"It sounds a devastating loss," Claudius murmurs. "The loss of a lifetime's work, when thy work was lodged within thyself." It must feel like the loss of one's self, too. The tactician in Claudius recognizes the strategy of it -- there's a way that empires invade that's as much theater as warfare. The show of force, then crushing the means and the will to resist. The Core-Melting Hand reached out first, because a people who've seen their strongest cultivators broken would surrender themselves more easily. Claudius can imagine how Wei Wuxian felt to witness it, to have his own home razed around him.