The Yellow Turban Rebellion (1)

The Han Dynasty was rotten to the core.

The Emperor, drowning in wine and women, paid no heed to the state of the realm. The eunuchs drew a veil over his eyes and sold offices for gold, wielding power exactly as they pleased. The corrupt officials who had bought their posts that way wrung the people's lifeblood from them, coin by coin, to swell their own estates.

A pack of wolves, every last one of them scrambling to fatten only himself!

To mend this rotting country would take ruthless resolve! Everything would have to be torn down and begun again from the very start!

184.

The common people, pushed past the very last of their patience, rose up at last. The Yellow Turban Rebellion. And so the long, long war began.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion — the upheaval that might rightly be called the true opening of Romance of the Three Kingdoms — had broken out after all.

The scale of it defied belief. Yellow Turbans were rising all at once across the eight provinces of the realm.

"Thirty thousand. A hundred thousand. Fifty thousand. A hundred fifty thousand..."

The reports just kept coming, stacking up across my office. I frowned as I worked through the tallies of Yellow Turban sightings from every corner of the land.

"So the floor is ten thousand, and the ceiling runs past a hundred thousand. Oh, hooray. And Jizhou has three hundred thousand, does it?"

Jizhou — presumed to be the very cradle of the uprising, where Zhang Jue herself had lit the fuse — had more than three hundred thousand Yellow Turbans swarming it. And Jizhou, of all places, was right next door to Bing Province. I let out a long sigh.

"This is what this country's sins have earned it."

A multitude of common folk who had risen because they could no longer go on living. Professional soldiering? They'd never so much as smelled it. And yet the sheer will to take up weapons with their own hands, hoping to build something better than this world — that much deserved to be honored.

True, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms the Yellow Turbans who open the whole saga are usually painted as nothing but merit-farming errands and experience-point piñatas for the warlords — but they were never an enemy to be dismissed. The imperial army had lost to them more than once, after all.

Case in point: Dong Zhuo, sulking over there in Xiliang. The one who got thrashed like a mangy dog by the Yellow Turbans and then had the General of the Household post he'd scraped together cold cash to buy confiscated straight back out of his hands. I could just about hear the whining from here.

...Though should that be 'her' hands, not 'his'? The mental image refused to form.

Be that as it may, the fact that Dong Zhuo — a commander who had actually crushed frontier tribes in the field — had lost to the Yellow Turbans was nothing to shrug at.

Compared to other regions, the Yellow Turbans inside Bing Province were relatively few. Not zero, mind you — but their numbers here were visibly, unmistakably thinner than anywhere else.

Well, of course they were. The outfits calling themselves the Black Mountain Bandits already packed Bing Province like flies, raising their own flavor of hell. And with the Yellow Turban Rebellion certain to loosen the central government's grip, those gangs were obviously biding their time, waiting for the right moment to dig in somewhere and throw their weight around.

Right now they kept themselves tucked deep in the mountains, but the instant official control frayed and the bandit ranks grew fat, they'd crawl out into the light. Guaranteed.

But the Black Mountain Bandits, still nursing their timing, could wait. What mattered more was what to do about the Yellow Turbans looming right in front of me.

...I say that, but truthfully it amounted to almost nothing. The Yellow Turbans in Bing Province had apparently decided this land wasn't worth the trouble — they'd already moved off to join up with their brethren in other regions.

Which left my job exactly what it had always been: drive off the nomads, and smack down the bandit pups popping up here and there like a round of whack-a-mole. Not that the original history had needed anyone's help — they'd drummed and fiddled their own enterprise into the ground all by themselves.

For all its colossal scale, the Yellow Turban Rebellion was, in the history I knew, all but wiped out within a single year.

Why? Because Zhang Jue, the whole engine of the thing, suddenly died of illness in 184.

184. The very year the rebellion had begun.

There's a saying about going out short and hard — but wasn't this taking "short" a bridge too far?

Zhang Jue, the Great Good Master. Whether she truly raised the Yellow Turbans because she could no longer bear to watch the persecuted people suffer, I couldn't say. But with the leader who shouldered them gone far too soon, what future did a Yellow Turban army without its axis have?

They would dwindle into a plain bandit gang, and the meaning of their rising — that they had risen for the people's sake — would bleach away with them.

She did have younger siblings, but set against Zhang Jue, how could they not come up short? And so, in the end, they were hunted down one by one — by the volunteer militias who had seen that the Yellow Turbans were no different from any other bandits, and by an imperial army rebuilt and reorganized.

