Threat for a Threat
Threat for a Threat
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The sharp beat of drums bored into his ears.
The boy imprisoned in the makeshift cell deeper inside the cave began cautiously surveying his surroundings.
The stench of blood suddenly stung his nostrils.
And an urgent air began to stir.
It told the boy with unmistakable clarity that something had happened outside.
"Government troops! The government troops are attacking!"
"Tch, they got wind of us after all."
The Yellow Turbans clicked their tongues and started rising to their feet.
As he listened to them talk, the boy quickly grasped the situation.
'Could it be... Mother?'
He couldn't be certain, but it was the most plausible explanation right now,
so the boy endured the pain and steeled his resolve once more.
The leg he'd injured the day before still hadn't healed.
Even staying still made him wince at the surging pain, and running was entirely out of the question.
But even so,
the boy decided to do whatever he could in this moment.
He pulled out the piece of metal he had saved for the very end.
Though still young, he had been on battlefields since he'd first learned to walk, and he understood.
Right now, his very existence was his mother's most dangerous weakness.
How would those men act now that a battle had begun?
They would surely use their captive to threaten her or try to break her will to fight.
No matter how valiant his mother was,
with a blade at her child's throat, she could hardly fight properly—in the worst case, she might even lay down her own sword.
To prevent that,
the boy had to hold out here for even a single quarter-hour longer.
Even if it meant threatening his own life...
And his prediction and resolve, unfortunately, did not miss their mark.
"It's time. Drag the little bastard out here right now!"
"Ah... understood, Boss!"
The Yellow Turbans approached the cell with loud footsteps.
In a flurry of motion, they hastily opened the cell door and rushed inside.
At the same moment, the boy...
"Huh?"
"Y-you... what the hell are you doing?"
The boy was pressing the metal shard against his own throat.
The sight made the Yellow Turbans flinch and freeze on the spot.
"Stay back! One step closer and I'll slash it! You know what happens if I die here, don't you?"
"... Honestly, you pea-sized runt..."
"Haha. The brat dares to make a half-baked threat—"
—Stab!
"!"
Defiantly, as if to mock the Yellow Turbans who had jeered at him, the boy drove the sharp metal in.
Though he had controlled the depth, a vivid stream of blood trickled out.
At that gruesome resolve, the smirks vanished from the faces of those who had laughed at him.
"Th-this son of a..."
"He... he really stabbed himself?"
The Yellow Turbans began to show bewilderment.
It was only natural—if the boy died here, things would become completely unmanageable.
They were hunters by trade and knew better than anyone how dangerous a beast became when it lost its cub and turned vicious.
Even so, with time pressing, they couldn't just leave the little brat alone.
Caught in that dilemma, the Yellow Turbans hesitated for a moment.
A sharp crack stopped them in their tracks.
—Crack!!!
"Argh!!!"
In the next instant, a sudden burst of pain made the boy drop the metal shard.
A single stone, thrown from the side, not the front.
Seizing the opening, the hesitant Yellow Turbans rushed at the boy all at once.
"You cause trouble right to the very end."
"M-my apologies, Boss."
The Yellow Turban man tossed aside the stone he'd been holding and spoke coldly.
Immediately, the Yellow Turbans pinned the boy down and began beating him savagely.
"You're still wet behind the ears!"
"How dare you try some pointless threat!"
"Stop it! We have no time for this! Just drag him out!"
"Ah... yes, Boss."
And so, despite his life-or-death resolve, the boy was ultimately captured and dragged away by the Yellow Turbans.
The pain in his leg meant nothing.
What tormented him more than anything at this moment was a profound, crushing sense of helplessness.
The fact that, after all he'd endured, far from helping his mother, he had only become a hindrance, left the boy tasting an utterly bitter agony.
He had grown up seeing and hearing the exploits and fame of his mother, called the Tiger of Jiangdong.
Yet he, her son, could do nothing at the crucial moment.
Neither stopping his father's death before his eyes...
nor protecting his younger siblings to the very end.
Not even taking his own life at the final moment so as not to become a burden to his mother.
'I'm completely useless... a worthless bastard like me... to my mother... to my family... I haven't been of any help at all...'
Swallowed by that deep helplessness, the boy and the Yellow Turbans emerged from the cave.
But then...
"Huh?"
"Wh-what the...?"
The scene that unfolded before their eyes
exceeded anything the Yellow Turbans inside the cave and the boy had imagined.
While they'd been inside, they had expected that Sun Jian was attacking with a few hundred—a thousand at most.
But now, standing on high ground and looking down, they saw a colossal number of government troops, at least tens of thousands strong.
An enormous army utterly beyond comparison to the soldiers Sun Jian had led.
They were crushing the mere few hundred Yellow Turbans with sheer overwhelming force.
'Who in the world...? Who could command an army this immense?'
The force his mother led could never be this large.
That meant someone else was leading these government troops.
The sight of a gigantic army unlike anything he'd ever seen in his life,
even in this situation, filled the boy with a sense of something truly overpowering.
Meanwhile, quite unlike the boy, the Yellow Turbans who had dragged out their hostage were instantly seized by bewilderment and fear.
"B-Boss, th-this... what do we do?"
"Hmm..."
A hostage threat was only feasible when some balance of power existed.
With tens of thousands of troops already grinding their allies to dust, turning the situation around with a single hostage was absolutely impossible.
In fact, attempting a clumsy threat might get them captured and lead to an even more painful end.
"L-let's just run. If we stay here, we'll die like dogs."
"Y-yeah. First, let's figure out how to use this brat as bait and get out of here..."
