Chapter 1320 - 1260. Tax Announcement Weaved & Announced

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Mi Zhu then detailed the two projects. He described the Imperial Optical Telegraph, the towering, steam powered masts that could flash coded military intelligence across the continent in a matter of hours. Then, he described the Iron Centipede, the huge flanged wheeled steam locomotive designed to haul hundreds of tons of cargo across continuous iron rails.

As Mi Zhu spoke, the expressions on the faces of Chen Qun and Lu Su shifted from bureaucratic curiosity to absolute, wide eyed astonishment.

Chen Qun, a man whose entire life was dedicated to the structural organization of society, instantly recognized the terrifying administrative power of the telegraph.

"Instantaneous communication," he whispered, his legal mind reeling. "A rebellion in Jiaozhi could be reported, analyzed, and a suppression order issued from Xiapi before the rebels even managed to march on the provincial capital. It makes the empire... protected."

Lu Su, the master of logistics and diplomacy, was equally staggered by the locomotive. "If you lay iron rails to the western front... you eliminate the attrition of the supply lines. You don’t need tens of thousands of draft animals eating the very grain they are trying to transport. You can move an entire legion, fully supplied, across the plains in days. It is... it is a miracle."

"They are miracles," Mi Zhu agreed heavily. "And miracles require mountains of silver. I told His Majesty that the treasury could not bear the upfront cost of casting hundreds of miles of iron rails and building thousands of steam towers."

"Then he must wait," Chen Qun stated firmly, falling back on the rigid safety of the law. "The Great Wall is the priority. The Emperor is a pragmatic man. He understands that even the Son of Heaven cannot spend silver he does not possess."

Mi Zhu looked at Chen Qun, a grim, humorless smile touching his lips. "He will not wait, Master Chen. The Kushan-Parthian alliance has accelerated his timeline. He demanded a financial solution that did not touch the reserves."

"And what solution did you offer?" Lu Su asked, a sudden feeling of dread pooling in his stomach.

"The only financial solution available," Mi Zhu replied softly. "I advised him to raise the baseline taxation rate across the entire empire by three percent."

The silence that fell over the Grand Secretary’s office was suffocating.

Chen Qun stared at Mi Zhu as if the Minister of Finance had just suggested they burn the Imperial Palace to the ground. Lu Su slowly set his teacup down, his usually affable face draining of all color.

"You advised a tax increase?" Chen Qun hissed, his voice vibrating with genuine shock. "Mi Zhu, have you lost your mind?! The Emperor has spent his entire life cultivating the image of the benevolent sovereign! His entire legitimacy, the very reason the common people did not rise up against us when we conquered the central plains, is because we promised an end to the crushing levies of the Han Dynasty! You are asking him to break the most sacred, foundational promise of his reign!"

"I am asking him to fund the survival of the empire!" Mi Zhu snapped back, his own mercantile temper flaring. "Do you think I wanted to propose it? I know the political risks! But I also know the treasury! The economy is overheating. The peasantry is wealthy. A three percent increase will not starve a single farmer, but it will build the machines that will keep the western barbarians from burning their farms to the ground!"

"The peasantry does not understand geopolitical strategy, Master Mi!" Lu Su interjected passionately, standing up and pacing the room. "They understand the weight of the silver in their palms! If they hear that the Emperor has raised taxes for the first time in his reign, they will not picture a steam powered telegraph tower. They will picture the bloated, corrupt eunuchs of Emperor Ling’s court! They will think the golden age is over, and the era of tyranny has returned!"

"I know," Mi Zhu said, his voice dropping, the anger leaving him. He looked down at the rolled draft on the table. "And that is why I came to you. Because His Majesty agreed. He hated it, he paced the room like a caged tiger, but he saw the necessity. He ordered me to draft the edict."

Chen Qun slowly sank back into his chair, rubbing his temples as a massive headache began to bloom behind his eyes. If the Emperor had agreed, it was no longer a debate. It was law. The only question now was how to survive the fallout.

"If he has agreed," Chen Qun muttered, his legal mind shifting into damage control mode, "then we must execute it. But if we simply post a notice demanding three percent more yield, we will spark riots in the provinces. The local magistrates will be overwhelmed."

