Dangtugo (6)
Having crushed Liu Biao, who had ruled Jing Province, and driven the Xiongnu invaders back out of Bing Province, we were next greeted by news of Yuan Shu's usurpation of the imperial throne. Defeating Yuan Shu himself posed no problem whatsoever. Judging by the state of our forces and the surrounding balance of power, the odds of Yuan Shu crushing us were precisely zero.
If a single thing nagged at me, it was only this: the damage the Xiongnu had inflicted on Bing Province's defenders had been catastrophic. The province had yet to properly recover, leaving it dangerously exposed to any outside incursion. And in the middle of all this, I was supposed to march the army off to punish Yuan Shu? Then the Xianbei and the Wuhuan would take that as their cue and come swarming over the border. War really is a goddamn hassle.
Qin Shi Huang had famously raised the Great Wall to hold back the northern tribes, but the Great Wall of the late Eastern Han could hardly be counted on for any genuine defensive effect. The reason was simple: after so many long years of corruption and neglect, the wall had never been properly maintained. Even modern buildings, products of centuries of engineering, start falling apart after a few decades—so what hope did a rampart of rammed earth have? For all its magnificent name, the Great Wall of this age was a white elephant that couldn't even buy the defenders time.
The stone-walled version everyone pictures was thrown up in a frantic scramble by the Ming Dynasty only after the later 'Mongol' affair—and the project was so colossal, I hear, that it still wasn't finished even by the time the Ming fell. I could understand why the Ming had undertaken such a mammoth enterprise. If bastards like the Mongol Empire came bursting out of the north again and filmed Jin Dynasty II, that would be a disaster in the truest sense of the word.
So there we were: the garrison's losses were massive, time was short, and the very fortifications raised for defense couldn't do their job. And yet I could hardly leave the people of Bing Province to fend for themselves. In the end, only one answer remained. As a stopgap, I diverted troops stationed elsewhere to shore up Bing Province's defenses.
"Zhishu." (Zhang Yang's courtesy name.) "I am entrusting part of the soldiers I brought to your command."
"A-are you certain that is wise?"
"I am. But you must hold Bing Province."
"Leave it to me!"
With those soldiers left behind in Bing Province, I returned straight to Luoyang, reorganized the army, and marched out for Shuchun.
Shuchun had been folded into Gangdong's territory, but it was not the kind of terrain people imagined—land that could only be attacked by first crossing the Yangtze. If anything, you might call it a bridgehead: a city that existed, in effect, to launch an army across that river. In the original history, after all, didn't Sun Quan—who had built a power base beyond the Yangtze—get beaten black and blue at Hefei time and again trying to push into Wei? And that Hefei sat just shy of Shuchun. In other words, whether you came from the north or the south, Shuchun was a region of enormous military value. Several rivers even threaded past the city, making it remarkably easy to defend as well.
...Still, it was no match for Xiangyang Castle, Liu Biao's impregnable home stronghold. Ugh. If the man who had originally served as Governor of Shuchun had simply kept Yuan Shu in check, none of this toil would have been necessary. From what I'd heard, that Governor—whose name I could no longer even recall—had clashed with Yuan Shu, lost outright, and handed the city over. Had Yuan Shu briefly gotten his act together after his brush with death at Cao Cao's hands? Or had the Governor of Shuchun been even more incompetent than Yuan Shu himself? Carrying that unanswerable question, I kept the army on the move.
The route from Jing Province to Shuchun did not take all that long. Wuhan, China—that is, march north from Jiangxia Commandery in Jing Province, cross a single mountain range, and you were practically there. The distance came to roughly nine hundred li, about 350 kilometers. A shade less than the span from Seoul to Busan. An utterly trivial stretch...
...This seriously pisses me off. Why the hell is this land so wide? I'll be honest with myself: I figured that by the time we finished off Yuan Shu and returned to Luoyang, autumn would be all but spent. After that would come the bitter depths of winter, and once even that winter passed, a new year would come around again.
...
And at some point during that winter, something enormous was going to hit me. One look at the eyes Seo Yeo was leveling at me even now made that certain. The fuse on the bomb had already burned down to nothing; those eyes seemed to be measuring the precise moment to let it blow. ...At the very least, I hoped to stay in one piece until we made it back to Luoyang.
