Chronicle of Leaving You Province (1)
"I'm heading to Bing Province. I'll be gone a while, so anyone who doesn't want to come along doesn't have to. If you've got family and you want to move them there, you're welcome to bring them."
While I was still standing there stunned, Liu Bei was already setting things in motion.
In the histories, Liu Bei first shows himself during the Yellow Turban campaign at the age of twenty-four.
But this nineteen-year-old Liu Bei was already talking about Shang Yang, already laying out how the Han had to change — and he harbored the ambition to become emperor besides.
Before I could even decide how to answer him, he seemed to have already made up his mind to follow me to Bing Province and play at being Shang Yang.
And I just... nodded.
The way Cao Cao couldn't hold Liu Bei back when he left. The way Gongsun Zan couldn't hold Liu Bei back when he left. When Liu Bei said he was coming, I simply let him.
But belatedly, I started turning it over in my mind.
What did a move like this actually mean? How was I supposed to deal with him?
I had only meant to offer something like an alliance. Then Liu Bei had announced, out of nowhere, that he would come work under me, and I had been thrown completely off balance.
Who was Shang Yang, after all?
He was the statesman Duke Xiao of Qin had raised up — the man who reformed Qin's institutions and lifted it into the first rank of the Warring States. The fruit of those reforms was such that even King Huiwen, Duke Xiao's successor, who nursed a bitter grudge against Shang Yang for the ruthlessness of his laws, had no choice but to acknowledge it. King Huiwen purged Shang Yang, yes. He left Shang Yang's reforms entirely untouched.
That Duke Xiao was succeeded by a king — King Huiwen — tells you everything. Qin proclaimed itself a kingdom on the foundation Shang Yang had built. And the man who first conquered Ba and Shu, the very lands that would become the base of Liu Bei's Shu, and folded them into the Chinese world, was that same King Huiwen.
King Huiwen's great-great-grandson was the First Emperor.
Since Liu Bei himself had admitted, to my face, that he wanted to become emperor, I had assumed he dreamed of being the First Emperor.
Then he suddenly said he wanted to be Shang Yang, and I was blindsided. I had never seen it coming.
Even before that, he was nothing like the image I had built of him. The chief of a band of wandering blades, the man who would one day sit the throne of Shu-Han — of course I had assumed he aspired to be a sovereign. He was, after all, a man who had never been content to serve under Cao Cao.
Wei had men like Liu Ye, a scion of the Han imperial house who rose high, and Zang Ba, a surrendered warlord who made a career of it all the same. I had taken Liu Bei for the kind of man who would never be satisfied with a station like Liu Ye's or Zang Ba's.
Most people think of Cao Cao as the Legalist sovereign. Who would have thought Liu Bei would be the one carrying Shang Yang's writings and treating them as gospel?
"I, ah... didn't you study the Confucian school?"
"Ah, I studied under the same teacher as Brother Bogui — Gongsun Zan — but it never sat right with me. I figured maybe scholarship just wasn't my thing. Strangely enough, though, this Book of Lord Shang pulls at me."
So the records that said Liu Bei didn't much care for reading had only meant he didn't care for the Confucian canon.
"I never expected Captain Liu to suddenly ask me to take him into my service."
When I spoke my honest mind, Liu Bei grinned.
"There are merchants in Zhongshan who owe me a favor."
Ah.
Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang.
In the Romance they fund Liu Bei when he raises a volunteer army against the Yellow Turbans. In the Records, they were already supporting him before the rebellion ever broke out.
"They deal in horses. I helped them when they were about to get cleaned out by the Wuhuan, and ever since then they've been granting my requests. For instance... passing along word about armed men going around Zhongshan specifically asking for me by name."
Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang were merchants of Zhongshan. They must have carried him the rumor that I was looking for Liu Bei and Guan Yu, and Liu Bei had come straight to the border of Zhuo Commandery to see what kind of man I was.
