Yu Chong (1)
After that certain something with Zhang Liao, just how many days had passed, I wondered? My meeting with Yu Chong came about surprisingly quickly. The moment I mentioned the imperial decree and explained that I could not leave Luoyang, a letter arrived declaring he would come to the capital himself — without a moment's deliberation.
And the result of that stood right in front of me.
"Bwahaha! It's been an age since I last had a proper look around Luoyang!"
There he was before my eyes, craning this way and that with a booming laugh. Nothing about the towering height or the massive frame suggested age at all. The corded muscle showing between the plates of his armor looked perfectly capable of folding a fellow like me in half at the waist, like some old flip phone.
This surreal feeling... yes. I suppose it was how I'd felt the first time I came face to face with Lu Zhi, Liu Bei's teacher. A frame of eight chi two cun — roughly 194 centimeters — had been more than enough to wring gasps of awe out of me. Truly, whatever the era, there are always those improbably tall people.
I approached Yu Chong as he roamed the sights of Luoyang and offered a respectful greeting.
"Your Highness, Prince of Chen — thank you for traveling so far to see us."
"Hm? And who might you be?"
Yu Chong, who had entered Luoyang attended by a modest retinue, looked me over as he asked. This was our first meeting in person, so there was nothing strange about the reaction — I had only pegged him as Yu Chong myself from the reports of the soldiers nearby.
A world without photographs was a genuine inconvenience. For sizing up a stranger's face, all you had was text and hearsay. 'Of towering build and manly bearing,' and so forth. How was anyone supposed to tell people apart from sentences like that?
There was a reason the Zhang Liao of the original history had failed to lay hands on Sun Quan at the siege of Hefei. The people of this era painted portraits in such a peculiar fashion that even setting them side by side for comparison got you nowhere. I could tell real effort went into the work, but to my eye it was a bit... how should I put it.
I still remember how awkward it was, receiving a portrait of myself as a gift — painted, so I was told, brimming with the utmost reverence. Apparently I had been rendered in a style straight out of a history textbook, and the sensation was truly hard to describe. I can't recall what later generations called that style of painting. ...Was it Eastern painting?
You know the type — breathtaking with landscapes, but people come out all simplified. In any case, that painting hangs in a place of honor at my residence. A gift given in such sincere goodwill deserves better than careless keeping.
Just as I moved to answer Yu Chong — who was still regarding me with clouded suspicion — he seemed to belatedly place me, and spoke.
"...Ah! You are the General-in-Chief!"
Yu Chong burst into hearty laughter, as though nothing could have surprised him more.
"With that black hair of yours, I took you for one of the imperial clan!"
"......"
"But your eyes say otherwise! I beg you forgive my rudeness!"
"It was a perfectly natural assumption, Your Highness. There is no need to take it to heart."
From where Yu Chong stood — no sooner had he set foot in Luoyang than some royal-looking stranger struck up conversation — the bewilderment was understandable. Still, identifying me from hair and eye color alone... it seemed the whole realm already knew my face.
Well, black hair paired with brown eyes was a rare combination. For all I knew, there was no one else but me. I'd heard that black hair itself was genuinely hard to come by outside the imperial line. Among those not of royal blood, the only black-haired souls I'd ever seen were Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. ...Was that a kind of mutation, then? Like a white dove, or a white tiger.
Yu Chong, for his part, bore the black hair and black eyes that proclaimed his own imperial blood. Colors I had seen everywhere in my previous world were rarities here — the irony was almost funny. Honestly, what a colorful world this was. One thing was certain: nobody in it lacked personality.
Yu Chong spoke, his heavy armor clanking at every shift.
"The longer we stand here, the more eyes gather! Now then — is there somewhere quiet where we can talk at our ease?"
"I have already made arrangements. Please, follow me."
Bellowing like that, how could gazes not gather? Yu Chong acted every bit as hearty as he looked. I extended Prince Yu Chong of Chen precisely the same courtesy I showed Liu Xie, the Prince of Chenliu, and ushered him along with due respect. A prince — a station no one beneath the Emperor could dare treat lightly, so my bowed head was simple propriety.
"...Hmph."
The purple-haired strategist who had quietly attached herself to my side the instant word broke of Yu Chong's visit gave him nothing but a curt sniff. Whatever could our little strategist be so displeased about this time? Don't tell me she simply didn't like watching me bow my head to someone else? If that were true, I'd find it rather endearing. I could probably knead those cheeks of hers raw and walk away acquitted.
Only one thing worried me now: what question Yu Chong would put to me. I truly was hopeless at this sort of verbal fencing. ...Good grief. But what could I do? Give it my best, that was all. It was far too late to back out on grounds of insufficient confidence.
Yu Chong and I faced each other inside a building prepared for our talks. A summit between the vassal prince who ruled Chen State and the General-in-Chief who commanded the armies of Han — even just hearing it, this was no easy seat. As if to prove the point, the building was even now under strict guard by my bugok, the Peach Sisters and Zhao Yun included.