Just then, Liu Bei—who had been campaigning at my side—came to me and offered a respectful bow.
"General-in-Chief."
"Hmm? What is it?" I asked.
Receiving my question, Liu Bei continued—looking, whether I imagined it or not, somehow ill at ease.
"We have confirmed the army of the Governor of Yanzhou nearby."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
Liu Bei bowed with perfect courtesy.
"The character for 'Cao' emblazoned on their war banners leaves no room for doubt."
"I see..."
I answered in a level, unhurried voice. To cross paths with Cao Cao in the middle of a march, of all things. It meant we had set out at nearly the same time—quite the remarkable coincidence.
Liu Bei went on.
"Cao Cao's forces appear to have noticed us as well. They are slowly closing in on our position."
...
"What would you have us do?"
At her composed question, a short laugh escaped me.
"About time I laid eyes on her again."
"You mean to..."
"We move toward Cao Cao's army as well."
"As you command."
Watching Liu Bei withdraw, I turned the matter over in my head. Cao Cao, Mengde. A beautiful woman of small stature, with silver hair and silver eyes to match. It had been a very long time since we had parted ways in Luoyang. Considerable years had flowed past since then—just how much would Cao Cao have changed? Hunting down those differences promised to be rather entertaining.
"It has been a while."
"It has."
"Hmhm... Did you not grow lonely in my absence?"
?
She had not changed in the slightest. Cao Cao spouted the same bizarre nonsense as the day we had first met outside Luoyang, and all I could do was pull a face of pure disbelief at the display.
"Judging by that look, you must have missed me terribly in Luoyang."
"Not even a little."
"There is no shame in being shy about it."
It was enough to make the words I'm losing my mind well up of their own accord. I was fairly certain this exact thought had struck me every single time I met Cao Cao.
"Fear not. If you wish it, I shall gladly share some... intimate time with you, whenever you please."
For reasons known only to herself, Cao Cao had deliberately picked out the phrasing most ripe for misunderstanding. I was already tiptoeing on eggshells, never knowing when the bomb parked nearby might go off—and there she was, playing with fire right beside it.
"Mengde..."
The pale-blue-haired woman stationed at Cao Cao's side wore a look of pure exasperation. She plainly wanted to say something, but with the setting being what it was, she couldn't quite bring herself to step in and only squirmed in mute distress.
Naturally enough, the eyes of Seo Yeo and Lü Bu, flanking me as my honor guard, had shifted to something far from ordinary. Seo Yeo's entire presence had flipped into something else entirely, while Lü Bu's brow creased ever so slightly as she glared Cao Cao down. That neither of them bolted from her post was the one mercy in all this. My gut had whispered trouble from the start, so I had warned them again and again not to act without my leave—and thank the heavens they had listened.
Even with every soul present fixing her with a stare, Cao Cao stood tall and utterly unshaken. ...In the original history, Cao Cao had been so thick-skinned that—save for the death of his eldest son, Cao Ang, the price of coveting a widow—he was said never to have regretted a single thing in his life. But that was precisely the side of her I had no wish to see on display here.
I offered Cao Cao a word of caution.
"...Battle is upon us. Refrain from any remark that might breed ugly rumors."
"Ah—so it ceases to matter once we have crushed that fool?"
"No. Just... don't."
At Cao Cao's question, forever swerving somewhere absurd, I finally spat the words out flat. Cao Cao's face bloomed with satisfaction.
"Heh heh. What a nostalgic tone."
"...What are you on about now."
"Can you truly not guess?"
The smile that had never once left her lips deepened further still.
"Only that I, for one, have waited in dream and in waking for the day I might meet you again."
...
A mind as capable as Cao Cao's would know exactly how such words painted her in the eyes of everyone present—so what possible design lay behind repeating them? I studied her for a long moment, and caught her gaze flick, for the briefest instant, toward Seo Yeo.
...Don't tell me she's doing this on purpose?Why, in heaven's name? What could she possibly stand to gain? Following the thread a step further, I stumbled onto a hypothesis too frightening to examine in detail—and promptly shook it out of my head. Oh, come on. There was no way she had gone that far off the rails. The world harbored every manner of taste, I'd grant—but I chose to believe Cao Cao was not among them. ...Right?
I fixed her with an uneasy look that asked exactly that, but Cao Cao merely smiled—mischievous as a child who had just gotten away with something.