Lu Kan’s spearmen were bracing their shields against a brutal, uphill assault by Hengyuan infantry. The fighting was fierce, the mud slick with blood.

​Suddenly, the deafening roar of charging cavalry echoed from the rear of their formation.

​The commander of Lu Kan’s division glanced over his shoulder, a momentary wave of intense relief washing over him as he saw the familiar, dusty banners of Yan Xing’s desert cavalry cresting the ridge behind them.

​"Reinforcements!" the commander shouted joyously, raising his sword. "Yan Xing has sent the cavalry! Hold the line, men! The flank is secured!"

​But the cavalry did not slow down to form a defensive line. They did not raise their weapons in greeting.

​With a terrifying, bloodcurdling war cry, Yan Xing’s heavy cavalry slammed at full speed directly into the unprotected, unshielded rear ranks of Lu Kan’s infantry.

​The impact was absolutely catastrophic. Lu Kan’s soldiers, completely caught by surprise, were trampled under the iron shod hooves of their supposed allies. Spears were driven through their backs, swords cleaved through their unarmored necks. The betrayal was so sudden, so incredibly violent, that the entire rear guard disintegrated in a matter of seconds.

​"Treachery! Treachery!" the commanders screamed, panic instantly seizing the ranks as the realization of the betrayal set in.

​But there was no escape. The moment Yan Xing’s forces struck the rear, the Hengyuan infantry, recognizing the signal of their new allies, surged forward with redoubled, terrifying ferocity. The armies of Lu Kan were caught in a brutal, inescapable vise of iron and betrayal. They were slaughtered by the thousands, their formations shattering into isolated, desperate pockets of resistance that were quickly, methodically wiped out.

​The exact same horrific scenario played out across the territories of Mang Xing and Yang Qiu. Cheng Li’s forces, eager to prove their worth to Emperor Lie Fan, attacked their former allies with a ruthless, vindictive savagery. They burned supply depots, ambushed retreating columns, and opened critical mountain passes to allow Pang De’s forces to flood into the vulnerable heartlands.

​The League of Northwestern Lords, an alliance that had threatened the western gates of the empire for years, did not simply collapse; it violently, cannibalistically consumed itself.

The combination of the overwhelming, unstoppable pressure from the Hengyuan armies in the front, and the sudden, lethal betrayal of Yan Xing and Cheng Li from the rear and the flanks, plunged the remaining warlords into absolute, direct, and immediate danger of total annihilation.

​The news of the cataclysm did not take long to travel.

​In the opulent, heavily guarded capital cities of Lu Kan, Mang Xing, and Yang Qiu, the warlords sat in their command halls, desperately waiting for updates on the shifting front lines.

They had believed that by pulling their forces back and letting Yan Xing and Cheng Li bear the brunt of the Hengyuan assault, they could preserve their own strength and perhaps negotiate a favorable peace when the Black Dragon grew weary of the mountains.

​But the Black Dragon did not grow weary. He simply bought their shields and turned them into daggers.

​The doors of Lu Kan’s grand hall burst open. A messenger, his armor covered in dust, his horse having died of exhaustion at the city gates, stumbled into the room and collapsed to his knees.

​"My Lord!" the messenger gasped, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with a terror that bordered on madness. "The northern passes have fallen! The army is destroyed!"

​Lu Kan stood up, his face draining of all color. "Fallen? How?! Did Zhang He break the line?!"

​"No, my Lord!" the messenger cried out, slamming his fists against the floor in absolute despair. "It was Yan Xing! Yan Xing’s cavalry attacked our rear! They slaughtered General Ma’s division! They have turned their cloaks! They are flying the black banners of Hengyuan, and they are marching on the capital alongside the vanguard of the enemy!"

​The ornate jade wine cup in Lu Kan’s hand slipped from his trembling fingers, shattering into a dozen pieces against the stone floor.

​Miles away, Mang Xing roared in incomprehensible rage, flipping his heavy wooden planning table over, sending maps and strategy markers scattering across the floor as he received the exact same horrific news regarding Cheng Li’s betrayal.

He drew his sword, screaming curses at the heavens, realizing that his entire southern flank had been completely erased from existence in a single afternoon.

​And in his own fortified keep, Yang Qiu did not scream. He did not curse. When the blood soaked messenger delivered the news of the total collapse of the alliance, Yang Qiu simply stood in absolute, paralyzed silence.

​He looked around his grand hall, at the wealth he had accumulated, at the banners of his ancestors. He heard the distant, but rapidly approaching, booming thunder of the Black Dragon Cannons echoing through the valleys. The trap had closed. The League was dead.

The armies of Hengyuan, bolstered by the traitorous forces of their former brethren, were swarming through the mountains like a plague of locusts made of iron and fire. Panic, absolute and suffocating, seized the three remaining lords. Their armies were surprised, scattered, and actively being butchered. Their allies were traitors. Their mountains were burning. The endgame of the northwest had arrived, and it was entirely bathed in blood.

______________________________

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