Sowing Discord (1)
Back in his own quarters after the banquet, Ding Yuan sent his attendants away and let out a long, rough breath.
Han Yeong, who threw obstacles across his path at every conceivable turn—Ding Yuan wanted nothing more than to march on his camp that very instant and tear him apart with his bare hands.
But Zhang Yang had counseled restraint. Do not clash with him now, the eunuch had urged; first grant governorships and provincial posts to the officials in the capital who showed signs of defiance toward him, and drive them out of Luoyang that way. Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, who wielded influence at court as sons of the Runan Yuan clan, were counted among their number.
Of course, defiance was not all he faced. There were men like Cao Cao, who had sought him out privately once the banquet ended, laying gifts before him and swearing loyalty to his face.
...Just who does that commoner think he is, interfering with my affairs at every single turn?!!
In his youth, Ding Yuan had been a son of Bingzhou. Appointed a county clerk in Nanxian, he had defended the province by putting down bandits and savage outlaws, and there was no hardship he would refuse when the people called.
In time, of course, his thinking had slowly changed. In the name of sound military judgment he had more than once done unrighteous things—deliberately standing by while the people living outside the vital strongpoints died—and yet Ding Yuan had always called such acts unavoidable.
But this rot-ridden country, far from repaying his decades of toil, had left him buried in Bingzhou until his hair went white with age. Wang Yun, a fellow son of Bingzhou and of an age with him, had climbed in that same span all the way to Minister over the Masses, one of the Three Excellencies of Han.
Whatever loyalty to the Han had once lived in Ding Yuan's breast was gone. What filled him now was nothing but a bottomless greed for wealth and an unslaked thirst for power. That, too, was why he had taken Zhang Yang's hand.
Lu Bu... if only that damned woman had been obedient!!
For executing without orders the soldiers Han Yeong had taken captive, he had sentenced Lu Bu to house arrest. That was why he had left her behind at the army camp whenever he went to meet Han Yeong or attended the banquet.
Had she faithfully obeyed his command and stayed there, he would have taken Han Yeong's head that day and made an example of him before every minister of the court.
Their bond had never recovered since the clash over the Black Mountain Bandits. She had never been his own flesh and blood to begin with—only a daughter taken in to serve as a political instrument—so there was no such thing as a father's love in him either.
Zhang Liao and Gao Shun, who had stood guard over him on his visit to Han Yeong, followed Lu Bu more faithfully than they followed him. They could not be trusted either. The only things in this world that would never betray him were wealth and power.
...Now that the officers and men of the Grand General's residence are mine, should I go on employing Lu Bu as before?
The face of a born rebel. Her peerless valor and martial might were needed to sweep away the swarms of foreign tribes and bandits with only a handful of men—yet he kept her at arm's length, wary of that rebel's face she carried.
But now, with the troops that had served under He Jin folded into his command, he fielded a great army of seventy thousand. In Bingzhou, whose population was smaller than that of any other region under heaven, such a number had been beyond imagining.
Even as he told himself he could beat Han Yeong without her, Ding Yuan wrestled with the question.
...No—this is an opportunity. If I win this war without Lu Bu, my name and my prestige will climb higher still.
He had always envied and resented the prospect of Lu Bu heaping up more glory than himself, and now he racked his brain over whether to deploy her in this war against Han Yeong. Adopted daughter or not, Ding Yuan—the man who held all the power—bristled at the woman the world praised as the Martial God of Bingzhou. Out of his own petty jealousy, he found himself praying she would never win fame again.
...Yeah, this is just the world hating on me.
If a man's hair started turning white before he had even reached his twentieth year, there could be only one explanation: the whole world had resolved to hate him without cause.
Damn it, nothing is going my way.
He had been on the verge of crushing Dong Zhuo once and for all and claiming Red Hare when the revolt of the Ten Attendants erupted earlier than anyone had predicted. As if that were not enough, the eunuchs had fled straight into Ding Yuan's arms and delivered the Emperor's person into his hands. Following the original history, the Emperor's protection should have been mine...
And so Ding Yuan, his position secured, had come into power far beyond anything his original-history self had ever held—and now he was tearing around the capital, screeching that he would swap out the Emperor exactly as Dong Zhuo once had. It was a headache from every direction.
Honestly, I owe the Han nothing. There's no bond of loyalty making me fight for a dynasty that never gave me a single thing—but once the Emperor is replaced, and I think of the nightmare the future becomes, fighting stops being a choice.
If it truly comes to that, I'll just pull off a clean, stylish retreat.
Not that I flew into a rage and hurled my wine cup at Ding Yuan without a plan in hand. After all, among our ranks at this very moment stands the very person who, in the original history, drove out Lu Bu—after she had killed Dong Zhuo, seized Chang'an, and gone on her rampage.
"I have taken the liberty of preparing a plan."
Just as he had expected, she answered with a smile of perfect composure. Jia Xu. Fa Zheng was a genius strategist in her own right, more than capable on the battlefield, but she was still young; set beside Jia Xu, she fell a shade short. This was a woman who excelled not only in the art of survival but in schemes and stratagems of every kind.
"What is it? Let's hear it."
"Some time ago, after you and Ding Yuan became enemies, my lord, I put funds to work gathering intelligence on the Bingzhou army."
Ever since he had placed those funds in her hands, Jia Xu had been moving on her own, preparing for the coming clash with Ding Yuan.
"You are already aware, I trust, that Ding Yuan disguised his men as Black Mountain Bandits to slaughter and plunder the people of Mengjin?"
"Of course."