Some time ago, Her Majesty had looked me in the eye and said:
"The treatment of the Prince of Chen I leave to you, Hwahyeon."
A staggering pronouncement — free rein to do as I pleased with a vassal prince governing his own fief.
"Should you judge him a man who would plunge the realm into chaos like the other traitors, you may take his head."
"...Your Majesty?"
At those chilling words, I could only widen my eyes and echo her. The officials attending the Emperor, having overheard the exchange, naturally wore looks of horror — before quickly settling into the calm acceptance of men who had made peace with it all. ...Honestly, everyone knew Her Majesty coddled me beyond all reason.
I wasn't propping up monstrous power the way the Ten Attendants or Dong Zhuo had, stirring up trouble for the state — so the court officials left me unchecked, in a 'he'll surely conduct himself properly' sort of way. Which, uh. What. Weren't they trusting me a little too much? True, I had formally wed Her Majesty and joined the imperial house — but asked whether they truly needed no checks on me whatsoever, I could only shake my head. An emperor's consort kin reaching for power after a marriage into the throne was hardly a rarity in history.
Look at Empress Lü, consort of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang — after his death she wielded state power as her private plaything, and in the end it was her own clan that was wiped out to a man. With precedents like that on the books, why exactly did the court officials leave me alone? ...I had a fair guess.
"Please take good care of my inadequate disciple."
The great scholar Lu Zhi.
"You haven't changed one bit from the old days. Heh heh — you wear a most auspicious air."
General of the Household Huangfu Song.
"Allow me to lend you my strength."
And even Wang Yun, Minister over the Masses of Later Han. All of them had since declared their retirement from politics, but the renown and influence they had built over their lifetimes remained immense. Even now, whenever a thought of them struck me mid-stroll and I paid a call, their gates were thronged with visitors — a marketplace forming before their very doors, as the old saying goes.
With men like that speaking well of me, even the sternest court officials apparently felt little need to keep me in check. They had fretted, at one point, that doing away with Yu Chong would kick up a backlash no laughing matter — but seeing this, it hardly seemed it would be a problem at all. ...Not that I'm saying I would kill Yu Chong. That was strictly a hypothetical.
I had no particular questions to put to Yu Chong myself, so I would have to open the conversation.
"It seems you have a question for me, after all."
"......"
"I shall listen attentively. Please, speak."
When I opened the exchange in my usual level tone, Yu Chong fixed me with a long, steady stare. Whoa — those eyes. So this was the presence of a grizzled old general who had lived his whole life on the battlefield and only grown fiercer with the years?
If I remembered the original history correctly, Yu Chong died at the hands of an assassin sent by Yuan Shu. Yes — that honey-water-begging, throne-usurping Yuan Shu. Yuan Shu had dispatched the killer for the petty reason that Yu Chong refused his request for supplies, and the attempt, against all odds, succeeded — ushering a titan like Yu Chong off the stage of the chaotic age. But how on earth had anyone assassinated a man like this? Come at him half-cocked and he'd likely wring your neck bare-handed. By all accounts, that same assassin even did away with Yu Chong and his chancellor Luo Jun in a single stroke... clearly no ordinary cutthroat.
While I entertained such thoughts beneath that extraordinary gaze, Yu Chong's mouth opened slowly.
"Are you a loyal subject of Han?"
"Ah... so that is what you wished to ask."
A question I had heard more times than I could count. It had come at me endlessly since I drove Dong Zhuo from Luoyang and rose to General-in-Chief — sometimes obliquely, sometimes head-on, exactly like now. And every time it did, I had answered the same way.
"Yes."
"......"
"Founding a new dynasty and other such tiresome enterprises are quite beyond me."
Even if I did go to the trouble of raising a new state, I'd count myself lucky to end up anything other than a second Wang Mang. Having ruined the Han through every political scheme imaginable and then grandly proclaimed his own Xin dynasty, that man squandered it all within a mere fifteen years and met a laughable end — executed along with everything he had built. Afterward, once Emperor Guangwu founded the Later Han, he was condemned as a traitor without appeal, and posterity would rank his name among the great villains of the age — Wang Mang, Dong Zhuo, Cao Cao, Sima Yi. In a sense, he was the reason the Han splits into Former and Later at all, so he did leave an enormous footprint on history. The trouble was that the footprint pointed entirely the wrong way.
Having answered Yu Chong's question with perfect calm, I returned his gaze, expression serene.
"Well? Does that suffice for an answer?"
"...Hahahaha! Yes! It does, it does!"
Whatever he felt in my answer, it left him laughing from the belly with deep satisfaction.
"I can tell these things! Those are no eyes of a man speaking falsehood!"
What — he could tell that at a glance too? Was the man psychic, or what?
Still booming with laughter, Yu Chong rummaged about inside his breastplate and slammed something down with a bang.
"A joyous day like this is no day to go without wine! Will you have a cup?"
"......"
Uh. Well then. You certainly are a magnificently bold man, Your Highness. That was all I could manage.