The Tiger's Pelt and the Censor's Seat
The tiger, which had barged onto the scene without so much as a by-your-leave, was dispatched without any real mishap. The hunt ended the way hunts tended to end around here: Lü Bu driving it in under a hail of arrows, and Seo Yeo finishing the affair by caving in its skull.
Gazing down at what had once been a tiger—now lying there in a thoroughly pitiful state—I mulled over what to do with the carcass. We could simply leave it where it fell; scavengers drawn by the scent of blood would see to it soon enough. But having gone to the trouble of a hunt, it seemed only right to squeeze some profit out of it.
The beast had been so absurdly powerful that its pelt was in poor shape. Animal hides fetched their highest prices the more pristine they remained, so the final value could swing wildly depending on how precisely one struck the vitals. Despite taking arrow after arrow, the thing had fought back to the bitter end, leaving the hide battered half to pieces—good for exactly the market rate, and not a coin more. At least its sheer size would keep the price steep. Small mercies.
I was still staring blankly at the ex-tiger when Lü Bu, standing nearby, spoke up.
"I've got confidence in one thing, and one thing only—skinning a hide. Anyone else who's the same, step right up."
"......"
It was a perfectly reasonable request, yet the soldiers just shuffled in place, sneaking glances in every direction. The instant a hand slipped, they'd find themselves on the receiving end of the bone-crushing stares of those two monstrous generals. Who in his right mind would volunteer for that without a second thought?
"Well, well. So nobody's coming out, is that it?"
Lü Bu, already in a foul mood over the fact that the beast had dared to lunge at me, began loosening up, slow and deliberate. "Fine. Then I'll do it all myself. What can I do when my subordinates say they don't want to, hm?"
Oh. So that's how she plays it.
I'd worried Lü Bu might start snarling at the soldiers outright; I hadn't expected her to route around them this gracefully. At the sight of the Matchless Under Heaven herself dismounting from Red Hare and striding over to strip a beast's hide with her own hands, the soldiers jumped clean out of their skins.
"N-no, General! I'll do it!"
"It's fine. You lot didn't want to do it either, did you? This is exactly when a commander leads from the front."
Lü Bu waved her hand in dismissal, but not a single soldier took her at her word. In an army cut off from the outside world, rumor traveled at lightning speed—and once the gossip mill started grinding out tales of who had talked back to Lü Bu and how it went for him, life for the poor soul in question became a living hell. Somehow, wherever people gathered, it was always the same story.
The soldiers stood there pale as sheets, utterly at a loss. Feeling sorry for them, I stroked Lü Bu's hair and said, "That's enough. Let them off the hook. You have to think of the little ones too."
"...Tch."
Perhaps an image of what a skinned carcass actually looked like flashed through her mind, because the moment my words landed, her fury drained away. "You'd better count yourselves lucky."
"Th-thank you!"
With Lü Bu letting the matter drop so tamely, the soldiers heaved sighs of profound relief. Keeping an eye on clueless juniors, reading a superior's mood before speaking... honestly, nothing in this world came easy.
After stripping and eating clean the tiger that had so spectacularly failed to read the room, I returned to the fortress and gave myself over to some well-earned rest.
"Good heavens! You actually caught the man-eating tiger?"
"Man-eating tiger?"
Meng Huo had come bounding up like a golden retriever the moment I returned, and the instant she clapped eyes on the tiger pelt, astonishment bloomed across her face. Evidently, the beast Seo Yeo had brought down was quite the local celebrity.
When I echoed the words back, curiosity plain in my voice, Meng Huo nodded so hard her whole body shook as she explained. "Yes! For a long while now, that fearsome creature has prowled these lands, snatching up and devouring people!"
"......"
"So cunning was the wretch that the hunters sent after it ended up losing their own lives instead!"
Well, it had certainly eaten well. The thing was enormous, and the practiced way it had turned tail and bolted the instant it laid eyes on us spoke of far more than one or two narrow escapes. The tiger's original playbook, presumably, had been to strike and withdraw, picking humans off one at a time... Of all the opponents it could have chosen, it could not possibly have chosen worse.
"How it infuriated me—letting out a single roar, as if to mock me, before vanishing into the trees...!" Meng Huo cried, fist clenched tight, her face burning with indignation. "But that accursed feud ends at last! Once more, we owe you an immense debt!"
"...Right."
I get it, so could you please stop leaning in with your eyes sparkling like that?
They do say you can't spit in a smiling face. Confronted with someone who barged so unreservedly into my personal space, I honestly had no idea how I was meant to react. Perhaps this was precisely why the other kings of the Nanman fell in line behind Meng Huo. When the person you'd braced yourself to clash with greets you with this kind of guileless affection, the will to fight simply drains out of you.
I coughed dryly, keen to change the subject. "Meng Huo."
"Yes? You called for me?"
