A Great Figure in the Records of the Three Kingdoms
A Great Figure in the Records of the Three Kingdoms
"Hyaaat!!"
-Clang-crash!!
Weapons collided with sharp reports.
The Green Dragon Crescent Blade swept in with crushing weight, while the Twin Ancient Swords darted through every gap.
Parrying and dodging blow after blow, absorbing hits with her armor when evasion was impossible, Lü Bu slipped into the opponent's openings and drove in counterattacks.
Yet even though no decisive blow had struck her, Lü Bu understood.
If this continued, she would be the one who lost.
'That long-haired woman is trouble, but... the most dangerous one is this wretch. This long-eared bitch... Zhang Liao didn't fall for nothing!'
It was the first time.
That someone had bested her in speed.
Though Lü Bu still held the advantage in raw power, and the short reach of those swords kept a decisive strike at bay, there had already been several moments where a single misstep would have let those blades carve into her.
Truly the warrior who had felled Zhang Liao, whom Lü Bu herself acknowledged as formidable.
But even facing this long-eared bitch, alongside the Green Dragon-wielding woman whose martial strength, though a notch lower, could never be ignored, Lü Bu had no thought of retreat.
For the sake of avenging Zhang Liao, whose spirit still lingered in the netherworld, she absolutely had to win this battle...
-Clang!!
"!"
"General!"
In that instant, a thick sword abruptly interposed itself and deflected the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
The moment she recognized the familiar weapon, Lü Bu turned in that direction.
There stood another of her comrades, another pillar of the Bing Province army...
"Gao Shun? Why are you here..."
"By order of the General-in-Chief. Withdraw immediately."
"What? B-but..."
"Now! Do you want to get yourself beaten four-on-two?"
"! Tch..."
At Gao Shun's words, Lü Bu belatedly spotted Ji Ling and Zhang Fei, who had closed to within arm's reach.
She had no choice but to spur her horse back into retreat.
Zhang Fei she could handle, but if Ji Ling—someone she was forbidden to harm—joined the fight on top of this, she knew there would truly be no answer.
"Where do you think you're going!"
"You will not escape."
"You wretched wench! Stand and fight! The Unmatched Under Heaven, turning tail and running! An ingrate who's forgotten the pride of a warrior while she's at it!"
"That... that bitch!"
"General! Go, quickly!"
Liu Bei and Guan Yu harassed them on the way, with Zhang Fei's running stream of abuse on top, but thanks to the aid of Gao Shun, whose martial skill was no trifle, Lü Bu narrowly slipped out of danger.
Her brow furrowed at the result, which was, in practical terms, a rout. Lü Bu rode hard and fast straight toward Hulao Pass.
'Tch... I'm sorry, Zhang Liao... I wanted to avenge you...'
*
Another enemy commander had barged in without warning.
Gao Shun.
Among readers of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he was treated as a barely-there nobody, yet in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, his true ability was anything but insignificant.
Together with Zhang Liao, he had routed Liu Bei, who was guarding Xiaopei, and captured Liu Bei's family—
right after which he also crushed the army of Xiahou Dun, who had arrived as Liu Bei's reinforcement. A valiant commander.
Moreover, when Cao Cao captured him, rather than surrender to save his life, he chose death and remained loyal to Lü Bu to the very end.
Distinctly unlike Lü Bu, who begged for his life at the end and perished, or Zhang Liao, who swore allegiance to Cao Cao after changing sides—this was a man who died demonstrating what duty, loyalty, and pride truly meant.
And that very Gao Shun's intervention had thrown our practically certain victory off the rails in an eyeblink.
A youth who still bore the marks of adolescence, yet had honed his martial skill to a level nearly rivaling Zhang Liao's.
Thanks to him, Lü Bu had slipped the net of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and the closing Zhang Fei and Ji Ling, successfully withdrawing without harm.
The fish we had practically caught had slipped right through our fingers.
Watching from a distance, I felt my brow knit.
"Damn it. A little longer and it would have been over..."
Honestly, this wasn't a situation where I could call Gao Shun's intervention cowardly or anything of the sort.
Our side had just tried to engineer a four-on-one situation and failed; it would be laughable to make pronouncements about fairness in the first place.
But that was that. The fact that we had let Lü Bu—the undisputed alpha and omega of Ding Yuan's forces—get away was, from my perspective, nothing short of galling.