I felt a fresh shiver at the tentacles Liu Bei had stretched into a kind of underworld, merchants included. It meant he had received the information and acted on it far faster than I had left Zhongshan and crossed into Zhuo Commandery.
"...So you already knew about me."
"The same goes for the Xiongnu Khagan. After actually meeting you and hearing you talk, a thought occurred to me."
Liu Bei paused, then went on.
"If the Heavenly God of the Xiongnu truly spoke of me, then before I become emperor, I ought to try the experience of serving under someone."
"And so you chose the experience of serving under the Xiongnu?"
"I'm starting to get tired of hunting Wuhuan anyway. The ones who were going to submit have submitted. The ones who were going to leave have left."
He tilted his head, then added,
"And I've started to have doubts about Brother Bogui's methods. He's a good brother to me, and as long as the Wuhuan submit, he'll keep them alive even if he works them to death... but I wonder if that's the right way."
"Bing Province is trying to find a way for Han and Xiongnu to live together."
"You Province really is too small. I thought about going to Liaodong or Lelang and finding a way to live with the Buyeo, the Goguryeo, the Joseon... but it's a good thing I met the Xiongnu Khagan. I want to go to Bing Province and see just how wide the world really is."
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, and Jian Yong... wait. Jian Yong is a sixteen-year-old boy? I never imagined the gap between the picture in my head and the living man would be this wide.
In any case, the three who would spend their lives at Liu Bei's side naturally decided to follow him.
Several days passed while we waited for those among Liu Bei's men who had gone to fetch their families.
And then I witnessed an utterly outrageous thing Liu Bei had done.
"Wait — those people aren't Han...!"
Just as Wei Xu said, behind the families Liu Bei's subordinates had brought, people in distinctly foreign dress appeared. A band of several hundred, by the look of them.
"You're bringing Wuhuan too?"
"Yeah."
"This wasn't part of the plan..."
"The Xiongnu Khagan said he wanted to rule Mobei, didn't he? Then you'll have to govern not just the 'unplanned' Xianbei, but the Wuhuan and everyone else besides."
...Was that it.
This was a test. An assignment Liu Bei had set me.
One of the reasons I had put forward the Tengri faith was that I would need it someday, when I built a great northern empire that took in even the Xianbei and the Wuhuan.
"If you really want to build a Nation of Bow-Drawers that embraces even the Xianbei, then first you've got to make these Wuhuan live together with everyone else."
If you can't even take in people on this scale today, the future of that ambition is obvious.
The moment I nodded that I understood—
"Liu Bei! Liu Beeeeeei!"
A single cavalryman was galloping toward us from the distance.
Don't tell me... this Wuhuan relocation was an illegal defection, done without Gongsun Zan's leave?
"Ah. That's one of Brother Bogui's men."
Looking mildly put out, Liu Bei said he would go talk to him and headed toward the rear of the column.
The rider who reined up before him was panting as he shouted.
"Where do you think you're taking this many Wuhuan without Chief Clerk Gongsun's permission?!"
"I'm not even Brother Bogui's subordinate. These Wuhuan are my 'prisoners' and my 'slaves,' and I'll do what I want with them. What's it to you?"
"What did you say?!"
"They're my slaves, so I do as I please. I'll take them wherever I want to take them, and I'll free them when I feel like freeing them. You not getting that?"
"You little brat! If you weren't Chief Clerk Gongsun's close younger brother..."
"If I weren't, what? You'd cut me down?"
Liu Bei did not wait for an answer.
His bizarrely long arms seized the cavalryman. One hand yanked the sword from its scabbard and flung it away; the other grabbed the man and hurled him to the ground.
I... I've seen this. That manga where a parasitic organism takes over the protagonist's right hand.
"Ugh..."
I turned toward the sound. The big boy's face — Zhang Fei's — had gone white.
"...Brother Bei's fists really hurt."
Ah. Come to think of it.
In the Romance it is Zhang Fei who beats the inspector half to death. In the Records, the one who left the inspector a bloody wreck was Liu Bei.
