Move out!"
Zhang Fei's voice boomed across the training grounds. Under the pale dawn sky, the soldiers marched eastward while choking down their morning rations. Weapons clattered. Boots struck earth. The long column stretched out like a dragon stirring from sleep.
Near the rear, Liu Feng threw one last glance toward his third uncle. Zhang Fei, of course, had his entire attention fixed on the vanguard and did not so much as glance his way.
Liu Feng sighed and gestured for his two peculiar companions to close the gap.
Their small group held a slightly privileged spot in the marching order, which meant they had room to breathe and time to talk.
"Exactly how far is this Hanzhong place?" Mi Fang was already draped in misery. He clutched his chest. As a pampered son of the wealthy Mi clan, he had never endured labor like this in his life.
"Barely two hundred li. Ten days at most." Ma Su did not miss a beat. "But if the Mi family's delicate young master truly cannot take another step, I can teach you a trick."
Ma Su's eyes glinted. He had spotted an easy target.
"You see General Zhang up on that platform? Run up there. Throw your arms around his legs. Cry. Tell him you have seen the error of your ways. Swear the man standing before him today is not the man who stood there yesterday. Who knows? The General might feel a moment of pity and..."
"Send him home?" Liu Feng cut in, genuinely curious. He had listened to these two trade cryptic jabs for weeks and still could not untangle half of what they meant.
Ma Su's smile was colder than the morning frost.
"No. The General might feel a moment of pity and only beat him half to death instead of finishing the job. Then he gets to lie in the medical tent for two weeks."
Mi Fang's face went red. "At least I never fled my post like a coward."
By now Ma Su knew exactly which strings to pull. He spoke slowly, deliberately, the smile never leaving his face. "Perhaps your esteemed elder brother wishes you had fled. It would save the family some embarrassment."
The blow landed. Mi Fang flushed to the tips of his ears. If Liu Feng had not stepped between them, Mi Fang would have thrown himself at Ma Su then and there.
"Enough." Liu Feng's voice dropped low. "Do the two of you actually enjoy the taste of the discipline rod? Because I can arrange a full serving right now."
The immediate threat finally sealed their mouths shut.
Up on the makeshift command platform, Zhang Fei stood watching the endless stream of soldiers winding below.
The column stretched long, a dragon of men and steel stirring beneath the pale dawn. After a silence, he turned his head toward Pang Tong at his side.
Pang Tong spoke first. "Is Yide about to ask me whether all these fine young men will come home?"
Zhang Fei shook his head. "I am not that naive, Shiyuan. These boys have it far better than those Yizhou soldiers Liu Zhang handed over to the bandit Cao. But war is still war."
His gaze swept across the sea of dark heads below. Some of these men had followed him from Zhuo Commandery.
A handful still carried scars from Xuzhou. Most were Jingzhou recruits who had followed him and his brother into the mountains of Yizhou.
Soon enough, many would bury their bones in the cold soil of Guanzhong.
"I was only thinking," Zhang Fei murmured.
His voice had dropped into something quieter. "If we truly manage to pacify this broken realm, and if I am somehow still breathing at the end of it, I will carve a monument for these boys. A big one. I will chisel every name into the stone with my own hands."
He paused. His grip tightened on the rail.
"And if I fall before the work is done, I will make Big Brother carve my name right alongside theirs."
"Fair or not, a block of stone cannot repay the dead. But it is something. Some small comfort for their spirits." A rough edge crept into his voice.
"After all, even that pathetic Song Dynasty on the Light Screen had to bleed a river of good men dry before they could crawl back and sign their humiliating treaties."
Zhang Fei looked as though he might force a bitter laugh, but the man who commanded an army was not the same man who drank and roared in the feast hall. In the end he simply stood rooted to the platform, burning the sight of his marching soldiers into his memory.
Pang Tong felt an unexpected surge of emotion rise in his chest. He stepped up beside the towering general, shoulder to shoulder. "I may lack fighting strength, Yide, but I swear on my life I will exhaust every trick I possess to bring your boys back in one piece."
A few paces behind them, Fa Zheng felt a sharp sting of envy.
That unshakable trust, that bond between commander and strategist. It was exactly the thing he had spent his whole life searching for.
Down below, Huo Jun looked up at the platform and shouted. "General Zhang! The vanguard stands ready. I will take my leave and clear the road ahead!"
Zhang Fei raised a massive hand, signaling for Huo Jun to proceed as he saw fit. As supreme commander of the expedition, Zhang Fei had to ride with the main army. Huo Jun's unit was only the tip of the spear.
Zhang Fei felt the crushing weight of thousands of lives pressing down on his shoulders.
Huo Jun felt nothing but pure and heady exhilaration.
Ever since his elder brother Huo Du had passed, Huo Jun had lived with a creeping dread that Liu Biao's regime in Jing Province was doomed to crumble.
When the chaos finally came, he had not paused to weigh the odds. He gathered up his loyal hometown fighters and marched straight into Liu Bei's camp.
