Betrayal at the North Gate
Outside the north gate, Dong Zhuo and his soldiers stood firm. It was hard to gauge precisely through the gap in the gate, but there were certainly several hundred troops.
"General of the Front, escort His Majesty and Your Highness! The traitors are plotting to assassinate them!"
In that split second, Jang Yang must have racked his brains and tried to pull Dong Zhuo to our side.
"Indeed, General of the Front!"
"His Majesty the Emperor is in danger!"
The Ten Attendants chimed in, seeing this as their lifeline. With the eunuchs around them joining the clamor, it was utter chaos. The ball-less bastards were shouting loud enough to shatter plates.
"Are those the traitors?" Dong Zhuo silenced them with a raised hand, pointing at us and asking Jang Yang.
If things continued like this, I'd have to face hundreds of soldiers with just my dozens of mercenaries. I couldn't die playing into the Ten Attendants' tongues, so I raised my voice against Dong Zhuo.
"General of the Front, the Ten Attendants killed the Grand General! When his subordinates sought revenge, they fled with the Emperor in tow!"
"Don't believe that nobody whose name I don't even know, General of the Front."
Both I and the Ten Attendants wagged our tongues to draw Dong Zhuo to our side. And the one holding the deciding power chose.
"Come in at once. I'll gladly escort you."
Dong Zhuo accepted the Ten Attendants' proposal. It was the moment the Emperor fell into the hands of the man who would become a traitor.
The Ten Attendants repeatedly expressed their gratitude, and the Emperor and Prince of Chenliu entered amid Dong Zhuo's army alongside them.
'Man proposes, heaven disposes,' they say.
Seeing the future I'd frantically tried to avert arrive just like this made me resent the heavens. I sighed in lament.
Sadly, I didn't even have time to wallow in it. As Dong Zhuo pushed his soldiers into the city, he asked me,
"What's your name?"
Dong Zhuo scanned me up and down. His eyes gleamed with greed, like a beast eyeing prey. His overwhelming presence was suffocating, but I feigned composure and answered.
"Jang Myeong. I hold no office."
"Are you a traitor?"
"If you turn all the Grand General's soldiers into enemies. If you kill us and protect the Ten Attendants, calamity will surely follow."
I answered while slowly retreating with my mercenaries. If only I had my repeating crossbow now, even Hong Gildong could make it.
"Even if the soldiers under the General of the Front fight well, can they defeat 10,000 in Luoyang?"
Here, I had to wag my tongue cleverly just to save our skins. I bluffed like a pufferfish, keeping Dong Zhuo from touching us.
"If I tell you to withdraw upon seeing you, will you?"
"If you spare us, we'll gladly withdraw."
I said, gradually lowering the sword I'd been aiming. I couldn't die unjustly branded a traitor here.
As I sheathed my blade, the hired mercenaries followed suit, stowing their weapons.
"Boring. Now, let's head to the palace!"
Dong Zhuo glanced dismissively at us, who had tucked tail, and passed by. Then he escorted the Ten Attendants and the Emperor toward the palace.
As the Emperor receded into the distance, my legs gave out from the realization that we'd survived, somehow.
Not long after, Yuan Shao arrived leading his soldiers. He asked me, slumped on the ground,
"Where is His Majesty?"
"The General of the Front is escorting him to the palace. Did you not encounter him?"
I harbored one last hope that Yuan Shao might stop Dong Zhuo, but their paths must have diverged, as Yuan Shao hadn't intercepted him. When I replied in a forlorn voice, Yuan Shao tilted his head.
"The General of the Front? Why is he here?"
"I don't know either."
I let out a dry, hollow laugh from the emptiness. Now, there was no stopping the era of warlords.
Dong Zhuo entered the palace with his soldiers in tow. The palace grounds were filthy with corpses and bloodstains, and massacres still raged in spots here and there. Shao Di and the Prince of Chenliu glimpsed the horrors visible between the soldiers and paled.
"Li Ru, go check the situation."
Dong Zhuo dispatched Li Ru to assess things. Li Ru returned with a few escort soldiers and an answer.
"General of the Front, what Jang Myeong said earlier seems to be true."
"Everything that man said is a lie."
The Ten Attendants insisted they'd killed the Grand General for plotting rebellion, but Dong Zhuo paid no heed to their yapping like dogs.
Dong Zhuo moved aside so the Ten Attendants couldn't hear and consulted Li Ru.
"Escorting the Ten Attendants like this will cause problems, won't it?"
"Yes. If we keep protecting them, the Grand General's subordinates will turn against us, and we'll be outnumbered."
There were already thousands of soldiers inside the palace alone. Dong Zhuo's hasty 300 couldn't handle it. The forces the Grand General had commanded inside and around the palace easily exceeded 10,000. Even bringing all 3,000 from his Frontier General headquarters wouldn't suffice.
"Bring Jia Xu, Fan Chou, and Zhang Ji. We need to figure this out."
Li Jue and Guo Si could think for themselves to some extent, but they were leading the main body, so he couldn't ask them. Moments later, the three summoned men arrived to see Dong Zhuo.
Dong Zhuo asked how to win over the Grand General's soldiers and seize power. Li Ru, Fan Chou, and Zhang Ji each offered opinions, but none satisfied him.
Then, Jia Xu, who had been silently listening, stepped forward and spoke.
"Arrest the Ten Attendants, and the Grand General's subordinates will join us for revenge. Once we've gathered the soldiers, execute the Ten Attendants with extreme punishment, and both the court and the people will follow the General of the Front. It eliminates the Ten Attendants who would share power—killing two birds with one stone."
"What excellent advice!"
Dong Zhuo slapped his knee upon hearing the scheme. The Ten Attendants would treat him like a backwater bumpkin and discard him the moment the crisis passed.
