I Am the Daughter of Zhang Yide

I took the wooden staff and gave it a few easy swings. It was heavy—nothing a child ought to be swinging, boy or girl. A few more and my strength would plainly give out.

Zhang Fei, who revered the way of the gentleman, was not a man to say one thing and mean another. This had to be a test of will. He had been astonished at how I had changed in a single week, which was only another way of saying that until a week ago Zhang Lan had been no different from any other girl her age. He had asked to see what I could do, but he would not truly be looking for the foundations of the martial arts in me.

That, however, was the story of the ordinary girl Zhang Lan had been.

I carried her memories of eight years of life, and together with them the decades I had lived in my previous life as a hale young man in Korea.

And one thing more.

A single thread of a voice, faintly dissolved into my last memory of Korea. When I first heard it slip past me I had no idea what it meant. Now that I was Zhang Lan, I knew.

The strength in the fist closed around the staff, in the legs that held me up, in my whole body, proved his words. This body holds innate divine strength on the level of Zhang Fei himself.

That was the rock at my back. Memory alone would never have let me throw myself at Zhang Fei with such bravado. Even if I had stepped forward, I would have offered myself as a civil official, armed with knowledge of the future rather than as a warrior.

But if I had this strength—

Then the greatest general under heaven becomes real.

I reset my grip. Not the way one holds a spear. The way one holds a sword.

The staff was more than a meter long. Set against Zhang Fei's frame it was hardly more than a short club, but for my still-small body it was plenty of length.

Not as a spear. As a sword. And I had wielded a sword that long before.

The swordsmanship I had taken up out of interest as a student of Western history would be nothing but a child's trick in front of Zhang Fei. Put the words nine-year-old girl in front of it, though, and he would not be able to wave it off ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as ordinary showing-off.

"Oh-ho. That stance is rather convincing. Picked up a blade sometime this week, did you? Bold little thing."

However seriously he meant to take this, he could not quite fold away a parent's pleasure in a beloved daughter's antics. Zhang Fei held a flawless guard, and still a thread of carelessness showed through it.

Now.

I drove into that tiny opening. From a high guard raised to make up for my small frame, I lunged straight in and cut down. Zhang Fei did not bother to evade the descending blow. This bout was a test of me, a confirmation and nothing more. Bent on taking the full measure of what I could do, he simply received it.

Crack!

For wood striking wood, the sound that split the training yard was louder than anyone could have imagined. The blow, carrying everything I had, was stopped dead on his staff—but it made the hands locked around that staff twitch. The easy warmth in Zhang Fei's eyes, the look he kept for his daughter, darkened in an instant into the gravity of a man standing on a battlefield.

Call it Zhang Fei's own level of strength and a nine-year-old body still had its limits. What I had, and the nine-year-old Zhang Fei had not, was technique.

I did not stop because I had been blocked. Liechtenauer's longsword is a chain of postures: from one guard into the next, like water running, like wind blowing, driving an opponent without cease by the constant changing of the stance. I held the initiative, and I had to keep pressing. However far my strength outran age and sex, the burden of a first real fight and the savage fatigue of going all out would fill this small body in no time.

"Hup—!"

Even under that one-sided storm of blows, Zhang Fei stood like Mount Tai and slipped or stopped every attack I threw. Defense is supposed to be the lesser course, and yet his left no opening to turn back against him. Unlike me, whose training had never gone beyond disciplining myself, the martial art he had forged on battlefields where life and death traded places was, quite literally, of another order.

Tok!

When he answered the last blow I could wring out of myself, I could hold on no longer, and the staff left my hands. Strength and technique aside, hands utterly unprepared for this were already skinned raw, beads of blood welling up, and my arms and legs shuddered as if I were in a fit.

"So this is as far as you go."

Zhang Fei came to me, carefully opened my trembling hand, and looked it over. Even he, cold as he could be, seemed to ache at his daughter's wound. He frowned and called to his wife, who had been watching from the side.

"Lan is hurt. Bring the medicine."

"What? Oh—yes, yes! Right away."

My mother, Lady Xiahou, had been staring as if her soul had left her at the sight of our bout. She started, and in her fluster forgot even to call a maid, hurrying off herself.

Left alone with me in the training yard, Zhang Fei worked my uninjured hand and arm with a surprisingly careful touch.

"You were born to this."

A hunger that had not been in his eyes before the bout now burned there, quiet and steady.

"My martial gift has passed to you."

According to Zhang Lan's memories, the eldest, Zhang Bao, had been born sickly. Far from following Zhang Fei onto the battlefield, it would have been praiseworthy enough that he later left children behind. The second son, Zhang Shao, knew how to use his body well enough, but not at a level that would make a warrior's name. What he had instead was a gift for letters. Zhang Fei—a man who revered the gentleman, from a house of the scholar-gentry—had taken pride in that second son.

