Eastern Wu King of Virtue (2)

It had been several days since we marched out of Luoyang.

Today, once again slogging through the endless tedium of the advance with a half-enlightened look on my face, I received ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠news I had never expected.

"Say that again—what's this about Gangdong?"

"Th-they're saying a schism has broken out within the Liu Yao faction that has ruled Gangdong until now...?"

...Why, all of a sudden?

In the original history, the factions of Yangzhou had gotten along grandly, all smiles and alliances together—right up until Sun Ce came along and smashed every last one of them.

"What on earth is going on...?"

Pang Tong, it seemed, felt exactly as I did; a look of considerable bewilderment hung on her face.

Just then, Sima Yi, who had been holding her silence while turning something over in her mind, opened her mouth.

"...Ze Rong."

"Hm?"

"I'd bet anything it was that man. I'm certain of it."

Sima Yi spoke brusquely, as though she had already unraveled the whole affair from start to finish.

"He was the true mastermind behind the assassination attempt."

"......"

"If he's doomed to die whether he surrenders or fights, then deciding to go down fighting would be the natural thing to do, wouldn't it?"

Hearing that explanation, I had no choice but to ask:

"...Wait—he'd die even if he surrendered?"

"Were you planning on letting him live?"

At my question, Sima Yi glared daggers at me.

"Absolutely not. Who exactly would that be for, hmm?"

"Uh..."

That part I couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tell you.

I had simply been curious about Ze Rong's predicament—a man whose death had apparently been decided without my knowledge.

Sensing my thoughts, Sima Yi heaved a deep sigh and explained at her own pace.

"To begin with, even if we took that man in, there'd be nothing in it for us. Nothing at all."

"Why not?"

"How exactly are you supposed to make use of someone who, the moment he claps eyes on wealth, goes blind with greed and starts killing people?"

It was an argument so obvious it hardly needed to be made.

And she certainly wasn't wrong.

Ze Rong.

Even in the original history, the instant he set eyes on riches, his eyes would roll back in his head and he would murder and plunder the very lords who had taken him in—until at last he fled all the way to Gangdong to escape Cao Cao, the man who had shown Xuzhou what true madness looked like.

He placed himself under Liu Yao's command after that, and when Liu Yao began getting absolutely trounced by Sun Ce—the one who would go on to pacify Gangdong—he judged there was no future left in it and raised a rebellion.

Yet for all the swagger with which he launched that uprising, he was crushed in short order—not even by Sun Ce, but by Liu Yao, the very man Sun Ce had been shoving around—and his head left his shoulders. In the most literal sense of the word, a bandit beneath all notice.

The thing that puzzled me was this:

If he was greedy enough for wealth to rebel the moment he decided there was nothing more to squeeze out of Liu Yao, what on earth possessed him to lavish his treasures on an assassin sent to kill me?

"He figured that if it worked, wonderful, and if it didn't, no harm done."

Sima Yi answered my unspoken question in a voice that suggested the answer couldn't have been simpler.

"If the assassination succeeded, the whole realm would be thrown into even deeper chaos—which would mean he'd get to run wild all the more. He'd probably be delighted."

"But if it failed, he'd just be throwing his wealth away for nothing, no?"

"To a man who has spent his entire life stripping it from other people, it's pocket change."

So he'd been a bandit with a surprisingly grand-strategic view of the world.

Besides, he knew perfectly well that I made a habit of crushing bandits wherever I found them, so thinking of it as a reinvestment in his own future made the whole thing fall into place.

Having more or less sorted through my thoughts, I nodded along.

"Now, that was the first reason. But there is a second reason as well."

At Sima Yi's continuing explanation, a surprised look crossed my face.

"There's more?"

"Yes. And this one is a very important reason."

Having said her piece to that point, Sima Yi continued in an utterly serious voice.

"Do you honestly believe we would ever forgive that man?"

"......"

"He crossed the line a long, long time ago—and kept right on going. There is no reason to."

"R-right."

I could only respond with a dazed non-answer as Sima Yi wore a truly dreadful expression.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I was hardly the sort to be intimidated by other people, but at that moment, she had given me chills in a way I couldn't quite explain.

For some reason, my gut kept insisting that whatever she had in mind wouldn't end with a mere execution by boiling...

And if there existed any punishment more horrific than boiling a man alive, then by my standards only one thing came to mind.

...Nah, come on.

We were still a long, long way from that particular punishment making an appearance.

It had to be just my imagination.

Something about the ominous look on Sima Yi's face made me venture a question, just in case.

"...Seeing as Her Majesty ordered him taken alive, you're not planning to kill him on your own authority, are you?"

"Hmph. Don't worry. You think I'd miss something that basic?"

Sima Yi shot back in her trademark curt tone—the very tone whose absence would, these days, actually leave me feeling a little bereft.

"Direct that warning at the others, not at me. He could genuinely end up dead in the time it takes to blink."

"Ah..."

