The Return (2)
As is the way of any power worth the name, the faction I led had hardly been flawless from the beginning. In battle, our ability to seize victory was second to none—but when it came to governing territory and breathing life into an economy, we fell short.
Time and a steady influx of new talent gradually sorted that out, yet with lands as vast as the ones we ruled, administrative gaps kept opening up all the same. What began as trifling little problems grew with the passing months into great tumors that gave us no end of grief. State affairs are never finished, after all; no matter how diligently we cleared our desks, the murderous workload only piled higher—so high, in fact, that even Sima Yi, the very woman history had christened the Hidden Tiger, shook her head and muttered that it would take her ages.
Those bamboo scrolls, stacked high as a tower, seemed destined to plague the General-in-Chief's faction for a good many years yet…
…until one girl stepped onto the stage, and all of that became a tale of the past.
The chancellor. The office charged with aiding the sovereign while commanding and supervising every official in the realm.
A chancellor could not afford to excel in only a single field. Abroad, they needed the diplomatic judgment to read how foreign powers were maneuvering, and the military talent to decide how the state should counter its enemies. At home, they had to manage and oversee legions of bureaucrats, and possess the political acumen to work out—even down to the root cause—why the people suffered, how they suffered, and what must be done to relieve them.
That was why chancellors were granted immense power by their sovereigns. And that power came paired with demands for responsibility and ability to match.
…It goes without saying, but people truly worthy of the chancellor's seat were exceedingly rare. In a world teeming with those who could barely manage one of the qualities I had just listed, a person capable of shouldering them all? Such a one would deserve the name of great chancellor without the slightest reservation.
Guan Yiwu—better known as Guan Zhong—had driven policy after policy and raised his beloved state of Qi to stand tall as a hegemon of the Spring and Autumn era. Xiao He had served at Emperor Gaozu's side, crushed the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, and founded a Han dynasty that would endure four hundred years. Between them, they were the archetypes of the great chancellor.
And beyond those two, whenever anyone named the greatest chancellors in Chinese history, one figure was always, always mentioned.
"I wonder what our little strategist has been up to?"
"Hyah?!"
Zhuge Liang, courtesy name Kongming. To anyone from the modern world, hers would be a name even more familiar than Guan Yiwu's or Xiao He's.
The white-haired little strategist had been poring over the bamboo scrolls, scribbling away without pause, and at my abrupt entrance she jerked in fright and blinked up at me.
"M-My lord?"
"That's right. It's me." I answered in a level voice, then craned my neck to skim the contents of the scrolls. Countless entries filled them: reports that the people of the still-undeveloped Nanzhong region dwelt deep in the jungle, eking out a living through herding; questions of where bridges and roads ought to be laid to ease the flow of traffic. Dense annotations ran beneath every line, and from them it was plain that Zhuge Liang was already drafting solutions to each and every problem.
…And it wasn't as if that assessment was wrong, either.
Looking over Zhuge Liang's handiwork, I nodded again and again.
"You've been working very hard."
"…I-it is an honor, my lord."
Having recovered from her alarm with impressive speed, Zhuge Liang allowed herself a faint smile, plainly pleased to be praised. I admired that lovely smile for a moment, then came straight to the point.
"By the way—didn't I tell you something the other day?"
"…Pardon?"
True to her name as one of history's great chancellors, Zhuge Liang's handling of work was always flawless. But would you believe that even this Zhuge Liang had exactly one fatal flaw? I said it in a perfectly calm voice.
"I told you to take it easy with the work."
With that, I slipped my hands under her arms and hoisted her clean off the ground.
"Hyaaaah?!"
Oh—a squeal just like a baby chick's, remarkably similar to Zhang Fei's. A strange feeling washed over me for an instant, but I recalled my original purpose and met Zhuge Liang's eyes squarely.
She was hardly heavy at all. Even though she had undergone her coming-of-age ceremony this year, she still had a tiny frame. Well, natural enough—Zhuge Liang was only fifteen, after all.
I tossed a question at her.
"Do you have any idea what time it is right now?"
"Th-that's…"
Knowing perfectly well that the sun had long since set and the moon now hung at its zenith, Zhuge Liang could not bring herself to meet my gaze.
Zhuge Liang's one and only fatal flaw: she worked a truly staggering amount. Without rest. Without end. It was severe enough that unless the people around her kept an eye on her, she wouldn't even see to a proper meal.
