Dangtugo (8)
After my meeting with Cao Cao concluded, I kept the army on the march, and before long the scouts brought word that Shuchun was no longer far off.
"The more I think about it, the more it gets on my nerves."
"Hm?"
Just as I was nodding along to the messenger's report, Sima Yi, riding at my side, grumbled under her breath.
"What on earth did she even mean by that... It's honestly beyond ridiculous..."
"......"
I had a fairly good idea who Sima Yi was muttering about.
"General-in-Chief, I'm only saying this just in case, but the more someone acts like that, the more careful you need to be around them."
"Careful? What do you mean?"
When I questioned her abrupt warning, the violet-haired girl replied flatly.
"People who push themselves at you for no reason usually have some dark scheme tucked away."
I couldn't exactly argue with that.
Considering everything Cao Cao had shown us so far, it was hardly a strange conclusion to reach.
If even I — someone who'd met her before — felt this way, I could only imagine what she looked like to a person seeing her for the first time today.
"You understand, right? Women like that are fickle to the bone. There's no telling where they'll go bouncing off to next."
But why does it feel like she's saying that with some entirely different intention?
It felt less like strategic advice and more like a wife keeping her husband on a short leash so he wouldn't get sweet-talked by some strange woman. If I pointed that out, wouldn't she explode on me?
When I kept my silence despite her admonition, Sima Yi asked in a puzzled voice.
"What are you thinking about so hard that you've gone quiet?"
"Oh, nothing much."
I fudged an answer. Teasing out her flustered reactions would have been entertaining, but we were on the verge of a battle. Cao Cao's forces seemed to be keeping pace without a hitch, so there was nothing particularly wrong with the situation.
I was still mulling over how to unfold this siege when a messenger came sprinting toward me.
"General-in-Chief! Urgent report!"
"...?"
What now?
Had the Xianbei and the Wuhuan invaded, just like I'd worried before? Nothing else came to mind as a reason for a messenger to come running with that much urgency written across his face.
Catching the direction of my gaze, the messenger hurriedly opened his mouth.
"The traitor Yuan Shu is advancing on us with his entire army!"
"...What?"
For a moment, I could only doubt my own ears.
That Yuan Shu — he did what, exactly?
Seeing my bewilderment, the messenger continued in a slightly dazed voice of his own.
"According to the spy's report, he marched out of Shuchun in full pomp, declaring that the new Emperor appointed by Heaven could never know defeat."
"......"
I fell silent, and Sima Yi beside me wore an equally dumbfounded expression, as if this, too, had exceeded anything she'd expected.
"...Wow. That's even worse than I imagined."
"Tell me about it."
I'd known he was so drunk on ambition that he'd usurped the imperial title, but I'd never imagined he was this far gone. His troop count was certainly enormous — but that was genuinely all there was to it. His men were surely half-trained at best, and he had no match-for-ten-thousand generals like Guan Yu or Zhang Fei to speak of, so what confidence, exactly, had he marched out with?
Just how had this man ever handled politics back in Luoyang?
A man already short on ability had, in his mad lust for power, lost even the barest shred of political sense, until he became incompetence incarnate. The only thing that had ever carried Yuan Shu as high as he'd climbed was that meager scrap of judgment — and now even that was gone.
...Well, I suppose that's what happens to men who put their faith in bogus prophecy books.
In fairness, Yuan Shu had always been the type to advance without hesitation when boldness was called for. It was Yuan Shu who had formed the coalition to check our faction's rapid expansion, and Yuan Shu again who had actively picked fights with Liu Biao and Cao Cao under one pretext or another to swallow up more territory.
If everything had gone according to plan, I would still have been buried in repairing the damage the coalition had dealt us. Meanwhile, his subordinate Sun Jian would have crushed Liu Biao and ridden that momentum on to topple Cao Cao as well, leaving Yuan Shu at the head of a monstrous superpower spanning Jing Province, Ye Province, and Yanzhou.
...The only problem being that everything he touched promptly crashed and burned.
The coalition he'd assembled with such fanfare had disbanded in a haze without so much as crossing Hulao Pass. Sun Jian had attacked Liu Biao, taken a grievous wound, and hovered at death's door ever since. And after Cao Cao thoroughly shattered Yuan Shu in open battle, his home base had quite literally disintegrated beneath him.
The sight of Yuan Shu — once so insufferably grandiose — fallen this low made him a textbook cautionary tale.
Just look at him.
