A Capable Minister in Peacetime, a Cunning Hero in Chaos (3)
Back when Cao Cao and I had crushed Yuan Shu—the upstart who dared claim the imperial throne for himself—she had afterward shut herself away at her home base and stayed there.
She could have finished Tao Qian herself had she taken the field; even allowing for the extra time it would have cost, the outcome was never in doubt. So when this woman of all people fell inexplicably silent, every power with a foothold in the realm naturally began to ask questions. And the sharper the observer—the more clearly they had glimpsed what Cao Cao was truly capable of—the deeper their curiosity ran.
Our own faction, of course, was no exception.
"Hmm... try as I might, I simply cannot make sense of it."
"……"
"There is no reason to halt the offensive now. So why on earth did she withdraw to Chenliu?"
A map spread before her as she weighed the state of the realm, Sima Yi knitted those fine brows of hers and sank deep into thought.
Watching my little strategist squirm, I tossed out a guess.
"...Maybe she's holding out for a better moment than this one?"
"This is the best moment there is, you know?"
Sima Yi shot my suggestion down without a second's hesitation.
"Defeat upon defeat has sent Tao Qian's army into a morale free fall, while Cao Cao's troops have never burned hotter for a fight. This is precisely when you ride the momentum and press the attack—so why would she hand the enemy time to catch its breath?"
Having laid it all out so plainly that even I could follow, she pressed on.
"Ugh... If Cao Cao were simply a fool, I wouldn't be racking my brain over this..."
She combed through every report our intelligence network delivered, grinding each scrap of it into her own knowledge. Our little strategist had seen through to Cao Cao's caliber long ago—and she had surely laid eyes on the woman exactly once.
Truly, the world of brilliant minds ran deep.
……
Of course, I knew perfectly well why Cao Cao was acting this way. She had withdrawn with the unborn child in her belly in mind, plain and simple. Tao Qian was someone she could crush whenever she pleased, so rather than run even a sliver of unnecessary risk, she had chosen to wait.
...Though if I was honest, a fair share of my own influence lay behind that decision. Whenever I found a spare moment, I fired off letters to Cao Cao insisting that expectant mothers needed rest above all else. Naturally, I sent plenty of medicinal herbs along with them, every one sworn to be good for the body.
I had my reasons.
If Cao Cao were to lose her first child to some unforeseen mishap, what kind of tempest of blood would sweep across the realm? I couldn't say for certain—but it took no great insight to guess that a slaughter to rival the Xuzhou Massacre would follow. The mere thought made my skin crawl, so again and again I wrote to beg her to rest and stay calm.
"My, how tireless your devotion is. Very well—I have heard you, so fret yourself no longer."
She must have been truly at her wit's end, because that was the reply Cao Cao sent back.
Of course, that was only what she wrote. I could see her all too clearly, beaming ear to ear and cooing that I was adorable all over again.
Adorable. A tall, dark, grown man.
I had long suspected it, but the women close to me seemed to possess some severely warped sense of aesthetics.
What on earth is she plotting...?
If Sima Yi ever learned the truth behind it all, she would have fixed me with a glare fit to curdle blood, then unleashed a scolding of truly historic proportions—you put your hands on another woman again? Do you intend to fill the entire realm with your children?
...Why, exactly, did that sound like a wife lecturing her own husband?
Needless to say, I wasn't so oblivious as to say any of that to her face, so I kept it to myself.
Anyway—having holed up in her stronghold of Chenliu for all those very reasons, Cao Cao had finally begun to move in earnest. When the news reached me, I could make a fair guess at how things would unfold from here.
Tao Qian, for one, would not last long. A man who had spent the original history losing to Cao Cao hand over fist—how was he supposed to beat her now? And in this world she hadn't even scored the own goal of the Xuzhou Massacre, so she would take Xuzhou with barely any effort at all.
Only one thing weighed on my mind.
"Come now, no need to be shy. Name the child already."
The infant Cao Cao must have been cradling so preciously at this very moment. A new life bearing the name Cao Ang, just as in the original history—she was the only thing I could think about.
Still, of all possible first acts after giving birth, launching the conquest of Xuzhou... I supposed Tao Qian really had gotten under Cao Cao's skin.
"I find myself awaiting the day we meet again."
I gazed down at the graceful, flowing script—unmistakably Cao Cao's own hand.
...Should I start thinking about how to explain all this to Sima Yi, before it's too late?
No. Whatever I said, she would stare at me like she meant to drill a hole clean through my face.
My worries deepened, just a little.
