Warlords Carving Up the Realm (4)
Midway through 191. While Liu Bei and her companions were away rescuing Liu Yu, time had drifted slowly by.
And time passing meant, in the end, that some change was bound to stir in the state of the realm.
"Over three hundred thousand rebels have risen in Qingzhou and Xuzhou?"
"That is correct."
I couldn't keep the surprise off my face at the report Jia Xu had brought me out of the blue.
Qingzhou.
The region stood far apart from the power struggles of the central plains; even before the age of chaos began, it had been where refugees fleeing the wars mostly settled. It also bordered the sea, giving it the face of a trading city as well — which meant that judged by both wealth and population, it was a land of staggering scale. And to make matters worse, the rabble in Xuzhou had joined hands with them, so there was nothing strange about the rebellion swelling to such an enormous size.
Jia Xu continued in her usual expressionless tone.
"They now wear yellow turbans on their heads, style themselves the Yellow Turban Army, and are said to make a habit of pillaging."
"Pillaging?"
"Yes."
Had these been the Yellow Turbans of the original history, I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow at the thought of them looting. But knowing the Yellow Turban Army of this world, I couldn't help but find the very idea strange. Zhang Jue, leader of the Yellow Turban Army, had strictly forbidden laying a hand on innocent commoners. I'd heard that back when the Yellow Turban Rebellion was in full swing, she personally beheaded anyone caught pillaging to hammer discipline into the ranks.
I sank into thought for a moment, then spoke again.
"Why would the Yellow Turban Army be pillaging?"
"Because they are nothing more than a pack of common bandits who merely took up the Yellow Turban name."
Jia Xu laid it out for me in terms impossible to misunderstand.
So they're stealing the name. It was the sort of news that would have made the real Yellow Turban Army — hard at work in Ye Province at that very moment — clutch the backs of their necks in outrage.
All manner of things happen in the age of warlords carving up the realm, and this was one of them. Great hordes of bandits rising in Qingzhou and Xuzhou at this time was something that had actually happened in real history. The massive horde under Gwan Hae that attacked Kong Rong, Chancellor of Beihai — that was them. And the ones Liu Bei fought in Qingzhou under the banner of rescue — them as well.
Except that Gwan Hae, who ought to have been leading that horde, had left Luoyang scarcely any time ago, saying she was bound for Ye Province.
...Then who's leading them now?
"Who commands these rebels at present?"
"I'm told there is no one who could properly be called their leader."
I held my silence a moment before throwing out another question.
"So they can't even hold together?"
"Indeed. Their command is not unified, and I hear they are scattered this way and that in complete disarray."
Well, that was that. A genuine rabble — nothing to them but numbers.
In the original history, once their rebellion was crushed, these bands marched through Bohai Commandery in Jizhou on their way to join the Black Mountain Bandits in Bing Province. But would that thug Gongsun Zan stand by and watch bandits trample his own territory? At their core, bandit hordes were a plague — things that scorched every land they passed through. Gongsun Zan personally led his army out and butchered bandits by the tens of thousands; the slaughter was said to have been so vast the river itself ran red.
These days the Black Mountain Bandits were folded under my command, so that particular tragedy would never come to pass — but precisely because of that, I couldn't begin to predict how these people would move.
Not that it mattered much in the end; the one who stood to profit most from this affair was Cao Cao.
When the Inspector of Yanzhou died at this time, Cao Cao drew in Bao Xin, Chancellor of Jibei, who had gathered up the dead man's forces — and swallowed Yanzhou in a single gulp.
And how, you might ask, did that inspector die?
Liu Dai, Inspector of Yanzhou, fell in battle trying to hold back the Yellow Turban remnants that rose at this time. He must have been truly abysmal at fighting, or else cursed with spectacularly bad luck.
And just like that, Cao Cao claimed Yanzhou in an instant without spending a shred of effort. That very Yanzhou which Xun Yu, the Talent to Assist Kings, had praised to the skies as the heart of the realm.
