Damage Control (6)
Against all expectation, I had landed a true heavyweight in Xun You.
A strategist who had stood behind Cao Cao from the very beginning, right alongside Xun Yu. Where Xun Yu had anchored Cao Cao's rule by shoring up the rear of her domain, Xun You had advanced onto battlefield after battlefield at her lord's side, stacking up military merits one after another. If Guo Jia was a prophet who read the broad shape of the board and predicted what came next rather than crafting battlefield schemes, Xun You was a field tactician who proposed the operations themselves and drove battles to victory with her own hands.
She was unquestionably brilliant, it's true—but wedged between personalities as vividly distinct as Xun Yu, Jia Xu, and Guo Jia, her presence just sort of… faded. A lifetime without a single famous anecdote, never once stirring up trouble, simply doing her job well year after year—and precisely because of that, relatively few people remember her. A figure of quiet misfortune, if ever there was one.
Empty Food Box Xun Yu. Cao Cao's designated delinquent, Jia Xu. The sharp-eyed prophet, Guo Jia.
Wow. Talk about a cast with clearly defined characters. While every one of them carried some weighty story of their own, Xun You—the elite who had simply worked steadily and well, without incident—ended up with nothing at all. Pitiful, if you wanted to call it that, though she was never once lacking in ability.
She must have noticed me giving her an odd look, because Xun You met my eyes. Confronted with those dark brown eyes, I turned my head slightly and looked away.
"Why are you avoiding my gaze all of a sudden?"
"It's nothing."
At my response, the corners of Xun You's eyes narrowed a touch.
"Have you perhaps been thinking something discourteous about me?"
"I told you, I wasn't."
Her remark, seeing straight through me to an almost frightening degree, made me flinch.
"…I'll choose to believe you."
Xun You studied me for a long moment before finally withdrawing that suspicious gaze. I let out a silent breath of relief.
So being brilliant naturally comes with sharp instincts, huh? Every irreverent thought I had got caught red-handed—I couldn't get away with a thing around her.
After Xun You took office, the pace of our civil administration picked up even further. In game terms, it felt like a domestic growth rate that had been climbing by 40 now jumping by 50 or 60 at a time. So this was why they called the age of the Three Kingdoms a war over talent. For the record, even that +40 had only been possible through the tireless efforts of Zhang Jue, Jia Xu, and several other dedicated figures. Back when all I had were talents good at nothing but fighting… well, things had mostly stayed at a standstill.
I'd heard the bastards beyond Hulao Pass were beginning to show signs of turning on one another, so all I had to do was keep watching the situation unfold and clean up the damage. And once I'd mopped up enough, I could strike out for Yanzhou or Yi Province as I pleased. If neither of those worked out, there was always the option of pushing through Bing Province into Jizhou or You Province.
Now, what could be called the next great event after the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition in original history?
With Xun You carrying on her work in silent diligence before me, I sank deep into thought.
Right—the Battle of Jieqiao, wasn't it? The incident where Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan tore into each other over control of Jizhou. Originally, the two had conspired together, promising to drive out Han Fu and split Jizhou between them—and the battle erupted when Yuan Shao failed to honor that promise.
When Gongsun Zan attacked Han Fu, the Governor of Jizhou, Han Fu lost his nerve and begged Yuan Shao for help. Yuan Shao, as though she had been waiting for precisely this moment, pretended to ride to Han Fu's rescue and swallowed Jizhou whole. Gongsun Zan then demanded the promise be kept—hand over your half of Jizhou—only for Yuan Shao to play innocent, insisting no such agreement had ever existed. So Gongsun Zan sent his younger brother Gongsun Yue, and on the road home, Gongsun Yue was struck down by arrows at the hands of men claiming to be Dong Zhuo's soldiers.
Except at that point, Dong Zhuo had already burned Luoyang and was off lounging around in Chang'an—how exactly would his soldiers be wandering through Jizhou? Gongsun Zan was no fool either; he saw exactly whose handiwork it was, flew into a rage, and declared war on Yuan Shao on the spot. That was the Battle of Jieqiao.
And what became of Han Fu, the original Governor of Jizhou, once Yuan Shao shoved him aside? Having surrendered to Yuan Shao, Han Fu came to believe his new master meant to kill him—and took his own life. Whether Yuan Shao truly intended his death, I couldn't say, but either way, that was how the man who had once ruled Jizhou met his end.
Raising a map of China in my mind and retracing original history step by step, I eventually landed on one particular figure.
Liu Yu, Inspector of Youzhou.
The man the central government had dispatched to Youzhou to crush the rebellion of Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun. Upon taking office, Liu Yu resolved the rebellion—and from then on, he began locking horns with Gongsun Zan. The reasons the two men clashed were many. Liu Yu championed conciliation, seeking peaceful accord with the nomadic tribes, while Gongsun Zan pressed a hard line that the nomads should be put to the sword without a shred of compromise.
Having been tormented by every nomad tribe under the sun since childhood, I could somewhat understand where Gongsun Zan was coming from. But the Han's national strength had already decayed far too much to wage all-out war against the tribal powers the way he proposed. Even Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han himself, had marched out against the nomads in his later years and come home utterly crushed—after which the Han spent the next hundred years paying them tribute. And he wanted all-out war in the Han's current condition?
Hmm… wasn't that just a little overconfident? Especially these days, when the nomad raids were strangely intensifying.
Besides, wherever Gongsun Zan was posted, rumor had it he squeezed his own people dry and ruled with savage brutality. To Liu Yu—a man famed as the very embodiment of benevolence and righteousness, who showered his people with good governance—such conduct would have been a thorn in his eye even if the nomad question had never existed. And Gongsun Zan, for his part, surely chafed at Liu Yu constantly holding forth about his failings.
