Sorting Things Out (2)
"I will press Liu Tan to surrender from within—so I ask that you, my lord, go and do what you must."
"What I must do..."
"Yes. Crushing the elder who holds Hanzhong."
The woman who had given me my reason to set out for Yi Province.
"In token of my sworn loyalty to you, my lord, I will leave this map in your keeping."
"And the name of this map?"
"...Ah, I confess that far hadn't occurred to me..."
Pressed with my question, the woman wore a thoughtful look for a moment, then promptly settled on a name.
"...If I must choose, the Bashu Topography Map would serve."
"I like it. Refreshingly to the point."
"I am honored."
The woman who had delivered the gift Liu Tan sent and swore her loyalty to me.
But what more was there to say? The name of the woman I had come to see today was, of course, Zhang Song.
Zhang Song greeted me with a smile, our first meeting in quite some time.
"A welcome face indeed. I trust you have been well, my lord?"
"I have."
In a world where nearly everyone I knew was beautiful and striking, Zhang Song drew the eye precisely by being so utterly ordinary-looking.
Was there some unspoken law that plainness, no matter what, simply could not be tolerated?
It was a world with its own firmly fixed standards, apparently.
I told Zhang Song what had brought me here.
"I came hoping we might finally have that long-overdue chat—was my timing perhaps bad?"
It was nothing more than a personal hunch, but Zhang Song seemed to have been in the middle of a conversation with someone just before I arrived.
To my question she replied as though it were nothing at all.
"If my lord comes calling, then time must be made even where none exists."
Zhang Song went on in her plain, unvarnished voice.
"As it happens, someone I have been wishing to introduce to you has just arrived, so allow me to escort you there myself."
"Someone you want to introduce to me?"
So my hunch had struck true. Zhang Song clearly intended to recommend a person of outstanding ability to me, and naturally that was welcome news, so I let my approval show.
"Well, now, that does sound promising. Shall we go and see for ourselves?"
"Yes. I rather doubt you will be disappointed."
With that, Zhang Song broke into a plain smile—the likes of which I rarely saw among those around me.
Man. I believe that was the first smile I'd ever seen that didn't come with the word beautiful attached.
"...It's not a woman, is it?"
At that, Lü Bu muttered under her breath, as though genuinely worried.
Chewed out by me mere moments ago, and here she went again.
I heaved a deep sigh, then took Lü Bu's cheek in my fingers and gave it a good long pull.
"Didn't I tell you not to say things like that?"
"Ueeeh... Buh... (But...)"
"What do you mean, 'but'?"
Anyone overhearing would think every woman in the world was in love with me.
And I would stake my life on this: any woman in this world who approached me claiming love at first sight belonged to one of two categories.
Either she was after money and power, or her tastes ran distinctly peculiar.
By overwhelming odds, the former accounted for most of them.
For good reason, too—this world was crawling with men better looking than I was.
Even Yuan Shu, the Honey Water Emperor, probably had me beat in the looks department.
...Though the amusing part was that he scored a flat zero in every other category.
This was no false modesty—I had actually stood before a mirror and weighed the matter myself, so I could say it with certainty.
True, a touch of correction had left me with a likable face, but not one I could brag about anywhere with a straight face.
Even fresh out of the bath, studying myself in the mirror, I never once thought I looked anything special...
After we had shared a bed following the subjugation of Yuan Shu, Cao Cao had put it this way:
She hadn't seen it before, but looking at me again now, I seemed to her the most handsome man in the world.
Love, she admitted with a soft chuckle, had the power to blind a person's eyes.
For the record, any woman angling for my money and power was stopped by the people under me before I ever laid eyes on her face.
With the likes of Sima Yi and Jia Xu standing guard, bribes got nowhere either—so from those women's standpoint, there was simply no way through.
Then, meaning it as a threat, I lowered my voice and whispered into Lü Bu's ear.
"Keep that up, and something very big is happening tonight. I mean it."
"S-something big?"
At my warning, Lü Bu pictured what the night might hold and swallowed hard.
"No matter how much you beg me to stop, I won't be letting go."
"...Eep!"
Red to the ears, Lü Bu—having evidently pictured the scene without much difficulty—clapped her mouth shut with the hand that wasn't gripping the Sky Piercer Halberd.
The man who could make the Peerless Under Heaven—she who feared nothing in this world—tremble with dread. That man was me.
She knew perfectly well I'd been exercising a measure of restraint lately, which was exactly why she reacted the way she did.