Lu Su stopped pacing. He turned and looked at the draft on the table, his eyes narrowing as his brilliant, propagandistic mind began to dissect the problem.

"We do not post a notice," Lu Su declared, his voice taking on a sharp, commanding edge. "We must rewrite the reality of the tax itself. We must use the very ideology we have spent to be spread under Your Majesty’s order in the academies."

Lu Su walked over to the table, picking up Mi Zhu’s draft. He unrolled it, his eyes scanning the dry, factual, terrifyingly honest numbers.

"This is useless," Lu Su said bluntly, tossing the draft aside. He looked at Chen Qun and Mi Zhu, his expression transforming into the cold, calculated mask of a master manipulator. "We must pivot. The people love the Emperor because he gave them peace. We must convince them that this peace is in imminent, terrifying danger, and that they are the only ones who can save it."

For the next six hours, the Grand Secretary’s office was locked down. The three most powerful civilian administrators in the empire engaged in a brutal, exhausting session of psychological and linguistic engineering.

They tore apart every sentence, every word, every subtle implication of the proposed edict.

"Do not use the word ’tax’," Lu Su instructed, striking a heavy red line through a paragraph Chen Qun had just drafted. "A tax is a burden imposed by a master upon a slave. Like you suggests, we use the term ’Imperial Defense Contribution.’ It implies agency. It implies that they are partnering with the Emperor, not being subjugated by him."

"We must emphasize the threat," Chen Qun added, his brush flying across a fresh sheet of parchment. "The Kushans and the Parthians are a distant, abstract concept to a rice farmer in Yangzhou. We must paint them as monsters waiting at the gates. We detail the alliance. We speak of foreign cavalry massing in the western mountains, eager to tear down the prosperity of the Black Dragon."

"And the machines," Mi Zhu interjected, ensuring the justification for the funds remained clear. "We describe the telegraphs not as administrative tools, but as the ’All Seeing Eyes’ of the empire. We describe the locomotive as the ’Iron Shield’ that will rush our brave soldiers to the front lines. We make them sound like mythological beasts forged to protect the common man."

As the afternoon dragged into the evening, the edict began to take shape. It was a masterpiece of state sponsored nationalism. It was designed to trigger a specific manipulated emotional sequence in the listener.

First as a terrifying fear of external invasion, second as a surge of fierce patriotic pride in the Hengyuan Dynasty, and finally, a willing acceptance of the ’Contribution’ as a necessary, heroic sacrifice.

But Chen Qun was not satisfied with just the words on the page.

"The text is flawless, Master Lu," Chen Qun said, tapping the final, pristine draft. "But a flawless text can be ruined by a terrible delivery. If a local magistrate reads this in a trembling, apologetic voice, the people will smell fear. If a corrupt tax collector screams it at a village square, the people will feel tyranny."

Chen Qun stood up, his eyes hard. "We must control the delivery as tightly as we control the text. We institute the ’One Voice’ doctrine."

Lu Su nodded slowly, instantly understanding the bureaucratic genius of the proposal. "Standardization of the heralds."

"Exactly," Chen Qun confirmed. "We draft a secondary classified addendum specifically for the regional administrators and the imperial announcers. We dictate their exact posture. We dictate the volume of their voice, the cadence of their delivery, and the specific pauses for dramatic effect. Whether this edict is being read in the grand plaza of Xiapi, a fishing village in Yamato, or a logging camp in the southern jungles... it must sound identical. It must sound like the Emperor himself is speaking directly to them. One unified, unyielding, absolute voice."

"No ad libbing," Mi Zhu agreed. "No local magistrate is allowed to add his own commentary or apologies. They read the script, they collect the contribution, and they step down."

By midnight, the work was done. The Imperial Edict, and the accompanying ’One Voice’ protocol manual, were finalized, copied by the most trusted, sworn to secrecy scribes in the Secretariat, and placed inside a locked, silk lined cedar box.

The three exhausted ministers did not sleep. They walked together, under the light of a pale moon, back to the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace.

Lie Fan was still awake. He sat in his private study, a single oil lamp casting long shadows across the massive, continent spanning map on his wall. He looked tired, the weight of the impending decision sitting heavily on his shoulders.

