Chapter 1134 - 1077. Last Meeting Between Two Rival & Old Friend Pt.3
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(A/N: Don’t forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"I see," Cao Cao murmured, his shoulders slumping. He says, since he has known there would be possible consequences to the reputation of his dynasty, and seeing that Lie Fan had already weighed those risks against the survival of his empire and still chose the blade, then he wouldn’t try again in trying to persuade him to change his mind.
There was no argument left to make. The Lord of Wei was a pragmatist to his very core, and he could not fault Lie Fan for executing the exact same ruthless maneuver he would have employed had their positions been reversed.
The atmosphere in the pavilion shifted. The nostalgic warmth of their early days faded, replaced by the heavy, titanic gravity of their final, apocalyptic wars.
"The first big clash," Lie Fan murmured, setting his chopsticks down, his appetite suddenly gone as he recalled the sheer, terrifying scale of the bloodshed. "The war for the central plains."
Cao Cao’s face tightened. The memory of that campaign was a wound that had never truly stopped bleeding. "I thought my defenses were impenetrable. I had fortified every river crossing, every mountain pass. I had the finest heavy infantry in the world, commanded by Xiahou Dun, Cao Ren, and Xu Chu. But your war machine... Lie Fan, it was something entirely alien."
Cao Cao looked at him, his dark eyes filled with a mixture of resentment and profound, awe struck respect. "Your logistical supply chains moved faster than my cavalry. You didn’t just outfight me, you out engineered me."
"It was the hardest campaign of my life," Lie Fan admitted quietly, offering his rival the absolute truth. "Your generals fought like demons. I lost tens of thousands of men trying to break your lines. But when the walls of Xuchang finally fell..."
"I lost my heartland," Cao Cao finished for him, his voice barely a whisper. He stared blindly at the feast before him, seeing only the burning banners of his former capital. "Losing the central plains... losing Xuchang... it broke the spine of the Wei Dynasty. I was forced to order a total, desperate retreat. We burned the bridges behind us, abandoned the fertile lands we had cultivated for a decade, and fell back to the ancient, renovated walls of Luoyang to make it my new capital."