Mopping Up (3)
After the coalition army marched home — and I'd endured my one round of provocation from Yuan Shu — I was promptly buried under another mountain of work. Once again there was no time to spare even a glance at the world outside; it was back to round-the-clock domestic administration. There was no helping it. We had succeeded in driving the coalition back, but our own army's losses had been considerable.
That famous Frenchman Napoleon once said that if your numbers are overwhelming, the numbers themselves are strategy — and he was dead right. The coalition's troops weren't as hopelessly useless as the peasant levies the Yellow Turbans had fielded in their early days, so there was no flaunting an overwhelming gap in strength. In experience and training, our soldiers were clearly superior, but elite or not, they were still only human. How was anyone supposed to hold against an endless human-wave assault with no end in sight?
Our veterans fell at their own steady pace, while the raw recruits who hadn't yet learned the battlefield fell in far greater numbers. Worse still, the foreign tribes of Bing Province and Xiliang kept us from concentrating our strength in any one place. In Xiliang, apparently, the Qiang had barely quieted down before the Di started running wild, so Ma Teng and Han Sui did send reinforcements — but the numbers were pitifully small against the coalition's scale.
As for Bing Province... well. It sits right where the hunting grounds of the Xiongnu, the Wuhuan, and the Xianbei overlap; enough said. As always, the Black Mountain Bandits were running their legs off doing everything they could to stop the raids. The one mercy was that those tribes hated one another's guts and kept busy fighting amongst themselves. The land was vast but the returns from holding it were meager — a headache either way.
It really was strange, though. Where did these tribes keep coming from? Surely the era of the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms wasn't going to erupt while I was still breathing... right?
For the time being, I would simply have to ignore whatever the warlords of the Central Plains did to one another. As this single coalition campaign had proven, their wariness toward our faction had already punched clean through the sky. The moment I set foot in the heartland, far too many of them would turn the spears they'd been aiming at each other straight back at me.
Someday the hour would come when I had to advance into the Central Plains. Now — with the damage from this war still being repaired — was not that hour.
I made no attempt to hide my surprise at the unexpected intelligence Jia Xu had brought me.
"You're telling me Liu Yan, entrenched in Yi Province, has severed every last road?"
"Yes. At present, no one at all is able to cross the Jiameng and Jianmen Passes under his control."
"......"
I sat in silence for a moment, then spoke again. "Why do you suppose he's done such a thing?"
"It is quite simple, my lord. He means to build a power base of his very own in Yi Province — a realm entirely independent."
"So in other words, a reactionary."
"That is correct."
Sly old fox, that one.
I threw out my next question. "And Zhang Lu, in Hanzhong?"
"Unlike Liu Yan, he has not cut off the road network outright."
"That's the closest thing to good news I've heard."
"However, I hear he has been styling himself the pontiff of a faith called the Five Pecks of Rice Sect."
So this one hasn't changed a bit from the original history either.
"Is there any chance of a large-scale uprising, like Zhang Jue's Taiping Dao?"
"It is a faith, yes, but its orientation is entirely different, so the likelihood is slim."
"Orientation?"
"The Taiping Dao chose to name the corrupt central government as its enemy and take up arms against it. The Five Pecks of Rice Sect chose to avoid conflict altogether and build their own utopia somewhere remote."
So it's the difference between radicals and moderates.
"And even if a revolt did break out, the sheer gap in the size of their followings would keep it very small in scale."
"Then there's nothing to worry about."
"No, my lord."
Jia Xu acknowledged my words with her usual placid expression, then went on. "That said, Zhang Lu is in the end one more warlord holding an independent domain. When the time is right, I believe a punitive campaign is the correct course."
"Understood."
Having grasped the gist of it, I nodded. To reach Jiameng Pass, which Liu Yan occupied, we would first have to get past Zhang Lu, who currently held Yangping Pass. While the others brawled over the Central Plains, I supposed I would have to expand my power in every other direction I could.
The problem was that Yi Province was cursed, from an attacker's perspective, with some of the filthiest terrain imaginable. The mountains were absurdly numerous, and on top of that absurdly treacherous, and the few roads that existed were mostly cliff-hugging ledges that made your head swim just to look at them. The soil was fertile, the harvests rich, the population large, the land a nightmare to invade — small wonder Wei, with national power several times greater, could never casually overrun Shu.
It wasn't for nothing that Deng Ai, who punched straight through that terrain and marched all the way to Chengdu, earned the nickname the Mountain-Climbing King. Jiang Wei had sealed off Jianmen Pass with an "absolute defense" — the kind you use to guard the entire planet — so Deng Ai simply went over the mountains and flanked around it. Even now, I honestly could not fathom how he crossed that cliff face in the dead of winter. They say he wrapped himself in blankets and rolled down the mountainside like a boulder. Utterly deranged man.