When the guards announced the arrival of the three ministers, Lie Fan turned, his expression unreadable.

Chen Qun approached the desk, bowing deeply, and placed the cedar box before the Emperor. He opened it, revealing the pristine scrolls inside.

"Your Imperial Majesty," Chen Qun said softly. "The edict is drafted. The protocols for its delivery are established."

Lie Fan reached out, picking up the primary scroll. The room was utterly silent as the Emperor read the words crafted by his finest administrative minds.

He read the terrifying descriptions of the western alliance. He read the mythological framing of his industrial machines. And he read the subtle, brilliant psychological manipulation of the ’Imperial Defense Contribution.’

Lie Fan lowered the scroll. He looked at Lu Su.

"This is not a tax decree, Master Lu," Lie Fan observed, his voice quiet, lacking any anger. "This is a call to holy war."

"It is a call to national survival, Your Majesty," Lu Su corrected gently, bowing his head. "If we ask them for silver, they will resent you. If we ask them to defend their homes, their children, and the glory of the Black Dragon... they will empty their pockets with tears of pride in their eyes."

Lie Fan turned his gaze to Chen Qun, picking up the secondary scroll detailing the ’One Voice’ protocol. He read the strict, unforgiving mandates on posture, cadence, and absolute uniformity.

"You leave no room for interpretation," Lie Fan noted, a spark of genuine admiration in his eyes.

"Interpretation breeds dissent, Your Majesty," Chen Qun stated firmly. "The empire must perceive this mandate as an absolute, monolithic truth. A single voice, echoing from the capital to the furthest borders. If they hear hesitation in the heralds, they will hesitate to pay."

Lie Fan looked back at the map. He looked at the massive, empty expanses of the Hexi Corridor, where the telegraph towers needed to rise. He looked at the vast plains where the iron tracks needed to be laid.

He felt a deep, lingering pang of guilt. He knew that for some of the poorest farmers, three percent was not a trivial amount. It meant less meat on the table during the winter. It meant delaying the purchase of a new plow. He was breaking his oldest, most sacred promise to the common man.

But then he thought of the Kushan cataphracts. He thought of the Parthian horse archers. He thought of the terrifying reality of modern warfare that he was forcing upon the ancient world. If he did not build the machines, the promise of peace was a lie anyway.

Lie Fan reached out and grasped the heavy, solid gold handle of the Imperial Jade Seal.

He pressed it firmly into a block of crimson cinnabar paste, the bright red ink coating the intricately carved characters. With a slow, deliberate, incredibly heavy motion, he brought the seal down onto the bottom of the edict.

THUD.

The sound echoed in the quiet study with the finality of a closing tomb.

"Let it be heard," Lie Fan commanded, his voice cold, resolute, and stripped of all hesitation. "Send the riders. To every province, every commandery, every island, and every vassal state. The Emperor of Hengyuan Dynasty calls for its due."

The deployment of the edict was a logistical masterpiece, executed with the terrifying efficiency of the Hengyuan administrative machine.

For the last time in the history of the empire, the message relied entirely on flesh and blood. Thousands of elite courier riders, carrying heavily sealed copies of the edict and the ’One Voice’ protocol, exploded outward from Xiapi like a swarm of locusts. They rode day and night, changing exhausted horses at the imperial waystations, carrying the heavy burden of the Emperor’s will across the continent.

Three weeks later, on a coordinated, pre determined date, the silence of the empire was shattered.

In the grand, sprawling central plaza of Xiapi, the sky was overcast, fitting the gravity of the moment. The plaza was packed with tens of thousands of citizens, merchants in fine silks, laborers covered in coal dust, farmers who had brought their goods to the morning markets.

They had been summoned by the rhythmic, deafening crashing of the massive bronze imperial gongs.

A high wooden platform had been erected overnight in the center of the plaza. Standing atop it was the Chief Imperial Herald.

He was dressed in immaculate, flowing robes of deep crimson and absolute black, the colors of the dynasty. He stood with a terrifying, rigid perfection, his spine straight as an iron rod, his chin elevated exactly as the ’One Voice’ protocol demanded. He did not look at the crowd, he looked out over them, projecting the aura of a man speaking with the voice of the gods.

