Ye Province (1)
The Mid-Autumn Festival — whose night had stretched far longer than usual — came and went, and I, having at least gotten a modest taste of the holiday spirit, returned to my everyday routine. Cradled in my arms, that is, was Guan Ping, Guan Yu's little girl.
"Gyauuu!"
Unlike her mother, Guan Ping had an exceptionally lively temperament, and she squirmed without a moment's rest, playing with my finger. So this was the baby who burst into giggles at the mere sight of a rolling leaf? I honestly couldn't tell what my finger had that she loved so much.
"M-my lord. I beg your forgiveness."
At the sight of her child disrupting my work, Guan Yu bowed her head with an apologetic look. One thing that caught my eye, though: even with her head lowered, the corners of her mouth were curling faintly upward. She didn't seem the least bit displeased, I suppose.
Even Guan Yu, who faced everything in this world with iron severity, was in the end a child's mother, it seemed.
I answered in a tone that made nothing of it.
"It's fine. I'm only doing what comes naturally to a father."
It was true I couldn't give my work my full attention — but if anything, I'd say I liked it this way. Honestly, with those soft, warm little hands fiddling with my finger, I felt as though body and soul were being gently healed.
Guan Yu's little one was, as a rule, looked after by the Peach Sisters, who pooled their strength and threw themselves into childcare. Liu Bei and Zhang Fei... or should I be calling them Big Aunt and Little Aunt?
"Waaah—!"
"Aaah! The baby's crying again! What on earth am I supposed to do?!"
The sight of Zhang Fei, having botched something and set the baby off, and then—
"...Yide."
"Sister Yunchang?! W-wait, just hold on— EEEK!!"
Guan Yu, who had stepped away for barely a moment, materializing in a flash to deliver a knuckle rap to the head. Both were sights we saw all the time.
At that rate, I genuinely worried whether they could raise their own child at all. ...Still, with my help, they would surely manage in the end. Raising a child was never meant to be the mother's burden alone, after all.
A wary hush fell.
"There we go. Such a good girl."
Liu Bei tended the infant with such effortless skill that she seemed to be proving her place as the eldest sister. As expected of the woman who, even in the original history, had led a faction on benevolence alone. It was no exaggeration to say that Liu Bei's signature gentle voice and kindly expression were optimized for the care of a child.
...Though there was another reason the baby felt so at ease, too.
"Mah-mah."
Liu Bei went very still.
Call it the sheer scale of her maternal devotion. The baby had taken a distinct interest in Liu Bei's figure — the owner of the largest chest of any woman I had laid eyes on in my life.
"Puhaha! Sister Yunchang! Did you hear that?! She wants num-nums! Num-nums!"
Liu Bei said nothing.
"Well, even as a fellow woman I can tell they're enormous— GYAAAH—!!"
Around then, something like a baby chick's dying squeak rang out from nearby, but it was nothing worth minding. In any case, women with big num-num jugs... no, generous chests, seemed to possess something that put an infant at ease. Honestly, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were amply blessed in that department themselves, but before Liu Bei even they had to concede a move.
When my thoughts arrived at that point, I turned my head toward Guan Yu. Scarcely had our eyes met before she flinched and asked,
"I-is something the matter?"
"No. It's nothing."
There she was, offering such an entertaining reaction to a glance I had cast without a shred of intent. Watching her, a touch of mischief stirred in me.
"I just wanted a look at my pretty wife's face, that's all."
Hearing my teasing answer, Guan Yu could not manage so much as a word in reply; her head sank deep.
"Good heavens. Sister Xuande, look at that. Sister Yunchang's face has gone red all the way to her ears."
"You're right. That's quite a rare sight."
The eldest and the youngest — neither of whom would ever let a moment like this pass unexploited — began whispering to each other.
"Ah! She's looking this way! Whatever you do, don't meet her eyes!"
The instant my head turned, quite naturally, toward their whispering, the two of them immediately averted their gazes. I was hardly Medusa — what was with that reaction? Anyone watching would think I was casting a petrification curse.
Liu Bei and Zhang Fei both turned shy whenever I held my gaze on them, too. Was that why they kept dodging my eyes?
"Aboo-ah!"
Confusing, if you wanted to call it that — but the baby, surrounded by so many familiar faces, looked nothing short of delighted. I gave her squishy little cheeks a few gentle pokes.
"Having fun?"
"Aboo!"
That's right. If you're happy, then so am I.
Ever since Cao Cao had come calling in Luoyang out of nowhere, it would be no exaggeration to say that the faction I led and the faction she led had all but merged into one.
Studying the map from one angle and another, I let a murmur slip out.
"Let's see... so what's left is..."
Ye Province, sitting near Jingzhou and Yanzhou. Gangdong, beyond the Changjiang. And the Hebei region, Bing Province excepted.
In a situation like this, there was only one place my next target could be. Ye Province. What more was there to say?