Even now, wasn't he simply cowering behind the title of Emperor, wrenching his eyes away from reality? Fake authority, fake honor, a fake facade. The situation surrounding Yuan Shu was, quite literally, a comedy viewed from afar and a tragedy up close.
"General-in-Chief."
Just then, a soldier clad in Cao Cao's colors approached me from the distance. The moment he drew near, he dismounted and bowed with meticulous courtesy.
"The Governor of Yanzhou has sent me to bring back her answer as to how she should move."
"Hm?"
I let a flicker of puzzlement show at the unexpected report. While I was still debating whether to take that literally or figuratively, the messenger went on.
"She says that, just as she mentioned before, she would genuinely like you to regard her as one of your own generals..."
"I see."
Cao Cao wasn't being two-faced about it — she had truly placed every decision in my hands. Yes. Just like the generals who genuinely followed me.
So what was she trying to say with a gesture like this?
After a brief moment of thought, I chuckled and gave the messenger my reply.
"This time, I won't be setting any course of action for her."
"...Might I ask you to elaborate on what you mean?"
Puzzlement crossed the messenger's face, and I answered him.
"Simply that I'm leaving everything entirely to the Governor of Yanzhou's judgment."
"......"
"Tell her I look forward to seeing for myself the skill that leaves a trail of victories behind her wherever she goes."
"Yes, sir."
Cao Cao's messenger bowed once more and withdrew from my presence, his face carefully blank. Watching him go, I turned the matter over in my mind.
Cao Cao Mengde.
Her strengths were many: a first-rate mind for weaving stratagems, a flawless command of every manner of political work. On top of that, even her personal martial arts were not to be taken lightly — a woman who truly earned the word versatile. And yet, if I had to name her single greatest talent, there was only one answer.
Leadership.
The deeper the corner Cao Cao was backed into, and the mightier the opponent before her, the more she drew on her hidden reserves to carve open a path forward.
It was like the time she launched her great campaign against Xu Province, lost her main camp to Chen Gong's betrayal, and had to fight Lü Bu anyway. At a moment when a single crushing defeat could have erased the name Cao Cao from history, she beat back the woman they called Peerless Under Heaven.
It was like the war against Yuan Shao, whose army outnumbered her own several times over. Facing that overwhelming mass of men and materiel, Cao Cao endured stubbornly through long years of attrition before landing one masterstroke to win the Battle of Guandu.
...Though, to be fair, she did have a habit of getting careless whenever the odds favored her, and losing for it.
To put it in cheap modern terms, the gap between her tryhard games and her casual ones was considerable.
Even so — for all the defeats she suffered, she staged grand reversals in battle after battle that everyone had written off as lost, and in the end stood tall as the undisputed hegemon of the realm. That was Cao Cao.
For a woman like that, letting her act on her own judgment had to be far better than me presumptuously issuing orders. Left to her own devices, she'd pull at least her full weight.
...I could only pray that Cao Cao wasn't currently in "just here to have fun" mode.
From her own command camp at the head of her army, Cao Cao asked abruptly.
"Hmm. So the General-in-Chief said that, did he?"
"He did."
The messenger relayed the General-in-Chief's words in a calm, level voice.
Cao Cao was quiet for a moment, as if weighing something, before she spoke.
"Yuanrang. I can take this as him trusting me, can't I?"
"Uh... well?"
Xiahou Dun answered with a somewhat dazed look on her face.
"Beats me. Playing quartermaster in the rear or swinging a sword up front, that I know — but this sort of thing? Not a clue."
"...Heh."
Hearing that, Cao Cao spoke in a voice of mock concern.
"And at this rate, how will you ever land yourself a proper man?"
"Oh, shut up!"
"Don't worry so much. One day you'll meet your destined other half too—"
"I said shut up!"
Already prickly about the subject, Xiahou Dun shrieked at the top of her lungs the moment her sore spot got poked. Cao Cao let out a small laugh at the sight of her kinswoman so flustered over the matter of marriage.
"'Leave everything to me,' he says..."
Just then, far in the distance, Yuan Shu's battle formation slowly revealed itself. He really had gathered every last soldier he owned and dragged them all here.
"Might as well use the occasion to earn myself a little favor."
It was only natural for a man to feel drawn to a capable woman, no? With that thought, Cao Cao drew the Yitian Sword from her waist.
"The time has come to take the head of that fool who ran wild on nothing but his family's prestige."
Yitian Sword bared, Cao Cao gave her soldiers their order.
"Advance."