Nanyang Commandery of Jing Province (1)
As I had said time and again, the Battle of Kuangting that Yuan Shu started ended in a complete victory for Cao Cao.
Heaven only knows what she was thinking—no, wait, what he was thinking—but Yuan Shu split his army in two: his vanguard clashed head-on with Cao Cao at Kuangting while his main force hung back near Fengqiu, watching how things developed.
And how did Cao Cao answer a move like that? She put her talents to full use, waging a war of movement that crushed Yuan Shu's divided army piece by piece. That was Cao Cao for you. It was a moment that laid bare the brilliant strategist who, even with her own power driven to the very brink of ruin, had thrown out Lü Bu and then, in the end, brought down Yuan Shao with all her overwhelming might.
If Sun Jian had still been at Yuan Shu's side, Cao Cao could never have won so easily—but by then Sun Jian was already lying dead from his assault on Liu Biao's army, skull caved in and brains spilling out. Sun Ce, who had been campaigning at his father's side, happened to be briefly absent during the Battle of Kuangting. As Sun Jian's child, he had stepped away from Yuan Shu's command for a time after his father's death to hold funeral rites in Gangdong.
So there was Yuan Shu, with neither Sun Jian nor Sun Ce under his command. Even by my reckoning, he looked like easy pickings. Soundly smashed by Cao Cao, he couldn't even return to his home base of Nanyang Commandery; he was chased clean out to Shuchun in Gangdong. But if he'd lost the battle, Cao Cao's pursuers should have been hot on his heels—so how on earth did he shake them? Whatever else might be said of the man, he seems to have been a superb runner. Judging by how he met his end, after all, Yuan Shu was never captured and cut down by anyone.
Now, how had Yuan Shu died again? Ah, yes—after his endless tyranny saw his domain disintegrate all on its own, he set off to throw himself on the mercy of Yuan Shao, the very cousin he had always held in contempt. In practice it amounted to nothing less than a tearful supplication, weeping as he desperately begged for shelter. Then again, I doubt Yuan Shao would have spared him even so; by that point Yuan Shu had racked up far too many bizarre misdeeds...
In any case, on the road to Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu grew thirsty and called for honeyed water. When none could be found, he worked himself into a solitary fury—how had it come to this?—and died on the spot, done in by pure rage. His attendants standing nearby must have been struck dumb. Their lord had been wailing and lamenting one moment, and the next he'd gagged up blood and dropped dead. The remnants of his forces were swept away by Sun Ce, who was then building his strength in Gangdong, and with that the name Yuan Shu vanished from the Three Kingdoms for good.
The more I turned it over in my mind, the more delightful that death became. A miserable end—and one perfectly befitting a man like Yuan Shu.
"Man, how long has it been since our last battle?"
Lü Bu, who had marched out at the head of the army alongside me, wore the expression of someone eagerly awaiting the fight to come. I asked breezily, "That exciting, huh?"
"Drilling soldiers is only fun at first. Keep it up and it wears thin," Lü Bu replied.
She wasn't wrong. Back in the Bing Province days she had personally gone scrambling over mountains to drill her troops, but at some point she had gone slack. Training was left to the officers under her command while she herself ambled about Luoyang on patrol or came poking around wherever I happened to be. To any observer she might have looked like a thief stealing her own wages—though in this day and age, I suppose I'd have to call it pilfering one's stipend.
But Lü Bu's martial prowess was so absurdly high that even her lazy patrols produced staggering results. Consider what kind of era this was: an age in ancient China where people died like consumables practically by the day, and on top of that a chaotic world where every faction nursed ambitions and waged open war. However fine Luoyang's public order, criminals kept crawling out of the woodwork without end—and Lü Bu caught them with ghostly precision.
She would perch herself on a scenic stretch of city wall or up on a rooftop, watch the streets below, and anyone suspicious who caught her eye got an arrow. Where that arrow landed depended on the gravity of the offense, and before I knew it I was marvelling out loud. Pickpockets took a shaft in the leg; those who deserved summary execution on the spot took one through the heart or the skull. When the bystanders scattered in terror, Lü Bu would seize her Sky Piercer Halberd and set off in gleeful pursuit. Put yourself in a criminal's shoes, and trembling wouldn't have been the least bit strange.
Worse still, her patrol hours were never fixed, so even pulling off a crime in secret was a struggle. Sometimes she'd head out before dawn on the excuse that she couldn't sleep—what was a lawbreaker supposed to do about that? Patrolling only whenever the mood struck her ended up working exactly like random spot inspections. She trained the soldiers the same way, only when she felt like it. The expressions the men wore whenever Lü Bu showed up still looked pained whenever I pictured them. Thank heaven they weren't real soldiers.