The gongs fell silent. The murmur of the massive crowd slowly died away, replaced by a tense, expectant hush.

The Herald unrolled the heavy parchment. He took a deep, precisely calculated breath, and began to speak.

His voice was a booming, resonant baritone, amplified by the acoustics of the surrounding stone buildings. He did not rush. He hit every pause, every inflection, exactly as Lu Su and Chen Qun had designed.

He spoke of the gathering darkness in the west. He spoke of the Kushan Empire, historically fractured, now allying with the treacherous Parthians. He painted a vivid, terrifying picture of foreign armies massing in the mountains, looking with jealous, hungry eyes upon the peace and prosperity of the Hengyuan heartland.

A ripple of genuine anxiety moved through the crowd. Mothers pulled their children closer. Veterans of the early wars tightened their jaws, the old instincts of survival flaring to life.

Then, the Herald shifted the narrative. He spoke of the Emperor’s sleepless nights, his tireless dedication to their protection. He spoke of the Great Wall rising in the dust. And he spoke of the new miracles being forged in the fires of Xiapi, the ’All Seeing Eyes’ that would watch the borders, and the ’Iron Shield’ that would roar across the plains to crush the invaders.

The anxiety in the crowd morphed into a swelling, palpable sense of awe and patriotic fervor. This was their Emperor. This was the protector of the land and liberator of chaos, bending steel and steam to protect their homes.

And then, the Herald delivered the killing blow.

He did not lower his voice. He did not apologize. He projected the demand with absolute, unwavering pride.

"To forge this invincible shield, to ensure that the fires of war never again burn the harvests of the central plains, the Son of Heaven calls upon the strength of his people!" the Herald roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "Effective immediately, by Imperial Decree, an Imperial Defense Contribution of three percent shall be added to the baseline agricultural and mercantile yields across the entire domain!"

The final words hung in the cold air.

For a span of perhaps five seconds, the plaza of Xiapi was paralyzed by an absolute, suffocating silence. The psychological whiplash was severe. The narrative of glorious defense had suddenly collided with the brutal reality of their own purses.

Then, the uproar began.

It started as a low, confused murmur, rapidly escalating into a chaotic, overlapping roar of shock and dismay. Merchants frantically calculated the loss of profit margins. Farmers stared at each other, the math of the upcoming harvest suddenly turning dark.

"Three percent?!" a wealthy silk merchant shouted, his face flushed red. "That is highway robbery! The Emperor promised the rates were fixed for a generation!"

"We already pay our fair share!" yelled a burly blacksmith from the industrial district. "How are we supposed to feed our families if they take more of the cut?!"

The Herald did not flinch. He did not attempt to calm the crowd. He simply rolled up the parchment, turned on his heel with rigid precision, and marched down the steps of the platform, surrounded by a heavy escort of soldiers who kept the surging crowd at bay with the butts of their heavy halberds.

The scene in Xiapi was perfectly replicated thousands of times across the vast expanse of the empire over the following weeks.

In the deep, frozen north of Goguryeo, the assimilated Korean nobles sat in their heated pavilions, listening to the Herald’s flawless, standardized delivery. They exchanged dark, calculating glances. They had submitted to Hengyuan power in exchange for economic stability, a sudden tax hike felt like the beginning of mainland exploitation.

Across the treacherous eastern sea, in the pacified islands of Yamato, the local clan leaders gathered in the wooden halls of Kyoto. When the translation of the ’Imperial Defense Contribution’ was read, hands instinctively dropped to the hilts of their katana. They respected the terrifying military might of the mainland, but taxing their rice harvests to fight a war against unknown ’Kushans’ halfway across the world felt like an insult to their "autonomy."

In the humid, sprawling coastal cities of the deep south, the merchants and tribal leaders grumbled loudly in the taverns, wondering if the golden age of Lie Fan’s rule had finally given way to the tyrannical greed that inevitably poisoned all emperors. But the most emotional reaction occurred in the heartland, in Xu Province.

______________________________

Name: Lie Fan

Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty

Age: 37 (204 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