Right now, by all accounts, they were stacking victories over the punitive expeditions, morale riding so high it might scratch the sky.

Mm. That wouldn't last.

185.

Zhang Jue was alive. And the Yellow Turbans clustered around her were still swaggering all over China like they owned it.

What even was this?

Had Nanhua Laoxian ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truly handed down the Taiping Yaoshu with instructions to flip this country upside down?

Zhang Jue, who by all rights should have been dead inside a year, was leading the Yellow Turbans in the rudest of health.

More astonishing still: the Yellow Turbans hadn't yet turned to banditry. It wasn't that it never happened — but every time it did, Zhang Jue beheaded the offenders with her own two hands.

And more astonishing than even that: the common people were rallying to her for it.

Which raised the question — how did they feed all those mouths? Word had it the wealth the corrupt officials had embezzled was simply mountainous. Fair enough; skim for years at the shortest, decades at the longest, and a skimpy haul would be the real surprise.

On top of that, the populace was voluntarily tossing food their way, and since the Yellow Turbans had been farming folk to begin with, they raised their own crops and had managed full self-sufficiency on top of it.

Hold on. Isn't that the tuntian system, straight up?

Which is precisely the flaw of tuntian: soldiers forced to farm on top of drilling absolutely hated it. Morale sagged, desertion came standard, and in the worst cases men butchered their own superiors. And troops who couldn't devote themselves to training alone inevitably lost their edge.

And yet the Yellow Turbans had overcome that shortcoming in their own fashion. To a fanatical flock willing to die for a better country, for their own flesh and blood, tacking farm work onto training was no burden at all. And whatever the troops lacked in polish, that trademark, crushing wall of numbers more than covered.

Time might yet surface other problems — but for now the Yellow Turbans, apparently flawless, were steamrolling the imperial army. They had reportedly already swallowed a handful of cities whole.

Watching events peel away from the history I knew, I couldn't help but be rattled.

...It'll be fine, surely.

Somewhere out there, the protagonists of Romance of the Three Kingdoms have to be earning their keep. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei — the sworn siblings of the Peach Garden Oath... ...sisters, rather?

Whatever. The three of them would be out leading the volunteer militias, diligently mopping up Yellow Turbans, and Cao Cao and Sun Jian would likewise be at the head of their armies somewhere, holding the line against the tide.

Just then a messenger came pelting, half-tumbling, into my office.

"My lord! The Yellow Turbans have invaded Bing Province!"

......

I knit my brows at the report. They'd gobbled up a few cities, but they were still slugging it out with the imperial army in Jizhou and You Province — and they wanted to stretch their front all the way to Bing Province now? Bing might sit right beside Jizhou, but piling on battlefields had to hurt.

"Their numbers? And who commands them?"

"One hundred fifty thousand strong, under Zhang Liang, the General of Man!"

Wonderful. A member of their high command, no less. I hadn't a clue what they were playing at — but if they wanted a fight, the only answer was to give them one.

The one hundred fifty thousand Yellow Turbans Zhang Liang had led into Bing Province marched straight through it, all the way to Taiyuan itself.

It had sounded like exaggeration, but it was true: on the way in, the Yellow Turbans genuinely did not plunder a single village in their path. Where support was offered, they accepted it; where there was none, they simply marched on all the same.

How novel. Were they actually not a mere rabble of bandits after all?

With one hundred fifty thousand Yellow Turbans spread out before me, I found my eyes meeting, from atop the wall, those of the figure who had to be Zhang Liang. Draped in a long, broad-sleeved outer robe and topped with a curious hat, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Zhang Liang stared dead at me despite the considerable distance.

It wasn't even hot. Why wrap up like a bundled dumpling? A mask, too, on top of it all.

What expression the mask concealed, I had no way of knowing. Zhang Liang held my gaze for a stretch, then looked aside and dipped a nod to the adjutant standing alongside. At that signal the adjutant began issuing orders this way and that, and before long a white flag was climbing a pole above the Yellow Turban camp.

A white flag. Everyone knows it as surrender — but its precise meaning is rather an absence of any intent to fight. In other words, those one hundred fifty thousand Yellow Turbans had no wish to cross blades with us.

"...They want to talk, then?"

It could hardly be surrender, whatever else it was. And as if to answer my question, Zhang Liang slipped out of the war camp trailing only the barest escort, and looked up toward where I stood.

"Should I just shoot?"

