The Tiger of Jiangdong (1)
Nanyang Commandery of Jing Province.
A land whose registered households alone numbered a full 500,000, its total population swelling toward a staggering 2.5 million. You would have had to fold three or four of Jing Province's other commanderies together just to match Nanyang's population. Henan Yin—the district that held the Han capital of Luoyang—counted a mere 200,000-odd households and barely cleared a million souls; set against that yardstick, the figures were downright monstrous. Sili Province itself recorded 600,000 households and 3.1 million people, and here was a single commandery vast enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with an entire province.
The more subjects a land held, the mightier the state that ruled them naturally became. And there was a warlord who held beneath his banner a commandery so immense it would not yield even to a province.
The man who had raised his forces in Nanyang Commandery of Jing Province—Wan—had slowly cultivated his strength on the foundation of that enormous population. Conscripting the common folk by force to forge a massive army, and never hesitating to plunder their property whenever the need arose, the warlord grew richer and more abundant with every passing day. Combine the wealth he had wrung from the people of Nanyang with the fortune his family had long possessed, and in sheer opulence his power now contended for first or second place in all the world.
The warlord who ruled Nanyang Commandery of Jing Province: Yuan Shu, courtesy name Gonglu. The rightful heir of the Yuan clan, that illustrious house of Four Generations of Three Excellencies, was currently knitting his brows as he waited for something.
"My lord."
"Ah, there you are."
At the appearance of the civil official he had been favoring of late, Yuan Shu smoothed the scowl from his face and welcomed him. Then, once the brief greetings were done, he said:
"Now, then. Do you know what that wench from the eunuch family is doing at this very moment?"
In all the world, there was only one woman who could be called the most famous daughter of a eunuch house.
"The last I heard, she had marched out to crush the bandit hordes of Qingzhou. There ought to be a result by now."
Disparaging Cao Cao with the ease of long habit, Yuan Shu asked after the state of Yanzhou.
"Ideally she'd have met with a crushing defeat and then slunk away in disgrace. So what's become of her?"
"...I beg your pardon for failing to meet your expectations, my lord, but Cao Cao has, regrettably, succeeded in suppressing the bandits of the Qingzhou region."
"...Tsk. Any other news?"
At the official's report, Yuan Shu began to let his displeasure show quite plainly.
Sensing his lord's mood, the official opened his mouth with careful deliberation.
"The court has issued an edict heaping high praise upon Cao Cao's merits and appointing the Governor of Yanzhou to the post of General Who Guards the East—"
"Enough."
At Yuan Shu's word, the official shut his mouth at once. Having severed the conversation, Yuan Shu's brow knotted all over again.
"Every scrap of news that reaches my ears these days does nothing but grate on me."
Yuan Shu spat the words out in irritation.
"They say Gongsun Zan couldn't punch through the Ice Queen and ended up fighting her at Panhe clear into winter—and now, of all things, the court appoints Cao Cao General Who Guards the East?"
Sure enough, the man who swaggered about under the far-too-flattering title of White Horse General, with no sense of his own place, had accomplished precisely nothing in his battle against the Ice Queen—tossed away a few troops as little more than bait, and bolted headlong.
The moment his vaunted cavalry, his pride and joy, was shattered to no effect, he had promptly reined in his whole army—and Yuan Shu could not fathom such a judgment in the least.
If ever there was a moment to steady the soldiers, stand firm, and grind the enemy down, it was precisely then—so why on earth sacrifice a portion of one's army as bait and retreat? Gongsun Zan's famed reputation, the one that set the northern barbarians trembling, was clearly so much empty air.
Had it been left to his heart, Yuan Shu would gladly have led an army himself and shown the Ice Queen the true gulf in their caliber, but the distance between Jing Province and Jizhou was simply too great to manage. To travel from Jing to Jizhou, one had no choice but to pass through Ye Province—and how many hundreds of li would that mean on foot, how many rivers to cross besides?
As things stood, there was nothing at all Yuan Shu could do about Yuan Shao.
Lamenting his inability to lay a hand on the Ice Queen, Yuan Shu said:
"To think wenches with no pedigree whatsoever could rise this far..."
Yuan Shao had swallowed up the forces of Han Fu, Governor of Jizhou, and chased Gongsun Zan from the field at Panhe. That lowborn Ice Queen could now be called the new ruler of Jizhou.
Gongsun Zan had sent word that the instant he finished regrouping, he would fall upon Yuan Shao at once. Since time granted would only let the Ice Queen's power swell further, Yuan Shu raised no particular objection.
True, Gongsun Zan had tasted a single defeat at Yuan Shao's hands, but in sheer military strength he still held the advantage. He could only pray that this time the war would not collapse into hollow anticlimax, as it had at Panhe.
Cao Cao, for her part, had struck down Liu Dai—the Inspector of Yanzhou who had tried to move against her—and gathered Yanzhou's splintered, scattered powers under a single banner.
