The Coalition (3)
With Yuan Shu's contemptuous tantrum finally at an end, the various lords resumed introducing themselves. I gave a brief introduction of my own and took my seat.
As the round of introductions from the governors and local officials joining the coalition drew to a close, I tilted my head.
So Kong Rong, the Chancellor of Beihai, and Tao Qian, the Governor of Xuzhou, joined from Yan Yi's run... but where's Gongsun Zan, the Administrator of Beiping?
The hero of You Province, famed by the epithet "White Horse General" and the greatest cavalry commander of the early chapters of history—he was nowhere to be seen.
Though he hadn't attended in the historical record, this was Yan Yi, where he was supposed to take part. Gongsun Zan's absence left me puzzled.
...Then what about Liu Bei?
I scanned the assembly of warlords, searching for the woman with the famously long earlobes and her retinue among so many gathered heroes.
By the original history, she should have joined thanks to her old connection with Cao Cao from the Yellow Turban Rebellion—but beside Cao Cao, too, there was no sign of anyone resembling Liu Bei.
All that met my eyes was some rich fool's blockhead glaring at me with venomous eyes, working my nerves for all he was worth.
Yuan Shu, apparently still sour that I had flatly contradicted him, kept shooting intermittent glares my way. I ignored them with practiced ease.
What's he going to do, glare me to death?
"Now then, since everyone has finished their introductions, it is time we select a leader to head this coalition, wouldn't you agree?"
With the clash between Yuan Shu and Han Yeong settled, Cao Cao raised the matter of choosing the coalition's supreme commander.
At her words, the eyes of the assembled warlords changed.
The leader of the coalition.
Head of the Guandong Coalition formed to crush the traitor Ding Yuan—and the one seat from which all the warlords gathered here could be commanded.
Local officials' expressions shifted as they eyed that illustrious position with unmistakable longing.
"...Ha! Is that even a question?!"
Yuan Shu lifted the tip of his nose in arrogant disdain, crossed his legs, and spoke with an air of supreme self-importance.
"The position of coalition leader obviously belongs to me, Yuan Gonglu—the legitimate heir of the Yuan clan of Runan, the great house that stands as the very face of the Han dynasty! Who else could possibly lead an army to crush a traitor?"
Yuan Shu declared flatly that no one besides himself was fit to be leader.
At the words of the heir to a family that wielded enormous influence from its ancestral home in Runan all the way across the Central Plains, the Clear Stream gentry clammed up like shellfish.
...Knew he'd say exactly that.
That bastard never deviated from expectations by a single inch.
"Those of you who served at court know full well how capable my main branch is, do you not? Do you truly believe there is anyone more suited to lead than I?"
Yuan Shu, a man who judged ability by birth alone, curled his lips into a faint, twisted smile as he looked down on the lords around him.
The Yuan family was the finest of the fine—a great house that had produced men rising to the rank of the Three Excellencies not once, but three times.
Leaning on his lineage and bloodline, Yuan Shu made a show of his own capability as well.
Take out the part about being capable, and that speech is half right.
If I had been reborn not as Han Sui's son but transmigrated into Yuan Shu's body, no better starting hand could exist.
Cao Cao and Liu Bei had gathered capable people beneath their banners, but after that, they carved out their paths and built their power purely on their own merits.
If anything, possessing the original's memories could drag one below their level—if you transmigrated into Cao Cao or Liu Bei, could you actually match the achievements they made with nothing but foresight of the future?
Yuan Shu, by contrast, belonged to one of the greatest houses in the Han and was wealthy enough to have been born with a diamond spoon in his mouth, lacking nothing in either manpower or resources. Through the connections of countless gentry and the retainers flocking to his gates, he would have been able to recruit a small army of talented men in one sweep.
Except his single greatest general was Ji Ling...
The reason Yuan Shu collapsed rested overwhelmingly on that bastard's own many faults.
A debauchee who wrung the lifeblood from his people to fund his luxuries; an arrogant temperament born of a tragic lack of talent paired with a great family's name.
On top of that, he broke promise after promise and trampled his own honor until he drove the Sun family's hearts away and made even the talents he'd tried to recruit flee from his shadow...
In truth, he was nothing more than a pearl necklace around a pig's neck.
"I nominate Yuan Shao."
Cao Cao put forward her old friend Yuan Shao for the position.
"She has won the support of the leading figures of the Clear Stream faction, and through her six years of mourning she has earned the deep trust and devotion of the people of Jizhou and the Central Plains. And she stood in Ding Yuan's path to the very last to stop him from seizing power. Is she not the obvious choice for leader?"
Where Yuan Shu had done nothing but brandish his family name, Cao Cao calmly and intelligently laid out how Yuan Shao possessed both popular support and moral standing, and how she had dared oppose Ding Yuan.
She had risen to object precisely because the utterly incompetent Yuan Shao's becoming leader was intolerable—and to put Yuan Shao forward in his stead.
Besides, after Yuan Shu had sneered at her as a eunuch household's daughter, there was no way Cao Cao would sit back and watch him take the seat.
The moment Cao Cao named Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu naturally knitted his brows and threw a fit.
"What?! You eunuch household's harlot! Without even a proper title to your name, how dare you stick your neck out so brazenly!!"
