Chapter 1316 - 1256. Traditional Telegraph Communication & Stem Carriage To Iron Centipede Progress

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"The headhunters know better than to test the open ground, Your Majesty," Ling Cao reported, riding up beside the Emperor’s carriage. "They have tried a few night raids, hoping to burn the sugarcane. The repeating crossbows shredded them before they reached the palisade. We do not chase them into the trees, and they have learned that crossing the dirt means absolute death."

Lie Fan looked at the imposing palisade, then back at the thriving fields of Tainan. It was a perfect, localized encapsulation of his grand continental strategy.

*Secure the vital resources, lock the borders, and let the untamable wilderness rot in its own isolation,* he thought.

"You have done exactly as I commanded, General," Lie Fan said, his voice carrying the heavy weight of absolute approval. He turned to look at Yang Hong and Yan Jun, who were waiting with bated breath for the Emperor’s final verdict.

"You have not just colonized Taiwan. You have mastered it," Lie Fan declared a smile gracing his features. "The ports are flawless. The agriculture is staggering. And the security is absolute. You have built a jewel in the eastern sea, and you have ensured that the Black Dragon will rule the oceans just as it rules the earth."

The two governors fell to their knees in the dirt of the coastal highway, tears of relief and overwhelming pride welling in their eyes. They had spent years toiling in the tropical heat, fighting disease, storms, and hostile tribes, all for this singular moment of imperial validation.

"We live only to serve your vision, Your Imperial Majesty," Yang Hong choked out, his forehead pressed to the earth.

Lie Fan spent the remainder of the day touring the outer agricultural villages, speaking with the local magistrates, and enjoying the vibrant, exotic beauty of the island. It was a day of triumph, a physical manifestation of his altering of history.

But even as he enjoyed the warm ocean breeze, thousands of miles away, the fires of his true legacy were burning white hot.

Far to the north, across the strait and deep within the heart of the mainland, the capital city of Xiapi was blanketed under a heavy, overcast sky. The air in the industrial districts did not smell of jasmine or ocean salt, it smelled of burning coal, sulfur, and the sharp, metallic tang of hot iron.

Within the primary courtyard of the sprawling Imperial Workshop, a scene of manic, frantic engineering was reaching its absolute climax.

The courtyard had been entirely cordoned off from the lesser apprentices. Only the Oriole Agents and the highest ranking master smiths were permitted entry.

Standing in the center of the soot stained cobblestones were the four greatest minds of the era, Minister Liu Ye, Master Huang Chengyan, Minister Zhuge Liang, and the metallurgical engineer, Lady Huang Yue Ying.

They were not dressed in the fine silks of court. They were covered in grease, their faces smeared with black soot, their eyes wide with the manic, exhausted intensity of creators on the verge of a breakthrough.

Rising thirty feet into the gray sky above them was a towering, heavy cast iron mast. It was the physical realization of Lie Fan’s optical telegraph schematic.

The structure was a brutal, beautiful piece of industrial art. At the very top, attached to heavy, greased iron joints, were the three massive signal arms. As Lady Yue Ying had brilliantly deduced, they were not solid blocks of wood or canvas. They were intricate steel frames filled with overlapping, angled wooden louvers. From the front, they looked like solid, dark geometric beams; from the side, the wind whipped harmlessly through the slats.

At the base of the mast sat the beating heart of the machine: a highly specialized, compact steam engine. It hissed and popped, the heat of the coal fire boiling the internal water tank. But the engine was not turning a wheel. It was driving a heavy mechanical pump, forcing air into a massively reinforced, riveted iron cylinder, the pneumatic accumulator.

"Pressure is approaching critical threshold!" Liu Ye shouted over the hiss of the steam, his eyes locked onto a small, primitive brass gauge set into the side of the cylinder.

Huang Yue Ying stood beside him, a heavy iron wrench gripped tightly in her calloused hands. She did not look at the gauge; she listened to the machine. She listened to the groan of the iron and the high-pitched whine of the compressed air.

"Wait for the moment," Yue Ying commanded, her voice steady despite the terrifying amount of pressure building within the iron bomb they stood next to. "If my calculations are correct, the spring will yield at exactly three hundred pounds of force."

