The Road to Guan Yu
Having left Xiangyong, Liu Feng and I were marching toward Xiangfan.
I commanded two thousand men; Liu Feng commanded another two thousand. Four thousand in all—not a great host by any measure, but I already had a plan taking shape, piece by careful piece, inside my head.
"My word. This flood really did a number on the place."
Liu Feng let out a low whistle of astonishment. Once we were outside the walls, the scale of the disaster was plain at a glance. It wasn't merely that the roads had turned to mud—one whole side of the landscape lay drowned under water, as if a river that had never existed before had simply risen up out of the earth.
Had we rushed out any earlier, our own army might well have been swept away.
I did not press straight on to Xiangfan. Instead I held us at a midpoint along the route and waited for the scouts I had sent ahead.
"General Cao Hong's army is passing near Xinye. It looks as though he means to make for Xiangfan at once. His strength is a little over ten thousand."
"Cao Hong. And Xinye…"
The scout's report stirred something unexpected in me—though it had nothing to do with Cao Hong himself.
Xinye.
The place where I had first opened my eyes in this world. For me it was as good as a hometown, and yet I had stayed there barely a year. Back then, with Cao Cao's army surging forward like a flood of its own, we had had no choice but to leave.
More than a decade had passed. I had lived through a great deal, and now I had come all this way again. It had been a long road back—but reclaiming Xinye was not something I could do from here. I had more important work at hand.
"General Liu Feng. Word is that Cao Hong's force has drawn near. Roughly ten thousand men."
I cut the rising memories short and spoke to Liu Feng.
"Cao Hong is no ordinary general. And he outnumbers us. Would it not be wiser to dig in firmly and wait for Advisor Pang's reinforcements?"
Liu Feng urged caution, but my thinking ran the other way. That Cao Hong had come this far meant we could not afford to delay any longer. One of the reasons Guan Yu had fallen in the original history was that he had been driven back by those very reinforcements.
The one small mercy was that Xu Huang—who should have been the one leading that relief force—was already dead, and Cao Hong had come in his place.
I felt a twinge of sympathy for Cao Hong, but he was a far more manageable opponent than Xu Huang would have been. The road to Guan Yu had just grown a good deal smoother.
There was no reason to waste time here.
Somehow, we had to stop Cao Hong quickly and join Guan Yu. Jiangling still worried me as well. And so I made a bold decision.
"What if we met them head-on instead?"
Liu Feng's eyes went wide.
"Head-on? The enemy is twice our number—nearly three times!"
"Yes. Their numbers are what they are. But we have a real chance of winning. Trust me. I have a plan."
I was not bluffing about our odds. Cao Hong himself was a capable general—that much was certain—but his soldiers were another matter.
I had already received word that Yu Jin had taken nearly all the elite troops with him, leaving Cao Hong with mostly raw recruits scraped together in haste. That matched the history I knew.
By comparison, the men under Liu Feng and me were veterans who had fought from the entry into Yizhou all the way through the Hanzhong campaign. I judged our chances more than good enough.
"Very well. Let's do it!"
Having won Liu Feng over, I prepared for a decisive clash with Cao Hong.
They mean to force a frontal fight?
Cao Hong watched the enemy's movements and considered. From the way they were forming up, they clearly intended to settle things in a single engagement.
His own side held more than twice their numbers, and still they wanted a straight fight. It was a daring call—or perhaps simply arrogance.
Arrogant as ever, Jin Cheong. This time I will stop you myself. No—I will break you!
The memory of their last encounter stoked his competitive fire, and Cao Hong resolved to answer the challenge. Given how desperate the situation at Xiangfan had become, crushing the enemy quickly and pressing on seemed the better course anyway.
"Form ranks! Use our numbers—surround them and strike!"
It was not long before he would come to regret choosing a full-scale battle.
The course of the battle ran as follows.
Cao Hong held the center himself and posted swift cavalry on both wings, intending to envelop the enemy from either side.
Against this, Jin Cheong placed her cavalry in the center and led them personally. On the two flanks she stationed Wang Ping and Yu Eun to hold off any approach.
While Wang Ping and Yu Eun formed defensive squares and blunted Cao Hong's cavalry, Jin Cheong and Liu Feng drove the main force straight at the center and attempted a breakthrough.