And then the eldest daughter. At last his martial gift would pass, through me, into the next generation.

The successor he had quietly given up on hoping for, as a warrior. The unification of the realm was still far off, and the famed generals of the present could not fight forever. He must have been waiting for someone to fill the place he would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leave empty. That I was his daughter no longer seemed to matter to him.

I was certain I had taken that empty place in his heart. Even if, once I grew, I ran into the limits of a woman's strength, could I not inherit his art of command and serve as a general all the same?

"You have the talent, but the tempering is still lacking. From tomorrow you come with me to the camp. There will be no special treatment. Climb up from the bottom."

But there could be no exception made for his strictness. No—because I was his own daughter, he could only be stricter still. To follow the army despite the inborn limit of being a woman, I would have to offer reasons ten thousand men could accept: superior blood, outstanding talent, and the authority to bind subordinates to me. Miss even one, and leading an army in a woman's body would be impossible.

"M-my lord!"

While Zhang Fei and I shared that understanding and carved our resolve for the long road ahead, my mother had already come back with the medicine. At the sight of the hand he was holding, she cried out in a voice close to a scream. She snatched out the salve and smeared it thick over my palm. Could I really trust this? Mashed herbs, surely.

I was about to say so when I saw the tears brimming in her eyes, and the words that had climbed to my throat caught and died.

What kind of daughter had Zhang Lan been to her? Before the previous life returned to me, before the Mountain Spirit's blessing settled into this body, Zhang Lan had not been so healthy—no more than the eldest son, Zhang Bao. A beauty born under a short-lived star, they say. The eldest daughter, as if she had been made by carefully choosing only the finest of her mother and father's blood, was a first child dearer to her than her own eyes. And then, overnight, everything turned over. The girl announced she would become a general. She asked to be taught by a husband who could be tender with his family and was, in military matters, sternness itself. At last she had even thrown a nine-year-old body at a father counted among the finest under heaven. Three hearts would not have been enough.

The more I turned it over, the heavier the guilt, and I kept my lips pressed shut. When the salve was all worked in, my mother spoke.

"Your mother is a daughter of the Xiahou. I am a woman, but I have an eye for warriors. How thickly you have taken my lord's blood, and the Xiahou blood with it..."

At the name of the Xiahou, Zhang Fei's expression soured. My mother was the niece of Xiahou Yuan, Cao Cao's left arm. He had been pleased to think his own martial gift had passed to me, and now his wife was saying the Xiahou blood had a share in it. Small wonder he did not like hearing that.

Even so, she went on, steadfast as a daughter of that house.

"I know perfectly well you won't stop just because I try to stop you. Only, treasure your body. And... no. No, child. I won't say any more."

There was something she wanted to say. She worked her lips over it, and in the end she never let it out, only touching my hand. But I thought I could almost hear the words she could not bring herself to speak. A mother who had not let go of the Xiahou, and the future I already knew.

Zhang Fei, who followed Liu Bei—and I, his daughter. The Xiahou house, which followed Cao Cao. We were bound to meet on the battlefield. How vast a wound, how deep a grief, would it be for her to watch the uncle who had raised her and the daughter she herself had raised cut each other down?

I'll make you a promise.

I could not promise to protect the Xiahou. Short of defecting to Wei, what I had to do was defeat Wei. The only promise I could offer came down, in the end, to this: that I would not raise my own hand against them, and that in the distant future, when Mother's cousin—my uncle on her side—surrendered to us, I would receive him with everything I had. That was all.

She might have been glad of even a resolve like that. I felt a faint disgust for myself, for deciding to stand by and do nothing even though I knew the death of the man who had been as good as a father to her.

Surely I would turn my face from many more deaths than this one, and spread death with my own hands besides.

To take the field. To fight an enemy. The weight of it pressed quietly down on my shoulders. A drop of ink is enough to write my name into the records. What carves a name into history is nothing other than someone's blood. I understood that now.

Even so, I did not want to step back. I had no wish to dress it in talk of great causes and the rest of that honeyed nonsense. This was my selfishness. Becoming Zhang Lan. Bending history. All of it.

Too late to turn back. From the moment I was born again as Zhang Lan, I was already running.

"I promise you, Mother."

I spoke to her as she still gripped the fingertips of my uninjured hand, tight.

"What you're afraid of will never happen. I can't promise you I won't be hurt, but I will survive. I won't die. Father is going to make me that way."

In the end she could not hold the tears back. Zhang Fei turned his gaze aside and let her pull me into her arms and weep as much as she wished.

Yes. If any ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠conscience was left in him, if he was a man who had studied the classics, then he knew the tragedy waiting for her. So I was asking him. Make it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so I never die. Make it so her grief is cut at least in half. Make me strong, Father.