The hissing grew louder, building into a deafening, terrifying screech. The massive iron cylinder vibrated violently against its stone mounts.

POP HISSSSSSS!

With a sharp, mechanical crack, a heavy brass valve on the side of the cylinder violently popped open, venting a massive, roaring plume of white steam and excess compressed air into the sky. The deafening whistle echoed off the walls of the workshop.

"The governor holds!" Huang Chengyan roared in triumph, pumping a soot stained fist into the air. "The pressure is capped and stabilized! The cylinder will not rupture!"

"Then the weapon is primed," Zhuge Liang said softly, his brilliant mind instantly shifting from the mechanics of the pressure to the logistics of the test. He stood at the base of the mast, his hands resting on a heavy, iron reinforced wooden helm equipped with three large brass levers.

Zhuge Liang looked at Liu Ye. "What shape shall we give the sky, Minister?"

Liu Ye grinned, a feral, exhausted expression of pure joy. "Give them the code for absolute victory, Master Zhuge. Angle the primary regulator to forty five degrees, and lock the secondary indicators parallel to the earth."

Zhuge Liang took a deep breath. He grasped the heavy brass lever corresponding to the massive central arm.

He didn’t pull a rope. He didn’t strain his back. He simply threw the lever forward with a smooth, firm motion.

The reaction was instantaneous and terrifyingly violent.

The lever opened a directed pneumatic valve. The stored, explosive pressure from the accumulator was instantly channeled into a heavy drive piston at the base of the mast.

WHOOSH CLACK!

With a sound like a thunderclap, the massive, thirty-foot steel arm at the top of the tower snapped upward. It moved with a blurring, mechanical speed that defied the heavy weight of the steel.

As it reached the forty five degree mark, the immense kinetic energy threatened to tear the arm right off its hinges. But in a fraction of a second, Zhuge Liang’s brilliant hydraulic dampeners engaged.

The heavy, viscous oil within the sealed joints absorbed the violent shock. The massive steel arm decelerated instantly, coming to a smooth, incredibly firm, dead halt exactly at the locked, forty five degree angle. There was no shaking. There was no vibrating. It locked into place with the immovable rigidity of solid stone.

Zhuge Liang immediately threw the two secondary levers.

WHOOSH CLACK! WHOOSH CLACK!

The two smaller indicator arms snapped out, caught by their own dampeners, locking perfectly horizontal to the earth.

The four inventors stepped back, looking up at the sky.

Against the gray clouds, the louvered steel arms formed a perfect, unmistakable, crisp geometric shape. It was entirely rigid, unbothered by the wind, and clearly visible from miles away.

"We did it," Liu Ye whispered, falling to his knees on the cobblestones, the exhaustion finally catching up with him. He stared up at the tower, tears of pure, engineering ecstasy cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "We actually did it. The machine translates thought into motion. It is flawless."

"It is only flawless in isolation, Liu Ye," Zhuge Liang corrected gently, though he too was smiling broadly, a profound sense of awe washing over him. He looked at the heavy cipher book resting on a nearby table. "Now, we must cast fifty more of these masts. We must lay the foundation stones from Xiapi to the coastal shipyards. We must train the Signal Corps. Only when a message travels from the ocean to the capital in a single hour will the Emperor’s vision be truly realized."

"Then we cast the molds tonight," Huang Chengyan declared, clapping his heavy hands together. "The foundries do not sleep."

But the optical telegraph was not the only earth shattering revolution brewing within the walls of the Imperial Workshop that day.

While the steam vented from the telegraph tower and the master smiths celebrated the successful pneumatic test, Huang Yue Ying did not linger on the triumph. Her restless, brilliant mind was already moving to the next impossible puzzle the Emperor had left them.

She walked away from the cheering courtyard, wiping her hands on a heavily stained rag, and entered the massive, cavernous primary foundry.

Here, the heat was physical, radiating from massive, roaring blast furnaces. The air was thick with the smell of molten iron and the deafening, rhythmic pounding of the steam-powered drop hammers.

Resting in the center of the foundry, elevated on heavy wooden blocks, was the beast.

