Enemies on All Sides (3)
The prefectures of Yu Province, the heart of Guandong, were being split between Liu Chong's army and Cao Cao's army. Yuan Shu's army, which had tried to seize Runan Prefecture with its remnants without knowing its place, was routed by Cao Cao's forces and disintegrated.
After the proclamation of the Emperor,
Liu Chong's army led a large force and annexed the counties around Chen Kingdom.
"I... I shall swear fealty...! Please accept the Runan Yuan Clan! While fleeing that vicious, tyrannical eunuch bitch I have gone days without a single grain of food!"
Yuan Shu.
Yuan Shu, reeling from repeated disasters, requested to surrender.
The young master of the Runan Yuan Clan had been reduced to a tattered wreck—proof that Cao Cao's army had threatened his life time after time.
Poetic justice, you could say.
It was a miserable end.
A fitting outcome for the wayward scion of a Great Noble House who once styled himself a knight-errant of the age.
"Your manner of speech remains impertinent. You're on the verge of starving to death and you still insist on clinging to the dignity and prestige of a Great Noble House? Perhaps I should have you tenderized with a club."
"N-No! That cannot be! This foolish servant has committed a capital offense!"
Thud—
Yuan Shu knocked his head against the ground and cried out desperately.
The topknot crown once adorned with rare gold and jewels was nowhere to be seen. The lustrous golden hair that had symbolized the nobility of a Great House was now loosed in wild disarray, like a lowborn butcher's.
His clothing was no different.
The young master who had never been seen without dazzling finery now wore nothing but tattered rags.
"I will ask you once. Why should I accept you? You recklessly pushed for Luoyang hoping to monopolize the glory and the credit, only to be smashed by Lü Bu's army. Not content with that humiliation at the hands of Liu Biao and the local gentry of Xiangyang City, you even let the White Wave Bandits snatch Nanyang Prefecture from you."
There was no reason to accept his surrender.
He was nothing but a Street Ruffian who brought harm without a single benefit.
Lineage. Background. Wealth. Prestige.
He had lost every strength he had staked his blind faith upon.
For any true nobility flows from power and authority in the first place.
The legitimate heir of a Four Generations of Three Dukes Great Noble House had fallen to a starving beggar who could not even scrounge his next meal. The renowned figures of the realm who knew Yuan Shu's arrogance laughed it off as poetic justice.
"If you give the order, I will take his head and hang it from the city gate." "Hyaaak!!"
A beauty with short-cropped green hair raised a sharp Short Halberd and threatened Yuan Shu.
It was Taishi Ci, captain of the bodyguard.
The beauty advanced slowly, and Yuan Shu, losing all composure, let out a single shriek.
"Hold. Even so, we cannot simply execute starving guests without a word. They may be vermin of no benefit... but I shall receive them as guests of the Imperial House for now."
I decided to accept Yuan Shu's force, now reduced to a roving army. Zhao Yun and Taishi Ci, who had already dispatched men to prepare for the beheading, did not hide their disappointment.
"I-Imperially magnanimous grace! Your Highness the Crown Prince...!"
"It is the benevolence of His Majesty the Emperor! Face south toward His Majesty at once and shout Long Live three times!"
"Long Live! Long Live! Long Live His Majesty the Emperor!!"
"Good."
Yuan Shu, trembling all over, shouted Long Live three times.
Yuan Shu's subordinates, watching him, wore expressions of unmistakable wretchedness.
A clown.
The legitimate heir of the Runan Yuan Clan had become a clown.
The exaggerated gestures and the fawning voice—an utter clown.
"Husband...!"
"Father!"
Yuan Shu's wives and concubines wept, their faces full of tangled emotions.
And his young children were the same.
Now they had no refuge left to turn to.
Only jackals after their lives lay in wait.
Had the highborn nobles of the Runan Yuan Clan, raised like delicate treasures, ever faced a life-or-death extremity? Dong Zhuo's army had placed bounties on Yuan Shu and his household for having joined the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition, and the situation had grown even more dire.
"Go south to Lujiang Prefecture. I shall grant you three hundred li of territory as a fief. And address me as Your Highness the Crown Prince."
"O-Of course... How could it be otherwise, Your Highness the Crown Prince."
Grovelling before the strong, brash before the weak.
Yuan Shu, who had always been a petty, contemptible wretch, cast aside all dignity and dropped to his knees first.
* * *
The negotiations were not limited to Cao Cao's army and Lü Bu's army.
We had dispatched spies to Yuan Shao's camp, which still maintained neutrality, and were watching their movements.
"We might be able to conclude an alliance in exchange for handing over Yuan Shu and his household, who walked in of their own accord. Assuming, that is, that there remains even a sliver of possibility for an alliance with Yuan Shao's army."
"Is that why you accepted that wastrel of a Great Noble House?"
"Obviously. Do you think I'm insane enough to welcome a scoundrel like that with open arms?"
