Preparations (4)
Lü Bu explained that Zhang Jue had told her she could see something interesting if she came over this way, so she'd just been wandering around the outskirts of the city.
"Yeah, Zhang Jue was right. This is pretty entertaining."
Lü Bu said this as she stared at Ochyma, which was still glaring daggers at us.
"I've never seen a horse make a delinquent face like that before."
First time for me, too.
If it didn't like us, it could simply leave — so why did it insist on hovering nearby and picking fights? Was it like a kid trailing after the one they had a crush on, playing pesky pranks to get their attention? Mischievous pranks, received from a horse that was terrifying just to look at. At the very least, I had no desire to be on the receiving end.
Seo Yeo, who had left the duty of guarding me to Lü Bu, was slowly making her way toward Ochyma.
"Hmm… I don't think she'll break it, but I am curious how she plans to subdue it."
Lü Bu watched the scene head-on with gleaming interest.
"The size gap's too big for her to stop it head-on… My bet is she'll bleed off its strength a bit and then swing herself up onto its back?"
"That's the usual way."
I nodded. Just as Lü Bu said, next to Ochyma — a mount built on the same scale as Red Hare — Seo Yeo might as well have been a small child.
It was a beast so large that even a full-grown man would groan and strain to climb aboard from the ground, so how exactly would she subdue that living war chariot? Her strength was never in question, but that monstrous difference in sheer bulk was another matter entirely. Watching them felt like watching an adult square off against a little child.
Neigh—!!
The moment Seo Yeo took a step forward, Ochyma — which had been glaring at us this whole time — let out a whinny and came charging.
Whatever stood in its path, the horse smashed straight through it. Trees, rocks, it demolished them all with perfect equality, and at the sight of that black shape bearing down on us, I found myself speechless. I was the one who'd compared it to a chariot in the first place, but this was crossing a line all the same. Red Hare was Red Hare, but Ochyma was a monster of a horse that went a step beyond even that.
"What the heck is that?"
A voice startled clean out of its wits. I turned away from the terrifying spectacle of nature being demolished in real time — and even Lü Bu was staring at Ochyma with an expression of sheer disbelief. Then, in a trembling voice, she stroked the head of Red Hare beside her.
"R-Red Hare. You can do at least that much too… right?"
"Neigh."
Red Hare shook its head, firm and decisive.
"No way…"
Lü Bu was stunned — was she seriously being outdone by her own mount now?
I walked over to the dejected Lü Bu and gave both her cheeks a light pinch. Soft and springy — a feel that could hold its own even against Seo Yeo's. I had a feeling I'd said something like this before.
"…Wha' ah you dooing?"
At my out-of-nowhere cheek-pinching, Lü Bu slurred out a bewildered question.
"Feeling better?"
"……"
Realizing why I was doing this, Lü Bu fell silent for a moment before recovering her usual expression.
"…Hmph. Youh think a li'l thing like thish would get meh down?"
With the gloom wiped from her face, Lü Bu declared boldly:
"Jushh watch. In the end, the winner'sh gonna be me."
"Yeah."
I nodded, smiling at the sight of her.
"…Sho when ah you gonna leh go?"
"Ah — sorry."
At her words, I released the cheeks I'd been holding. The feel was so addictive that I'd kept at it without even realizing.
"Ugh… It doesn't hurt, but it feels weird."
"Want me to keep going?"
"I'm good."
Lü Bu rubbed her cheeks for a moment, then whipped her head away from me. Her ears had gone red — she was clearly embarrassed.
While I'd been busy with Lü Bu, the distance between Seo Yeo and Ochyma — still considerable until moments ago — had shrunk dramatically.
"Oh, they're about to collide."
Lü Bu was watching the scene with an engrossed expression of her own.
Seo Yeo let Ochyma bear down until it was right in front of her, then shifted sideways to slip past the charge. So she was planning to take her time and wear the horse down after all… The moment I thought that, Seo Yeo did something entirely unexpected. She caught the tail of Ochyma as it thundered past and began driving her legs into the ground.
The sight of a woman forcing a charging horse to a halt by nothing but its tail.
Neigh?!
Even Ochyma seemed flustered for a heartbeat, but faced with Seo Yeo so openly challenging it to a contest of strength, it blew steam from its nostrils and kept running.
KWA-GA-GA-GA—!!
A woman refusing to yield, a horse desperate to shake her loose. Dirt sprayed in every direction as a long, unbroken line was carved into the earth.
Wow. She's water-skiing. On land. With dirt kicking up instead of water, it somehow looked even more convincing. No question about it — that would drain Ochyma's strength fast.
It was a feat that belonged to Seo Yeo alone — to Xiang Yu reborn, rather. I did wonder whether Lü Bu could manage a passable imitation.
Contrary to my expectation that it would drag on for quite a while, the contest between Seo Yeo and Ochyma was over before I knew it.
Neigh…
Ochyma, which had been galloping at full tilt, steadily ran out of steam as though its whole body were turning to lead with every passing moment. Its speed had already fallen off so drastically that it was all but standing still. The horse strained for one more step; Seo Yeo refused to grant even that, and the tug-of-war stretched taut between them. Just for a moment.