It was the next generation of the steam carriage, the massive, multi tubular locomotive that had successfully proven the concept of decoupled steam power. But it no longer looked like a simple, heavy carriage. Under Lie Fan’s hasty, brilliant chalk sketches from weeks prior, the inventors had been slowly, meticulously transforming the machine into something entirely unprecedented.

Yue Ying walked around the massive, black-iron chassis.

The flat, rubber treaded wheels were gone. In their place, the master casters had forged something completely new. Heavy, solid iron wheels, but with a distinct, protruding inner lip, the flange.

She reached out, running her hand over the cold, perfectly cast iron lip.

"The flanged wheel," Yue Ying murmured to herself, her mind running the complex physics of friction and guided momentum. The Emperor had told them that flat wheels would deviate under massive weight. The flange would physically lock the engine to a raised iron rail, turning the path of motion from a suggestion into an absolute, inescapable physical law.

But it was what was attached to the wheels that truly represented the next leap in mechanical evolution.

Yue Ying crouched down, inspecting the heavy, external steel coupling rods that now connected the three massive drive wheels on either side of the engine.

The Emperor had warned them about traction. If the engine was pulling hundreds of tons of weight, a single pair of drive wheels would simply spin helplessly against the iron tracks, unable to grip. By linking all six wheels together with the heavy steel rods, the immense, violent torque generated by the primary pistons was evenly distributed across a massive surface area.

"Maximum traction," Liu Ye’s voice echoed behind her.

Yue Ying stood up, turning to see Liu Ye walking into the foundry, having left the telegraph tower to the apprentices. The Minister of Works looked at the modified engine with a mixture of profound awe and slight, lingering confusion.

"The coupling rods are installed, and the flanged wheels are perfectly cast," Liu Ye said, stepping up beside her. "But Yue Ying... I have been running the mathematical models on the pulling power of this machine. If we lock this beast to iron rails, and we distribute the torque across six wheels... the amount of sheer, dead weight it can haul is..."

He paused, struggling to find a word that accurately described the calculation.

"...it is astronomical," Yue Ying finished for him, her eyes fixed on the heavy iron coupling at the rear of the chassis.

The Emperor had told them to build a system of linked carts. He had told them to build a "prime mover."

The inventors of the ancient world did not have the word "train." They did not have the historical context of the industrial revolution to draw upon. They were standing in the dark, feeling the shape of the future with their bare hands.

"If we link ten heavy cargo carts behind this single engine," Liu Ye hypothesized, pacing back and forth, his hands moving rapidly as he visualized the concept. "Ten carts, loaded with pure, high grade iron ore from the western quarries. We connect them with the heavy iron knuckles. We lay the flanged rails."

Liu Ye stopped, looking at Yue Ying, his eyes wide with a terrifying, absolute realization.

"Yue Ying... this is not a carriage," Liu Ye whispered, the sheer magnitude of what they were building finally crashing down upon his brilliant mind. "A carriage moves men. A carriage moves a few sacks of grain. This... this machine..."

"It is an Iron Centipede," Yue Ying said softly, giving a name to the nameless behemoth. "It is a mechanical beast of burden that never tires, never starves, and never stops."

She walked to the rear of the engine, placing her hand on the cold, heavy iron coupling knuckle designed to link with the first cargo cart.

"His Majesty told us to think laterally," Yue Ying continued, her voice echoing in the roar of the foundry. "He told us that mass producing thousands of small engines was impossible. So, he has ordered us to build a single, colossal engine that does the work of a thousand horses."

Liu Ye stared at the linked drive wheels. "If we lay the tracks from the quarries to the foundries... we bypass the rivers. We bypass the muddy roads. We can move hundreds of tons of raw material across the continent in a matter of days. It will feed the Great Wall expansion. It will supply the armies. The logistical efficiency..."

He shook his head, completely overwhelmed. "It breaks the world, Yue Ying. The Emperor is not just conquering territories. He is conquering distance itself. With the telegraphs moving his words, and the Iron Centipede moving his weight..."

"The Hengyuan Dynasty will become present everywhere at fat speed," Yue Ying concluded, a shiver running down her spine despite the heat of the blast furnaces.