As the cavalryman staggered to his feet, Liu Bei's fist slammed into his face. Right into the exposed flesh, missing the helmet. The rider had misjudged the distance, never imagining a man's arms could be that long.
"Consider that your warning."
"You— you!"
His face a mask of blood, something torn or burst open, the cavalryman shouted.
"Chief Clerk Gongsun won't let you get away with this!"
Liu Bei raised his fist.
"Before I beat you until you stop breathing so Brother Bogui figures out what's going on as late as possible — get out of here quietly. Yeah? And don't forget: I've got eyes and ears in every alley of every commandery and county in You Province."
Before we departed, I stood before the Wuhuan.
Liu Bei had his men raise a small platform for me.
"They won't understand Xiongnu, but they'll understand Han speech."
I answered Liu Bei's advice with a nod.
I was glad I had had Du Ying pack my Grand Shaman vestments.
I gave my body to the wind so the robes would billow as much as they could, and I cried out before them.
Dazed eyes barely lifted to look at me.
At the word Tengri — not Han speech, but a word they themselves could understand — a faint spark of life returned.
No honey flowing, though.
A single dilemma was churning through my mind.
Liu Bei's sudden proposal. The Wuhuan prisoners he had dumped in my lap. Looking at things like that, I could not help thinking it.
Had I, by going out of my way to seek out Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, only encouraged the early awakening of monsters?
It was a dilemma close to the one Cao Cao had faced. I thought I understood his anguish.
Won't this just end up raising Liu Bei? But Liu Bei is useful.
Liu Bei successfully delayed Lü Bu in the east. He is close with Chen Deng of Guangling, so if I leave him in Xu Province, the two of them might keep Sun Ce in check while I fight Yuan Shao. And in Qing Province, Yuan Tan could be checked well enough by Zang Ba and Liu Bei working together.
I could not help having the same thoughts.
I tried the hypothesis. What if I killed Liu Bei here, so he would not become an obstacle later?
Then I would have to take the path of helping Zhang Jue's Taiping Dao bring down the Han.
But the Yellow Turban Rebellion ending in a Taiping Dao victory would be a problem too. The Taiping Dao simply ended as rebels, so we will never know — but what if they stabilized the realm faster than expected? What if the very opportunity for me, for the Xiongnu, to seize northern China vanished?
I could not just sit back and rely on Zhang Jue's success.
People who favor Cao Cao or Wei often complain that Liu Bei's resistance only prolonged the age of chaos. Which is another way of saying that Liu Bei is a man optimized for obstructing someone else's unification.
That someone could be Cao Cao. It could also be me. That was the problem.
Why? Here I tried assuming it: perhaps Liu Bei is an inevitable existence.
The Han is a four-hundred-year-old ancient empire. The era of the Records of the Three Kingdoms is the process of that ancient empire's collapse. Even a rotten tree makes a tremendous noise when a great trunk falls. Ending antiquity and opening the medieval age inevitably comes with a reaction.
Cao Cao, of course, and Cao Pi as well, had to spend their entire lives in ideological struggle, answering the question of why the Cao clan, and not the Liu clan, should be emperor. An ideological struggle to open the medieval age.
If destroying the Wei rebels was the national policy of Shu-Han, then destroying the Shu rebels must have been the national policy of Wei. How much weaker Shu-Han's national power was compared to Wei was entirely beside the point. Wei, by its very existence, was Shu-Han's evil — and Shu-Han, by its very existence, was Wei's.
Therefore... even if I killed Liu Bei here, if the reaction of that ancient empire called Han did not disappear, it would not mean much, would it?
Look at it squarely. Cao Cao and Cao Pi's struggle was, in the end, a fight to overthrow antiquity and open the medieval age. The fight I am waging is, in the end, a fight on the scale of destroying the Han.
There was no good way to control the variables.
So for now, I decided to watch and see just what Liu Bei would do.