Nor did Cao Cao's windfall end there.
The soldiers that come to mind first when one thinks of Cao Cao's army: the Qingzhou Troops. Those troops were precisely the force born of forcing the surrender of the Yellow Turbans who rose here and folding them into her command. Even allowing for China's customary habit of inflating numbers, the Qingzhou Troops who surrendered to her back then must have numbered well over tens of thousands — which made this affair nothing less than an opportunity heaven had gift-wrapped for Cao Cao.
From this point on, her power grew explosively. She defeated Yuan Shu, her old adversary, drove him out, and forced him to relocate his base of operations entirely to the Yang Province region. Then she immediately extended her influence into Ye Province — and right around then, word reached Cao Cao's ears that Cao Song's entire household in Xuzhou had been massacred by Tao Qian.
Having lost her father and siblings, Cao Cao went mad-eyed and unleashed the great purge of Xuzhou, then clashed with Lü Bu, who had stabbed her in the back, and then...
My thoughts had run long, but the point was this: from here on, Cao Cao's presence in the world swelled enormously.
It would be a lie to say I had no wish to slam the brakes on Cao Cao's rise — but there was no way to stop it. The state of the realm was slowly sliding toward a breaking point, yet for now everyone was still watching everyone else. Han Fu kept up his checks out of fear of Yuan Shao's power, while Yuan Shao was beginning to feel the limits of her patience.
The Battle of Jieqiao — the clash that could be called the true opening of the warlords' age — had yet to come to pass.
If I so much as made a conspicuous move in the middle of all this, I'd be branded a public enemy and get to savor Coalition Season 2. Defend Hulao Pass again? Absolutely not.
The nail that sticks out is always the first to get hammered. So until the grudges between them festered deep enough, watching and waiting was all I could do.
On a map alone, our territory looked impressively vast, but setting aside the capital province of Sili, the rest were lands from which profit was hard to squeeze — we weren't exactly racing ahead of everyone else in the contest of powers.
Cao Cao and Yuan Shao. How would things unfold between us and them? I still couldn't say for certain.
Puyang — the principal city of Dong Commandery in the Yanzhou of the Later Han. In that city, presently under the rule of Liu Dai, Inspector of Yanzhou, a banquet was in full swing.
"Lord Cao. Have a drink with me."
With a faintly drunken look on his face, Liu Dai filled Cao Cao's cup.
"Thank you."
Cao Cao returned the courtesy in a flat, curt voice.
Watching her, Liu Dai ventured a remark.
"Have you heard the news?"
"What news would that be?"
"That a great rebellion has broken out in Qingzhou and Xuzhou."
At his words, Cao Cao nodded slowly.
"I am aware of it."
The sight of Cao Cao answering so deferentially, with every courtesy to Liu Dai, would have startled anyone who knew how she normally carried herself. Cao Cao studied the man as he stroked his beard.
The sudden invitation to a banquet. He claimed he'd asked her here simply to enjoy the evening together, but there was surely a design hidden beneath it. By his own logic — had he truly wanted nothing more than a banquet, why had he not invited Zhang Miao, Administrator of Chenliu, as well?
Liu Dai, for his part, looked as though it mattered not one whit to him whether Cao Cao had seen through him or not.
"In times like these, it's those in difficult straits who ought to join hands — wouldn't you say?"
"......"
"And so I've had myself a rather fine idea..."
Liu Dai let the words trail off deliberately, then fixed Cao Cao with a gaze swimming with desire.
...Tsk.
Having instantly identified the emotion behind that look, Cao Cao clicked her tongue inwardly. Men who wore that particular expression had never once strayed beyond her expectations.
"What would you say to you and I joining together — becoming one family?"
So it's this again.
Cao Cao opened her mouth, feigning a flicker of surprise.
"If that were to come to pass, I cannot say how the Administrator of Chenliu might take it."
"Haha! Everyone already knows your influence within Chenliu has grown far beyond his — what nonsense is this!"
