The Coalition (3)
"I, Yuan Shu, of the rightful bloodline of the Yuan clan, shall stand forth as the very voice of the Imperial House and drive the traitors from the realm...."
The silver-haired girl reading the proclamation aloud let a soft snort escape her.
"Well, well. For once in his life, that idiot has decided to think."
Yanzhou lay directly beside Sili Province, which meant Liu Dai — the Inspector of Yanzhou, still among the living — would be joining the coalition if only to keep a weather eye on the warlords' moods. And Chenliu, where Cao Cao had lately made her nest, belonged to Yanzhou in the end as well.
Which meant that she, too, was destined to be swept up in the typhoon called the coalition.
Even so, Cao Cao had no intention of throwing herself into the fight once she'd joined. She simply wished to watch what manner of display the man who had caught her heart would put on.
If he ever learned she had taken an interest in him, he would no doubt turn green around the gills.
Truly an insufferable man.
He would be astonished to learn how many men under heaven hungered for her attention.
Beside Cao Cao, the woman with slate-blue hair pulled a sour face at the proclamation's contents.
"Just hearing it turns my stomach."
Xiahou Dun, it seemed, was remembering the time Yuan Shu had made a play for her.
At the look on her face, Cao Cao smiled in open mischief.
"What's the matter? A house as grand as Yuan Shu's ought to make him quite the prize."
"Ugh. Don't even joke about that, alright?"
Xiahou Dun shook her head at Cao Cao's needling tone.
"That's just it — take away the family and the man's got nothing going for him. Not one thing."
"Oho. Care to back that up with specifics?"
"His personality, for one... You know it as well as I do, Mengde. No need for me to spell it out."
The arrogance of a man who looked down on everyone, always. The silliness of one who carried on like a toddler. The debauchery of one who flung his duties aside to chase pleasure. The insolence of one who trusted nothing but his own birth and behaved accordingly.
The vanity of flaunting luxury far beyond all decency. The envy he bore anyone doing better than himself.
And on top of it all, the pettiness of a man who would shave anyone down by any means necessary just to trample them beneath his heels.
Vulgar. Haughty. Small.
Yuan Shu, with all of it rolled into one, could fairly be called the worst sort of human being alive.
His conduct tested the very limits of everyone's patience — as if asking, surely you can't hate me even after all this? — until most of the people of Luoyang had washed their hands of him entirely.
"If the man at least had some talent, we might cut him a little slack. He doesn't even have that."
Watching an incompetent fool with a rotten personality to boot strut about on the strength of his family name alone was enough to bring up everything she'd eaten that morning.
"And from what I hear, his way with women is a complete mess, too."
The women clinging to him were, in the end, fawning over his wealth and his clan rather than over Yuan Shu himself.
Whether he knew it or not, word had it that he simply grinned his delight and whiled his days away dallying with them.
Cao Cao, who had been listening to all this, spoke up as though puzzled.
"And what, pray, is so wrong about a tangled love life?"
"Huh?"
What on earth is the little runt going on about all of a sudden?
Under Xiahou Dun's bewildered stare, Cao Cao declared with perfect confidence.
"Standing tall upon the seat of principal wife, having cast down rivals beyond number... doesn't the very thought delight you?"
"Uh... yeah. Sure......"
Well, if that's how you're built, then I suppose it must.
She had long since sensed it: compared to ordinary people, Cao Cao carried a set of values bent slightly askew.
...Or more than slightly?
"By that same token, a man who is already spoken for has his charms too."
"..."
It was more than slightly.
"A man who watches his own wife with an ambiguous look by day, and by night gathers me into his arms and whispers that he loves me more than anyone alive."
"..."
"Why, merely picturing it sets my whole body humming."
What a complete nutcase...
Ahem. Still, even so, thinking such ugly things about Mengde was going a bit far.
Wearing a look of utter revulsion, Xiahou Dun opened her mouth.
"So any married man will do, is that it?"
"What do you take me for? Whatever else I may be, I am hardly that easy a woman."
"Fair enough."
Looks far beyond her own — and she fancied herself passably pretty — together with the ability to back those looks up.
The Cao Cao before her had a taste in men that was a little... no, a great deal strange. And yet she was by no means a girl who would give herself to just anyone.
"Hopping from one man to the next is not to my taste either. He would have to be a man I could fall into for a lifetime, don't you think?"
"A man Mengde could lose herself in for a lifetime, hm..."
Xiahou Dun turned it over in her head for a moment, then shook it.
"If romance just isn't your thing, you could've said so. Don't go saying weird stuff and getting me worried over nothing."
"...And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, obviously. Is there even a single man out there Mengde could like that much?"
The girl called Cao Cao Mengde was, from the ground up, a person whose perspective sat crooked beside everyone else's.
The things ordinary women fell for — a dashing face, a gentle temperament, wealth and pedigree — none of it registered with Cao Cao.
He simply had to please her heart.
