Power (3)
What kind of future was I, in the end, trying to draw?
It was a question I'd been asked many times over the years, and at other times one I found myself turning over alone.
An age of chaos.
A word for a world so upended by war and lawless rule that simply staying alive became a daily struggle.
In times like these, settling down in any one place and living out my days in idle comfort was next to impossible.
Had I never accepted He Jin's invitation and instead stayed dawdling in Bing Province, I would most likely have ended up bound to Yuan Shao or Cao Cao — and in all probability been thrown personally into the colossal slaughter of the battles at Guandu and Red Cliffs.
Had I gone to Jiangdong instead, I would have placed myself under the Sun family's banner and spent all day, every day fighting the Shanyue Tribe.
Fighting foreign tribes even in Jiangdong was galling enough, but linger there any longer and I'd have had to shoulder my lord's drinking habit and his slide into dotage on top of it.
Yi Province would have been little different. It was, to begin with, ground that Liu Yan and Zhang Lu squabbled over — and given time, Liu Bei would gulp Yi Province down whole, then go on to spend a very hot night at Yiling.
Wherever I went among the thirteen provinces of the Later Han, it was self-evident I'd be swept into the flames of war. Battles were, quite literally, breaking out across every inch of China.
Reading about it in books had been entertaining, but living through it firsthand? Nothing on earth grated on me more.
A world where human life was treated as worth less than a beast's. That was the reality of this era.
Since it was obvious I'd be dragged along by the tide of the age whether I moved or not, I simply resolved to live as my heart directed.
Every time I stepped into the streets, the corpses of the starved lay sprawled across them, so I handed out relief grain; the orphaned children pained me to look at, so I took them into my household and raised them as attendants.
And that was when, as if by fate, I came upon that child.
———Hey there, little one.
I stretched out my hand toward the girl who stared vacantly into the empty air with hollow, haggard eyes.
———Will you come with me?
———...
And so I gained the companion who would walk beside me for the rest of my life.
I hadn't intended it, but I had taken in a child who, left to her own devices, might one day have grown into the seed of a calamity.
Considering the name Xiang Yu, it was entirely plausible.
After that, I began acting a shade more boldly — heaven knew where the confidence had come from.
———Was that too abrupt? Then tell me — what's your name?
———...
I walked up smiling to Lü Bu as she single-handedly butchered a foreign warband.
———If it's ever discovered that you spared me... you won't be safe either.
———I stopped caring about that a long time ago.
And I secretly sheltered the leader of the Yellow Turban army, whose rebellion had swept across eight provinces of the realm.
By the time I'd gone that far, there was no denying it anymore.
I was already riding the current of history — the vast current that would flow on for at least several hundred years, and perhaps several thousand.
Well then. Since it had come to this, why not see how far I could go?
With that thought, whenever an opening appeared, I barged straight through it.
I drove out Dong Zhuo, who had seized total control of the court; I turned back the coalition that had named Yuan Shu its leader; and I claimed the whole of Jing Province from Liu Biao's hands.
A border force that had once scuffled with foreign tribes in the boonies of Bing Province now stood towering as the mightiest power under heaven.
And what future did I — lord of that power — envision? I could answer with certainty.
"...I simply wish for people to be able to live like human beings."
There were those who starved to death for want of a single meal. There were those who died wracked by sickness, unable to obtain even the cheapest medicine. There were those beaten without cause, whose festering wounds carried them off.
People who laid hands on their own families — kin who had succumbed to hunger before them. A little child wailing as it clung to a mother who had already stopped breathing. And still others trampling one another underfoot, clawing any way they could just to stay alive.
All of it was tragedy.
The karma sown by the incompetent and the greedy ran deep. These were the people lying strewn everywhere one looked, and even with the sensibilities of a modern individualist, I could feel it — this was simply wrong.
Would I shrug it off as the way of the world and look away? Or would I hurl myself at it, without regret?
As it happened, a suitable measure of power already sat in my grasp, along with the military strength to strike down the corrupt officials who lined only their own pockets. A person without a purpose in life grows terribly listless — so was there really any reason to hesitate?
"I never used to think that way, but it turns out I'm rather prone to sticking my nose into other people's business."
It felt a touch embarrassing to say stone-cold sober, so I said it while tipping back a cup or two.
Truthfully, with Seo Yeo at my side, keeping this one body of mine intact was easily managed. And Lü Bu looked ready to follow me anywhere at a single word, so a quiet, pastoral life in some secluded corner of the world had been well within reach.