Yes—Zhuge Liang was a great chancellor: fair and rational, devoted to her people, unfailingly loyal to her lord. Yet the very person at the heart of it all never looked after herself. How bitter a thing that was.
In the original history, after Liu Bei's death, when Zhuge Liang took charge of Shu, one of the officials under her once submitted a memorial that read:
"Permit me, meager as my talents are, to compare the work Your Excellency now undertakes to the running of a household.
A slave is set to till the fields; a servant is charged with preparing the meals; the dog is given the task of barking at thieves, the ox the task of bearing heavy loads, and the horse the task of traveling far. Each performs its own duty faithfully, and so the work flows on without a single gap, lacking nothing, smooth and untroubled. Yet should the master one day suddenly take up all of these tasks alone, his body will weary and his mind will grow dim, until in the end he can complete nothing at all.
Not because the master's wisdom falls short of a chicken's, a dog's, or a servant's—but because he has forsaken the proper way of a head of household.
For precisely this reason, the ancients called those who sat and discoursed upon the Way kings and dukes, and those who toiled and labored and made, scholar-officials."
The official—whose analogy was every bit as masterful as you'd expect from a man steeped in the old classics—pressed straight on.
"Today Your Excellency conducts the government in person, personally examining every ledger of income and expenditure, sweating from morning until night—
───is this not too heavy a burden of toil?"
In other words, it was a supremely courteous way of saying, We are worried, because you do nothing but work.
But with the weight of a nation upon her, Zhuge Liang never heeded that worried counsel. In the end, overwork and stress accumulated without end, and she became a star fallen over the Wuzhang Plains.
Sik so sa beon, an neung gu ho.
"He eats but little, and his affairs are many—how can he possibly endure for long?"
How telling, that even Sima Yi reportedly uttered these very words upon hearing an account of Zhuge Liang's daily routine. Zhuge Liang, who had spent those years thrashing Sima Yi at every turn, could not deny it this time—and before long, she drew her final breath. All to repay the grace she owed the late Emperor, Liu Bei. Zhuge Liang was simply that kind of person: one who calmly, uncomplainingly, burned away everything she had.
"……"
"…My lord?"
And the little strategist standing before my eyes right now was walking straight toward that very future. Recalling how light she had felt compared to her fellow little strategists, Sima Yi and Pang Tong, I pronounced sentence in a cool, level voice.
"This won't do. You're on forced vacation."
"…Pardon?"
"Forced vacation."
I had told Zhuge Liang, over and over, to cut back on the work. I'd asked Sima Yi and Pang Tong to look after her, and I'd urged Zhuge Liang herself as well. And even after all that, she still wouldn't listen? Then it was time for me to flex a little executive muscle of my own.
"First—these are confiscated."
"My lord?!"
I swept every last bamboo scroll off the desk. Said out loud like that, I felt like an adult snatching a treat away from a small child—the only joke being that the thing being taken wasn't candy, but paperwork. I stuffed all the scrolls into a handy cloth bundle lying nearby and put on a bright, breezy expression.
"For the time being, you won't be seeing so much as the 'bam' in 'bamboo.'"
"……"
"And this is an order, issued in my capacity as your lord."
I had made it perfectly clear that if she wouldn't listen to me, I would make her rest by force. This was entirely of her own making. Remembering the words of a certain orc shaman who had once turned somebody into crispy fried chicken, I flicked a meaningful glance at Seo Yeo.
"……"
Catching my glance, Seo Yeo—responsive to a fault, the moment you asked—drew out a blanket from nearby and spread a bed, and I laid the still-helpless Zhuge Liang down upon it. When I drew the covers up to her chin, Zhuge Liang batted her eyes and spoke.
"Um… my lord?"
"Sleep."
"But the work…"
"Ah-ah. I said sleep."
There would be no work—not until we left Gangdong and returned to Luoyang. No, as far as I was concerned, she could count on doing nothing but resting for a good long while even after we arrived in Luoyang. Settling down comfortably at Zhuge Liang's side, I made plain with my entire body my resolve not to budge from that spot until she was asleep.
And perhaps that stubbornness worked.
"……"
Barely any time had passed under my watch before Zhuge Liang closed her eyes and drifted off, snoring softly.
See? I knew you were exhausted. And yet you dared try to force yourself back to work? I'll show you just how far I can go once I get serious.