Call Me Lady Aman
Call Me Lady Aman
My first meeting with the overwhelmingly intense young Yuan Shao, whom I came to call my older sister.
After spending several years in this world following that day, I came to understand a few crucial truths.
This world was the Three Kingdoms I knew...
To be precise, it more closely resembled the Romance than the historical Records, but with various differences here and there.
One of them involved the flow of time,
and the report that now reached my ears while I worked as Changshui Colonel was another piece of that puzzle.
The Yellow Turbans.
For now, they were still just a heretical cult called the Yellow Turban Sect showing unsettling signs of trouble.
But historically, they shouldn't have emerged until Yuan Shu was in his thirties. Yet here they were, already surfacing before I had even turned twenty.
Events were unfolding similarly to the Original Timeline, yet diverging.
Since I, the one who possessed this body, had yet to do anything much that could have caused such a shift, it was safer to assume that this world's timeline was inherently distorted compared to the Original.
However, even more significant than this altered flow of time, in my opinion, was another difference.
Namely, the changed genders of several Three Kingdoms figures I knew, like Yuan Shao herself.
And as if in accordance with that, this world wasn't a male-dominated society like ancient China in my original world. Here, equality between men and women was a natural, established fact.
Men and women alike can rise to success and receive equal treatment based on ability.
Women are conscripted into the military just like men when war breaks out.
Exceptions exist for those who are pregnant or raising young children, but otherwise, the common sense of this world is that everyone bears the duty of military service 'equally,' without exception.
Perhaps this is the world those activists were always clamoring for back in my original world?
I didn't know whether the people living in it would consider it a good thing, but at any rate, the truth was that being a woman was no real obstacle to achieving fame and glory.
Still, male dominance was an ideology that had ruled China for thousands of years in the Original Timeline... and even persists in the modern era.
How could such a deeply rooted custom have been so cleanly erased?
The answer lay with the very figures who founded this Han Dynasty.
Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang and her closest aides, Han Xin, Zhang Liang, and Xiao He. In this world, they were all women.
The Three Heroes Who Founded Han, who in female bodies subdued the Hegemon-King Xiang Yu of Western Chu and pacified the realm. And their sovereign, the first female emperor, Liu Bang.
The difficulty was likely even more brutal for them than it was in the Original Timeline, but in the end, with their exceptional abilities, they proudly conquered the realm and succeeded in founding the great Han Empire on the Central Plains.
Rumor had it that Liu Bang possessed a Beauty That Could Topple a Kingdom, looks worthy of the conqueror who brought Chu to ruin. And, true to the pun in her name, she supposedly had the finest bosom in all history... or something like that.
In fact, according to the Records of the Grand Historian written by this world's Sima Qian, the Hegemon-King Xiang Yu intended to kill Liu Bang on Fan Zeng's advice, but found both her beauty and her bosom too precious to destroy and tried to make her his concubine instead.
In the end, though, he was forced to swallow his tears and send her back meekly, wary of Consort Yu who was watching nearby with fire in her eyes...
At any rate,
since Her Majesty Emperor Gaozu of Han was so openly female,
and even her capable closest aides shared the female form, how could anyone dare discriminate against women on the path to glory?
As a result, even then, slightly less than half of the court officials in the nation were women,
and a considerable number of generals who wielded swords and spears were also women.
Naturally, this phenomenon applied to the people around me as well, starting with Yuan Shao.
"Hey, my lord! How long are you going to sprawl around? Let's go, quickly! I need to have another bout today!"
A woman's voice, full of energy, called out to me as I handled official duties.
Her appearance, as she briskly approached, could be summed up in one word: Golden Sun.
She had an energetic impression: blonde hair, brown skin, and blue eyes.
Watching her walk around with her top shamelessly open, clad in only a chest wrap, I let out a small sigh.
"I know it's late to be asking this, but... don't you ever get tired? You caused that whole ruckus last night and you're still so lively?"
"I can do that much all day long! So, where are we wiping out today? Let's go, fast! My Three-Pointed Blade is starving!"
Watching her, like a dog begging for a walk... a Golden Retriever, more or less, I finished organizing the report I was writing and rose from my seat.