I had held firm when the Peach Garden sisters came pouncing, and just recently, when Meng Huo and her sister and Zhurong had all lunged at me at once, I hadn't budged an inch—solid as an iron fortress.
A few of the soldiers even joked that I remained undefeated on the battlefield of night as well—need I say more?
"And this warning isn't for Lü Bu alone."
With that, I turned my head toward Seo Yeo and flashed a grin.
"You understand, right?"
"...Yes."
Hard on the heels of the Peerless Under Heaven, the Matchless Throughout the Ages dipped her head the instant my gaze found her.
It wasn't as though I wanted to advertise that they couldn't so much as twitch against me—yet here I was, making myself say these things again and again.
...
Watching the whole spectacle, Zhang Song covered her mouth in astonishment, as if beholding something truly rare.
She couldn't bring herself to voice it, but even I could tell just how stunned she was.
Feeling a touch self-conscious, I hurried to speak.
"...My apologies. I didn't mean to put you through that."
"Not at all. I found it a rather interesting situation, myself."
When I offered an honest apology, Zhang Song said there was no need for any such thing.
"If anything, I find myself relieved."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
I let my puzzlement show at her words.
That had been sexual harassment with not a shred of a General-in-Chief's dignity in it—what on earth was there to be relieved about?
Zhang Song answered my doubt without the slightest difficulty.
"Since you hold the initiative so firmly in matters between men and women, surely there is little danger of jealous passion ever spiraling into disaster?"
"...I suppose so."
Who said she wasn't a civil official? Her mind really did turn in that direction.
Then again, count the people whose lives had been blown to pieces by romantic jealousy, and you would never finish counting.
Take the consorts of Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang—Empress Lü and Lady Qi. Hadn't they torn into each other over exactly that?
That feud reached its end when Empress Lü, who had outlasted everyone to seize power, inflicted a horrific punishment upon Lady Qi.
It was an incident that showed just how cruel a woman counted among China's Three Great Villainesses could become once the Han lay in her grasp.
...As for what that horrific punishment actually was, it was better not to know.
They say the grotesque punishment Empress Lü carried out so disturbed people that they shunned its very name, letting a Chinese character fall into disuse—need I say more?
Pouring every ounce of my strength into making sure nothing of the sort ever came to pass—that, I supposed, was my role.
At the very worst, I could picture several women who, even while insisting they would never look upon my face and shutting themselves away at home, would still come clinging to my coattails and refuse to let go.
"H-have... has We done something wrong...?"
"..."
"We shall never do it again, so please, I beg you, let go of your anger..."
...And there was one person in particular who would react in the most dramatic fashion of all.
Seen one way, having the most dangerous person of them all unable to move against me was, frankly, a genuine blessing.
Feeling sheepish under all this praise from Zhang Song, I changed the subject.
"By the way—didn't you say you had someone to introduce to me?"
"Ah, yes, I did say that."
At my words, Zhang Song nodded with the expression of someone who had quite forgotten.
"An exceptional individual. You may look forward to this."
...
Zhang Song was no slouch of a talent herself—and this was someone even she rated that highly?
Going by my memory, only one talent in Yi Province merited an assessment like that.
Before long, Zhang Song guided me to a room and opened the door with a smile.
...
Inside sat a woman whose bearing was colder than that of anyone I had ever laid eyes on.
...No, "cold" wasn't quite the word.
This person existed beyond the reach of "composed" or "level-headed."
Her aura was, quite literally, as chill and pitiless as midwinter.
Cruelly cold—now wouldn't that be the perfect description?
The woman looked as though you could run her through with a blade and not draw a single drop of blood, and the moment she saw me, she offered a calm, measured bow.
"This worthless scholar pays her respects to the General-in-Chief, whose name resounds throughout the realm."
Whoa. Even her voice was cold as ice.
One glance was enough to tell me this woman was anything but ordinary, and I put my question to her.
"...And your name?"
"Fa Zheng. My courtesy name is Xiaozhi."
It was exactly the person I had expected.
The only person Liu Bei ever personally granted a posthumous title to—an honor bestowed after death to praise the virtues of sovereigns and great ministers—when she hadn't given one even to Guan Yu or Zhang Fei.
The genius strategist who finally handed Liu Bei a victory over Cao Cao—the opponent who had skewered her every single time they met.
This was the moment that talent revealed herself: the one who, during the Hanzhong campaign, had commanded the entire board and, together with Zhuge Liang, ushered in Liu Bei's golden age. It would be no exaggeration to say so.