Warlords Carving Up the Realm (5)

Word had it that in Yanzhou, Cao Cao had turned the tables on Liu Dai—the very man who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had plotted to destroy her—killing him outright and seizing the whole of Puyang in the process.

Nominally, Zhang Miao still ruled Chenliu, but he had long since been half-swallowed by the ever-growing Cao Cao. With Puyang fallen into her hands as well, there was no longer any way around it: the new master of Yanzhou was Cao Cao.

Hearing the news, I gave a calm nod.

She had taken the province faster than I'd expected. The man would have died in battle against the bandit hordes of Qingzhou if history had run its original course—so what on earth gave him the confidence to invite Cao Cao over and then try to kill her? It must have seemed like an absolutely brilliant plan, in his own head at least.

As for Liu Dai, the former Inspector of Yanzhou—much like Gong Ju, that Inspector of Yu Province—he belonged to a tier of warlords I knew next to nothing about, so I honestly couldn't say what manner of man he'd been.

Most people, hearing the name Cao Cao, think first of peerless command and cunning stratagem, but her personal skill at arms was nothing to sneer at, either. Take the time, after her crushing defeat at Xu Rong's hands, when she was scraping together soldiers to salvage what remained of her forces and a mutiny erupted in her camp. The mutineers surrounded her tent in the dead of night and set it ablaze—and Cao Cao cut her way out personally, striking down dozens of them as she fought free of the crisis. Hers was a life spent on battlefields, a string of victories, and a habit of walking out alive from situations that would have killed anyone else.

It's no accident that Cao Cao holds the top spot for overall stats in the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms game series.

Now that Cao Cao ruled Yanzhou—the very center of the realm—her power was set to balloon. Word had it her relations with Yuan Shu had soured lately, so before long the two would come to blows, Cao Cao chasing Yuan Shu off into Gangdong and then stretching her hands toward Yu Province as well.

…Hmm. What will she actually do, though?

According to my intelligence, when the coalition marched on me, Cao Cao had hung back citing one excuse after another and simply watched how things unfolded. I heard she kept up that same air of indifference even as the coalition tore itself apart from within. If anything, she'd found it delightful, quietly whispering discord between the warlords whenever an opening appeared.

…A bit of a wicked streak, that.

And apparently it was Cao Cao herself who proposed disbanding the coalition at its final council. At that report, a question mark all but floated up over my head.

In the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms, while the whole anti-Dong Zhuo coalition tiptoed around watching one another, the one who argued most aggressively for battle had been none other than Cao Cao. In the end, unable to stomach the coalition's exasperating dithering, she marched out alone at the head of her own army—and was dealt a crushing defeat by the ambushing Xu Rong. Only afterward came Cao Hong's immortal line—"The realm can do without this Cao Hong, but it cannot do without Lord Cao Cao"—and thanks to Cao Hong's aid, Cao Cao survived by the skin of her teeth and quit the coalition for good.

That was the kind of figure Cao Cao had been during the coalition era: utterly committed to the destruction of Dong Zhuo. Purely my own subjective read, but I suspect loyalty to the Han court still lingered in her back then. There was more besides—from beating to death the uncle of Jian Shi of the Ten Attendants in the old days, to submitting memorial after memorial to the throne demanding a sweep of corruption and abuse. That would be the face of a capable minister of a peaceful age, one half of Cao Cao's famous assessment.

Never mind that she later went dark and threw away whatever humanity she had to become the Hero of Chaos.

Let's think this through carefully.

Could Cao Cao really be called my enemy now?

I shook my head.

The Cao Cao of today, I judged, still stood far closer to the capable minister of a peaceful age than to the Hero of Chaos.

So after much agonizing, I decided to grant Cao Cao an official post.

I stretched it out at length, but strip away the flourish and that was roughly the gist of it.

I'd decided to be extraordinarily generous with this appointment. Naturally, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cleared it with Her Majesty the Empress first—and she approved the moment I raised it, without so much as asking why. I still hadn't gotten used to that.

Why I went beyond the Inspectorship Liu Dai had held and granted Cao Cao the full rank of Provincial Governor was simple. On paper, an Inspector sounds like a high-ranking official presiding over an entire province; in practice, it was a post that got sneered at even by Administrators—its own nominal subordinates. An Inspector merely held the right to supervise a province, while an Administrator combined a commandery's civil administration, courts, policing, and military in a single pair of hands. As a result, it was hardly unheard of for the "superior" Inspector to be chased out of the province, or killed outright. Gongsun Zan's recent attempt on the life of Liu Yu, Inspector of You Province, was the prime example—and less famously, there was Sun Jian, who had killed Wang Rui, Inspector of Jing Province.

Like I said—a pack of common thugs, every last one of them.

Now, who do you suppose it was who first proposed creating this new office called Provincial Governor? The argument went that Administrators holding a commandery's military and administrative authority was the real problem, so why not concentrate the military and administrative power of the entire province in the Inspector's hands instead? The men at the top nodded along—huh, sounds reasonable enough—and accepted it, only for matters to grow far worse. Once a single man could wield, as he pleased, the vast territory of a province stitched together from several commanderies, the warlordization of the countryside only accelerated.

