Hulao Pass (10)
The Coalition had stopped advancing altogether — so openly, in fact, that they were practically announcing their decision to keep their distance.
When they did show themselves, it was only to loose a few performative volleys from beyond arrow range, and then call it a day. The range lay beyond even the arrows from our high walls, so naturally theirs never came close to touching us either.
Watching it all, I could tell they were now seriously racking their brains over what pretext they might conjure to withdraw. I briefly considered sending them off with a parting gift, but they remembered getting burned before, apparently, because their precautions were airtight — sturdy stakes that spoke of long, grudging preparation, and sentries keeping watch with relentless vigilance. One look at that scene and I decided to simply behave myself.
Right. They would turn back on their own if I left them alone, so there was no need to go poking a hornet's nest for nothing. Our soldiers' losses had been heavier than I'd expected, and if I overreached, it could easily turn into a disaster.
"They're not coming anymore."
Lü Bu said, yawning sleepily. Ever since the Coalition had begun its assault on Hulao Pass, there had barely been time to sleep, so it was hardly surprising that even she was worn out.
If a walking human weapon like Lü Bu was feeling the strain, what must ordinary people be enduring?
"Haaah…."
"Uuurgh…."
The soldiers drifted along the walls like zombies. It gave me the creeps just watching them. Some sat perched on the battlements snatching naps; others were sprawled flat on their backs, snoring loud enough to shake the ramparts. Zhang Liao and Seo Hwang could not quite hide their fatigue either.
Honestly, if even one of them had been missing, the battle would have been far harder, so I had guaranteed them ample rest — yet they still looked dead on their feet.
As for me... I was busy hiding behind Seo Yeo. I say this about myself, but what a sorry sight it was. Still, the mere presence of our faction's leader did wonders for morale, so let's call my duty done. I considered myself a kind of totem.
Seo Yeo refused to leave my side for even a moment, on the grounds that I was in danger. Honestly, arrows did come flying the instant you advanced even a few steps on a battlefield, so "dangerous" was fair.
...Though they seemed to fly in rather more thickly than strictly necessary.
If I were ever to die on a battlefield, I'd probably go down to an arrow. While I was entertaining a thought that would have made anyone else's jaw drop, I felt Seo Yeo's gaze boring steadily into me.
"……."
"...What is it?"
Seo Yeo, who had been staring at me with open displeasure, spoke in a curt voice.
"...Do not entertain thoughts of dying and leaving me behind for nothing."
That startled me. Was she using some kind of telepathy?
Seo Yeo, having seen straight through exactly what I was thinking, went on staring at me, still curt.
"I can tell by your expression."
"?"
Just what kind of expression does a person have to wear for someone to read he's thinking about his own death off it? Seo Yeo had clearly been living in a wuxia world all along.
I laughed.
"Aw, come on. Just something that crossed my mind. As if I'd actually die?"
"……."
"I mean it!"
Then again, the grand old tradition of fiction is that the moment someone says 'as if,' they die.
"...My lord."
Seo Yeo looked at me, apparently having caught me spouting nonsense in my head again. This really wasn't a lucky guess — she genuinely seemed to be reading my thoughts somehow.
I shrugged and spoke up.
"I mean, realistically, who actually wants to die?"
"……."
"Don't worry. I'm really not going to die."
Having said that, I snorted a laugh.
"Besides, with you here, why would I ever die?"
She kept her eyes narrowed at everything near me at all hours — who could possibly kill me? Anyone who tried would be the one taken out instead, launched straight off to the afterlife.
"I'm going to live a very, very long time, enjoy my full natural span, and only then shuffle off."
"...Come that day, I will follow you."
"?"
That was not what I meant.
Seo Yeo went on with a perfectly unbothered expression.
"For the place I belong is near you, my lord."
Her love weighed a ton...
"Scoring points the second I take my eyes off you, I see!"
"Lü Bu?"
Lü Bu had somehow sidled up beside me, nodding away furiously as she declared:
"No idea what she just said, but whatever it was — same here!"
"You don't even know what she's talking about?"
"Doesn't matter! Same!"
Refusing to be left behind, nodding along to words she hadn't understood — that was Lü Bu through and through.
"She says when I'm old and finally die, she's following right after me."
"Huh? That's..."
Lü Bu's eyes went wide in shock.
There it is. The reaction of an ordinary human being...
"Honestly, I think it's kind of romantic!"
"?"
"Even I can do that much, easy!"
Good grief, she was hopelessly smitten too.
So this is the premier romanticist of the Three Kingdoms, as invented by later generations...?
