Warlords Carving Up the Realm (7)
Ma Chao, Mengqi. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, she is the woman who bears the epithet Splendid Ma Chao — a name celebrating her striking beauty.
It was Ma Chao who routed Cao Cao's forces in open battle — the very faction that had shattered Yuan Shao at the Battle of Guandu and completed her final evolution. She was even the sort of figure who, at the Battle of Tong Pass, outright threatened Cao Cao's life.
The army Cao Cao led in those days had every manner of general packed into its ranks — Zhang He, Xu Huang, Cao Ren, Xu Chu, and more besides.
That Ma Chao bored straight through all of them, pierced Cao Cao at her most unguarded moment, and put her very life at stake tells you everything about how brilliant her generalship was.
Cao Cao, having barely escaped with her skin, put her head together with Jia Xu and spun a stratagem of discord, finally succeeding in driving Ma Chao back.
For Ma Chao's host at the time was a kind of coalition — an army formed by the warlords of Xiliang banding together.
Once again, in the end, it was the coalition that proved the problem.
Lose she did — but even amid her defeat Ma Chao went on to repel Xiahou Yuan, performing at her usual standard without fail. Weigh all of these factors together, and she had more than earned a place among the ranks of famous generals.
With Ma Teng — who had come calling yet again today without fail — seated across from me, I took a leisurely sip of my tea.
"So when is Ma Chao coming?"
"...Mm. To tell you the truth, I couldn't say for certain when my daughter will arrive."
Ma Teng answered with a faintly troubled look on his face.
"What was it she said... that she needs to prepare her heart? Something like that. She's asked for more time."
"Prepare her heart...?"
What kind of mental preparation could she possibly need just to come and meet me? Had she gotten it into her head that this would be some kind of interview where I'd fire questions at her? If so, that I could understand.
I nodded and gave my answer.
"She wants to show me a more perfect self, then. There's no need to rush her."
"Hahaha! As ever, the General-in-Chief's magnanimity is as vast as the rivers and seas!"
Ma Teng burst into hearty laughter at my reply.
"Well then — enough of this tea. What say you to a drink instead?"
"Drink that often and it'll ruin your health."
I shook my head at Ma Teng's suggestion.
"This, too, is part of that health regimen you yourself preached to me. How about it?"
"Hmmmmmgh... I... can't rightly argue with that..."
Ma Teng let out a mournful groan, looking thoroughly crestfallen.
No matter how carefully I paced myself, sitting across from Ma Teng with cups in hand always somehow ended with far too much drink gone.
And since his tolerance ran far deeper than mine, it was all the harder to even feel how much I was putting away.
So when I turned down the drinking party with an easy smile and health as my excuse, a faint shadow of gloom settled over Ma Teng's face.
To Cao Cao — who had secured Puyang and returned to Chenliu — there arrived an envoy from the imperial palace.
She showed a brief flicker of intrigue at the unexpected visit, but the moment the envoy appeared before the government office she received him with impeccable courtesy.
The envoy's pronouncement wound this way and that at considerable length, but boiled down to its essentials, it said this:
Let Cao Cao, Chief Commandant of the Army, be hereby appointed General Who Conquers the East and Governor of Yanzhou!
Let her henceforth devote her talents and her sworn duty to the great work of setting right this disordered realm!
The moment the imperial envoy — who had proclaimed it all so proudly to Cao Cao's very face — departed, the magnates clustered around her launched into their fawning.
"My lord! Our humblest congratulations!"
"What truly joyous news this is!"
Every word of it aimed at currying favor, by any means necessary, with the woman who had just become the new power of Yanzhou.
Cao Cao heard the flattery out with studied indifference, then parted her lips.
"Withdraw."
"......"
At her word, the magnates who had been spitting praise moments before began glancing nervously at one another.
"Did you fail to hear me?"
"N-No, of course not!"
And when Cao Cao turned an emotionless stare upon them, the magnates flinched as one and scrambled out of her presence.
A woman with striking pale-blue hair approached Cao Cao's side.
"Now that the Emperor's officially recognized your grip on Yanzhou, things'll get a whole lot easier from here, right?"
"They will. Consolidating Yanzhou just became a fair bit simpler."
The former Inspector of Yanzhou, Liu Dai, had never been a man who ruled the whole province.
He had been, at most, a lord of Dong Commandery with Puyang as his seat.
Each of Yanzhou's commanderies had its own Administrator wielding power of his own, and all Cao Cao had managed so far was to swallow Chenliu Commandery, once Zhang Miao's domain, and Dong Commandery, once Liu Dai's.
With Bao Xin, Chancellor of Jibei and formerly Liu Dai's man, also coming under her banner, Cao Cao's faction now amounted to roughly half of Yanzhou.
She was indeed the largest power in the province at present, but she had by no means clenched Yanzhou's entire authority in her fist.
"So what're you going to do with the rest of them?"
"Oh, that part is simple."
Cao Cao answered Xiahou Dun's question.
"Those who grovel at my feet live. Those who resist to the very end will find nothing but death."
The mere thought of buttering up the magnates and rolling out some conciliatory policy made Cao Cao's skin crawl.
She had already done quite enough of that back in Luoyang.