And who made that proposal?

None other than Liu Yan, the Governor of Yi Province—the very man now sealing Yi Province behind its passes and lording over it like a king in all but name. He had put the idea forward with impure intentions from the very start, so a flaw was baked into it from the beginning.

Which is to say, my appointing Cao Cao to the enormous post of Provincial Governor of Yanzhou carried a meaning anyone could read: let us get along from here on. Cao Cao had never once been hostile to me, so I would not be hostile to her either. Sure, it would sting plenty if she ever planted a knife in my back at full force—but that was no reason to live in fear of every little thing.

And so, along with Her Majesty's letter of appointment, I sent Cao Cao a personal letter in my own hand. I couldn't very well hand my own errand to the imperial courier, so I went looking for someone suitable to deliver it—and an unexpected figure stepped forward to volunteer. When I asked why, the answer was that there'd been nothing to do lately and life had grown dull. The offer cost me nothing, so I entrusted my letter to the volunteer.

Not long after, a messenger came looking for me.

"General-in-Chief! Urgent report!"

"What is it?"

One look at the messenger's stricken face told me it was nothing ordinary.

The messenger dropped to one knee, folded his hands, and reported at the top of his lungs.

"The White Horse General Gongsun Zan is marching on Jizhou at the head of an army!"

"…Precisely which direction is he advancing?"

The messenger answered in a steady voice.

"Toward Ye—which lies under Governor Han Fu of Jizhou!"

"…Good. I've got it. Head on back."

The messenger bowed respectfully and withdrew.

So it was finally beginning.

Gongsun Zan would now set about methodically smashing Han Fu's army to pieces, and Han Fu would come crawling to Yuan Shao for help. And Yuan Shao, playing the gracious savior, would march her troops straight into Ye—and swallow the whole of Jizhou in one gulp.

I did all the bleeding and dying, and some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other bastard swallows the province without lifting a finger? Naturally, Gongsun Zan's eyes would fly wide open at that. The two would turn on each other, their poisoned relations finally curdling into open war.

That war would be the Battle of Jieqiao.

In the history I knew, Yuan Shao won at Jieqiao—but who could say how it would play out here? Still, the mere thought of that lunatic thug Gongsun Zan winning and pushing all the way into Jizhou was enough to turn my spine to ice, so for my money, I hoped Yuan Shao took it. Gongsun Zan and I were already badly estranged over the whole Liu Yu prison-break affair, so Yuan Shao, who got along with me, was plainly the better neighbor. Surely I wasn't the only one who saw it that way? If Yuan Shao gave me a look that said why are you acting so familiar with me, I think that would sting quite a bit.

…

I had heard that Yuan Shao, much like Cao Cao, took almost no part in the coalition's activities—which meant she had to be on my side, right?

Yuan Shao had been at loggerheads with the coalition's so-called honey-water leader, Yuan Shu, from the very outset. Then, once a little time had passed, under the pretext of safely escorting the Yuan family household I had sent out of the capital, she returned the bulk of her meager troops to Nanpi. With her soldiers thinned and her own safety suddenly in question, the matter resolved itself with perfect timing—Yan Liang and Wen Chou arrived at her side, guard troops in tow. Yuan Shao explained that the two had simply finished the duties she'd entrusted to them, which was why she could bring them along now.

Sure they had.

While she still had soldiers, she'd dodged every engagement on the grounds that her generals were off leading troops in the front line—and the instant most of those soldiers went home and her personal security began to sag, she'd summoned Yan Liang and Wen Chou with the most impeccable timing imaginable. To anyone with eyes, it was a ringing declaration that she had no intention whatsoever of participating in coalition activities. Yuan Shu, I heard, flew into a rage over her conduct that came within a hair's breadth of foaming at the mouth. Even so, no one could simply throw Yuan Shao out of the coalition—she kept the other members supplied with provisions, making it impossible for anyone to lay a rash hand on her.

Left where she was, Yuan Shao would have spent the war squeezed under Han Fu's thumb, her stores dwindling to nothing. But because I had left the Yuan family's Luoyang property untouched and returned every last member of their household, her supplies were, by all appearances, overflowing. I'd sensed it back in Luoyang, and it held true here: a Four Generations of Three Excellencies family really was astronomically rich. By now the Yuan clan was backing the concubine-born Yuan Shao more ardently than Yuan Shu, the rightful heir of the main line. They knew, of course. They knew perfectly well that Yuan Shu was the man who would drag the family into ruin. So they had simply jumped ship to Yuan Shao.

For a while, then, Jizhou would ring with the din of Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan at each other's throats, while in Yanzhou and Yu Province, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Cao Cao and Yuan Shu took up their tug-of-war. The warlords who had spent all this time watching each other out of the corners of their eyes would now begin to move in earnest.

Warlords carving up the realm.

The era in which every soul harbored private ambitions and hurled themselves headlong toward them had, at long last, raised its curtain.