Jing Province, Nanyang Commandery (6)
Acting on my orders, Liu Bei had made a full circuit of Yuan Shu's stronghold and stripped it of every last item of wealth, without leaving so much as a speck of dust behind.
That she had brought back even the tiniest gem without fail told me she had gone about it with every intention of leaving nothing behind.
Gazing at the gold, silver, and jewels piled up before my eyes, I put the question to her.
"Is this everything?"
"Yes."
Liu Bei answered with perfect courtesy.
"Some of it we found based on the testimony of the soldiers who surrendered, and the rest our own men turned up by combing the place from top to bottom."
"And in the course of that—did any of the soldiers engage in looting?"
"The troops under one's command, after all, inevitably come to resemble their commander in character."
Having said her piece, Liu Bei flashed me a sly little smile.
"How could soldiers who follow the General-in-Chief ever stoop to such a thing?"
"Er..."
A flicker of bewilderment must have crossed my face, but Liu Bei showed no sign of stopping.
"If anything, they went and shared their own food with the people left starving."
"I... see."
"And that, too, is your benevolent virtue at work, General-in-Chief."
Even after becoming my bugok, Liu Bei still had that knack of hers for barging in out of nowhere.
I wore a dazed expression for a moment, then turned my gaze back to the gold and silver that had once belonged to Yuan Shu. There were ordinary valuables anyone would picture at the word "treasure," all the way up to strange items that left me wondering what on earth he had been stockpiling them for. Needless to say, every last piece must have been plundered from his own people. It was a hoard that reeked, plain and simple, of Yuan Shu's greed.
"These treasures are the gold and silver that will go toward restoring Nanyang Commandery."
I gazed upon a hoard I could never, not even once, skim for myself.
"So have it all placed in a warehouse and the doors sealed tight, so that no one can put a single item to personal use."
"......"
"And that includes me—no exceptions. Understood?"
At my words, Liu Bei bowed with the utmost courtesy.
"I shall carry out the General-in-Chief's orders."
"Good. Carry on, then."
I turned and made for the government offices at Wancheng.
I could feel Liu Bei's gaze boring steadily into my back—and just then, Lü Bu, who had been guarding at my side, spoke up.
"Jeong Reung."
"What?"
Lü Bu dropped her voice to barely a whisper.
"You can't go falling for talk like that, you know?"
"......"
"Look at her, giving you that soft little eye-smile. Get bewitched by her, and I guarantee she'll eat your kingdom alive."
What on earth was she going on about this time?
Whether she registered my exasperation or not, Lü Bu pressed on.
"What was that guy's name again, from way back...? Anyway, you know how there were kingdoms that fell because a king lost his head over a woman."
At Lü Bu's words, I sank into thought for a moment. Apparently she meant the women of old who had brought kingdoms to ruin.
When it came to the great femme fatales of China, there was one name that came up more than any other.
Daji of the Shang dynasty.
Anyone with even a passing interest in Chinese history has heard that name at least once—it was that famous.
A terrifying woman, she was. When King Zhou's uncle was revered as a sage—a person of such extraordinary wisdom and virtue as to be looked up to for all time—Daji purred that she'd heard a sage's heart had seven openings in it, and coaxed the king into cutting the man open to see for herself.
That said, in Daji's case, the last Shang king, King Zhou, was such a raving madman that the consensus holds Shang would have fallen even without her.
So if we set Daji aside...
I mulled it over for a moment, then muttered, "...You mean Baosi? Or Xishi?"
"Yeah, that's it!"
Baosi.
A fabled enchantress said to have lived in the days of the Zhou dynasty.
Baosi possessed a beauty said to topple kingdoms, yet she never once smiled, and it slowly drove the king's poor heart to mush—until one day, so the story goes, she remarked that the sound of silk being torn put her in a good mood.
Why the sound of ripping silk would cheer anyone up, I couldn't say—but that's what they say happened.
When King You heard of it, he had mountains of silk torn to ribbons until Baosi finally laughed.
But the endless shredding of pricey silk left the Zhou treasury empty to the bottom.
And in the middle of it all, Baosi laughed again—this time at the sight of soldiers running in circles when the beacon fires went up.
So what did King You do then?
He'd already squandered the treasury tearing up precious silk by the bolt—was lighting one little false beacon really beyond him?
After that, the false beacons blazed at every hour of the day, and the feudal lords began ignoring them with a "that bastard's at it again." King You had turned himself into the boy who cried wolf—and so, when a genuine crisis struck, no one came to his aid, and he died at the hands of the barbarian tribes.
Honestly, I had my doubts the whole tale wasn't invented, but it was written in the official histories, so I supposed I had to take it at face value and move on.
For all we know, she really was just an eccentric who genuinely liked the sound of tearing silk.