Yuan Shu pointed out that Cao Cao, unlike the other lords, commanded little real influence.
She had raised her army by borrowing the aid of her friend Zhang Miao, Administrator of Chenliu, and the vast fortune of her kinsman Cao Hong—so compared to the regional governors, her sway was indeed somewhat thin.
She held a seat equal to the other lords only because she was credited with helping Qiao Mao gather them in the first place.
Can't just stand by and watch.
Of course, there was no chance in hell I could quietly let Yuan Shu become coalition leader.
"I, too, agree with the Colonel of the Vanguard's words."
Before Yuan Shu could spout anything further, I raised my hand and swiftly seconded Cao Cao's proposal.
If that bastard Yuan Shu became leader, he would squander even battles we could have won outright.
A man with a catastrophic lack of talent and an arrogance without peer—everything but his bloodline. There was no way I would ever vote to put him at the top.
I hadn't sat down and schemed this with Yuan Shao and Cao Cao in advance, but somehow the situation had arranged itself into an alliance with the two of them anyway.
"What?! You conniving bastards—!! What nonsense is this!!"
That they would pass over a legitimate heir of a great house and instead elevate a concubine-born commoner like Yuan Shao sent Yuan Shu into a towering rage.
His erratic temperament and vulgar outbursts darkened the faces of the neutral local officials who had been holding their tongues.
"This is an official assembly. Refrain from discourtesy, Administrator of Nanyang."
Yuan Shao stepped in to check his tirade of abuse against Han Yeong and Cao Cao.
These treacherous bastards...
That a concubine-born commoner, a eunuch household's daughter, and a frontier hick from Liang Province who probably reeked of horse dung should all oppose his opinion left Yuan Shu in a black mood indeed.
"...Ahem. I also believe General Yuan Shao is the right choice for leader."
"Agreed."
The other warlords who had kept silent out of fear of the prestigious Yuan family's power also began, one by one, to quietly raise their hands for Yuan Shao.
Damn it all...!!
As the lords lined up behind Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu's hands trembled with incandescent fury.
Ever since their days serving under He Jin, he had watched Yuan Shao stay one step ahead of him—and like a demon of fire, the Inferno of his inferiority consumed him.
...For now, I'll watch how this plays out.
Sun Jian, attending as Administrator of Changsha, could easily have spoken up in Yuan Shu's defense—but he held back, observing the situation.
Yuan Shu's conduct before the other warlords was simply too insolent and unbridled for him to bring himself to lend his support.
"Then it is decided."
A golden-haired beauty of serene, captivating grace clasped her hands in a formal salute and bowed with perfect courtesy.
Where Yuan Shu had leaned on his family name and treated everyone with contempt, her dignified bearing and respectful treatment of the lords left more than enough of a favorable impression.
"In honor of your lofty spirit and resolve, I, Yuan Benchu, will accept the position of coalition leader. Though I am wanting in many ways, I shall devote my utmost to the task."
At the sight, the assembled warlords burst into applause, their response fervent.
"With our leader chosen, we must now select our vanguard commander and our chief strategist."
By the way, where exactly is the Oath of the Peach Garden trio?
Even in the middle of the council, I found myself wondering where the three sworn sisters had gotten to.
"...Sister. Is this the right place?"
A woman with yellow hair tied back in a tight side-tail, a long serpentine spear resting across her shoulder, asked with a dissatisfied look.
"...Yeah. Just a little farther, probably? Maybe..."
The pink-haired woman with a pair of swords at her waist murmured over a map, her voice drained of confidence.
"Argh!! We went out to catch bandits and got lost instead—what even is this!?"
The white-haired woman hefting her Green Dragon Crescent Blade gave the weapon a single sweep, shaking off the blood crusted on its edge, and gently chided the grumbling one.
"Calm yourself, Yide. We got this way doing a righteous thing, did we not?"
By their original schedule, the three women should have already reached the coalition's camp, where they meant to join the campaign through Cao Cao, an old acquaintance. Instead, they had lost their way after wiping out a bandit gang raiding a village.
Just then, one of the villagers they had rescued approached them.
"E-excuse me, noble heroes..."
"Yes?"
"The road to Chenliu Commandery is that way. Follow it straight and it's the shortest path there."
"Really? Thank you so much!!"
When the kind-faced woman with the paired swords smiled warmly and offered her thanks, the villager flushed crimson and fidgeted in embarrassment.
"All right!! Let's go, Yunchang! Yide!!"
Hearing the way to Chenliu, she gave childlike cheer, yanked her reins, and galloped off at full speed.
"Wait, Sister!?"
"You must come with me!!"
Flustered by her headstrong charge, the two spurred their horses after her.
The villagers watched their departing backs and murmured.
"...Truly good people, they were."
"...I suppose. Though when they first showed up, the things they said and did made me wonder if they'd lost their minds."
At the child's blunt remark, the village elder delivered a sound thump to the back of his head.
"Hey!! How dare you speak so of your benefactors?!"
"B-but it's true, isn't it? Those people introduced themselves in the strangest way earlier!!"
"...Well, that much is true..."
Having been saved by the sisters who carried the fragrance of peaches in their very names, the villagers could hardly bring themselves to deny it—strange as the trio's outlandish self-introductions had been.