547 Epilogueception 1 Yellow Turban Family / Former Enemies (2/2)
When Tong returned and resumed his duty as the emperor, Xiahou Dun visited Tong and asked to clear Cao Cao's name.
Tong demanded that Xiahou Family and Cao Family had to serve him if he did so, which Xiahou Dun accepted.
As promised, Tong published a new statement at Chibi and Wulin Port, telling the local population that they had completely investigated the epidemic outbreak during the southern campaign and found out that Cao Cao wasn't the creator of those poison barrels. Instead, it was the work of Gan Ji, who plotted to use them as a sacrifice to kill Dong Bai's soldiers. Unfortunately, the masterminds died, and Cao Cao ended up taking the blames.
Tong even built Cao Cao's statue at Chibi Port and created a story that Cao Cao tried to collect all poison barrels in one place so that Gan Ji couldn't use it against the people. Tong went all-out to the point that he erased several soldiers' memory about the incidents.
Cao Cao's name was cleared after a few years. Xiahou Clan and Cao Clan adhered to their promises, in which they became Tong's subordinates.
A year before the East-West war, Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren, Dian Wei, and Xu Chu increased their cultivation strength to 10 wings.
One day, they found out that the surviving Sima Clan's descendants were plotting rebellion. They assassinated Sima Shi as a warning to Sima Yi.
Unfortunately, Sima Zhao insisted on going through with his brother's goal. The two clans acted on their own and avenged for Cao Cao's children in the other timeline by killing all Sima Clan members.
From that day, they continued to act as Tong's hidden swords.
But when Cao Cao was reborn as Cao Xian and Tong's son, Tong appointed Xiahou Yuan as a temporary grand commander of a new legion – Wei Han Legion. Jia Xu and Xun Yu were also reassigned to support this unit as they were from the old Wei.
Cao Mengde redeemed himself and worked for Tong this time. He grew up and took the helm of Wei Han Legion, which would take an important role in the 300-Year East-West War in the future.
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= Liu Ping =
After getting caught, Tong forced him to reincarnate as a dung beetle so that Ping had to live by eating feces forever. Tong also sealed Ping's bug body in a small glass box.
At first, Ping resisted by not eating any food provided by Tong. After all, they were human dung.
Although Ping no longer had any special ability, Tong kept injecting lifespan into him. Ping wanted to commit suicide by starving himself to death, but the starvation torture was too unbearable. Ping ended up eating the poop to live.
The taste was awful. He could hardly digest it since human poop wasn't a dung beetle's primary food. They only ate herbivore creatures' feces.
Ping wanted to die, but he couldn't die. He embraced this humiliation and torture.
Somehow, Ping got used to eating human feces after 500 years. At that point, Tong got bored torturing Ping. He squeezed the bug and used the system authority to shatter Ping's soul to pieces.
Ping got his peaceful death, and his soul fragments entered the reincarnation river. He didn't remember anything afterward as all his past and present memory was erased forever.
Unfortunately, Ping didn't forgive Tong for what he had done. The karma chain between Tong and Ping remained, which would come back and haunt Tong in the latter days.
Because of that karma, Zhang Tong died in the fight against the creator in the higher dimension.
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= Pu Jing, Chen Gong, Zhang Miao =
Pu Jing had once dominated the declining Roman Empire and almost restored it to the former glory with his intelligence alone. Unfortunately, Romans hated other races and believed that their race held the supremacy over the Asian and black people. Some of the Romans even envied him because of Pu Jing's modern knowledge that outshone their culture. They saw Pu Jing as a slave-born Asian man and refused to accept his leadership.
Pu Jing proved them wrong by killing many hostile roman aristocrats secretly and openly. With Chen Gong and Zhang Miao's help, they took over the Kushan, allied with the declining Parthian Empire, and destroyed half of the Roman Kingdom during the 10 years that Tong was away.
However, cultivators complicated the war. Septimius Severus, the rising emperor of the Roman Empire, declared that Pu Jing and his forces were the nemeses of the Romans. He united the native cultivators and pushed back against Pu Jing's mercenary forces.
In 220 AD, the Immortal Emperor Severus bribed the Parthian Empire and had them backstab Pu Jing Army, excused that Pu Jing was a Han Dynasty's spy that came to ruin their forces.
Afterward, the Romans assisted the new rising country, the Sassanid Empire, the descendants of the glorious Persian Empire. They replaced the weakened Parthian with the Sasanians. Then, Severus appointed the Sassanid Emperor, Ardashir the First, as their vessel.
History changed. Sasanians became a vessel state for the Romans. Ardashir raised his weapons against Pu Jing and coordinated with Severus Army. Against the two giants and various native cultivators, Pu Jing's western campaign failed.
Chen Gong and Zhang Miao were captured and killed during the fight, but Pu Jing managed to flee and return to where he had started, China.
Pu Jing decisively surrendered himself to Tong, who had returned from Lilim's dimension. He even swore allegiance to Tong with his immortal oath.
Tong appointed Pu Jing as the overseer of the west. He ended up in charge of monitoring the Silk Road and the relationship with the western countries.
After maintaining his position for more than thirty years, in 255 AD, the Roman Empire and the Sasanid Empire and waged war against Tong's Han Dynasty as they were afraid of Pu Jing's influence.
The East-West War occurred. All Tong's elite generals and strategists were sent to fight against the Romans.
Supported by Tong's elite officers, strategists, and advanced weaponry, Tong's forces utilized their modern military knowledge and trampled on the countless soldiers of the western alliance army. Romans and Sasanians experienced a disaster campaign and returned home with only a few thousand men. Out of a hundred 8-wing cultivators, only a handful of them managed to scrap their skin and went home alive.
Pu Jing suggested to Tong that they should destroy the western world and dominate the world, which many strategists agreed.
Seeing that everyone supported Pu Jing's suggestion, Tong sent Pu Jing with Wei Han Legion to destroy the Roman Empire. Many 8-wing elites, such as Zhang He, Xu Huang, and Zhang Liao, also accompanied them.
The campaign lasted 300 years as Severus proved himself to be worthy opponents. It was recorded in history books as the 300-Year East-West War. As for the result of this historical event, no one could claim that they won.
Tong and Pu Jing failed to control the annexed countries as revolts kept occurring. Meanwhile, western countries lost most natural resources to the Han Dynasty.
In the end, Pu Jing withdrew his forces back to China. Roman, Sasanian, and Kushan ceased to exist afterward, but several new countries emerged on top of the fallen ones.
For the sake of not having another East-West War, Tong placed a restriction in the admin system that no commoner could cultivate more than 2 wings without his authorization. As for the cultivators, who had already attained a higher cultivation base, they could retain their strength.
War never occurred again under Tong's watch, until the multi-dimensional gate opened and an outsider informed Tong about the Heavenly Dragon Gathering Festival invitation.
As for Pu Jing, Tong executed him after he had learned about what Pu Jing had done to the native Romans during the war.