"Alright, alright... Let's head to the north gate today. I heard there's a bastard there extorting dues however he pleases. We'll check it out and straighten him out."
"Great! Leave it to me! I've already got the men ready to go!"
Her eyes sparkled with delight.
She began escorting me, accompanied by the waiting government troops, toward the north gate.
Even as she did so, she twirled the heavy lump of iron in her hands lightly, like a puppy wagging its tail.
It was a sight I should have gotten used to after all these years, but it still looked surreal every time I saw it.
The way she casually swung the fifty-jin, three-pronged Three-Pointed Blade with slender, feminine arms as if it were an umbrella made it clear she possessed tremendous strength that her appearance belied.
As some may have guessed, she, like Yuan Shao, was one of those whose gender had been altered from the Original Timeline.
One of the truly few named generals in Yuan Shu's faction.
Ji Ling.
Among most people, she's barely a footnote, but according to the Romance, in her prime she was a considerable powerhouse who famously fought Guan Yu for over thirty bouts without a decisive outcome.
Admittedly, later on, when Yuan Shu was utterly ruined, she clashed with Zhang Fei and lost her head in just over ten bouts. But by that point, it was a fight while she was practically a fugitive, a pitiful wreck with a fallen nation and a collapsed society, so there are mitigating circumstances...
She was the kind of general you could rank around A to A+, even if not S-rank.
Well... even so, compared to other shining big names, she was admittedly lacking. But the more I thought about it, the more this felt like a form of historical fidelity.
Lü Bu, the so-called Mightiest Under Heaven, and her subordinate Zhang Liao, the legend of Hefei.
Liu Bei, flanked by the universally acknowledged S-rank warriors Guan Yu and Zhang Fei from the very start.
Cao Cao, who travels with universally recognizable named generals like Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan.
Yuan Shao's lineup, spearheaded by Yan Liang and Wen Chou.
But unlike them, the Yuan Shu faction in the Original Timeline had no particularly famous generals.
Ji Ling was the most prominent, but compared to that dazzling roster I had just recited... well, she was just a minor figure.
To be precise, you could say they were merely 'not yet' present at this point, but according to the Original Timeline, those events—the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition—had to be overcome first before I could even hope for such encounters.
Partly for this reason, I had tried until now to seek out the talents from the original story and bring them under my command...
But whether it was a cruel joke of fate, or simply because my luck was just rotten beyond belief, the results were uniformly dismal.
Several years passed since I possessed this body, years I spent honing myself, balancing scholarly studies with martial training.
During that time, I shed my boyhood, received strong support from my family, rose through official posts,
and was now serving in the capital as Changshui Colonel.
Yet despite all the time that had passed and all the effort I had put in, in the end, the only named talent I had managed to formally recruit was Ji Ling, right here.
It wasn't that I had failed to find the people I was looking for.
But most of them didn't live in this region, so even getting to them was difficult.
I knew it already, but still... the landmass of China.
It really was unbelievably, disgustingly vast.
The plains stretched endlessly even after days of riding; the mountain paths were treacherous; and on top of that, the road conditions were the absolute worst by modern standards. Along the way, wild beasts, bandits, and all manner of random encounters would pop up for the flimsiest reasons.
In that ancient era, traveling across the Central Plains without thorough preparation was a perfect recipe for dying by the roadside.
Forget Zhuo Commandery, where Liu Bei was said to live all the way out there; even reaching Jing Province, which looked close by on a map, required immense preparation and resolve.
And there was one more truly infuriating fact.
Every time I finally overcame the hardships and reached the place where a future star was supposed to be, I realized something.
That unique stroke of dumb luck the original Yuan Shu possessed didn't apply to me.
No, more than that, it was simply that my current luck was rotten to the core.
Even when I painstakingly made the journey, they happened to be away.
Or they would decline the meeting due to a sudden death in the family.
Or, if I truly was lucky enough to meet them, for some reason they had been born later than in the established history and were too young to possibly be recruited.
My attempts at bottom-fishing were so consistently poor in result that it felt like the world was just outright trolling me.
Yet, though failures were many and the tangible results were quite lacking, these efforts of mine were not entirely meaningless.
Unintended as it was, after a fairly decent first meeting, Yuan Shao and I had maintained a solid relationship as younger brother and elder sister.