Snort……
At last, the black horse — utterly spent from its struggle with Seo Yeo — stopped dead where it stood. When Seo Yeo released its tail, the horse turned to face her, and their eyes met. Holding her gaze, Ochyma slowly lowered its head to her — and so, that day, Seo Yeo gained herself a legendary steed.
A government office in Luoyang.
Having spent a while savoring my freedom and enjoying a proper rest, I summoned one person privately to decide how I would act from here on out. The one I called for arrived before long. A composed beauty with clear blue eyes stepped into the room and offered me a respectful cupped-fist salute.
"Jia Xu, courtesy name Wenhe. I have come in answer to my lord's summons."
"Good."
Jia Xu. Ask anyone who prides themselves on knowing their Three Kingdoms to name the master of self-preservation, and hers is the first name off their tongue. When General Huangfu Song was reinstated, I could hardly contain my delight at seeing Jia Xu enter my service alongside him.
"I called you here because there's something I want to discuss with you privately."
"Please, speak."
Jia Xu always kept a deferential posture, careful never to put me in an ill humor. When I had taken her into my service out of nowhere, with no ties between us, and whenever I peppered her with questions about this and that, she had simply followed along in quiet obedience. She coveted no high office, and kept no one close. Without so much as a personal acquaintance, Jia Xu simply repeated the cycle of office, home, office, home — managing her own conduct with an almost pathological care. Which was no doubt how she'd managed to live out a long and natural life even under that psycho Cao Pi.
"I hear that lately, senior officials — governors who've seized command of armies — are conscripting soldiers however they please."
These were the posts Dong Zhuo had flung about indiscriminately among the warlords before fleeing Luoyang. Using them as their warrant, warlords had dug in across every corner of the realm and were acting exactly as they pleased.
What they intended, I couldn't say for certain. It might be for their own defense; it might be a military buildup in service of their ambitions. Either way, it was not a problem I could sit back and watch.
"What I mean is, even if we issue an edict appointing new governors, they'll just lock them up somewhere or kill them and pretend it never happened. Should we put them down by force right now, before they can swell their armies any further?"
"…You mean to stop the age of chaos before it arrives?"
"I do."
I was forever grumbling inwardly about the coming age of chaos, this age of chaos — but the way things stood now, it looked to me like it could still be set right, if someone moved to set it right. Break the warlords' spirit before the true chaos descended, and make them docile enough to obey. If we managed that much, I thought, we might just head off an age of chaos that would otherwise take years upon years simply to clean up.
Jia Xu held her silence for a long moment. Then she spoke.
"The age of chaos has already arrived."
"……"
To her flat certainty, I said nothing.
"Corruption that had spread through every stratum of society gnawed the Han hollow and left the people's lives in ruin."
It was a truth everyone under heaven knew.
"People living such bitter, hopeless lives would have come to feel nothing but disillusion toward the very name of Han."
Lives ground down year after year had struck a spark in the people's hearts. What if you knew you were a subject of Han, and yet that country never once looked after you — if anything, it only took what little you had? What subject could go on loving the land of their birth?
"Decades of grievance piled upon grievance… until, at last, it exploded."
The Yellow Turban Rebellion.
To survive, the people had cast aside their farm tools and bound yellow cloth around their heads. The people had renounced a dynasty that boasted centuries of history. It was no revolt waged for any one man's power or glory, but a noble struggle by people who simply wished to live. The people's flame had burned the Han down.
"A central government that had taken up arms against its own people had all but spent its strength."
The toll of the campaign against the Yellow Turbans had been devastating. The suppression had succeeded, but the scars the people left behind were more than enough to bring the dynasty crashing down.
"And with the state so weakened, internal strife erupted on top of it all."
The Ten Attendants' Rebellion. At a moment when the central government needed every scrap of strength just to hold the nation together, it had split in two and torn itself bloody, carving flesh from its own bones.
"And then a warlord nursing his own ambition swallowed the state whole."
Dong Zhuo. That wolf of a man had wielded power without the slightest effort to hide his greed.
"His devouring of the state was a brief thing — but for a country already swaying on its feet, it was more than enough to lose the people's faith for good."
Everyone was thinking the same thing. Is the nation called Han already dead?
"It has lost the faith of every soul under heaven. That is why the age of chaos has already arrived."
The young emperor, crushed beneath the weight of power, had thought so. The official who had watched the state rot for decades had thought so. The commoner wailing over the body of their dead family had thought so.
"For most of the warlords now entrenched across the realm, legitimacy is nothing more than a pretext."
Jia Xu delivered it with a perfectly calm face.
"They simply do not say it aloud. In their hearts, the Han already exists no longer."
So this was the tide of the era.
"If you were to step forward now to bend the warlords to your will, they would instead band together and turn their blades upon you."
I felt my thoughts tangle into knots.
"So for the time being, I believe the right course is to tend to governance at home and wait for your moment."
"…I see."
I let out a long, slow breath and rose from my seat.
"That's what I'll do, then."
In the end, the age of chaos could not be stopped.