Reining in the great clans to shore up her authority, ferreting out malcontents to purge her ranks, she had steadily widened the reach of her influence.
And as the report just delivered made plain, she had even succeeded in sweeping away the bandits of the Qingzhou region; by now there was no one under heaven who did not know the name of Cao Cao.
Yuan Shao and Cao Cao. It was no exaggeration to say that the world now turned upon those two.
As for the man called General-in-Chief—who knew what he was even doing in Luoyang? He had offered nothing but silence, and worse, displayed the ungrateful audacity of quietly bolstering Yuan Shao and Cao Cao from behind the scenes.
The moment the eunuch crowd's chit seized Yanzhou, he had gone so far as to appoint her Provincial Governor in due form, handing her a perfectly legal pretext to tighten her grip on the province.
And now, on top of it all, they said he would honor her bandit-suppression merits by conferring the very office of General Who Guards the East. Day by day, the Cao Cao faction would only grow more insufferably full of itself.
Nor was it any different with that lowborn Ice Queen.
He had brokered a reconciliation with Gongsun Zan, snuffing out a war that never needed to end at all, and judging by his antics, before long he would appoint the Ice Queen Governor of Jizhou just as he had the eunuch wench.
What could he possibly be thinking, pressing power into their hands again and again, when merely keeping those wenches in check was barely enough as it was?
...He couldn't actually take those two wenches for loyal servants of Han... could he?
If that were truly the case, Yuan Shu was quite confident he could laugh outright at the General-in-Chief's naivety.
That lowborn Ice Queen was a venomous wench who would sell her own parents for power, and the eunuch's girl a heartless one who could cast a person aside like a worn-out straw sandal without so much as a blink.
To think the General-in-Chief could not see even that much.
However lofty the seat he occupied, a country bumpkin was a country bumpkin all the same.
A station far too exalted to bestow upon a mere common fellow—and just what in the world was the Emperor thinking?
Having written the General-in-Chief off in his heart, Yuan Shu turned to the civil official waiting nearby and asked:
"And what is Sun Jian doing at present?"
Yuan Shu had sprung into action the very moment word arrived that Cao Cao was heading for Qingzhou.
While she was away crushing the bandits of Qingzhou, he meant to expand his own influence over Jing Province.
And so he had placed soldiers in Sun Jian's hands and dispatched him against Liu Biao, the Inspector of Jing Province.
The official answered Yuan Shu's question.
"Yes, my lord. Sun Wentai, advancing at the head of his army, engaged Liu Biao's generals in battle and crushed General Huang Zu, driving the Liu Biao forces all the way back to Xiangyang Castle."
"Haha! Now that is glad tidings!"
At long last, a cheerful piece of news—a smile blossomed across Yuan Shu's face.
"Taking in Sun Jian was the right choice after all!"
Sun Jian had made his name known throughout the realm with one illustrious feat after another, dating back to before the Yellow Turban Rebellion ever erupted.
It began when, alone and undaunted, he drove off a band of brigands by pretending to summon government troops that did not exist; he went on to crush the Ou Xing Rebellion that had erupted in the Yang Province region, whereupon the court promoted him to Grand Administrator of Changsha.
Considering that, in those days, the going price of a Grand Administrator's post rivaled that of the Three Excellencies themselves, it was a strikingly exceptional appointment.
Yet Sun Jian harbored one fatal flaw.
His temper was fire itself, and he had a habit of setting things in motion without a thought for what might follow.
While marching on Hulao Pass in answer to the coalition's call, Sun Jian committed one colossal blunder.
Namely, the killing of Wang Rui, the Inspector of Jing Province—a man who could well be counted his superior.
True, Wang Rui had long sneered at Sun Jian and looked down on him, but even so, Sun Jian slaying his own superior was not a deed that could be lightly waved away.
One after another, the other officials began to shun him, until at last Sun Jian stood wholly alone.
All of this, moreover, better than two thousand li—some eight hundred kilometers—from his home base of Changsha.
What could a man possibly accomplish alone in a place like that?
In the end, his supplies spent, Sun Jian's army stood on the brink of scattering to the four winds or degenerating into banditry—and it was then that Yuan Shu himself had taken Sun Jian under his banner and given him shelter.
Once enrolled beneath him, Sun Jian had lived up to his fame as the Tiger of Jiangdong, unleashing his abilities to the very fullest in his lord's service.
Just look—even now, was he not betraying those expectations not one whit, smashing Liu Biao's army to pieces and proclaiming his lord's fearsome might across Jing Province?
It was proof that his judgment had not been wrong.
A lord's ambition, after all, must be underpinned by outstanding generals.
And in that respect, Sun Jian was a superb general worthy of his renown.
Yuan Shu thought to himself:
As long as Sun Jian stood beneath him, no one in this world could stop him.