She was far more taciturn than I had expected, so I couldn't grasp her true thoughts precisely, but I could at least tell she harbored familial affection for me as a sibling.
Though I couldn't be sure, I figured that, at that point, she wouldn't try to kill me directly or indirectly as she had in the Original Timeline... right?
I desperately hoped so.
And one more thing.
In a sense, a result even greater than getting close to Yuan Shao.
That was the woman smiling brightly before me right now, here at the north gate...
"Oh~ It's been a while. Gonglu, my friend."
"It's been too long. Lord Northern District Commandant of Luoyang."
"What's with that 'Northern District Commandant' crap. What did this big sis tell you to call me? Say it. If you don't, I'll brand you a suspicious character and lock you up in confinement~"
A woman with a beaming smile, saying something truly terrifying.
Looking at the red-haired, blue-eyed woman who was slightly taller than me, I suppressed the quiet pressure rising in my heart and gave the answer she wanted.
"My apologies, Aman."
"Heh heh, that's right, that's right. You really do have a sweet, cute charm, our Gonglu. It's nice how different you are from Benchu, who always has that sour look on her face."
With those words, the woman naturally began to pat my head.
No matter how little I minded it, she was a person with the standing and audacity to treat me, the legitimate son of the Yuan Clan, this casually.
In the Original Timeline, he was born the same year as Yuan Shu. In this world, however, like my friend Yuan Shao, Cao Cao was a woman born three years before me.
Outwardly, she presented the image of a playful, amiable older sister,
but knowing what kind of person she was, I still tensed up around her.
Right now, she was just a general guarding the north gate of Luoyang. But she was the one who would later rise to Chancellor of the Han Empire, eventually become King of Wei, and virtually end the dynasty.
Evaluated as an able minister in peaceful times and a villainous hero in chaotic times, she was, from my perspective, the very person who would eventually annihilate Yuan Shu's faction. As such, she was my number one designated threat, even above Yuan Shao.
Cao Cao.
Considered one of the true protagonists of the Three Kingdoms alongside the three Liu Bei sisters, she had always treated me casually, as I was the younger brother of her friend Yuan Shao, and that hadn't changed.
The reason I managed to get on such good terms with someone who had been at odds with Yuan Shu in the Original Timeline was partly because I had treated Cao Cao—born of a family line despised as eunuch stock—with the utmost respect from our first meeting onward, simply because she was my big sister's friend.
But personally, I suspected there was another reason besides that.
Setting aside his trash abilities and course of action, Yuan Shu possessed one advantage.
Whether from the records of the Original Timeline or what I could see with my own eyes now,
Yuan Shu was, at the very least, one hell of a handsome man.
If I had to describe my state at the time, I supposed I was somewhere in the middle ground between a pretty boy and a handsome man.
And women liking good-looking men is a universal constant, no matter the era or place.
A handsome young master with a dazzling family lineage, treating her with the utmost courtesy and calling her his older sister?
And what if the recipient was Cao Cao, famously fond of women (specifically, married women...) even in the Original Timeline?
I didn't know what this female version of Cao Cao's tastes were, but it was abundantly clear she at least didn't dislike it.
Even her reaction right now was basically,
'Yuan Shu used Charming Affection!'
'It was super effective!'
just playing out in real-time.
After she had patted me as if recharging her energy for a while,
Cao Cao withdrew her hand with a satisfied expression.
"Alright, now that I've replenished my vitality... ahem, received your greetings, shall we get down to business? I doubt you, the busy Changshui Colonel, came all this way just to see Aman's face."
She was still smiling, but her voice had grown serious with quiet concern.
She seemed to grasp the situation without my saying a word, and I felt relief... and a slight tension. I was just about to tell her why I had come.
"I received a tip a little while ago. I heard that around here..."
—CRASH!
"!"
A sudden, raucous noise rang out.
With a sound like something being utterly smashed, our conversation was cut off in an instant.
"... Lord Northern District Commandant. Over there."
A large man standing behind Cao Cao quietly spoke up, pointing toward the source of the noise.
Cao Cao's expression, in stark contrast to a moment ago, instantly sharpened.
"Tch... Of all times..."