Liu Dai laughed her objection neatly aside.
"You were aware of that, I take it."
"My, my. I know it shames you to admit it, but what a wicked little joke."
Embarrassed? Who, exactly?
"So you'll be agreeing to this proposal as well, yes?"
"...Whew."
At the sight of Liu Dai steamrolling the conversation forward on his own, Cao Cao could bear it no longer and let a small sigh escape her.
Whether he failed to notice or simply didn't care, Liu Dai stretched out his hand toward Cao Cao's shoulder.
"If the two of us join forces, there will be no one in all the realm who can stand against—"
"Enough."
"...?"
In the beat of Liu Dai's confusion, Cao Cao spoke on.
"I do wonder how men who dress themselves up as gentlemen, forever prattling of scholarship, always end up in exactly this shape."
Since the old days, the number of men who had thrown themselves at her like beasts on the strength of her looks alone had long since passed all counting. Cao Cao, her courtesies now folded away, slowly shook her head.
"I shall treat your proposal as something I never heard."
"What did you say?"
"How could any person of breeding wed the whelp of a beast?"
"Y-you bitch...!"
At being likened to a beast, Liu Dai's face crumpled and flushed by turns.
"I deigned to bind a mere wench of an eunuch's household to the noble blood of the imperial family — and you dare repay the favor with ingratitude!"
"'Imperial blood,' you say."
Cao Cao looked at him through a hollow laugh.
"Rich words, from the man who tried to overturn that very imperial house with his own hands. Your ancestor King Daohui must be weeping tears of blood in the world below."
"Silence!"
When Liu Dai hurled insults at Cao Cao's lineage, Cao Cao answered in kind — dredging up his ancestors and trampling his pride without ceremony.
"Come out, all of you!"
At Liu Dai's roar, dozens of ax-wielding soldiers revealed themselves all around the banquet hall.
Confronted with the sight, Cao Cao tilted her head.
"Hm. So that's it."
"So you finally grasp the situation you're in."
As Liu Dai curled his lips into a sinister smile, Cao Cao spoke on, her expression perfectly composed.
"Luring a guest to a banquet, lulling him into ease, then killing him — it's a time-honored trick."
"Haha! Fret not. A face like yours is far too fine to waste — I've no intention of killing you!"
No longer even pretending to conceal his ill intent toward Cao Cao, Liu Dai declared it openly.
"Starting with you, I will swallow Yanzhou whole — and from there, march on Qingzhou!"
"Isn't that dream a size too grand for the man dreaming it? Chase ambitions like that, and you're certain to die sprawled face-down in the dirt."
"Insolent to the very last...!"
Unable to stomach another insult, Liu Dai turned and barked orders at the soldiers around him.
"Make certain she can never so much as think of defying me again!"
Watching the ax-wielding soldiers close in with murder thick in the air, Cao Cao calmly drained the last of the wine from her cup.
Just as Liu Dai began to wonder at how utterly untroubled she seemed, Cao Cao turned her empty cup over and parted her lips.
"So that's how it is, then."
The instant the words left her mouth, the figure that had been holding its breath behind Cao Cao stepped into view.
"Dian Wei."
A woman in the flower of her youth, revealed from behind Cao Cao's back. At the sheer presence she radiated, Liu Dai's soldiers flinched and shuffled back half a step.
"I could take the field myself, but I find I'd like to see your valor once more — you who raised the great yamen banner with a single hand."
"Leave it to me."
Drawing the twin iron halberds slung across her back, the woman planted her feet and held her ground like a fortress.
"What do you think you're doing! You would shrink back in fear from a single woman?!"
With Dian Wei's aura alone pinning them where they stood, the soldiers could not bring themselves to close the distance, and Liu Dai harried them mercilessly, repeating his orders again and again.
"Attack!"
At last the soldiers charged with a roar, and Dian Wei swung the eighty-catty twin halberds gripped in her hands.
That day, the ruler of Puyang fell — and it was over almost before it began.