And so, once again, all I could do was quietly shore up my administration and tell myself the day would come eventually. As for the Central Plains, I'd just have to suck my thumb and wait for some great shift in the board. My one consolation was Jia Xu's point that Zhang Lu, the softest target available, could be conquered whenever preparations were complete.
It was true that our faction was currently the strongest under heaven, but it was far murkier whether we were strong enough to outright crush the others. A mere three years had made all the difference: Emperor Ling had died earlier than in the original history, and the warlords had dug themselves into every corner of the realm that much sooner. That was the biggest factor.
What use was Emperor Ling, honestly? While alive he ate through the country in grand style, and in death all he did was trip up his own descendants. Truly a job magnificently done. I sincerely hoped he was being soundly thrashed by every Han emperor who came before him, down there in the underworld.
Sighing inwardly at the thought of the man, I turned to look outside — and found that the sun had slipped low without my noticing, and dusk had settled over the grounds.
I rose from my seat, stretched out my stiff body, and spoke. "Let's call it here for today. Good work."
"Yes, my lord."
Jia Xu watched me go, her face as unreadable as ever.
Back at my own residence, I was sprawled out and idling the hours away when a familiar voice drifted in from beyond the door.
"My lord. May I come in?"
A voice soft enough to melt any man's heart just to hear it. Only one person in my household spoke like that, so I sat up from where I'd been lying.
"Yes. Come in."
"Pardon the intrusion."
Granted my permission, the woman opened the door and slowly revealed herself. An indefinable aura in which purity and allure coexisted. A face so bewitching that a single glance could snare the hearts of men. A beauty whose every movement made it impossible to look away.
"I trust the day treated you well."
Wang Yun's adopted daughter, Diaochan, bowed to me with perfect courtesy.
"Uh — yes."
I nodded back at her question with a distinctly dazed expression. I saw this woman every single day, and yet somehow I never quite got used to her. Perhaps because her beauty was simply too transcendent.
Even in China, a land overflowing with lovely women, Diaochan's looks stood in a class apart. She looked less like a mortal and more like an immortal maiden descended from the heavens. And there was something about that beauty which, without my ever deciding it, quietly drained the fight right out of me.
I am a man, and I like beautiful women — show me one who doesn't, short of a few eccentrics. But beautiful was one thing; Diaochan was simply too far past the sensible limit, and that was the problem. Every instinct I had insisted that getting carelessly close to her could only end badly. I felt as though I'd squander a kingdom just like the tyrant King Zhou, who doted on Daji, or the Tang emperor who lost everything to his love for Consort Yang.
The people around me sang my praises to the skies — a hero, a sage, what have you — but honestly? I was never a man of such iron resolve. Hand me a reason to fall, and I was an utterly ordinary man who would turn to the dark side without lasting long at all. And Diaochan, with that overwhelming beauty of hers, was a bomb more than capable of being that reason.
Which was why, even while keeping her near, I had been warily — and, I'll admit, rather clumsily — maintaining a peculiar distance from her.
"So what brings you today?"
"Yes. I have come to report that the education of the Dong clan, which you entrusted to me some time ago, is now fully complete."
"Already?"
I couldn't hide my surprise. "Dong clan" aside, they were simply ordinary little children who happened to carry the surname Dong. Children raised in wealth and comfort from the cradle — how had she made them this docile and obedient in so little time? Just as Wang Yun had boasted, Diaochan's talent for getting things done was genuinely exceptional.
"Then, my task being finished, I shall take my leave."
Perhaps because she understood that I kept her at arm's length, Diaochan never once forced her way closer to me. She simply resolved whatever I entrusted to her, watching me quietly from her place at my side.
"Just a moment."
I spoke up and stopped her before she could leave the room. Diaochan halted mid-step and turned to face me.
"...Have you some command for me?"
Tapping a finger against my knee, I said, "How would you like to hold an official post?"
"An official post, my lord?"
"That's right."
Her eyes widened slightly — a rare, unmistakable flash of surprise. I nodded at her question. Whether she meant anything by it I couldn't say, but Diaochan had spent all this time serving at my side while quietly taking the measure of what kind of man I was.
And I, in turn, had watched her just as closely, handing her one task after another. The result was a conclusion I had come to on my own: Diaochan — this beautiful woman — was the type who, once given a duty, took responsibility for it and carried it through brilliantly. And talent, no matter how much you have, is never enough.
So, in as casual a voice as I could manage, I urged her to take up office.
"...Would I not prove a hindrance instead?"
Whoa. Look at that destructive power. For a heartbeat I nearly lost myself and simply stared at her.
Shaking my head sharply to snap out of it, I said, "From where I stand, you're not that kind of person. And even if something did go wrong — everyone makes mistakes. It's fine."
So please, for the love of everything, share my workload.
Smiling breezily, I swallowed the rest of it down. Diaochan deliberated for a long moment, then bowed her head to me with grave courtesy.
"If that is your wish... then I shall obey."
"Thank you."
I couldn't hide the warmth that spread through my chest.