The Imperial Envoy (2)
Word came that Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan, honoring the Empress's edict, had obediently withdrawn their armies from the field.
Drawing on hard-won experience, I had dispatched an envoy in the dead of winter—the one season when no commander wanted to budge an inch from where he sat—and my prediction had played out exactly as expected.
If Gongsun Zan had refused the edict... well... he and Yuan Shao could have gone on slaughtering each other for the rest of their lives, for all I cared. Sending the imperial envoy a second time would have been an embarrassment to the court anyway, so my plan had been to order the two of them to settle matters between themselves and then withdraw.
Because Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan obeyed without a word of protest, that never came to pass. For now, both were pulling their armies back to their own provinces, and peace had returned to Jizhou.
Peace, naturally, of the most fleeting kind. The moment winter passed and the weather warmed, Gongsun Zan would be right back at Yuan Shao's throat. He had presumably picked something up from his recent clash with Qu Yi, so his tactics might carry a slight variation this time—but from his standpoint, there was no reason whatsoever to sit idle in peace and hand Yuan Shao time to grow. If he failed to strike while Jizhou was still in disarray, then once she had digested the province, her national power would leave his far behind.
Supposing Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan spent the next several years waging war back and forth across Jizhou and You Province, the regions demanding my attention next were Yanzhou and Ye Province. I had said all along that Yuan Shu and Cao Cao loathed each other and would inevitably come to blows—yet the state of affairs around Ye Province and Yanzhou was far too tangled for the two of them to clash outright just yet.
There was General of the Rear Yuan Shu, who had seized Nanyang Commandery (Wan) in Jing Province and now pushed the Tiger of Jiangdong, Sun Jian, out ahead of him as he tried to swallow everything within reach. There was Inspector of Ye Province Gong Ju, running himself ragged from Yingchuan Commandery (Xuchang) to hold back incursions by outside powers. And then there was Governor of Yanzhou Cao Cao, who had disposed of Liu Dai, was busy tightening discipline at home, and watched for her chance every waking hour.
This three-way standoff alone was enough to give anyone a splitting headache, but then—call it the butterfly effect—the Yellow Turban remnants had all flocked into the Ye Province region and kept up a relentless guerrilla war. These Yellow Turbans were far more capable than their counterparts in the original history, so conquering Ye Province would be anything but easy.
Amid all this, Tao Qian of Xuzhou began making moves to link arms with Gongsun Zan of You Province. No doubt his intent was to check Yuan Shao, who had devoured Jizhou, and Cao Cao, who had devoured Yanzhou.
And then, in the middle of everything, no fewer than three hundred thousand rebels rose up across Qingzhou and Xuzhou. Just what kind of governance drives that many people into open revolt?
Inspector of Jing Province Liu Biao, seeing Yuan Shu entrenched in Nanyang Commandery slyly nibbling across the border and openly coveting his territory, began bracing himself against the man.
Oh, honey... that is not a good choice.
Yuan Shu's reckless posturing would end up driving Liu Biao straight into the camp of Cao Cao and Yuan Shao. The man had gone and multiplied his own enemies with his own two hands. Left alone to watch, sooner or later a catastrophe of the first order was bound to erupt on the Yuan Shu–Liu Biao front. Then again, I might simply be jumping at shadows, so I would keep my mouth shut for now.
If Tao Qian threw in with Gongsun Zan and Yuan Shu while Liu Biao threw in with Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, the board would resolve into two massive blocs of three powers each, squaring off in unspoken alliance against one another. A mess of truly monumental proportions.
But this was still no time for us to act. For our own strength to grow fat and healthy, those fools needed to batter each other senseless and chew through their own power first. The realm was merely in disorder for now; setting aside the contests of stratagem, no genuine war had yet broken out. Even so, matters had reached the hair-trigger point where one careless touch would set the whole thing off—the true age of the Warlords Carving Up the Realm was about to begin.
So, first things first—let me sort out my priorities. Weighing everything together, which crisis demanded solving before all others?
After a moment buried in thought, I arrived at a single conclusion. The rebels in Qingzhou had to be dealt with first.
I could understand rising up because life had grown unbearable—but judged purely on their deeds, they were no different from any pack of thieves. A swarm of criminals who set fire to homes and plundered innocent commoners without the slightest hesitation. And with their numbers swelling into the hundreds of thousands, the sheer scale of their crimes was staggering. What reason was there to leave such a wholly poisonous rabble alone?