Lü Bu spoke to me.
"Be careful. One wrong step and you'll end up just like—"
"......"
I caught Lü Bu's cheek mid-sentence and stretched it out long and taut.
Startled by my out-of-nowhere move, she spoke in a flustered voice.
"Why ah you doing that?"
"Lü Bu."
Saying her name, I gave the hand gripping her cheek a gentle shake, up and down.
"Mmph?"
All that escaped through her slightly parted lips was a little puff of air.
"Didn't I tell you? I don't like hearing you badmouth other people."
"......!!"
Lü Bu's eyes blew wide as saucers.
With a temper like hers, she did occasionally derail like this, and every time she did, I would scold her and steer her back onto the right path.
You might ask how anyone goes about disciplining Lü Bu, the Peerless Under Heaven—but for me, at least, it was the easiest thing in the world.
I put on a deliberately stern voice for her benefit.
"Keep that up, and I might just have to stop looking at that face of yours."
"S-Sowwy!"
At my words, Lü Bu startled as though she might spring right off the ground.
She looked for all the world like a henpecked husband who couldn't so much as twitch in front of his wife.
...Or was "devoted husband" the more charitable term?
I opened my mouth in the soothing tone of a parent calming a child.
"I'm not going to force you two to get along. But at the very least, let's not say nasty things about each other. Got it?"
"......"
To that, Lü Bu offered no reply—only bobbed her head in a flurry of short nods.
When I let go, her cheek flushed a telltale pink before quickly recovering its usual color.
I turned my head slightly and looked at Seo Yeo.
"......"
"......"
Seo Yeo stared back at me with the same blank expression she always wore.
Hm... if I kept this up, we'd end up in another staring contest.
I held her gaze for a moment, then turned my eyes forward again and set my stalled feet moving.
"How can such a thing be allowed to happen!"
Inside Xiangyang Castle, a man who had gathered his talented retainers about him erupted in fury.
"We were the ones who bled for it, and yet Nanyang Commandery slipped into Jeong Reung's hands without his spilling a single drop of blood!"
The man—a towering figure of some eight cheok, standing well over six feet, with handsome features to match—kept venting his rage, and he was none other than Liu Biao, Governor of Jingzhou, hailed as one of the Eight Gentlemen of Jiangxia.
Liu Biao pressed on.
"I followed your counsel and struck at Wancheng, and all it earned me was loss."
So saying in an inflamed tone, he swept his gaze across the figures gathered there.
"Come, now—if any of you has something to say, out with it."
The hoary old serpent, worn smooth by every political arena imaginable, glared at his assembled officers with eyes cold as naked steel.
The officers who met that gaze felt an icy chill spread through their bodies and broke into cold sweat.
In days past, Jing Province had been a lawless scramble, its every prominent clan lunging this way and that to clutch power for itself.
There had been several reasons Jing fell into such a state.
The first was that the previous Governor, Wang Rui, had been murdered by Sun Jian, Grand Administrator of Changsha, leaving the province without a head. The second was that in the wake of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a man named Dong Zhuo had seized the imperial court, and the central government's grip had withered to almost nothing.
Amid that chaos, the court appointed a new Governor of Jingzhou—and the man so appointed was Liu Biao, courtesy name Jingsheng.
Liu Biao had entered Jing with no power base whatsoever, then, wielding a superb political instinct, expanded his influence step by step—until, in a single stroke, he purged every faction that stood against him.
In the end, the master of Jing Province was Liu Biao, and the clans that survived the purge all groveled flat before him.
Who would dare raise a hand against such a man?
Just as everyone was busy watching everyone else, one man stepped forward and offered his counsel to Liu Biao.
He was a son of the Kuai clan—the family whose backing had allowed Liu Biao to tighten his grip on Jing's real power.
"My lord. Our first priority must be to deliberate on how we are to meet what lies ahead."
"......"
"The reckoning can be demanded afterward; I humbly beg you, let your anger subside, if only for a little while."
At the words of the Kuai clansman—Kuai Yue—Liu Biao let out a long sigh.
Liu Biao held the Kuai and Cai clans, the families that had helped him bring Jing to heel, in particular favor.
"I suppose there is no helping it. I shall let the matter pass—for now."
"Thank you, my lord."
Kuai Yue bowed low and withdrew to the rear once more.
Liu Biao watched him go, then opened his mouth.
"Then, as for our countermeasures—"
"My lord. Urgent report."
Just as Liu Biao moved to resume the council, a staff officer who had just received something from a soldier spoke in a small voice.
Liu Biao's puzzled gaze swung toward the officer, who then delivered news startling enough to make anyone jump outright.
"An imperial envoy from the royal court has arrived."
"...What did you say?"
To Liu Biao, it was an utterly absurd piece of news.