She tilted her head, and at that hopelessly goofy display, a laugh slipped out of me. "Before long, I intend to grant you an official post—one that will make it known to all that you now follow me completely."
"Y-yes?"
Now, what office had Zhuge Liang granted Meng Huo in the original history? If my memory served, it had been a staggeringly lofty one. Ah—that was it. The Vice Censor-in-Chief.
The Vice Censor-in-Chief served as deputy to the Censor-in-Chief, an office charged with surveilling and impeaching the entire bureaucracy, and one whose prestige rivaled even that of the Three Excellencies. Naturally—the post tasked with the very audits and impeachments that officials feared above all else could hardly carry a modest rank. In the extreme, it meant the power to seize on any pretext and impeach an official one simply didn't like. ...Though of course, if things ever went sideways, the Emperor could just as easily decide that I, too, was a thorn in her side, and off would come my head. Beyond that, the Censor-in-Chief juggled plenty of other duties besides, serving in effect as the Emperor's private secretary. For Zhuge Liang to hand over the deputy's seat of such an office, just like that—bold didn't begin to cover it.
She had likely meant Meng Huo to serve as a model for the Nanman people, drawing them into active participation in the affairs of state. And indeed, once the Nanman felt that they were not being discriminated against, they marched under a special force known as the Wudang Flying Army, a unit that with barely a few thousand men held the line against Wei's hundred-thousand-strong host and piled up glorious battle honors. It was thanks in no small part to their exploits that Shu endured as long as it did, even after Zhuge Liang's death. For a people as much at home in the mountains as in the forests, toying with Wei's armies—men wholly unaccustomed to Yi Province's terrain—on the open field would have been easy pickings. If not for that lunatic mountaineering king who rolled himself up in a blanket and tumbled down the hillsides at the ripe age of seventy, Shu might have held out even longer...
"I can't promise anything for certain yet—it will need Her Majesty's approval—but..." Having settled the matter in my mind, I spoke in an even voice to Meng Huo, whose eyes had gone round as saucers. "Barring complications, my plan is to seat you in the office of Vice Censor-in-Chief."
"......?"
Meng Huo, who knew next to nothing about the Han court's hierarchy, did not exactly react with theatrical awe. She hadn't the faintest grasp of whether the post was a prize or a punishment. "...Is that... really true?"
The one genuinely startled by my decision was Sima Yi, who had scurried over the moment word spread of my arrival. "The Vice Censor-in-Chief? You're seriously just going to plop her into a seat that enormous?"
"She is a king, ruling the Nanman in her own right. Anything less wouldn't do her dignity justice."
As I nodded along to my own reasoning, Sima Yi murmured in a daze, "I mean, even granting all that..."
"I, for one, believe it a splendid approach." Zhuge Liang, who had materialized beside Sima Yi at some point, favored me with a smile that lived in her eyes alone. "If we extend our sincerity first, the foreign tribes making their home in Nanzhong—for so these former Nanman lands are now called—will offer us their loyalty in return."
True to her historical reputation—the civil genius who had once woven the Nanman into the very fabric of the Han—Zhuge Liang had pierced my intent at a single glance. Speaking of which, she was already calling it Nanzhong, barely a heartbeat after I'd claimed the place. Should I be saying "the people of Nanzhong" now, instead of "the Nanman"?
Even as I mulled that over, Zhuge Liang pressed on. "Show them that we discriminate against no one. Show them that effort alone can carry a person to the loftiest of seats. Who, then, would dare harbor thoughts of rebellion?"
Hers was the counsel that we accept the people of Nanzhong not as slaves to be worked, but as subjects of the Han in the truest sense. That had been my intent from the very start, so I raised no objection whatsoever.
"Well? Wouldn't you call that a truly fine approach?"
"Ugh... if you insist, I suppose there's nothing to be done..."
Even Sima Yi, whose response had leaned sour, evidently judged the arrangement a net gain, for she offered no further protest.
"Th-the question, then, is how we ought to carry out the resettlement policy..." That was when Pang Tong, who had been timidly making her presence felt at the edge of things, ventured her query. "D-do you perhaps have a good idea in mind for the resettlement policy as well...?"
"Hm? No, not a one."
"...Pardon?"
Did she honestly think my brain rolled that far? I am a man with not the slightest notion of which policy produces which effect. Any nation that put me in charge of civil administration would be a nation deranged with longing for its own demise. Some reckless decree of mine would bankrupt the economy in short order, plunge the realm into chaos inside and out, and bring the whole edifice crashing down.
At the sight of Pang Tong—eyes huge, flustered beyond words—I smiled and gave her shoulder a gentle pat. "I put my faith in you. All of you."
"......"
I found myself wondering how Pang Tong saw me in that moment—stirring up a mountain of work and then bolting from the scene. Please forgive your worthless lord.