And Cao Hong allowed that breakthrough to succeed.
His plan had not been a bad one. It was, if anything, textbook military practice.
But he had overlooked several things.
First: his force was composed largely of inexperienced recruits.
Second: the command ability of Wang Ping and Yu Eun. Both men were often overshadowed by the fact that they served as Jin Cheong's lieutenants, yet each was an excellent officer in his own right. They excelled especially at defensive fighting, and they stopped the charging cavalry with ruthless efficiency.
Third: the presence of Jin Cheong herself. A female general who always fought at the front was an object of near-worship among her soldiers, and that faith became the engine that maximized their breakthrough power. Against a force of raw recruits, that charge was simply too much to stop.
The center of Cao Hong's army was split open in an instant, driven apart to either side as if a wedge had been driven through it. Every time she swung her spear at the head of the charge, soldiers fell like leaves in an autumn wind.
His lieutenant Xu Shang rode out to stop her, only to be run through by a single thrust of her spear. She then drove straight on toward Cao Hong himself at the heart of the formation.
"Cao Hong! Come at me! You won't run from a fight like a real man, will you?"
While Liu Feng kept the main body occupied, Jin Cheong came straight for him. Cao Hong clenched his teeth.
"You insolent wench! This time I'll repay the humiliation of that day!"
He did not refuse the duel. The battle had already turned against him, but if he could only take Jin Cheong, the fight would be over.
He met her again—and once more he was forced to realize that his judgment had been wrong.
Clang! Clang!
Every time their spears crossed, a jolt ran through his wrists, proof that her martial skill had climbed still higher.
Sh-she's even stronger than before…?
When their own commander was driven back, Cao Hong's soldiers saw it, and their morale collapsed at once. The units that should have been breaking through the flanks instead began to edge backward, step by hesitant step.
"It's no use! All of you—retreat!"
With his lines shattered and defeated once more in single combat against Jin Cheong, Cao Hong had no choice but to fall back. This time he lost not only his helmet and spear but had his cloak torn to shreds as well—though that was the least of his problems.
At least the withdrawal itself succeeded, and he managed to keep his force from being annihilated outright.
Damn it all! To be reduced to this before I even reach Fancheng…
His gut burned with frustration, and his pride was raw. At this rate the city itself might fall.
But before he could even shake off the bitter taste of defeat, Cao Hong began to hear a strange rumor circulating through his ranks.
"General Jin Cheong. I picked this up for you."
After the fighting was done, while we were reorganizing inside the camp, Zheng Sui came in and held something out to me. It looked familiar.
"This is… where have I seen this before?"
A helmet, gleaming brightly. Ah—Cao Hong's helmet.
I had knocked it off him during the fight, and Zheng Sui had gone and retrieved it. He could have kept it for himself, but he had thoughtfully brought it to me instead.
Come to think of it, the last one he wore had looked expensive too. This one was even more ornate. Who puts gold leaf on a helmet?
I had heard the Cao family was wealthy, but apparently they poured a fortune into their war gear as well.
"Perfect. We can sell this and put it toward military funds. Thanks. Good find."
One side was caved in from my spear, so it was unusable as armor—but it would still fetch a handsome price. Maybe next time I should hit a little more gently?
Yu Eun smiled from beside me.
"When it comes to things like this, General, you really are thrifty."
"War doesn't run on spare change. You gather what you can. That way we can at least put a little more food in the soldiers' bowls."
Zheng Sui grinned, as if he had known all along that was exactly what the general would say.
"Anyway—about the next operation…"
We had broken Cao Hong's army once, but the fact remained that he still outnumbered us. We could not simply leave him in our rear and push on to Xiangfan.
"The agents have infiltrated Cao Hong's camp without trouble, I trust?"
"Of course. They should be spreading the rumors even now."
"Well done. Keep a close watch on the enemy. The moment the time is right, we move."
"Yes, General. Understood."
I had slipped agents into the enemy ranks at the moment of their rout, when they were being driven back in disorder.
The plan was simple: seed false rumors through their camp.
A force of raw recruits, already demoralized by defeat—if we struck at that moment, even baseless talk would spread like wildfire.
I settled in to wait inside our camp, watching the enemy's every move.
