Zhao Yun (5)
The realm had collapsed.
Decades of corruption and decay, stretching on without end. Great famines arriving one after another. Bandits running rampant in every corner of the land. Everywhere one looked lay the bodies of people who had starved to death, and those who could no longer endure the hunger and bolted from their homes were never seen again.
Even amid all of it, the corrupt officials, desperate only to sate their own greed, did nothing but squeeze the lifeblood from the people, and the great famine born of drought after drought made it seem as though Heaven itself had abandoned the Han.
Whenever the world descended into chaos, it was always the powerless who paid the price.
...Seen one way, the fall of such a nation was inevitable.
"The Azure Sky is already dead; the Yellow Sky shall rise!"
"In the year of jiazi, great fortune shall come to the world!"
The people—whom everyone had dismissed as meek and harmless—rose up with weapons in hand to bring the Han crashing down.
The central government dismissed it as just another petty revolt and dispatched suppression forces with hardly a second thought, but the fury of the people surpassed anything they had imagined. Reports of the imperial army's defeats poured in from across the realm, until even word arrived that several major cities had fallen—utterly without precedent. Only then did the Ten Attendants grasp how dire the situation had become, and they threw the full military might of the Han into crushing the uprising. The people resisted with their very lives, yet they could not bring down centuries of history.
The flames that had roared so fiercely died down to ash, and the wailing of the people slowly faded away.
What came after was exactly as the history books told it.
As time passed, the long famine at last receded, but the people's suffering did not lessen. Young men were dragged off by force to expand buildings and reinforce the garrisons. With the young gone, the fields were left mostly to the elderly and to children, and most of the meager harvest those hands bled and sweated for was seized away in the name of taxes.
Why had the Qin, the first dynasty ever to unify the realm, perished? The Qin, whose power none had dared to challenge. Its rule was so savage that it drew up the people's resentment, and from that resentment came the first great peasant uprising in the history of the East. Chen Sheng, crying out, "Are kings and nobles born to their blood?" raised his banner in revolt against the Qin. Though he was annihilated by Zhang Han, who led the Qin's punitive army, the fires his rebellion had kindled would in the end consume the dynasty. The people's revolt sapped the central government's strength, and warlords hungry for power rose up in every quarter, bringing Qin to its ruin.
Had the rulers of today learned nothing from that history? Why could they not break this chain of misery—blinded by greed, tormenting others?
Zhao Yun had wanted to set it right. She had left her homeland of Changshan and wandered the realm in search of righteousness and virtue.
Yuan Shao, who ruled Jizhou, was a warlord in the classic mold. The way she coldly turned everything she possessed to her own use, purely as the need arose. It was not that she lacked ability—but Zhao Yun knew by instinct that the world Yuan Shao was building was not the one she wished for.
Gongsun Zan, who ruled You Province, was more brutal still. Like Qin Shi Huang before him, he forcibly conscripted young men for his massive construction projects. He plundered with his own hands the very people he was meant to protect, all to fill his war chest. It would be no exaggeration to say that the great fortress he called Yijing Tower had been raised upon the corpses of countless common folk.
Disillusioned, she had turned her horse away. Her next destination was Bing Province, lying right beside Jizhou and You Province.
……
And there, Zhao Yun beheld a sight she had never once seen before.
A settlement so vast it hardly felt like a frontier at all. The corpses of the people, which had appeared as a matter of course wherever she went, were nowhere to be found. Though the village was far from wealthy, the people helped their neighbors and shared their food without stinting, and the soldiers who patrolled the streets never once laid a hand on them.
Vitality brimmed from the people's every movement. There was laughter. There was happiness.
...This was the sight she had always longed to see. Now that the wish had been granted, only one course of action remained to her.
To protect this world under Heaven.
"Wh-where in the blazes did that madwoman crawl out from...!"
"Run! Run for your lives!"
From that day on, Zhao Yun roamed Bing Province, cutting down every last tribe that dared to cross its borders.
"Gwaaagh!"
"Gahk!"
Everyone said the same thing—that it was by the grace of the General-in-Chief that they were able to live as they did now.
"What in the world is happening?!"
"Chanyu! Look out!"
That was why Zhao Yun could offer up her very life without a moment's hesitation.
"Boss! We have to fall back, now!"
