A Capable Minister in Peace, the Hero of Chaos (2)
Having had her laugh at Tao Qian, Cao Cao turned to a nearby aide and gave an order.
"This is the old man whose efforts made it so easy for me to take Xuzhou. Lock him in a cell, and see that he's treated well."
The aide blinked at the command. "Treated well, my lady?"
"Yes. Though I suppose he might fail to master his own temperament and drop dead without warning."
"Y-yes, my lady! As you command!"
With those words alone, the aide grasped exactly what Cao Cao wanted of him and bowed low to the ground.
Tao Qian was no fool, either; he understood at once what Cao Cao intended to do with him.
"You cursed bitch…!"
That scheming creature from a eunuch's line clearly meant to throw him in a cell and let him die.
And after that she would butcher his entire clan and spin every manner of nonsense about how it had been a tragic, unforeseen accident!
Just as others had judged him before, Tao Qian was a petty man — and precisely because he was such a petty man, he possessed a violent temper that could never swallow the humiliation he had suffered.
His was a nature that could find no rest until every blow he'd taken had been returned in full.
Had history flowed as it was originally meant to, this moment would have revealed exactly how Tao Qian — nursing his grudge over his endless collisions with Cao Cao — would have vented his spite upon the Cao Song family left behind in Xuzhou.
Just then, as he ground his teeth, a certain sight caught the old man's eye.
Cao Cao, reins held in her left hand, tenderly cradling a swaddled bundle in her remaining right.
"Gyaa."
"…!"
The instant he realized a baby's laughter was drifting up from that bundle, a vile smile crept across Tao Qian's face.
Rage had blinded him only moments before, but with his vision clear again, he could see it plainly now.
That child was Cao Cao's reverse scale.
Resolved that dying one way was no different from dying any other, Tao Qian bellowed at her with all the strength he had left.
"Hahaha! For a woman who so carelessly toys with men's nethers, you certainly do love the sound of your own voice!"
"Hm?"
"Birthing a brat whose own father you can't even name, and fussing over it so tenderly — how utterly patheti…. Guaaack!"
A blade came flying out of nowhere and buried itself in the knee of Tao Qian, who had screamed with nothing but hatred and malice.
"Whoopsie! My hand slipped — how clumsy of me!"
The woman with the distinctly sly face scratched at the back of her head.
"I was just about to shout 'You there—!' and draw my sword, and wouldn't you know it, my grip slid right off the hilt!"
"Ugh…."
For all her talk of an accident, the blade the woman had thrown had not so much as grazed a single vital vessel in his leg.
It was, in every sense, the handiwork of a master torturer whose only aim was pain.
"Anyway, you! For that little remark just now, you won't be getting an easy death!"
"Heh heh heh…."
Faced with a woman who showed not a shred of decorum, Tao Qian laughed in her face.
"You think the likes of you frighten me?"
"Pardon?"
"Did you truly believe a little steel in my leg would have me weeping and begging for mercy?!"
"…My, how impressive!"
At that colossal outburst, the woman clapped her hands together and cried out in genuine admiration.
"They say your temper was legendarily foul in your youth — and it seems time hasn't softened it one bit!"
"Grr…."
Even the most oblivious soul present could tell the woman was mocking Tao Qian to his face.
"You see, there's something I've been curious about for the longest time! Just how long can a man like this hold out—"
"Waaah…."
"Hup."
At the sound of an inexplicable whimper nearby, the woman bit off her sentence mid-word and immediately clapped both hands over her mouth.
"Ah. The little one's awake."
The moment the baby in her arms began to fuss, Cao Cao responded.
Her voice was so tender it could quiet the heart of anyone who heard it.
Considering how Cao Cao normally treated the people around her, it was a most unusual sight.
And yet not a soul found her behavior strange.
"Goo."
"There, there. I'm right here."
Any mother who loved her child would have looked much the same.
"Oooh…."
When Cao Cao drew her face close, the baby, soothed at last, slipped back into sleep.
Having weathered a crisis that was no crisis at all, Cao Cao gazed down at the soundly sleeping infant and murmured to herself.
"Honestly…. He has my looks, but his temperament is nothing like mine."
"……"
"I truly cannot imagine who he takes after, being such a gentle little thing."
Her tone was thick with mock exasperation, but the eyes she bent upon the baby brimmed with affection.
That, however, lasted only a moment. Raising her head once more, Cao Cao put on an expression cold as ice.
"Tao Qian."
"…What is it now."
"I can forgive a mind that wanders with age, but what you just said crossed the line."
"Wh-what did you say…?!"
Tao Qian flushed scarlet at the insult, and Cao Cao, watching him, spoke.
"From the look of you, you're about to kick up another fuss. Is there no one to shut this old man's mouth?"
"As if I'd ever be si—! Mmph!"
Before Tao Qian could get the words out, Dian Wei, Cao Cao's bodyguard, had already stepped forward.