Hearing that, of course, I had no choice but to concede.

Our ranks were hardly short of generals who could wring a mere bandit's neck with their bare hands.

Recalling what had become of the assassin who had tried to kill me back in Luoyang, I turned my head and spoke.

"Seo Yeo. Lü Bu. You two understand, right?"

"......"

"Even if he catches your eye, under no circumstances are you to just kill him on the spot. Understood?"

These two were all too likely to lose their grip on their emotions and cause an incident—insisting afterward that they had only struck him with precisely nonlethal force, or that their strength had slipped just the tiniest bit without their noticing.

"......"

"Uh... um..."

See?

There they went, sneakily avoiding my gaze even now, wearing expressions utterly devoid of confidence.

"Answer."

Having watched them long enough, I took turns seizing a cheek apiece and pressed for a reply.

"...Yes."

"O-okay, I got it! We won't kill him! I said we won't!"

Seo Yeo and Lü Bu hurried to answer, my antics apparently proving rather more than they could bear.

Who could have guessed I would live long enough to extract a vow from these two—a vow not to kill another human being.

Truly, life never ran short of things to see if you lived long enough.

"U-um, excuse me..."

Just then, Pang Tong, who had been watching the whole scene unfold, addressed me.

"Hm? What is it?"

"The infighting within Liu Yao's faction is one thing, but this seems like a far more serious problem..."

Having said that, Pang Tong continued in a slightly trembling voice.

"Y-Yan Baihu—the man styling himself the Eastern Wu King of Virtue... they say he is leading the Shanyue tribes dwelling within Gangdong...?"

"What?"

What kind of news was that, coming out of nowhere?

Yan Baihu was Shanyue, not Han?

"......"

Well, I did recall certain historians arguing that Yan Baihu had been of Shanyue origin—so in this world, that theory happened to be the correct one.

Truthfully, I had wondered how he'd managed to muster a host numbering in the tens of thousands in Gangdong, a land with barely a soul to its name.

Liu Yao was holding out with his coalition and every soldier he could scrape together, but my guess was that even without the internal schism, he wouldn't have lasted long.

Frankly, I considered Yan Baihu himself a man of no account.

In the original history, he never once managed to defeat Sun Ce—not even back when Sun Ce had yet to find solid footing—and did nothing but lose, again and again.

In the end, Yan Baihu surrendered to Sun Ce in hopes of sparing his own neck, and was cut down anyway.

When you thought about it, Sun Ce really didn't know the first thing about mercy.

The Little Conqueror hadn't earned that name for nothing.

In any case, the real problem lay not so much with Yan Baihu himself, I'd say, as with the Shanyue tribes he would have at his command.

The truth was, these people bore a hefty share of the responsibility for why Gangdong had remained undeveloped all this time.

For hundreds of years, they had been a foreign people resisting Han dominion and leaving Gangdong a lawless wreck.

Hadn't I mentioned before that Yi Province had its own trouble in the Ba tribe, who claimed that land as their very own?

The Shanyue were cut from precisely the same cloth.

Now, what exactly were they called again...

If my knowledge was correct, they were said to be descendants of the ancient state of Yue, stirring up chaos at every possible opportunity.

The only difference was that they dwarfed the Ba in sheer scale.

The reason they were called the Shanyue—mountain Yue—rather than simply the Yue was a simple one.

The name said it all: these people lived in hiding, high up in the mountains.

My head was already starting to throb just thinking about it.

Even the Kingdom of Wu of the original history warred with the Shanyue day in and day out; the records of their punitive campaigns against them would surely fill dozens upon dozens of lines.

That alone told you exactly what sort of mayhem the Shanyue had wreaked across Gangdong.

With their living space overlapping, both sides threw themselves into the struggle for survival, and in the end, the victor of that long war was the Kingdom of Wu.

Sun Quan took the Shanyue captured in that war, made slaves of them, forcibly absorbed them into Wu, and put them to work as the labor force that developed Gangdong.

No people in Gangdong, you say?

There are plenty of people right up on those mountains.

What's that? They're not people of Wu?

Nonsense. You are now.

That, more or less, was how it went.

The Shanyue supposedly melted fully into the Han people somewhere between the Sui and Tang dynasties—and now it was my job to make that happen.

A delightful game of tag with the Shanyue, played out across the towering mountain ranges spread over Gangdong...

Hold on.

That's the same game we used to play all the time back in Bing Province.

What's more, while these people excelled at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the chaotic melees of mountain warfare, unlike the northern nomads they wouldn't simply spur their horses and bolt the moment things turned against them.

If it came down to a straight clash of strength against strength, I was more than happy to oblige.

The problem was having to make a full circuit of that vast expanse called Gangdong to do it.

"...Good grief."

Still, with Yan Baihu standing at the head of the Shanyue, perhaps seizing that one man would be enough to sort everything out.

All I could do was hope, with all my heart, that things would work out as smoothly as they had with Meng Huo.