Sandwiched between the premier romanticist of the Chu–Han Contention and the premier romanticist of the Three Kingdoms, I was starting to feel dizzy.
The Coalition's main camp.
Within the Alliance Leader's quarters, a man opened his mouth in a deferential posture.
"Lord Alliance Leader, our forces are finding it harder and harder to endure our dwindling military provisions."
"So?"
"I beg you — show us magnanimity vast as the rivers and seas, and extend us even the smallest aid..."
"Hmph. For once I was in a fine mood, and because you claimed to have something important to say, I granted you an audience — only for it to be that same old business again."
Yuan Shu, seated and sipping honeyed water, cut the man off with a crooked smirk.
"What reason, precisely, do I have to help a faction that has been uncooperative with me?"
"That was the other factions — we were never like that!"
"Are you contradicting me just now? My, my. It seems even your basic deportment is lacking."
Yuan Shu mocked the man, who protested as though wronged. Remembering that Yuan Shu held the initiative at present, the man meekly lowered his head.
"...My apologies."
"There. I shall forgive you just this once. Is this not precisely the rivers-and-seas magnanimity you spoke of a moment ago?"
"……."
The hangers-on around Yuan Shu chorused their agreement.
"Indeed it is! Today, too, we are moved by your lordship's boundless generosity!"
"It is only natural that the fortune of All Under Heaven follows you, my lord!"
Yuan Shu laughed in high spirits.
"Hahahaha! You certainly know how to pick the right things to say!"
Watching the sorry spectacle of birds of a feather fawning over one another, the man bowed his head. The word "benighted ruler" must have been coined for precisely this kind of man.
"Nothing in this world comes free. If I hand over provisions, what will you give me in return?"
"What in the...!"
The man's eyes flew open in disbelief at Yuan Shu's words. Yuan Shu knew full well how desperately they had fought against Jeong Reung's army — and this was how he acted?
Casting not a glance at the man's reaction, Yuan Shu went on with perfect indifference.
"Fine. Hand over ten thousand soldiers, and I will consider it."
Meet his demands, and he would think about it. The man had seen his duty through to the very end even as the rest of the Coalition gradually pulled back, and Yuan Shu's attitude now amounted to treating him as beneath utter contempt.
"Forget it! We will resolve it among ourselves!"
Having realized from the start that Yuan Shu had never intended to spare any grain, the man spun on his heel, his face burning red with fury.
"Tsk, tsk. I offer him the opportunity of a lifetime, and he kicks it away."
Wrapped in his low-grade satisfaction, needling the man even as the fellow retreated without a clue what the problem was, Yuan Shu clicked his tongue.
"My lord! Urgent report!"
Barely moments after the man had left Yuan Shu's presence, a messenger came sprinting in with frantic urgency.
For reasons known only to himself, one of the civil officials at Yuan Shu's side spoke up.
"You wretch! Where do you think you are, barging in looking such a sorry sight—!"
"Enough. Let us hear what he has to say."
Halting the official who had been raging on his behalf, Yuan Shu put on a triumphant expression, as though he had just performed some great deed. The official, instantly catching what Yuan Shu wanted, bowed his head with practiced speed.
"Y-yes indeed! No one in all the world could match your lordship's magnanimous heart!"
"Hahahaha! Flattery it may be — and I'll take it!"
The corners of his mouth stretched wide in unmistakable satisfaction.
The official sighed inwardly — playing the chorus to this man's every word was a job in itself — and addressed the messenger.
"Well? Out with it. His lordship has graciously granted you this audience — if your news amounts to nothing, you will find him sorely displeased."
The messenger, thrown off balance by the strange proceedings from the moment he had stepped inside, could not find his footing. All he had done was come to deliver urgent news...
So, with a to-hell-with-it resolve, he blurted it out at the top of his lungs.
"The Yellow Turbans have begun stirring up trouble again!"
"What did you say?"
Yuan Shu's eyes went wide at the wholly unexpected news. After Zhang Jue had vanished without a trace, most of the Yellow Turban host had disbanded or taken to wandering in small, cowed bands — or so he had understood.
"The Yellow Turban remnants scattered across the realm are slipping in disguised as commoners, burning government offices and storehouses — running rampant in every way imaginable!"
"...Do not tell me this has happened in my cities as well?"
The messenger bowed his head, mortified.
"Yes! It happened in the blink of an eye, and we could mount no response—"
"You incompetent fools!!"
Yuan Shu cut him off with a roar.
"Then have you seized those damned wretches or not?!"
"The Yellow Turbans set the fires and fled immediately — we were unable to capture so much as a single one!"
"KRAAAAAGH!"
For Yuan Shu, it was news enough to send him clean through the roof.