They stood together in the shadows of the massive, black iron machine, two ancient engineers peering over the precipice of the modern age. They didn’t know they were building the first freight train in human history. They only knew that Lie Fan had handed them the blueprints to become gods of iron and steam.

On the other hand, for the next two weeks, the Imperial procession became a moving testament to the absolute sovereignty of the Hengyuan Dynasty over the island of Taiwan. Lie Fan did not simply wish to see the polished, sanitized corridors of the Taipei Governor’s Palace, he demanded to see the raw, beating heart of the colonization effort.

From the heavily fortified agricultural plains of Tainan, the massive convoy of shock absorbing carriages and the entire security escort turned southward. The paved coastal highways eventually gave way to flattened dirt roads, meticulously maintained by local labor battalions, leading them toward the southernmost tip of the island.

The heat grew more intense, the air thick with a cloying humidity that made the mainlanders sweat profusely beneath their silk garments. Yet, the vibrant, almost aggressive beauty of the landscape was undeniable. The dense, emerald jungles pushed right up against the pristine, white sand beaches, where the azure waters of the ocean crashed in a rhythmic, eternal cadence.

In the newly established southern port town, a strategic naval choke point designed to monitor the shipping lanes stretching toward the Jiaozhi commandery and the deep southern archipelagos, the Emperor and his family were met with the same fanatic devotion they had experienced in the north.

Here, the focus was not on agriculture, but on maritime dominance and resource extraction.

Lie Fan stood on the edge of a massive, wooden pier, the salty wind whipping his dark hair around his face. Beside him stood Yang Hong and Ling Cao, detailing the strategic layout of the southern garrison.

"This port serves as our early warning system, Your Majesty," Ling Cao explained, his weathered face squinting against the glaring sun reflecting off the ocean. "The southern seas are fragmented, and their waters are infested with pirates who prey on the spice trade. By stationing a squadron of our heavy galleons here, we create an overlapping patrol grid with the mainland fleets. Nothing crosses the South China Sea without our explicit permission."

"And the resources?" Lie Fan asked, his eyes tracking a line of local fishermen hauling in massive, heavy nets filled with shimmering, silver scaled catches.

"Beyond the fishing, Your Majesty, the southern waters are rich in pearls and rare corals," Yang Hong noted, signaling for a local magistrate to step forward. The nervous official presented a velvet-lined wooden box, opening it to reveal a dozen perfectly spherical, luminous black pearls, alongside jagged, intricate branches of deep crimson coral.

Zhen Ji, standing just behind her husband, stepped forward, her mercantile instincts instantly ignited. She picked up one of the black pearls, holding it up to the sunlight, analyzing its luster and weight with the practiced eye of a master jeweler.

"These are extraordinary," the Empress murmured, a calculating smile touching her lips. "The nobles in Xiapi and Chengdu would empty their family vaults for matching sets of this quality. The crimson coral could be carved into protective talismans. The profit margins on these luxury exports could entirely offset the cost of maintaining the southern naval garrisons."

"See to it that the pearl diving operations are brought under strict imperial monopoly, Yang Hong," Lie Fan ordered smoothly, trusting his wife’s flawless economic assessment. "I want the divers compensated fairly in silver, but the product flows exclusively through the state treasuries. We do not allow independent merchant guilds to artificially inflate the market."

"It shall be done by nightfall, Your Majesty," Yang Hong bowed deeply.

The tour was not merely a sequence of economic audits. For the Imperial Family, it was a profound, shared experience that strengthened the bonds of the dynasty’s inner circle.

While Lie Fan and his administrators dissected the island’s infrastructure, the women of the imperial household engaged with the land on their own terms.

Sun Shangxiang and Ma Yunlu, utterly bored by the endless ledgers of trade and taxation, took to the dense, lower foothills on horseback. Clad in light, breathable leather armor, wielding their customized composite bows, the two fierce warrior women spent their days hunting the wild, aggressive boars that plagued the outer edges of the sugarcane plantations. They rode back into the imperial camps at dusk, laughing uproariously, their horses laden with fresh meat for the evening feasts, much to the awe of the local garrisons who had never seen women ride or shoot with such terrifying, lethal proficiency.

______________________________

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