They do say the truth stings worst of all. There was no way Gongsun Zan looked kindly on Liu Yu trotting out nothing but correct remarks in that prim, nagging tone of his.
In the end, the two raised their armies and went to war. But Liu Yu, the emblem of benevolence, could not defeat Gongsun Zan, the White Horse General who had spent years grinding the northern nomads into the dirt without respite. Having taken Liu Yu and his family captive, Gongsun Zan taunted him—declared he would spare his life if rain fell from the sky—and then killed him anyway.
If that sounded familiar, it should. It was the exact same line Sun Ce used before killing Yu Ji in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
By slaying Liu Yu, whose name was renowned across the realm for virtue, Gongsun Zan branded himself a thug bastard in the eyes of all under heaven. Naturally, the tribes who had been close to Liu Yu glared at him with bloodshot eyes and ground their teeth. In truth, Liu Yu stands as a textbook example of how kindness alone cannot keep you alive in a chaotic age like this one.
What must Liu Bei, then serving under Gongsun Zan, have felt as she watched it happen?
For one thing, Liu Yu had taken office as Inspector of Youzhou right before Dong Zhuo seized power, so he would have had no way of grasping what was happening in the capital now. In the first place, if he'd known how things really stood in Luoyang, he would never have joined a coalition that had me in its sights.
Liu Yu was the sort of man who did what he believed to be right, no matter what the people around him said. And if that paragon of virtue had abstained from the coalition, the other warlords would naturally have started thinking along these lines:
'Liu Yu—whose loyalty to the imperial house outstrips anyone's—isn't joining?'
'What's this? Has something gone wrong?'
'Could all those rumors actually have been lies?'
To be sure, more than a few warlords joined the coalition while quietly suspecting the rumors were false. But a few simple, honest lords must have truly believed I was Dong Zhuo version two. And if Liu Yu's absence had let the world see the rumors for the lies they were, there would surely have been warlords who never joined the coalition at all. It never occurred to me back then, but now that the idea had surfaced, I felt a flicker of regret. It had been a genuine chance to limit the damage.
Then again, if I actually tried to insist to Liu Yu, I'm not some Dong Zhuo of a bastard!, how on earth would I even go about it?
I turned to Jia Xu, standing at my side, and spoke.
"Jia Xu. How are things in You Province these days?"
"You Province… I'm told relations between Liu Yu, the Inspector of Youzhou, and Gongsun Zan, Administrator of Beiping, have been souring steadily of late."
"Think those two will come to blows before long?"
"Yes. War will break out soon—I am certain of it."
"When?"
"Within the year, without fail."
Jia Xu gazed at me with her clear, luminous blue eyes.
Something about the timing felt off. In original history, Gongsun Zan's full-scale collision with Liu Yu had only come after the Battle of Jieqiao, once he had already fought Yuan Shao. And now the two were set to clash already? What on earth was this? What kind of butterfly effect had I set off?
"What happened, to set those two at each other's throats?"
"It seems Gongsun Zan has of late been intruding into Liu Yu's territory at will, raiding common households to bankroll his war machine."
Seriously? He was picking a fight in broad daylight. What Gongsun Zan was doing was such a naked provocation that letting it pass unchallenged would have been the strange response. As if to prove no one could call him anything but a thug bastard, his conduct was thuggish through and through.
If Jia Xu herself would stake her reputation on it, then a collision between Liu Yu and Gongsun Zan was a foregone conclusion. So what should I do now? Help Liu Yu? Or simply stand back and watch it burn?
Weighing the rumors drifting in from every corner of the realm against the intelligence I'd gathered personally, I judged Liu Yu to be precisely the sort of man who would roll up his sleeves and throw himself into caring for his people. A superb check on the northern nomads, too, and one already skillfully wielding a policy of conciliation. The moment Liu Yu lost his life, I suspected, the nomad offensives that were already such a throbbing headache would only redouble.
After a moment's deliberation, I reached my decision: helping Liu Yu was the right call. Where in this whole world would you find a man whose virtue rivaled Liu Yu's? I had no intention of fussing over how it might shift the future balance of power. I simply wished to help a good man, and to lend my strength so that such a man would not be thrown away on a pointless death.
I looked at Jia Xu and opened my mouth again.
"Jia Xu. If I wanted to help Liu Yu, how would I go about it?"
"…"
At those words, Jia Xu's eyes went wide with unmistakable surprise. Xun You, likewise occupied with work nearby, froze mid-motion and turned to stare at me as well. Faced with the strange atmosphere that had formed in an instant, I felt my face go sheepish.
"Come on, there's no one in the realm more virtuous than Liu Yu. He'd make a fine ally."
"…He is also one of the lords who joined the coalition against you." Jia Xu, who had listened to my words in silence, finally spoke.
"All the same, wouldn't it be a good thing to add another ally?"
"Judging by the reports, the Inspector of Youzhou participated in the coalition's activities with remarkable enthusiasm, did he not?" This time it was Xun You, who had been watching the exchange, who answered.
Well, from Liu Yu's standpoint, it had been a war to rescue the Emperor from a monster like Dong Zhuo. But I said nothing and kept my mouth shut. This was Jia Xu and Xun You, after all. The moment I tried to match those two in a battle of pure logic, I'd learn firsthand what it meant to be run through by a single sentence. Which left me exactly one option.
"I'm begging you."
"…"
"Do it for me."
"Liu Yu really could become an ally, you know? Can't you make it work somehow?"
I wheedled and whined without a shred of shame. Losing such a genuinely good man would be a tremendous loss in this dizzying age of chaos. He was a noble soul who served as a load-bearing pillar of the imperial house—win him to our side, and the Emperor and the Prince of Chenliu would be overjoyed as well.
At my plea, Jia Xu closed her eyes and sank into thought.