But the very fact that I hadn't chosen that path — wasn't that itself proof that I harbored some grand ambition?
"I only wish that no one should lose their life unjustly for the sole reason of having been born."
"..."
At my brief answer, Wang Yun held his silence for a moment.
"You have chosen a difficult road."
"I think so myself."
They say not even a sovereign can conquer poverty. An obvious truth.
Poverty and want had walked beside humanity since it first took its wobbling steps — how much could one insignificant man hope to stamp out?
But that was no reason to give up.
...Not that I was some towering paragon of virtue. My plan was always to step aside once things improved to a reasonable degree.
Aiming high is all well and good, but if I keeled over dead in the pursuit, the loss would be mine and mine alone.
Wasn't walking the tightrope between ideal and reality the true wisdom of life?
"That is the whole of my answer. Is there anything else you wish to ask?"
Feeling oddly lighthearted, I judged that the wine had begun to work its way through me. Deciding overindulgence was unwise, I confined myself thereafter to nibbling at the dishes that arrived between rounds.
Just then, Xun Yu spoke.
"It seems my eye has not failed me after all."
"...?"
When I showed my puzzlement, Xun Yu offered a faint smile.
"Having observed the General-in-Chief over many long years, I predicted that no matter how much power you amassed, you would never stray onto the wrong path."
"...And so?"
"And once my thoughts arrived there, I found myself suddenly curious."
Xun Yu continued in a calm, even voice.
"What manner of world would a person like you go on to build, I wondered."
"..."
"Do you know why I sought to join Her Majesty the Emperor to you, General-in-Chief?"
I had no idea, of course.
The Talent to Assist Kings.
It meant a talent fit to uphold a king and achieve great deeds — to earn such an evaluation in this era was praise of the very highest order.
Liu Bei had Zhuge Liang, Sun Quan had Zhou Yu — and Cao Cao had Xun Yu.
When Cao Cao herself likened Xun Yu to her own Zifang — Zhang Liang, the fabled strategist of Han's founding — the matter needed no further words.
But how was I supposed to see through the mind of that Talent to Assist Kings?
Then Xun Yu said:
"Because I believed that you, General-in-Chief, could build not a Han of hollow facade, but a Han that was truly real."
...Certainly, in the original history, Cao Cao — Xun Yu's lord — had shown the Han no respect whatsoever. Only the signboard out front still read 'Han'; peer closely within, and it was as good as Cao Cao having swallowed the dynasty whole.
One needed only look at how he sent a concubine to her execution even after the Emperor had personally pleaded that the woman was carrying his own child.
Some questioned whether Xun Yu, who went on serving Cao Cao to the end, could truly be called a loyalist of Han — but this is what I believe. Xun Yu was loyal to 'the Han,' not to 'the Emperor.' In other words, a person who, if she judged it necessary, would make coldly ruthless choices even toward the Emperor herself.
Drawn from Korean history, she was much like Jeong Mong-ju. Hadn't Jeong Mong-ju cooperated when Yi Seong-gye swapped one king for another, yet when Yi Bang-won recited a poem urging him to serve the new dynasty, answered with a verse of his own pledging his heart to the old?
"Rather than let some unheard-of nobody become an imperial in-law and cleave the realm's power in two, would it not be better to gather that power into the hands of one who can be trusted?"
"..."
"It is the way of things: when a nation falls into turmoil, heroes arise," Xun Yu said. "I believe without a shadow of a doubt that you, General-in-Chief, will accomplish the great restoration — the rescue and renewal of our tottering realm — just as Emperor Guangwu once did."
"...That is praise far beyond what I deserve."
Of all the comparisons she could have made, she picked the munchkin Emperor Guangwu. Keep hoisting me up like that, and I might well die under the weight of expectations.
When I pulled a vaguely queasy face, Xun Yu smiled faintly and closed her mouth. She clearly had no intention of retracting a single word of her opinion.
"Ahem. I am merely ashamed that I doubted the General-in-Chief, even for a single moment."
Wang Yun's reaction was hardly any different from Xun Yu's.
Before Wang Yun could lay my heart bare the way Xun Yu had, I hurried to speak first.
"I merely did what anyone ought to do. There is no need to think so highly of it."
"No, no. When one has done wrong, feeling responsibility for it is only natural."
Somehow this old gentleman wouldn't concede an inch either.
"Well then, in for a coin, in for a fortune — we drink until our noses turn crooked! Allow me to pour you a cup!"
Wang Yun, in evidently excellent spirits, laughed heartily and filled my cup to the brim.
...No, hold on — I said I'm not overdrinking.