"I won't let those nutless bastards have their way."
Feed the Ten Attendants as sacrifices to the Grand General's soldiers, quell their rage, and secure their loyalty. With the Emperor in hand and the Grand General's army besides, no one in the realm could oppose this Dong Zhuo.
Dong Zhuo ordered his adjutant to carry out Jia Xu's plan exactly.
"Go 'escort' the Ten Attendants specially. Disarm them and ensure they can't pull any stunts. I need to meet some people."
The upstream of the watercourse had changed thanks to someone's efforts, but the destination where the water arrived remained the same. The dock where the downstream arrived was named Han Wang—the Fall of Han.
If you had even a passing interest in politics like me, you knew the central power was in turmoil. Even street performers whispered about it, so few in and around Luoyang were ignorant.
The seat where the churning power settled was that of the Minister of Works, and Dong Zhuo sat there.
"Those Xiliang bastards are coming again. At this rate, Luoyang will be packed."
Every four days, Dong Zhuo's soldiers entered Luoyang Castle. Each time, roughly a thousand marched in. After seven or eight such entries, it rivaled the forces the Grand General had commanded in Luoyang.
But the office of General of the Front far exceeded its allowable troop limits; how Dong Zhuo kept them as subordinates was a mystery.
"Lord Shao Ming. Over ten officials have already vanished without a trace."
Inside, people disappeared quietly, their seats filled by backwater hillbillies. The upright were killed, and those who openly defied Dong Zhuo died too. But since they weren't killed openly, those uninvolved in politics didn't know who had died.
"From now on, I will execute the corrupt officials who have eaten away at the state!"
The people's hearts remembered not those killed in dark alleys at night, but those executed in the markets.
Fifteen days after the Ten Attendants' disturbance, Dong Zhuo executed them. He killed them in various ways: drawn and quartered, dismembered alive, beheaded, boiled alive, and more.
As the Ten Attendants died shrieking grotesquely, the commoners cheered.
"Has Lord Zhao Gong come to watch too?"
"I wanted to see the Ten Attendants die. Hmm, that one's a soldier from the Grand General's headquarters."
Most of the soldiers administering and overseeing the punishments had been under the Grand General. That explained how Dong Zhuo had won them over.
Power moved more smoothly than the history I knew. It was rotten timber.
I had to devise countermeasures now that Dong Zhuo had seized power.
On the day swallows returned south during Cold Dew, Yuan Shao summoned me. It had been a while, and Yuan Shao's face was dark.
"I've been busy and only called you now, Jang Myeong."
What a blatant lie. If Yuan Shao truly wanted to see me, he could have made time anytime. Through my connections, I roughly knew the movements of key figures like Yuan Shao and Dong Zhuo.
But pointing out uncomfortable truths gained nothing, so I thanked him for meeting me now.
"First, let me ask one thing. Did the astronomy you saw before go this far?"
"Yes. It was the future I tried to change. That's why I said to exclude Zuo—or rather, Dong, the Minister of Works."
Yuan Shao wouldn't view Dong Zhuo favorably now, so that form of address sufficed.
"I looked into it: the Minister of Works acted on his own after seeing other warlords move. If I'd known, I should have sent him to the frontier outright."
Yuan Shao claimed he hadn't brought Dong Zhuo in. It was good news for me, who had suspected he'd ignored my advice.
"Regretting the past is meaningless. What matters is what's ahead."
"That's why I called you. Your astronomy foretold some event, right?"
With reality so dire before his eyes, Yuan Shao must have been grasping at straws. My accurate prophecies probably looked like a lifeline to him.
Even so, I hadn't expected the arrogant Yuan Shao to swallow his pride and ask me about the future. Of course, what I gave him wasn't a straw worth clutching, but cold, dark reality.
"The Prince of Chenliu ascends the throne. The mastermind is Dong, the Minister of Works. After that, Luoyang is drenched entirely in blood."
I dropped the bomb right away to quash false hopes. Saying the Prince of Chenliu becomes Emperor meant Shao Di was no longer Emperor. Calling Dong Zhuo the "mastermind" made the outcome easy to predict.
"Th-that's treason, isn't it?"
"Probably."
The word "deposition" shocked him so much he stuttered. No wonder; in the original history, it was Dong Zhuo's most chewed-over crime.
Even with power, becoming a regent was one thing—deposing a perfectly healthy Emperor was tyranny beyond ordinary men's imagination.
"Can't we stop it like last time?"
I closed my eyes and groped for remaining options, but unfortunately, victory and defeat were already decided.
An army? How to beat Dong Zhuo, who had most of Luoyang's forces in his grasp? Politics? Sadly, Dong Zhuo hadn't erred politically yet. I couldn't drag him down with fabricated charges. Assassination? Lu Bu, his surrogate son, guarded him. With no rift between Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu, winning Lu Bu over was impossible now.
Without Dong Zhuo deposing the Emperor, I couldn't rally opposition against him. I opened my eyes and spoke the truth.
"Neither astronomy nor insight shows a path."
That ended my meeting with Yuan Shao. When I politely said I couldn't give the answer he wanted, he chatted idly for about half a ke before rising.
That he didn't show open displeasure like last time meant his view of me had improved.
'This will tell me.'
Simply telling Yuan Shao that Dong Zhuo would depose Shao Di was enough. But to confirm my suspicions about Yuan Shao, I added the line on purpose.
'Is he the filial son who served three years of mourning, or the monster who discards his clan for political ground?'
If Yuan Shao cherished family, he'd evacuate them upon hearing Luoyang would be blood-soaked. But if he hesitated not to glorify abandoning family for gain, he'd keep them in Luoyang.
Original history suggested the latter, but I didn't want to miss the chance to verify.