Xu Province Conflict (2)
Daybreak, heavy water fog hanging low.
An urgent dispatch reached Pengcheng.
The messenger, who had ridden at breakneck speed changing horses, poured out frantic words.
"The Liu Chong's forces that burned the supply depots in Donghai Kingdom and Guangling Prefecture... are coming toward P-Pengcheng! The vanguard is said to be led by Sun Jian and his daughter Sun Ce!"
Liu Chong's army had abandoned the strategy of avoiding a pitched fight as much as possible and chosen one instead. As if to prove it, the sixty thousand troops who had been pushing into Donghai Kingdom and Guangling Prefecture were now massed.
They were aiming for Pengcheng.
At last they intended to wage a pitched battle.
"Father! The opponent is Liu Seong-hwi, who shattered Dong Zhuo's army that once boasted a host as countless as a thousand chariots and ten thousand horses. If we face sixty thousand soldiers head-on, enormous losses will follow."
"War is like that. One must fight ready to die and do so with the resolve to give flesh and take bone! I will show the arrogant southern traitor the valor of Xu Province!"
Tao Shang spoke, his handsome face full of worry.
To that, Tao Qian responded with a stouthearted voice, revealing his determination.
"A few days ago I heard you visited the quarters of the Major of a Separate Command Shamoke under Gongsun Zan. Is it true?"
Liu Bei.
The wench who had become a hero of Xu Province overnight.
After quelling the bandit Que Xuan's gang, she had begun to flaunt her influence. Although she was nothing more than a guest general dispatched to keep Liu Chong's army in check, she was rallying the scholar-officials and local gentry of Xu Province, building renown and clout as a warlord.
A cunning snake.
A snake that would clearly swallow Xu Province whole one day.
She would surely bewitch his naive son with sly honeyed words. That was why Tao Qian warned his eldest son, Tao Shang, about the sinister cunning hidden behind Liu Bei's devastatingly beautiful features.
"You need not worry...! The Major of a Separate Command said nothing of the sort."
"Hm."
Tao Shang flinched and waved his hands.
With his whole body he was signaling that he had nothing to do with it.
"It is truly so, Father! How could this son go against your words!"
"How could I suspect you? That you are a filial son is a fact known even to a three-year-old. I brought it up only to warn you that the Major of a Separate Command, Liu Bei, is a treacherous person. So do not take it to heart."
Although a spineless, white-faced scholar, he was also a son who genuinely revered his father. By nature, Tao Qian was notoriously miserly, suspicious even of his closest attendants, but he trusted his eldest son Tao Shang alone.
Here was a son famed for his devotion.
There was no way such a son would be seduced by a sly, wicked plot.
Tao Qian had appointed his eldest son Court Gentleman the moment he came of age and ordered him to take sole charge of his meals, clothing, and belongings. For he trusted no one except his deeply filial eldest son.
"I trust you completely... but I heard that the Major of a Separate Command, Liu Bei, made contact with Ying several days ago. Who knows what sweet talk that viprously sinister wench poured into Ying's ears. Be wary of Ying; he may already be Liu Bei's string-puppet."
Tao Qian had his private troops under Cao Bao and the Danyang Troops keep watch over Liu Bei's forces. He also sent his agents to spy on the treacherous wench day and night.
Perhaps it was an unfounded fear.
It was nothing more than a warning from his intuition.
After all, no evidence of a treasonous plot had come to light.
"Cough! Cough, cough...!"
While preparing to march,
Tao Qian, who was readying his armor and weapons, broke into coughing.
His body was heavy and sluggish.
Along with a light dizziness, he felt nausea rising.
"My lord!"
"Are you well, my lord?!"
The seasoned old general, who had been flaunting his hardened vigor while donning his heavy armor, suddenly turned haggard. The officers who saw it rushed over, shouting near-screams.
It must be the pressure and the strain.
His mind and body had worn down while bracing for Liu Chong's invasion.
Already past sixty, he could not help but grow easily fatigued by the rapid, unceasing shifts in the war situation.
"All officers prepare to march! I will personally spur the troops from the front!"
"Please, my lord! You must get some rest first!"
The face that had been brimming with seething vitality faded, emaciated like a patient facing death. Cold sweat poured down as if he were about to vomit at any moment, and his face even trembled.
It was dangerous.
An ominous premonition struck.
Even laymen who knew nothing of medicine could sense at once that something was gravely wrong.
"My lord! Blood from your nose...!"
"Summon the physician at once! The lord's condition is critical!!"
Blood trickled from his nose.
That was not all.
Soon Tao Qian vomited up the contents churning in his gut.
"Guuoohgh——!!"