It was the domain ruled by Inspector Gong Ju — a man with, truly, not a speck of presence to his name.
In the old days, Inspector Gong Ju had been wedged between two giants, Cao Cao and Yuan Shu, too busy desperately defending his own patch of land to attempt anything more. Then Yuan Shu was thoroughly crushed by Cao Cao at the Battle of Kuangting and chased off to Gangdong, and with me settling myself firmly in Jingzhou, his position shrank further still. Every time he tried to accomplish anything after that, the Yellow Turban remnants would hammer him flat and his forces would sink into a half-dead state — over and over again...
There he was, wrestling the Yellow Turbans in nothing but his underwear, while the factions around him shot up like weeds between one blink of the eye and the next. Considering all that, Inspector Gong Ju of Ye Province had to rank among the unluckiest of men.
The Yellow Turbans, now specialists in guerrilla and mountain warfare, far beyond anything you could still call a mere peasant rebellion. Yuan Shu, worthless in ability yet commanding mountains of supplies and soldiers. And even Cao Cao, the Hero of Chaos, who would flip a hopeless battle against overwhelming odds through sheer tenacity.
Beaten from without and within like that, Gong Ju had no hope of escaping his predicament unless his talents were truly extraordinary. In the end, the curiously named Inspector of Ye Province had been pinched this way and pinched that until, by now, he seemed to have abandoned ambition and everything else besides.
At worst, if I sent down an edict ordering him to lay aside his post as Inspector and present himself in Luoyang, he would likely bow in gratitude rather than complain.
"...Hmm."
My gaze, fixed on the Ye Province region, eventually drifted to one particular corner of it. Chen State, within Ye Province.
This was a land ruled by a man enfeoffed as a vassal king, no less. Yes — a vassal king. A rank equal to King of Wei, the very title Cao Cao had clawed her way to over the objections of her own vassals.
Yu Chong, Prince of Chen. Judged purely on the nobility of his blood, he stood nearly on par with Liu Yu, who had once governed You Province.
With Inspector Gong Ju beaten senseless by the Yellow Turbans and out for the count, the only man in this situation capable of swallowing Ye Province whole was Yu Chong.
An imperial clansman with genuine ability — a truly rare find in a Han dynasty as rotten as it could possibly get. While other high-ranking members of the imperial family withered and starved once the chaos of the age descended, he was one of the precious few who had managed to stand tall as the master of a region, in the manner of Liu Yu or Liu Biao.
In other words, for our faction to take Ye Province peacefully, three conditions had to be met.
1. Inspector Gong Ju had to be made to relinquish his power,
2. Prince Yu Chong of Chen had to hold genuine loyalty to the Han imperial house,
3. And above all, the Yellow Turbans — whose eyes spun wild at the mere sight of Han forces — had to be carefully soothed.
Seen this way, it was unexpectedly interesting. Just how many factions were tangled up in this one little corner of Ye Province?
It was only because Yuan Shu — or what had been Yuan Shu — and Cao Cao were out of this contest that we were spared six separate factions squabbling over a single region.
Honestly, this tangled state of affairs was precisely why I had left Ye Province alone until now. Pushing through by force was certainly an option, but I couldn't bring myself to feel that Ye Province was worth occupying at the cost of all that blood.
At one thoughtless wave of my hand, tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands, millions — could die, so the decision to draw the sword had to be made with more care than anything else. But the time for putting it off had run out.
Trace the map with your eye, and Ye Province jutting out amid my territories was a considerable irritation. Call it something like a pimple on the skin.
As for Gangdong and Hebei... I would probably have to leave those for next year.
The Chinese landmass was so vast that subjugating Yi Province and the Nanman had devoured more than half the year. And Gangdong, like Yi Province, was another region where the foreign tribes stirred up every manner of mayhem — merely contemplating the cleanup left me delighted to the point of madness.
There was Liu Yao's faction, posturing as the resident old guard from its entrenched position across the Changjiang, and there was Yan Baihu's crowd, calling itself the Eastern Wu King of Virtue while it watched day and night for its chance... It seemed the hour was not far off when I would march out the Little Conqueror — the one who, in the original history, pounded them all into paste.
I had given the navy close to two years to grow, so even if a naval battle erupted on the Changjiang, there should be no problem.
As for Hebei, judging by how Gongsun Zan was slowly being pushed back, a victor would likely be decided before long. The problem was that Gongsun Zan's final desperate flail would be to dive into the Yijing Tower meta.
If Gongsun Zan holed up inside the Yijing Tower, Yuan Shao would once again be pinned in the north, unable to move a muscle, for years on end. And if that happened, the one to unify the realm would end up being me. ...So why did an uneasy premonition gnaw at me?
I lifted my head and turned my gaze toward the distant grasslands of the north. Winter had not yet arrived, and yet a wind colder and harsher than any I had known brushed past my body.