Another voice interrupted her.
"Hey there, hold it right there."
"!"
A woman's voice reached their ears.
Turning their heads, they saw a blonde woman holding a massive Three-Pointed Blade,
and a man in a black war coat over striking armor who appeared to be the general leading them.
Countless government soldiers had already encircled the cave, surrounding them.
The faces of the Yellow Turbans began to fill with despair.
"Surrender and I'll spare your lives. Resist, and I promise you won't die easy."
The blonde woman spoke in a voice brimming with confidence.
At the offer of their lives, the Yellow Turbans glanced at each other and began to waver.
Then...
"D-don't be fooled! It's all a lie! Do you think they'll just let us go? Even if we surrender, they'll kill us painfully!"
With those words, the Yellow Turban man pressed his blade against the boy's throat.
The chilling sensation on his neck made the boy gulp dryly, despite having already steeled himself for death.
"D-don't come any closer! If you don't let us go, this brat dies!"
"Hey, I said if you surrender, I'll let you live. Have you bastards been lied to your whole lives—"
Just then.
"Wait. Stand down, Ji Ling."
"Huh? Ah... understood, my lord."
At the words of the black-robed general called "my lord,"
the female warrior immediately stepped back,
and the general strode forward in her stead.
"D-didn't I tell you not to come closer?! Does the brat live or die mean nothing to you?!"
"It means something—for your fate."
"Wh-what? What do you—!"
Before the words could finish, the general simply raised his arm.
At once, a sight unfolded before the Yellow Turbans' eyes.
Hundreds, thousands of arrows, all aimed squarely at them.
Countless government soldiers had drawn their bowstrings and were aiming at their lives.
They had sensed death coming, but now that it materialized so vividly before their eyes, the Yellow Turbans were seized instantly by overwhelming terror.
"U-urgh..."
"D-don't be scared! Th-they'll never actually shoot—"
—Thwack!!!
"AAARGH!!!"
"!"
In that instant, an arrow sank precisely into the shoulder of one of the men in the rear.
The utterly terrifying sensation that followed robbed the Yellow Turbans of speech.
And in this heart-wrenching situation,
the general spoke in a cold voice.
"You've been under a misconception from the start..."
—Thwack!!!
"AAARGH!!!"
Another arrow flew.
Along with the scream of yet another comrade,
a chilling killing intent settled over the general's face.
"Killing vermin like you is nothing. I simply don't wish to shed any more meaningless blood."
"U-urgh..."
"Choose. Will you surrender quietly and save your lives? Or will you plummet straight to hell right now?"
"..."
A final warning, a question laced with cold mercy.
A single strand of a lifeline, descending amidst enormous terror,
shattered even the stubbornness that had remained.
As a result...
Clang!
A sword clattered to the ground.
At once, the soldiers who had been standing by swiftly dragged the Yellow Turbans away.
A rapid clean-up that gave no opening whatsoever.
Left alone on that spot was a single person.
Only the boy who had been taken hostage remained.
"Are you all right?"
"Huh?... Ah... yes..."
The general, whose earlier intimidation now seemed unreal, smiled with a hint of kindness.
The boy, as if under a spell, barely collected his wits and replied.
"I-I'm fine. Thank you for saving me, General."
"No need to thank me. All of this was at your mother's request."
"Sir? M-my mother... did? Is she... is she here right now?"
"She is. She's probably finished her 'cleanup' by now. She's at the foot of the mountain, so I'll take you there."
With those words, the general extended a hand toward him.
Strong yet benevolent, exuding a dignity that was not easily approached,
the boy took in the sight and grasped the general's hand.
From deep within his heart,
something as a man...
a feeling called admiration began to bloom...
*
The young boy, Sun Jian's son.
Looking at the child I'd saved with my own hands, I couldn't help but feel rather excited.
'So this kid... is the famous Little Conqueror... Sun Ce.'
I'd already heard from Sun Jian herself what her children were like in this world.
One son, two daughters.
Their names: eldest son Sun Ce, eldest daughter Sun Quan, and youngest daughter Sun Shangxiang.
Honestly, the fact that the second child, Sun Quan, was a girl didn't surprise me much anymore.
If anything, it was slightly surprising that the firstborn, Sun Ce, was a man, just as in the Original Timeline.
And one more unexpected detail, if you could call it that.
As some might have noticed, these three children carried the surname Sun, just like in the Original Timeline.
The three children took Sun Jian's surname, not the late Wu Guotai's—who was Sun Jian's spouse and their 'father.'
I'd roughly heard the reason why: Wu Guotai, originally a young lord of a prestigious family, had renounced his clan to marry Sun Jian, a woman of humble birth, and had completely severed ties with his main family, which was why the children bore her surname.
Indeed, even in the Original Timeline, Sun Jian had had a fair bit of trouble winning his wife, so it was a story I could make sense of.
From my perspective, it was fortunate, since I didn't have to force myself to stop calling the already familiar Sun Ce and Sun Quan by awkward names like Wu Ce or Wu Quan—which kept making me think of bookstores instead.
Anyway, with that, I had kept my promise to Sun Jian.
I helped her chop off Zhao Hong's head as she'd wanted, and even saved her son, Sun Ce.
I was a bit rattled at the end when the remnants pulled a dirty trick, but thanks to the few elite archers I'd posted just in case, it was resolved without major issue.
With the situation concluded safely, we made it back to where Sun Jian was.
But.
"What?"
"Th-that..."
At the unexpected news that immediately followed,
Sun Jian... and I could not help but be considerably flustered.