"General, what shall we do now?"
Xu Rong's question at my side only made the regret feel a shade more vivid.
The battle had ended on an ambiguous note with Lü Bu neither killed nor captured; the odds were high we would not break through Hulao Pass in one blow.
However.
"The enemy commanders have fled, so we'll ride this momentum while we still can. Sun Jian, you will lead your forces and hit the fortress at once. Xu Rong, carry the order for a general assault to the other lords. We commence the assault on Hulao Pass now."
"Understood. The whole army, advance!"
"I carry your command. Hyah!"
At my instruction, Sun Jian immediately moved the forces she had ready, while Xu Rong rode to issue the order to the lords.
Though seizing the pass would be far from easy, I expected we could at least deal a good measure of damage, and with that in mind, I deployed the troops.
So the coalition army's advance on Hulao Pass continued.
Our soldiers, shields forward, swarming like ants, drove back the enemy vanguard stationed before the gate and then, in a flash, began battering furiously at the soaring walls of Hulao Pass.
A sprawling gate-fortress built between a great gorge.
Sishui Pass had been stern enough, but Hulao Pass frankly carried an imposing grandeur that made you wonder if the thing could even be breached.
"Raise the ladders!"
"Advance! Those bastards are nothing!"
The one stroke of luck was that Lü Bu's rout had thrown them into disarray, and the enemy's fighting spirit was emphatically poor.
Exploiting that opening, our onslaught struck before the enemy could recover, dealing casualties across their line.
Arrows rained down and soldiers clambered over the ramparts, cutting foes down in short order.
The defenders teetered as if about to collapse at any instant. That was when the mood shifted.
"Kuh-hu-uurk!!"
"Hold the line! Sweep them aside in the name of the White Horse Cavalry!"
Astride a white horse atop the wall, Gongsun Zan swung his blade and beheaded soldiers.
Though he had been thrashed by Dong Zhuo in Single Combat, his command ability was clearly no hollow boast. Gongsun Zan's personal guards and the elite troops of You Province swiftly quelled the chaos and began a counterattack.
Close behind, Ding Yuan at last made his appearance and took control of the soldiers.
His record of slaughtering foreign tribes was no empty boast; with Ding Yuan's arrival, the Bing Province army also regained order and stiffened their defense.
Our early strikes had done considerable damage, but true to its reputation, Hulao Pass showed no sign of an easy fall.
Through the half-day that the battle dragged on, our side also lost its initial momentum, and casualties began to accumulate by inches.
"G-General Sun Jian! W-we cannot continue thiiis! The fortress is a solid wall of iron, it iiis!"
"Hawawaa... the enemy has restored their spirit, please!"
"Reorganization required. Request withdrawal."
"Hmm..."
Frustrating as it was, there was no denying that pressing on would force us to absorb ruinous losses.
At the urging of Hua Xiong and the other commanders, Sun Jian finally gave the order to fall back.
"Retreat! We pull back and reorder the ranks!"
So Hulao Pass remained untaken, for all the accomplishments we had wrung from the field.
Sun Jian fixed the place with a cool stare for a moment, then rode back toward our encampment alongside the troops.
*
"Hoo..."
"Th-they're falling back!"
"We held the fortress! Victory is ours!"
Throughout the pass, the Bing Province and You Province troops strained to raise their voices.
But the joy of victory aside, Ding Yuan's expression as he surveyed the scene was not especially bright.
"How badly did we get hurt."
"Of our 100,000 soldiers, roughly 20,000 are dead or severely wounded. The dithering early on accounted for a great deal of the damage."
"Tch..."
Ding Yuan's brow creased at the report from his subordinate, Zang Ba.
Lü Bu had not been defeated, but the first engagement had, in many ways, left the army at a loss.
The White Horse General had lost face, troop casualties were not light,
but the greatest problem of all was that Lü Bu's prestige had been diminished.
Lü Bu's presence—renowned as the Unmatched Under Heaven, a warrior none dared to face—had been an immense boost to our soldiers' morale in and of itself.
Yet here were coalition generals who had not only fought this Lü Bu practically to a standstill but had ultimately made her flee.
The ferocious performance of that woman Liu Bei and her two commanders, and the sight of Lü Bu ultimately forced to withdraw without overcoming them—this demonstrated that even the "Unmatched Under Heaven" was not invincible, while at the same time driving home that our enemies were truly strong.