At Cao Cao's hard line — that any who refused to submit would be killed to the last man — Xiahou Dun spoke up with a worried look.
"Mengde. You've noticed their stares haven't exactly been friendly lately, yeah?"
"I've noticed."
Cao Cao replied with an expression that couldn't have cared less.
"I'm slowly stripping away the power they've held all their lives. What did you expect — warm smiles?"
The moment Cao Cao caught so much as a whiff of corruption from any magnate in Yanzhou, she seized on it as pretext to slash his privileges to a fraction — or strip them away entirely.
"One wrong move, and those bastards could all rise up at once."
Xiahou Dun voiced her worry that the magnates might do something rash.
However you sliced it, anyone hoping to plant a banner in this world ultimately had no choice but to cooperate with the local gentry.
Persecute every last one of them, and talented men would stop coming to your door — and you'd be left waging a grueling war with your support completely severed.
"That's not worth worrying about."
Cao Cao brushed aside Xiahou Dun's concern in a single stroke.
"There isn't a soul in Yanzhou who could rally these magnates and raise a banner of revolt. Just where would they find the confidence to rise up?"
"...You think so?"
"I do."
At Cao Cao's explanation, Xiahou Dun nodded along as if that settled the matter.
"Well, if our brilliant Mengde says so, I suppose that's how it is."
It was a faintly nonsensical thing to say, but that was precisely how deeply Xiahou Dun trusted the woman called Cao Cao.
'...It isn't as though such a person doesn't exist at all.'
Cao Cao swallowed the rest of the sentence.
Zhang Miao, Mengzhuo.
If that man — whose name still carried real weight in Yanzhou — were to raise a rebellion, the magnates who nursed grudges against Cao Cao would flock to his side in a heartbeat.
From where Cao Cao stood, Zhang Miao was unquestionably a man who carried risk.
And yet she did not particularly worry about the danger of revolt.
That coward Mengzhuo would never so much as entertain disloyal thoughts so long as she drew breath.
A man who agonized day and night over his standing with Yuan Shao — ties that weren't even severed — dreading that any day might be his last.
He was without question a virtuous soul, chivalrous to a fault and never one to hesitate when someone needed aid; the trouble was simply that he had far too little spine.
Just then, an official appeared before Cao Cao.
"My lord. An envoy from the General-in-Chief has arrived."
"Show them in."
The official bowed and withdrew at Cao Cao's word, and before long a woman came walking toward them from a distance.
At the sight of a face she had seen once before, back in the allied army, Cao Cao's lips parted slightly.
"...A familiar face."
"I am called Liu Bei Xuande."
The woman introduced herself with a gentle smile and bowed courteously to Cao Cao.
"I have come to deliver the General-in-Chief's letter to the Governor of Yanzhou."
"......"
The woman who had once stood behind Gongsun Zan in the days of the alliance.
That same woman Cao Cao had once watched with such interest now stood here, she said, bearing the General-in-Chief's command.
"Weren't you, by all rights, an enemy of the General-in-Chief?"
"I was. Yet, undeserved as it was, the General-in-Chief saw fit to forgive me most graciously."
"Hmm..."
Cao Cao, lost in thought for a moment, put the question to her again.
"The General-in-Chief would never send a kinswoman of the imperial house on a personal errand. You volunteered for this, didn't you?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"To repay the grace that the General-in-Chief has shown me."
So answered Liu Bei, the smile never once leaving her lips.
"......"
For reasons she herself couldn't name, watching Liu Bei like this stirred a faint displeasure in Cao Cao.
"You aren't hiding some other intention, are you?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
Liu Bei put on the very picture of incomprehension at Cao Cao's question.
But Cao Cao, who had witnessed countless lies unfold since her days in Luoyang, knew.
That black-haired woman was lying at this very moment.
"...Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped the woman who had caught the lie.
Lying without a single flicker crossing her face?
The part about repaying a debt of grace was no lie.
If there was one problem, it was that something far stickier had been mixed into it.
Whether she simply hadn't recognized it herself, or was deliberately concealing it — Cao Cao guessed the latter.
"......"
"......"
And so Cao Cao and Liu Bei held their silence, facing each other down.
'...What is this?'
Xiahou Dun, watching from the sidelines, kept sprouting question marks over what the situation even was.
Why had Mengde suddenly soured on the woman? And why was this Liu Bei person locked in a battle of wills with her?
The brief standoff of locked gazes came to an end when Cao Cao spoke first.
"...Fine. You say the General-in-Chief sent a letter?"
"I do."
"Then hand it over."
Liu Bei held out the letter, and Cao Cao took it — and slipped it into her breast without reading a word of it.
"Rest a while, until I've written my reply."
"Thank you."
Bowing at Cao Cao's word, Liu Bei withdrew.
"Mengde. What on earth was that about?"
Once Liu Bei was gone, Xiahou Dun, who had watched the whole exchange unfold, asked with a puzzled face.
Cao Cao answered her in a voice tinged with distaste.
"I get the feeling she and I just wouldn't get along."
It was the first time in all the years she had known her — back to when they were young — that Cao Cao had reacted this way to a person on sight, and Xiahou Dun couldn't quite hide her astonishment.