Seo Hui, firstborn of my children. Yeo Hwa, the second. Guan Ping, the third—and Cao Ang, whose arrival I couldn't even begin to pinpoint. Had the me of a few years back been shown this scene, I'd have jolted in shock and fallen clean out of my chair.
Honestly, it still astonished me even now. Just how much family had we added in the space of a single year?
My children did skew rather mature for their age... but mature as an infant might be, there is only so mature an infant can be. In any case, once a parade of newborns—each demanding more attention than twenty-four hours in a day could provide—came tumbling into the world, the phrase "downtime" vanished from my vocabulary entirely.
Not that I could comfortably hand them off to the attendants for even a short while. Infants are wired to fear strangers; the instant anyone who wasn't Mother or Father drew near, they raised pure hell.
"WAAAAAH—!"
Yeo Hwa wailed loud enough to shake the whole manor off its foundations,
"Uuuu..."
while Guan Ping trembled all over like a frog cornered by a snake, pitiful to behold.
And then there was Seo Hui...
"……"
Just then, the girl in my arms began staring up at me, blank as still water.
Oh—she's awake.
If Yeo Hwa, Lü Bu's daughter, had come into the world with a firecracker temperament, then Seo Hui, Seo Yeo's daughter, took after her mother with an eerily tranquil one.
"There you are... did you sleep well?"
"……"
See what I mean? I was speaking to her at this very moment, and she just kept boring holes into me without the faintest reaction. When I talked to Yeo Hwa, at least she would gurgle some incomprehensible baby-gibberish and knead at me with those tiny hands. Seo Hui did none of it—she simply went on staring.
I genuinely could not tell what she wanted from me.
And what would happen if Seo Yeo joined in—fixed on me as always, in the name of her precious guard duty?
"……"
What would happen is this: one more gaze would clamp onto me like a magnet. The fact that I found even that adorable surely proved I'd gone hopelessly soft myself. Above all, that warm, squishy little presence was simply impossible to resist.
Even after I had shamelessly ravished those pillowy cheeks of hers, Seo Hui's expression never so much as twitched—stony as a temple bodhisattva.
Good grief. She even inherited that from her mother.
"...My lord."
"Hm?"
Seo Yeo, who had been watching the whole spectacle from nearby, spoke in her usual level voice.
"It will soon be mealtime."
"Ah. So it will."
The timing of her interjection was almost suspiciously convenient—surely just my imagination. I noticed the sun had climbed to its zenith, and with a tilt of my head moved to hand the baby over to her mother.
"……"
Squeeeeeeze.
Here we go again.
When Seo Hui clamped down on my collar and refused to let go, I was left wearing a perfectly helpless expression. That's right—uncannily like her mother, Seo Hui did not burst into tears the way Yeo Hwa or Guan Ping did when a stranger drew near. She simply gripped my collar tight and slipped into baby-panda lockdown mode.
And there lay the problem: her strength defied belief for an infant.
"……"
"……"
I clutched my head as mother and daughter locked into yet another contest of strength. Children are supposed to favor their mothers over their fathers, aren't they? Why had my case flipped itself around?
Mind you, Seo Yeo could peel the child off me without effort if she truly wished—but if the baby were hurt in the process, we would have a catastrophe on our hands. And so Seo Hui held on with strength no baby had any right to, while Seo Yeo applied only the gentlest tension, patiently waiting for the little grip to tire itself out.
Astonishing. Not even a year old, and already getting her exercise. That's my daughter, all right.
Lü Bu, standing nearby, blinked at the tug-of-war now underway.
"...What on earth are you two doing?"
Don't ask me—I have no idea either.
Yeo Hwa had been watching the whole scene for some time now, and there was something distinctly ominous in her eyes. I worried, not without reason, that she might pick up some very strange habits.
"Aboo."
"Hm? What is it, hm?"
Seemingly oblivious to everything, Lü Bu was far too busy cooing over the precious bundle in her arms to pay attention to anything else.
"Hmmm... so even Yunchang's daughter carries on like that?"
"She does not."
"Truly?"
"...Yes."
To Liu Bei's question, Guan Yu held her silence for a moment before answering. Small wonder that Zhang Fei, listening in on the exchange, had to raise an objection of her own.
"Big Sis Yunchang, that silence of yours was freakishly long."
"Yide. Think you that you shall fare any differently?"
"...Huh?"
Guan Yu had just laid a curse on Zhang Fei.
Told that she, too, would one day be worn down to a frazzle exactly like her elder sister, Zhang Fei could only tilt her head in bewilderment.