"By my lord's command. Be silent."
She wound a rope a single turn between his gaping jaws — a sight much like a man being forcibly muzzled.
"Mmmph…! Mmph…!"
Tao Qian thrashed and fought with all his strength, but besting the monstrous power of Dian Wei — the woman who wielded twin halberds of a full eighty catties (roughly eighteen kilograms by Han measure) — was never in the cards.
Had Guan Yu, who swung the eighty-two-catty Green Dragon Crescent Blade, witnessed the sight, surely she would have nodded in agreement: a weapon, after all, ought to be heavy.
Watching Tao Qian defy them without a care for the blood running from his mouth, Cao Cao put on a look of pity.
"To fly into a frenzy like a rabid beast over a few taunts — what a truly vicious temper you have."
"No wonder he was never well liked."
The sly-faced woman tilted her head.
"If someone capable of replacing that old fossil had existed, wouldn't the great families of Xuzhou have thrown their support behind him instead?"
"Now that is an intriguing hypothesis."
If things had followed that hypothesis, it would mean Tao Qian would have had no choice but to surrender the seal of Xuzhou — if not for his own sake, then for his family's.
Perhaps that was why Tao Qian had tried to swell his ranks even by joining hands with bandits.
Power struggles between the great families long rooted in a region and the lord who governed it were an old and familiar story, after all.
Sometimes their interests aligned and the two sides cooperated — but far more often they did not, and the struggle for power began.
And Yanzhou, under Cao Cao's rule, happened to belong squarely to the latter category.
"……"
Cao Cao, who had been tallying up the great families she had sent to the execution grounds, turned her gaze on Tao Qian, who still glared at her and raged against his bonds.
"Judging by that display, keeping him alive would only store up trouble for later."
"Indeed. I hear Tao Qian's children are devotedly filial — wouldn't it be far kinder to send them along with their father?"
At that exchange, Tao Qian's eyes went wide as lamp flames.
"Mmmph! Mmmph!"
So even a beast of the wildest temper holds its own young dear.
The old man's face — which had not so much as twitched at talk of his own torture and death — drained of color, and Cao Cao let a faint smile cross her lips.
"I don't know what delusions you've been laboring under, but I had intended from the start to end this with your head and nothing more."
"Mmph…!"
"They say kin come to resemble one another. It seems I've grown gentle myself."
Gazing down at the child sleeping soundly in her arms, thinking of someone far away, Cao Cao went on in an even voice.
"But you went and said the one thing you should never have said."
"……"
"You do know what a dragon does to the man who touches its reverse scale?"
A word for something that must never, ever be touched.
Yeok — to defy, to go against.
Rin — a scale.
Of all the countless scales that armor a dragon's body, the one and only that grows against the rest.
It is said that should a human lay a hand upon it, they will incur the dragon's wrath and die without fail.
"Yuanrang."
"…You callin' me?"
"I had meant for it to end with Tao Qian's household stripped of office. I've changed my mind."
Xiahou Dun, close as she was to Cao Cao, had a fair idea of what order her friend was about to give.
The Mengde she knew had always been prone, every now and then, to judgments carried away by emotion.
"Every last one of them, young or old—"
"Whoa, whoa, hold it right there!"
Seeing Cao Cao's cruel nature about to surface, Xiahou Dun shouted in haste.
"What kind of face do you think your lord husband would make then, Mengde?!"
"……"
"Yes, the old fossil crossed the line — but still!"
"…Hm."
What face would someone make, she wondered, upon hearing that Tao Qian's three clans had been wiped out?
Cao Cao sat with her eyes closed, lost in thought for a long moment, then spoke in a voice of perfect calm.
"Cut out that old man's tongue and hang him in the public square. Banish his household to some remote corner of the land."
"You got it!"
When Xiahou Dun nodded vigorously, Cao Cao wheeled around, as though Tao Qian no longer existed to her.
Phew…. That actually works.
Xiahou Dun, who had been watching her, let out a long breath of relief.
"Hey. You're one lucky old man, you know that?"
"Mmph…."
"Just as you said — thanks to the father of this child here, the one whose face is so very 'unclear,' your three clans get to keep their heads."
Cao Cao was the sort to shrug off nearly anything as beneath her notice, but toward anyone she judged to have crossed the line, she showed a cruelty far beyond what was necessary.
What made her truly terrifying was that she felt no guilt, no matter how many innocent people she put to death.
Xiahou Dun, who had long worried that this nature would one day trip her lord up, found the change a hopeful one.
Xiahou Dun leveled her great saber at him and said,
"First things first — stick out that tongue. Orders are orders."
"Mmph!"
"There now, hold still. Move and you die, understand?"
Ah. So I'm dead either way.
"…Big Sis."
At the sight of Xiahou Dun being so hopelessly dim, Xiahou Yuan pressed a hand to her forehead.