"Th-this cannot be! How can we flee a battle we have already won...!"
"Boss—!!"
Once her road was chosen, all that remained was to walk it to the very end.
"H-heh heh... I expected as much, but your horsemanship is truly superb as well..."
"……"
"So turning my back in fear was my mistake, was it."
That was her conviction.
"Boss... forgive me..."
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom.
Benevolence.
Righteousness.
Propriety.
Wisdom.
The proper way that a leader must uphold and practice.
"A woman who would be honored wherever she went—why were you drifting through Bing Province?"
"Because when I looked upon this place, I found hope."
"Hmm?"
"Let me swear it here and now."
"……"
She had simply resolved to give everything she had to such a person.
The day after the sparring match between Zhang Liao and Zhao Yun came to an end.
Zhang Fei, who had gone to bed still clad in her armor, snapped her eyes open the moment the sun rose and bolted upright all in one motion. She moved as though a fire had broken out somewhere, but this was simply what mornings looked like for Zhang Fei.
"Hwaaam..."
After one long yawn, she straightened herself up.
"All right."
Having tidied her disheveled appearance, Zhang Fei's wide, bleary eyes now showed she was fully awake.
"Today's the day I finally get my match."
The subject of that sentence went unspoken, but there was only one person Zhang Fei had in mind. Xuande had outright pushed her toward the bout, and even Yunchang—who had blocked her way before, saying there was still too much work to be done—was keeping her silence now.
"If I get moving now, I'll make it there in good time..."
Zhang Fei recalled the words Xuande had uttered yesterday as she gazed at the three of them. After a moment's thought, she broke into a silly grin.
"She had a point."
Yunchang, needlessly strict even with her own sworn sister, did not seem to have caught on yet—but Zhang Fei, who had spent the whole night turning those words over in her head, understood exactly why Xuande had said them. Zhang Fei was, in her own way, perfectly capable of putting her mind to work.
"Yide. Are you awake?"
"Ah—Yunchang?"
At the sound of Guan Yu's voice calling from beyond the door, Zhang Fei sprang to her feet. Stepping outside, she found Guan Yu waiting with her Green Dragon Crescent Blade in hand, looking precisely as she always did.
The sight pried Zhang Fei's mouth open.
"Honestly, when you stand there like that, people get scared of you?"
"……"
"You're scary-looking enough as it is, and then you go and put on that solemn face, and—ow!"
Guan Yu, without a moment's hesitation, drove her knuckles into the head of her sworn sister, who was spouting nonsense before the morning had barely begun.
And so, a short while later.
Once the time-honored ritual of Zhang Fei taking a rap on the head had run its course, the two of them set off for wherever Zhao Yun was. ...Not that they had any way of knowing exactly where that was, so just as they had yesterday, they resolved to wait by the General-in-Chief's side until she showed herself.
"Yunchang."
"What is it."
When Zhang Fei called her name, Guan Yu answered with her usual expression.
"It's been weighing on my mind too."
"...And what would that be?"
"Zhao Yun. I'm talking about Zhao Yun."
A woman who, for reasons no one could fathom—whatever she had been through, wherever she had come from—hovered around the General-in-Chief to a degree that defied all sense. Judged by appearances alone, she was a woman who would weigh everything in this world with cold clarity, yet behind that exterior hid a drive so forward even Zhang Fei could see it.
"No matter how I look at it, you can feel it plain as day in her eyes."
"……"
"That look only ever belongs to someone whose loyalty has gone just a little bit off its rails—exactly like yours, Yunchang!"
Loyalty gone off its rails...
What was that supposed to mean, exactly?
"...I see."
All she meant was that she wanted a match.
Having read the situation, Guan Yu raised her right arm—and Zhang Fei, stricken with terror, scrambled to explain.
"W-wait, hold on! That was a compliment...!"
Guan Yu drove her fist, with tremendous force, into Zhang Fei as she spouted yet more nonsense about loyalty off its rails and who knows what else.
"GYAAAAAGH—!!"
Zhang Fei, having just received the most devastating knuckle-rap of her entire life, let out a shriek.
"Um... Colonel?"
An aide who had been watching this spectacle from nearby ventured to speak.
"What exactly is going on here..."
"...I know nothing about it, I assure you."
Liu Bei quietly averted her eyes from the stares of everyone around her.