Our morale had fallen in consequence, and the siege that followed had inflicted staggering losses.
Thanks to the leadership of Gongsun Zan and Ding Yuan, they had narrowly managed to steady the ranks and ultimately drive the foe back, but the earlier losses, and the battles yet to come, were tying Ding Yuan's mind in knots.
'Even if we keep fighting... will our side really have a chance? We succeeded in holding them off for now, but what direction will this take from here on...'
As Ding Yuan was thus sunk in worry...
a cautious voice reached him from behind.
"Ahem, Jianyang?"
"What is it, Bogui? You have something to say?"
"I do... there is a matter I wish to discuss. A rather important one."
Gongsun Zan addressing him by his courtesy name.
Ding Yuan recognized this signaled a serious issue and listened intently with a grave air.
"This battle... can we actually win it?"
"Hmm..."
Ding Yuan could not easily answer Gongsun Zan's question.
Two-tenths of their strength had already been chewed away in the first clash.
The outcome had been shaped by the enemy's sudden assault after Lü Bu's retreat, but the damage itself was nothing to take lightly.
Above all, a string of defeats was steadily draining army morale, and it was a fact that fear was swelling in Ding Yuan's own heart.
Seeing Ding Yuan voice his unease through silence, Gongsun Zan carefully spoke.
"Brother, the truth is, before I came here, I laid one arrangement in place... would you hear of it?"
"Wh-what arrangement?"
Amid the thoroughly subdued atmosphere, Gongsun Zan cautiously began.
"I am not asking you to decide anything right this moment. I mean only for you to keep this in mind, as a contingency. That is the spirit in which I speak."
"I understand. Now, what in the world is it that you feel you must broach?"
"Well, you see..."
Gongsun Zan carefully relayed a certain fact.
At the words that left her lips,
Ding Yuan began to show rather keen interest.
*
"The war situation is bad, you say?"
"That is correct, Lord Zhang Rang. Reports indicate that General Lü Bu has been routed and that our forces holding the fortress in the subsequent battle are suffering considerable losses."
"And the enemy? That Coalition, or whatever they call themselves, the one led by Yuan Shu—are they still unshaken?"
"Yes... they continue their fierce attack without wavering, I am told. Led primarily by Sun Jian, who serves under Yuan Shu, they are hammering Hulao Pass without cease, and the momentum is said to be truly threatening."
"Hmm..."
At Duan Gui's words, Zhang Rang's expression soured, and he was seized by the sensation that his insides were slowly charring to a crisp.
That Sishui Pass had been overrun so easily—and now even Hulao Pass was imperiled.
And even though weeks had passed, the enemy was reportedly keeping up the pressure without a flicker.
'A coalition, I expected, would show plenty of signs of shaking... yet there's not even the slightest hint of that...'
Zhang Rang had calculated a coalition would never hold together for very long.
They had gathered under the deposed Emperor Liu Bian's name, shouting about punishing traitors and whatnot, but ultimately they were just a clumsy organization cobbled together to serve each individual's greed.
Once they lost their initial momentum, she had expected them to start shoving blame onto one another and tear themselves apart in internal strife.
But against these expectations, those people remained tightly knit and were still hammering Hulao Pass with ferocity.
The Yuan Clan and Dong Zhuo's faction—the backbone of the enemy force—were right now leading the fighting at the very front.
And in this atmosphere, the other lords were also prosecuting the war aggressively.
Worse, provisions, arms, and armor were flowing in without shortage from Ji Province, Yan Province, and Nanyang.
'If this continues and Hulao Pass is breached, that will be the moment we are annihilated. We must, somehow, find a different path...'
They could not simply sit still and wait for the day they died.
As Zhang Rang was racking his brain for an alternative, it happened.
"L-Lord Zhang Rang!"
"Hm? What is it, friend?"
Another of the Three Regular Attendants, Cao Jie, came rushing in breathlessly.
After he had confirmed that only Duan Gui and Zhang Rang were in the room,
she immediately spoke in a trembling voice.
"W-we found it!"
"Hm? Found it...? What do you...!"
For a moment, Zhang Rang's face showed confusion at Cao Jie's words.
But as their meaning sank in, her expression in an instant brightened.