"..."
A hostage and gift in one.
A single use of Yuan Shu, now reduced to a roving army, was enough.
One opinion had been to treat him as a propaganda tool—borrowing the majesty and prestige of a Great Noble House, wouldn't that suffice?—but I had rejected it immediately. Yuan Shu was greedy and debauched by nature, a man of Rebellious Streak whom no one could truly follow.
"Setting aside the hopeless degenerate for now... What is the state of the warships deployed on the Jing Province front?"
"We are drilling a fleet of three hundred vessels and twenty thousand marines."
Three hundred warships.
And twenty thousand marines.
Zhou Yu, who concurrently held the offices of Commander and Governor of Yuzhang, was cooperating with Deputy Commander Lu Su to train the marines. Since the fleet and marines would be indispensable for confronting Liu Biao's forces in Jing Province, I placed great expectations on Zhou Yu.
"Any problems?"
"A warlord of Jiangxia Prefecture who commands a formidable armed group on the Yangtze River has joined Liu Biao."
Huang Zu.
A subordinate warlord under Liu Biao.
One of the renowned commanders who held sway in the south.
Zhou Yu was surely referring to Huang Zu, the Jiangxia Prefecture warlord.
Originally, Huang Zu's forces had grown by collecting goods and transit tolls from the merchant vessels of Jing Province and Yang Province. By taking in refugees who had come south from the Central Plains and by recruiting the river pirates infamous on the Yangtze, Huang Zu's army expanded its strength and now boasted tens of thousands of officers and soldiers.
"Liu Biao's army... This is going to be a headache."
"River pirates presumed to belong to Huang Zu's forces have been sighted in the Lujiang Prefecture and Yuzhang Prefecture sectors. They attempted to ambush the enemy's rear, but every time, the pirates eluded pursuit with uncanny skill."
Pirates brazen and agile enough to slip past a fleet deployed to the Jing Province sector.
One name came to mind.
Gan Ning.
A rebel of Yi Province and a leader of river pirates.
But the point in history when Gan Ning failed in the Yi Province rebellion and fled to Jing Province was the transitional period after Liu Yan's death, when Liu Zhang took power. Liu Yan still wielded absolute authority in Bashu in robust health, so it might not be Gan Ning.
'If it is Gan Ning... I'd like to win her over somehow. She'd be the perfect vanguard commander for the fleet.'
No matter how many capable talents you have, it is never enough.
I began to take an interest in the person presumed to be Gan Ning.
"You summoned me, Your Highness the Crown Prince."
Senior Assistant Officer Jian Yong.
The foremost of the Jian-Sun-Mi Trio.
Liu Bei's childhood friend from the same village and an advisor in Liu Bei's army.
I had designated Jian Yong as the head of the delegation to be sent to Cao Cao's army and Lü Bu's army. Even in the Original Timeline, Jian Yong had been a diplomat who, together with Sun Qian, managed the relationship with Wu with exceptional tact and eloquence.
"Would you head the delegation together with Senior Assistant Officer Sun Qian? I will personally prepare the gold, silver, and treasures to present to Cao Cao's army and Lü Bu's army. I am not, however, saying that you must complete the alliance at the cost of your life. Your lives matter more than an alliance with either side."
"I shall carry out Your Highness's will."
If we could not draw the Central Plains armies of Cao Cao and Lü Bu into an alliance, Liu Chong's army would be completely isolated and cut off. The situation was all the more complicated because cadet imperial clan members of the Han Dynasty who commanded Yi Province and Jing Province were aligning themselves with Dong Zhuo's army.
We had to make the alliance happen.
Jian Yong swallowed a deep breath and nodded.
"It is unlikely that Cao Cao's army, which took part in the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition, and Lü Bu's army, which declared its rising after breaking with Dong Zhuo's forces, would turn hostile toward each other... But they won't readily consent to an alliance either. Even if Cao Cao and Lü Bu are not figures who are loyal to the Han Imperial House and the Imperial Court, they will hardly be delighted by the southern rebels who have declared usurpation before all under heaven."
"..."
A faction of treason.
To take part in a usurpation is to become a traitor.
The heroines of Guandong had no reason to join in a perilous usurpation. But neither did they have cause to follow the cadet imperial clansmen who had aligned with Dong Zhuo's camp, so they were most likely to declare neutrality.
"By now the cadet imperial clansmen will be working their own petty schemes as well. If our army and Dong Zhuo's army ultimately annihilate each other in mutual destruction, a scramble will break out to seize the young Emperor and the court ministers... And to gain the upper hand in a chaotic, hellish free-for-all like that, you would need overwhelming military power."
"Surely a brutal age of chaos will descend, far surpassing even the Yellow Turban Rebellion."
A scramble among the cadet imperial clansmen for the throne.
It would no doubt spiral into a civil war to rival the Rebellion of the Eight Princes that destroyed the Western Jin Dynasty.