...Though I couldn't help noticing she drove the men hardest precisely when I had reason to stop by camp. No matter how I sliced it, she was hovering around me and, as a bonus, getting her work done at the same time. But what could I do? I was the General-in-Chief in name, after all—I could hardly never set foot in the barracks. I could only hope the soldiers took it as sweat spilled now for blood spared later.
Then Lü Bu looked my way and said, "I'll be watching closely this time too."
She wore a triumphant grin as she said it. Seeing her look forward to a fight that much made me feel a little guilty.
"There probably won't be any fighting."
"Huh? Seriously?!" Lü Bu jolted upright in shock.
"Assuming everything goes to plan, that is."
"Plan...? What plan?"
A perfectly natural question. I answered the puzzled Lü Bu in a playful voice. "Wait and see."
"Hmm... fine, then." She nodded, calm and unbothered.
"Hm..."
Nearby, Zhang Fei—who had been leading my bugok and was taking a short breather—watched Lü Bu and let out that unreadable little sound. She sidled up to me and said, "You know Lü Bu, right? The moment she stands in front of the General-in-Chief, her temper just deflates."
"Well, that's..." I didn't dispute it. However spectacularly Lü Bu blew her top, the instant I entered her field of vision she would smother the fire and recover her composure. Zhang Fei, who had been commanding my bugok for some time now, must have witnessed similar scenes herself. She went on mischievously: "If anyone else had said that, she'd have gone ballistic on the spot—and then some."
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean!"
Lü Bu, who had been eavesdropping nearby, shrieked at Zhang Fei. Zhang Fei, utterly unbothered, kept needling her. "See? I tease her a little and she comes charging straight over."
"Shut uuuup—!"
Lü Bu's face had flushed tomato-red, and she looked ready to pounce on Zhang Fei at any moment. Left alone, the two looked set to start brawling again, so I shifted my position slightly, letting myself drift into Lü Bu's line of sight.
"U-urgh..." The instant I appeared in her view, Lü Bu became conscious of me, made a strange strangled noise, and cooled her temper at once. Weren't her mood swings a touch too fast? Maybe she simply couldn't bear to look ugly in front of the person she loved. Fitting, perhaps, for the woman later generations would recast as the Three Kingdoms' archetypal romantic—Lü Bu was utterly, hopelessly devoted to me.
Zhang Fei snickered. "Man, this is fun. I'm doing this whenever the mood strikes from now on."
Then, from behind Zhang Fei, a familiar voice rang out. "Yide."
"...U-uh, yeah?" There was an unmistakable chill threaded through that voice, and Zhang Fei broke into a light sweat as she turned around.
No point dancing around it: the one calling for Zhang Fei was Guan Yu.
"Uh... Sister Yunchang?"
"What is it."
Guan Yu's tone was as level as ever, but everyone present could tell she was angry.
Zhang Fei asked, clinging to a thread of hope. "You're not mad, right?"
"..."
At the question, Guan Yu's eyes narrowed ever so slightly—the look of someone asking, you already know the answer, so why bother?
"We can scarcely afford to get along even within our own ranks, and here you are carrying on with such wanton recklessness."
"...U-uh."
"Yide. Come with me."
"Eep!"
The moment Guan Yu moved, Zhang Fei darted behind me and hid.
Guan Yu, evidently not expecting this, stopped dead in her tracks. "...Yide. What exactly are you doing."
"Ah." Startled by her own reflex, Zhang Fei rolled her eyes for a beat, then stepped back out. "Um... sorry?"
"It's fine. Don't worry about it." I had no idea what she was apologizing for, but I accepted it all the same.
"Haah... To think a general would hide behind the very lord she is sworn to serve."
"..."
"Come."
Guan Yu all but dragged the speechless Zhang Fei away by main force.
"That is a sight to behold," came a pleasant voice from behind me. "To think the day would come when Yide of all people would hide behind someone."
"Hm?" I turned my head to find Liu Bei standing beside me at some point. When did she get here this time?
I put on a deliberately unconcerned face. "What little sister wouldn't be frightened, with a terrifying older sister come to scold her ordering her to follow?"
"...Hehe." Liu Bei's lips curved into a smile, and she nodded. "Quite right, General-in-Chief."
What was this nagging feeling? She was clearly agreeing with me, yet something seemed hidden beneath the words.
"My lord."
"Hm? What is it?"
Just then Seo Yeo drew near and called to me. She leaned in until her lips brushed my ear and whispered, so softly I could barely catch it: "...All women are beasts."
"..."
I was certain I'd heard that line from her before. Why bring it up now, of all moments?
I answered just as quietly. "Then I suppose that makes you a beast too, Seo Yeo?"
"..."
"...?"
"..."
Why wasn't she answering? I shot her a puzzled look, but Seo Yeo merely let her gaze slide away, slyly dodging mine.