The question came from Lü Bu at my shoulder.

"At this range, I can hit without even trying."

A big, gnarled bow in hand, Lü Bu kept her eyes glued dead ahead. And it was true — this was a golden chance to remove one of the Yellow Turban high command from the board. Firing in open defiance of a white flag? Against the Yellow Turbans, branded rebels as they were, I might even get patted on the back for it. We don't negotiate with terrorists, and so forth. A phrase from a later age, sure, but it fit this moment to a tee.

"...Let's hear them out first."

And still I shook my head at Lü Bu's offer. Why, though? For the life of me, nothing in me wanted to loose that arrow.

"If you say so."

The moment I turned her down, Lü Bu stowed her bow without a whisper of regret. Honestly, my own curiosity had a hand in it too. In not one report had the Yellow Turbans ever come out first, asking to talk. Those pages described the sort who charged the instant they clapped eyes on an imperial army.

A trap couldn't be ruled out. But I trusted the elite officers and men who followed me — and Lü Bu and Seo Yeo at my side. If they wanted to try something, then by all means, try.

The Yellow Turbans storm in the second the gates crack open? I had dependable soldiers who'd spent more days than they could count brawling with nomads. Elites who'd stand their ground against the famed White Horse Volunteers, or even give the Xiliang cavalry pause. No panic, no fumbling — the gates would bang shut and the fight would be handled with textbook polish.

They try to kill me the moment I step out to talk? Then I'd be entitled to strike off Zhang Liang's head, fully within the letter of the law. Lü Bu and Seo Yeo would do the actual striking, but still.

Xiang Yu and Lü Bu, standing together — a lineup that makes the chest swell on the names alone. I liked my odds of surviving the afternoon. Didn't even Zhou Yu once move to kill Liu Bei, only to go cold at the sight of Guan Yu planted at her side?

"Let's go down. I want to hear what they have to say."

I said it to Lü Bu, and to Seo Yeo, who stood guard at my flank. As I started toward the sealed gates, the adjutant beside me roared:

"Open the gates!"

At the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠command the gates groaned awake, grinding slowly apart. And beyond them Zhang Liang waited, not one muscle moving.

I mounted my horse and rode out toward Zhang Liang at an easy walk, Lü Bu and Seo Yeo matching my pace at my back. Up close, there was something quietly uncanny about Zhang Liang's presence — a feeling I'd only ever tasted once before, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the Imperial Palace, back when I'd entered it as a child trailing after my mother. It left me unsettled.

I could have believed it if someone told me this was Zhang Jue, not Zhang Liang. And if this was Zhang Liang, then Zhang Jue herself was beyond imagining.

"Why ask to talk?"

"...I was merely curious." The reply drifted over, calm as still water. "You are... different, somehow."

?

Different how? Perhaps catching the question on my face, Zhang Liang continued.

"You know it as well as anyone. That this country is coming apart."

......

The fact everyone knew and everyone pretended not to. Far too dangerous to endorse out loud, I kept my mouth shut. And when I wouldn't speak, Zhang Liang carried the conversation alone.

"Those who would serve this country loyally, to the bitter end."

Whatever lay behind the mask stayed hidden, yet somehow I had the sense Zhang Liang was grimacing beneath it. "Those who use us to unveil their ambition, one careful inch at a time."

Figures. Souls clawing for the high seats had never once been in short supply.

"To me, all of them feel exactly the same."

Zhang Liang pronounced it in a voice like sheet ice. "But you are different. Seen this close, I can tell."

Tell it how, exactly? Since when did a person's face advertise that sort of thing?

"I see in you no hunger to pile up wealth, no ambition to clutch power in your fist."

"Uh... thanks for the flattering read."

Out of nowhere, I'd just taken a compliment from a Yellow Turban. The feeling was hard to place — dizzy, almost.

"That talent gathers to such a person is only natural, I should think." Zhang Liang's gaze slid sidelong, to Seo Yeo and Lü Bu behind me. "One who helps others out of nothing but pure goodwill."

Zhang Liang spoke with an earnestness without a crack in it. "One who cherishes the people, and would not see them suffer."

And having said all that, Zhang Liang — perfectly casual — dropped a remark of catastrophic size.

"We will not count you among our enemies."

??

What. What in the world was going on right now?

At Zhang Liang's ambush of a declaration, Lü Bu — and, admittedly, me too — couldn't keep our composure from slipping. Seo Yeo remained as expressionless as ever.