A vicious poison had begun to liquefy his five viscera and six bowels. As proof, black, discolored foul blood poured out, pooling on the ground.
* * *
Drums and horns crashed out a reverberating roar, ordering the officers and men to fight fiercely. The soldiers of Tao Qian's army burned with resolve to drive out the Liu Chong forces that had invaded their homeland.
Their homeland was in danger.
Right now, the people of Xu Province were calling for help.
When they met the foe on the battlefield, they would charge forward without hesitation.
"Silence the drums and horns! The march has been postponed!"
"Officers, steady the troops so they won't grow restless! We will ready the march once more!!"
Just as they were preparing for a decisive battle with do-or-die resolve,
a turn of events that felt like having cold water thrown over the soldiers unfolded.
The march was postponed.
It was only natural that the soldiers would be shaken by such a sudden reversal.
—The Governor of Xu Province is hovering between life and death.
—Some unknown villain fed the old lord a poison that kills on the spot.
Though close aides led by Sun Qian and Mi Zhu swiftly clamped down on the information, the secret soon leaked. The rumor that Tao Qian had collapsed from a virulent poison threw all of Pengcheng into an uproar.
Who,
who in the world—
What sort of heaven-outraging scoundrel had tried to murder the old lord?
Cao Bao and the Danyang Troops were immediately dispatched to search everyone who had been in contact with Tao Qian. Naturally, the eldest son, Tao Shang, who had been in charge of his father's clothing, meals, and everything else, became the prime suspect.
"That can't be...! That can't be! The Major of a Separate Command Shamoke swore that he would waste away and die slowly, and that it would absolutely never come to light that poison was used!!"
It was nothing like the explanation he had been given when he received the vial of poison.
That he would be sick for a few days and die of debility?
On the contrary, as soon as the poison entered him, he vomited blood in less than half a day.
He had been tricked.
He had fallen for that wench's scheme.
A sense of betrayal crashed over him, his heart collapsing in shock.
As if brainwashed by something, he had been bewitched by the whisper of a beautiful pit viper. Lured by a lewd figure and coquettish wiles that could forcibly captivate any man, he had fallen into an utterly heinous Chain Stratagem.
"Where is the young master Tao Shang!"
"Arrest the young master at once! We already have evidence that he bribed a young servant boy to mix poison into the lord's food!"
Countless officers and soldiers who had witnessed the ghastly scene stormed Tao Shang's quarters. They were gripping their sword hilts, as if to show they would never extend mercy to the degenerate who had tried to murder his own father.
He was going to die.
He would be sentenced to the harshest punishment.
While resigned to a fate meant to reward virtue and punish vice, Tao Shang still attempted to expose that the Major of a Separate Command, Liu Bei, stood behind it all. He had to reveal that today's brutal tragedy was the result of the beautiful viper's intrigue, so that the sinister other side of the personage revered as a hero of Xu Province would be made known to the world.
"Guhhkk...! Guoohhgh—!!"
While he awaited judgment,
Tao Shang abruptly clutched his chest and let out a shriek laced with agony.
And—
Just like his father, he vomited black, discolored blood.
* * *
The heinous degenerate who had tried to murder his father then died from poison he had prepared in advance. Met with one catastrophe after another, Tao Ying turned pale with shock and had the details investigated.
"M-My elder brother tried to kill Father...?"
That could not be.
It absolutely could not be.
Had his brother not been praised again and again by the scholar-officials and local gentry of Xu Province for his admirable filial piety? He could not bring himself to believe that his elder brother, who had truly revered their father, had committed such a heaven-outraging atrocity.
"So my brother died from poison in the end? Ha ha! I had already steeped the tea leaves sent to his quarters with the poison that the Major of a Separate Command Shamoke handed me... and yet he took himself out just like that. All that trouble for nothing!"
His brother was dead.
His father was hovering at death's door.
Surely the office of Governor of Xu Province and the title of Marquis of Lüyang would now fall to him. Tao Ying rejoiced, saying that the heavens, which had so callously ignored him until now, had begun to assist him wholeheartedly.
"It is an established, unchallengeable fact that I will be enfeoffed as a feudal lord commanding all under heaven! Now I need only take a peerless beauty as my wife! Wealth, glory, and a woman of empire-toppling beauty are all tumbling into my lap at once!"
The grief of losing his own flesh and blood lasted but a moment.
Elated by the thought that he had gained riches and honor just by sitting still, he burst into delighted exclamations.
"Young master, it is Commandant Zhang Kai."
"Enter."
He was in such high spirits that he could laugh off anything.
Tao Ying stretched out his hand and granted him entry.
Thereupon Zhang Kai entered the residence, a sharp dagger concealed in his breast.