Xuzhou under Inspector Tao Qian, I heard, was managing to hold on, but Qingzhou under Chancellor of Beihai Kong Rong was a complete shambles. However disorganized the rebels were, before violence in such overwhelming numbers the defenders could only flounder. Unless the one leading the suppression had a genuine gift for commanding troops, there would be no crushing them at all.
To his credit, Kong Rong was not utterly inept: he circulated proclamations to every commandery and county of Qingzhou, mustering soldiers and shoring up defenses, and so no fortress was breached and no city fell to the bandits. It was only the small villages, with no walls to shelter behind, that kept dying.
When I reminded myself just what I had come to stand in this position for, I found I could not simply turn a blind eye to the people suffering in Qingzhou. No one can save everyone—but wherever my strength could reach, I had to try.
Frankly, the very fact that these vermin were called bandits at all already grated on me. Do—the character for thief. Jeok—the character for brigand. How bitterly the ancients must have gnashed their teeth, to coin such characters and brand these creatures with them for all eternity. With beings like this, the best course was to grab them by the collar and beat them into obedience at the earliest possible date.
So—how exactly should the suppression be carried out? The one to lead it had to stand close to Qingzhou, face comparatively few threats from neighboring powers, and possess military might enough that losing to that rabble was never in question. And as luck would have it, every single condition was met by the very card that had destroyed them in the original history—a card already resting in my hand.
Cao Cao Mengde. If not her, then who?
Once Cao Cao crushed them, she would absorb the surrendered soldiers under the now-immortal banner of the Qingzhou Army, take in their families—all those countless commoners—and swell into a truly formidable power.
"Jia Xu."
"Yes."
My mind made up, I called to Jia Xu, who stood in attendance nearby.
"I must submit a memorial to Her Majesty. Could you lend me a hand?"
"I merely follow my lord's commands." Jia Xu met my eyes and bowed with composed courtesy.
"Good. Thank you."
I summoned one of the officials under me and had him bring everything needed for drafting a memorial. With Jia Xu assisting, I could spare myself the blunders I might otherwise commit before Her Majesty without even realizing it.
A good long while had passed since I had taken the lofty seat of General-in-Chief, but I remained hopelessly clumsy with court protocol. The instant I went huh? and fumbled, I had already breached etiquette—it was maddening enough to scramble my brains. Yet not one of the officials had ever dared take me to task for my lapses. Presumably, being so constantly at the Empress's side, I was simply beyond anyone's nerve to touch. The only consequence was that each time I stumbled, our pint-sized Empress, Her Majesty herself, would look at me as though I were the most adorable thing alive.
...Which was, honestly, the hardest part of all to endure.
Having accepted my request, Jia Xu settled in beside me, and whenever a problem surfaced in the draft, she corrected it in her quiet, level voice. "Stretching the text out at such length is also a breach of etiquette, my lord."
"Right." I nodded and rewrote the offending passage exactly as she had amended it.
So for a while I drafted the memorial with Jia Xu's help—until Sima Yi, who had been watching the whole performance, sidled up to me.
Once she had closed the distance, Sima Yi simply fixed me with a sullen stare and held her silence. What was her problem this time?
I set my work aside and looked at her. "Is something the matter?"
"...No. Nothing at all." The answer came with a distinctly sour face. But even as she said it, her eyes bore into mine, glinting with some pointed, unspoken meaning—as if to say, look at me and figure it out.
It was seriously getting on my nerves. Could it be that she was piqued I'd asked only Jia Xu for help? Even if I had guessed wrong, there was nothing to lose by asking.
"Would you like to help?"
"...Help with what?"
"The memorial I'm writing right now."
I looked at her with a slightly sheepish expression, and Sima Yi's reply came back charged with sudden energy. "...Well, I suppose it can't be helped. I'll assist you."
One little probe—and it seemed I had struck gold. Brisk and businesslike, she scooted over, poked her small head in close, and began slowly combing through the memorial I had written.
Having read it through once from top to bottom, she wasted no time offering her verdict. "The flow here is a little off. How about we change it to something like this?"
"Oh?" I revised the passage she had flagged precisely as she suggested and read it over again.
...It really did read more smoothly. Sima Fang had once said her gifts for composition and memorization had already surpassed his own—and he had not been exaggerating in the slightest.
"Impressive."
"Of course it is."
At my nodding, wide-eyed admiration, Sima Yi's face glowed with triumph. From then on she kept helping me draft the memorial, drinking in every exclamation of amazement I let slip.
"...Heheheh."
Somewhere past the fifth compliment, she began humming contentedly through her nose. Could anyone really be that pleased?
Jia Xu watched her with an unreadable gaze.