And the standard by which a man did so was one she could not begin to fathom.
If even she, who had known Mengde since childhood, couldn't find that standard, what chance did any man meeting Cao Cao for the first time have of winning her heart?
"...You needn't worry on my account. I've already found the man who pleases me."
"Huh? Seriously?!"
At Cao Cao's words, Xiahou Dun jolted and thrust her head in close.
Brows knitting, Cao Cao pushed the looming head firmly away with her small hand.
"Back off. I have no taste for studying a woman's face at this range."
"Aw, come on. So who is it? Just gimme a teensy hint of the name!"
"Telling you the name would be telling you the name. What in the world does 'a teensy hint of the name' even mean?"
A perfectly fair point — and yet Cao Cao could not overpower Xiahou Dun with strength alone.
When Xiahou Dun refused to budge no matter how hard she shoved, Cao Cao snapped at her, a touch irritated.
"All that boar-like strength and not a scrap of sense. I'll give you your answer, so back off."
"Deal!"
Grinning ear to ear, Xiahou Dun sat up straight.
Loosing a small sigh, Cao Cao spoke.
"You asked for a hint, so a hint is what you shall have."
"Aww... stingy."
"Hush."
Shooting Xiahou Dun a disgruntled look, Cao Cao tossed out her clue.
"The man who interests me bears a character meaning 'hill' in his name."
"A hill?"
"Yes. A hill."
Xiahou Dun chewed it over. There were any number of characters that meant "hill."
Qiu—hill. Ai—hill. Gang—hill. An—hill.
...
Yuan—hill.
Hold on.
A single character carrying the meaning of "origin" and "hill" both.
Wasn't the mother of the most famous figure in all the world using that very character at this very moment?
Ding Yuan, Jianyang. The woman currently serving as Inspector of Bing Province.
And the mother of the most famous man in the world.
"It's him!"
The thread followed to its end, Xiahou Dun jerked her head up and stared at Cao Cao.
Ling — the character for hill!
Jeong Reung, Hwahyeon!
"It's Jeong Reung! Right?!"
"...Remarkable, how that head of yours only manages to turn over at times like this."
Cao Cao caught herself briefly regretting that she had handed Xiahou Dun so decisive a clue.
Xiahou Dun grinned wide.
Really, though. I just can't stand not knowing.
"Since when have you been interested in him? No — what made you interested in the first place?"
"I never should have opened my mouth to begin with."
Watching Xiahou Dun grow chattier by the minute, Cao Cao sighed.
Too weary to explain, she waved the questions away with an evasive murmur.
"I simply took a liking to him."
"...?"
His looks were hardly so different from any ordinary man's.
Son of the Inspector of Bing Province, granted — but against the towering pedigree of Cao Cao's own house, he fell far short.
Ability? He seemed to clear the average, but hardly to a degree worth Cao Cao's coveting.
And yet the man carried an inexplicable conviction.
Where that confidence came from, no one could say — and still he threw himself, without a moment's hesitation, into storms in which no one could see an inch ahead.
What he judged right, he did without reserve; what he judged wrong, he turned his back on without agonizing over it.
Cao Cao did not realize that, perhaps, what she saw in him was her own past self.
Back when she commanded the guard of the capital's northern gate, she had beaten an uncle of the Ten Attendants to death.
At the time, Cao Cao had raised that storm without a single thought for her family's standing or what consequences might follow.
Relative of a Ten Attendant or no — how could any private individual stand above the law of the state?
She had acted for one reason only: because she believed it right.
Afterward, demoted to a sinecure, Cao Cao saw every ugly thing the central government had to show.
Rebellions by commoners who only wanted to go on living in a rotted nation.
She remembered vowing, clear as day, to watch over the country and bring its people ease — and it was those very people she cut down with her own hands.
She could no longer remember what exactly she had been thinking as she did it.
The brawling of wolf packs enslaved by appetite. A Grand General and the Ten Attendants, chasing nothing but power and profit, colliding again and again until blood spattered the court.
To Cao Cao's eyes, the Clean Stream faction and the Muddy Stream faction alike were nothing but vermin gnawing the nation hollow.
Then the wolves vanished, and a new beast came stalking out of the dark: a savage tiger.
The rot-bloated beasts that had growled and torn at one another all bowed their heads before that overwhelming power.
And when the tiger devoured the innocent, she could do nothing at all.
Thus, tossed about by the storms of the age, her heart was whittled away grain by grain.
At some point, she must have lost the upright girl she used to be.
And then that man appeared.
No brilliance to astonish anyone, not even a concrete plan for the morrow.
But he had a dream.
His dream — the very dream she herself had let go — was, beyond doubt, the one ray of light this dizzying world needed more than anything else.
Recalling the verdict once passed upon her, Cao Cao smiled.
Will you make me a capable minister, then?
Or, if not that — will you make me a treacherous hero?
Cao Cao could hardly bear how much she was looking forward to finding out.