The moment he had first heard that report, long before Ding Yuan openly bared his ambition and turned hostile, Han Yeong had branded the man a threat.
"It seems that among that lawless rabble, who behaved no better than common bandits, a single unit alone refused to take part."
"...And who would that be?"
"The unit of Lu Bu the Flying General—she who is called the Unrivaled Under Heaven and the Martial God of Bingzhou."
...As expected. Try as he might, Han Yeong could not picture a single general besides Lu Bu who would defy the orders of Ding Yuan, who wielded enormous power over Bingzhou as its Governor.
So there really is something different about her.
Had she been the Lu Bu of the official histories, the wealth streaming out of Mengjin's plunder would have blinded her with greed, and she would have been first in line to join Ding Yuan's atrocity. Here, however—perhaps because she stood opposed to the man—she had even gone so far as to deliver the people suffering under the Bingzhou army.
Does she have some shred of care for the common folk left in her?
He didn't know her exact reasons, but this could prove a great strength—or a great weakness. The strength: if they succeeded in winning her over, took her in as an ally, and treated her well, she would never turn against him, no differently than the unwavering filial devotion she had shown her adoptive father in the original history. The weakness...
Going by what she said when we met in the market district, she's Ding Yuan's adopted daughter, same as in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
That her unit had refused to plunder at Mengjin Port was proof of her lack of greed. And a woman without greed would not be easily coaxed to his side—even with Red Hare as the bait.
While he was still turning the problem of Lu Bu over in his mind, Jia Xu's explanation went on.
"What is more, Lu Bu took it upon herself to punish the Bingzhou soldiers who were throwing Luoyang's public order into chaos—and for that, Ding Yuan placed her under house arrest."
...So that's why she wasn't at the banquet. Had Lu Bu been present, his troops and Ding Yuan's might well have crossed blades right there in the banquet hall—and in the worst case, his head would have left his shoulders.
"It is my intention to set these two against each other—to sow discord between them until they cannot stand the sight of one another."
Its most famous example: Chen Ping, a strategist of Han, who set Xiang Yu—the Hegemon-King of Chu—against Fan Zeng, the advisor he trusted above all others and the finest mind in all of Chu, until the bond between them split apart. In doing so he broke the Chu army's capacity to operate, and above all he played a decisive part in sending Fan Zeng to his grave.
If we can pull that off, then even with our smaller numbers we have a real chance. But...
The question was whether it would work at all.
"Ding Yuan and Lu Bu share no blood, but they're still father and daughter. You really think it can be done?"
It was true Ding Yuan might have taken Lu Bu in purely as a political tool, but precisely because the bond was one of father and daughter, Han Yeong worried the rift might not be so easily pried open.
Jia Xu countered, as though his worry were a fear over nothing.
"Ding Yuan dreams the grand dream of swallowing the realm whole, yet he is too narrow-minded to hold a great army together, and miserly to the last coin. Were Lu Bu a daughter he truly cherished, then now—of all moments—he would be soothing her with gentle words, not punishing her."
Jia Xu had seen straight through to the man's heart. Ding Yuan feared that Lu Bu would pile up fame beyond his own and, one day, shake the very ground he stood on.
"As it happens, we hold a general named Li Su, who came over to us at the Battle of Didao. He was born in the same hometown as Lu Bu, so he should know a good deal about her."
"...Li Su?"
Han Yeong knew the man well: a creature with a gift for the artful lie. Talent, or sheer improvisation? In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Li Su hailed from Lu Bu's hometown, and it was he who proposed to Dong Zhuo the scheme of using Red Hare to tempt her into betrayal. He was also the man who, while serving as Colonel of the Cavalry, had drifted unnoticed onto Wang Yun's side and stood at the forefront of Dong Zhuo's assassination. At the recent Battle of Didao he had been in Dong Zhuo's service—until he threw down his weapon and surrendered.
I only accepted his surrender because I meant to use Li Su to lure Lu Bu over, the moment Red Hare was in my hands. Right?
Everything had been so frantic of late that the whole plan had slipped his mind entirely.
"The groundwork for spreading the rumors, in preparation for Your Lordship's meeting with the Colonel of the Central Army, is already largely in place."
It seemed the preliminaries for the stratagem were nearly finished. All that remained, apparently, was his word.
"Good. Do it as you see fit. If there's anything else you need, just say the word."
The gap in numbers between the enemy host and his own was considerable, and in the prowess of its generals—Lu Bu above all, with Zhang Liao and Gao Shun beside her—the Bingzhou army held a narrow superiority as well. And yet, if there was one thing in which his side reigned supreme...
...he suspected it was the presence of strategists who could master a battlefield and spin webs of superb intrigue.
While Ding Yuan showered the notables of Luoyang with the seals of governor and other provincial offices, packed the court ministers off to distant regions, and tormented himself over whether or not to deploy Lu Bu—letting the war with Han Yeong's army sit on hold for the moment—two rumors burst without warning into the streets of Luoyang.
The first held that Han Yeong, girding for war, was hauling vast stores of military provisions and other supplies out of Yong Province and into his camp.
And the other...
...was that Lu Bu, seething at being denied any worthy office despite the merits she had piled up, was in league with Han Yeong—meaning to cast Ding Yuan himself aside and raise herself up as the one true master of the army.
"Bring me Lu Fengxian this instant—!!"
Ding Yuan's heart was already brimming with grievances against Lu Bu, and his trust in his adopted daughter was nonexistent. He did not so much as attempt to confirm the particulars of the rumor. Worked up into a fury, he called at once for the woman still confined under house arrest.