Liu Bei was a true lord for the age. That was the plain and unshakable truth in Huo Jun's heart.
The man had handed him command without a flicker of hesitation. From the dusty roads of Jing Province to the defensive lines of Jiangzhou. From Jiangzhou to the critical choke point of Baishui Pass. And now he was leading the spearhead into Hanzhong itself.
He could feel it settling into his bones. The grand ambitions his elder brother had left unfinished, the dreams that had been cut short, all of it was finally being brought to completion by his own two hands.
Watch me from the heavens, brother. A fierce grin split his face. I am going to make the whole world see that the southern commanderies produce men of talent. I will prove that the boys from Zhijiang can flip heaven and earth in this age of chaos. And the hometown brothers who followed me into the fire? I will bring every last one of them back draped in silk and glory.
From the platform, Fa Zheng finally voiced the anxiety gnawing at his pragmatic mind. "Are we absolutely certain the grain routes are secure? These mountain roads, you know. Treacherous."
Pang Tong turned his head and confident smile. "Kongming is handling it. There is zero chance of failure."
Fa Zheng shut his mouth. That single name was all the guarantee anyone needed. Before leaving Chengdu to join the vanguard, he had seen with his own eyes the ruthless efficiency with which Kongming had pulled the newly conquered capital into order.
If Kongming was doing the math, the grain would arrive on time.
"Did we truly bring none of the Wooden Oxen and Flowing Horses into Chengdu?"
Meanwhile, Liu Bei stood knee-deep in a dusty granary inside the government office, a stack of bamboo slips in one hand while his eyes tracked across the rows of grain sacks.
Kongming made a precise checkmark on his ledger and nodded without looking up.
"Shiyuan and I settled the logistics back in Jing Province. We saw this exact bottleneck coming. After Langzhong was subdued, Shiyuan should have requested a specific officer from you."
Liu Bei's memory caught at once. "Chen Shi."
"A steady and reliable man." Kongming's praise was measured and matter-of-fact. "While you was driving through Yizhou with overwhelming force, Chen Shi followed Shiyuan's orders. He took every Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse we had straight to Jiameng Pass. He has been stationed there ever since, using the blueprints I provided to mass-produce of the devices specifically to supply this Hanzhong campaign."
Hearing Kongming casually describe his conquest as driving through Yizhou with overwhelming force nearly pulled a laugh out of Liu Bei. It put him too much in mind of the sarcastic nicknames the Light Screen liked to pin on Xiahou Yuan.
Granted, in the version of events shown on the Light Screen, Cao Cao had already seized Hanzhong and left Xiahou Yuan to garrison it, only for the man to be chopped to pieces by Huang Zhong.
In their present reality, however, Hanzhong still belonged to Zhang Lu. There was no Xiahou Yuan waiting in the mountains. The absence of that particular target left the whole affair feeling strangely incomplete.
Even so, Liu Bei felt a deep and quiet satisfaction. He turned to his strategist with a faint smile.
"The reach of your plans, Kongming. You and Shiyuan are always ten steps ahead. I cannot hope to match either of you."
Kongming brushed the praise aside with a light wave. "It is nothing more than geography, my lord. Yizhou and Hanzhong are a single body. They cannot be separated."
It was the undeniable truth. The future records of the 'Six Campaigns from Mount Qi' made it glaringly obvious.
If you held Hanzhong, you controlled the exit points at Mount Qi and the Baoxie Road. The defenders in Guanzhong would be forced to run themselves to death just trying to plug the gaps.
Conversely, if Hanzhong fell to the enemy, the natural mountainous defenses of Yi Province became completely useless. Hanzhong was the front door. You do not leave the front door open.
Liu Bei let the matter settle, then looked around the vast granary with its rows of heaped stores and let out a quiet breath.
"For all his faults, Liu Zhang kept a light hand on the people. A tax of three parts in ten is remarkably lenient. Much the same as what we maintained in Jingzhou during times of peace."
Kongming offered only a quiet and noncommittal hum. The land was a heavenly prefecture, rich beyond measure. It was a shame Liu Zhang had treated it as nothing more than a bargaining chip, waiting for the highest bidder.
"By the way, My lord, what brings you down to the granaries today?" Kongming's eyes held a trace of genuine curiosity. "You rarely trouble yourself with these matters."
Liu Bei opened his mouth to reply, but the words caught in his throat.
From outside the heavy wooden doors, Zhang Song's sharp, piercing voice rang through the courtyard. "Kongming! Is my lord inside?"
Panic flashed across Liu Bei's face. He hurriedly ducked behind a tall stack of grain sacks.
Kongming grasped the situation at once. A trace of mischief flickered across his expression. Raising his voice, he called back, "I have not seen him! Try the Dujiangyan works. He may have gone there to inspect them."
Zhang Song did not even open the door. He shouted his thanks, and his footsteps quickly faded.
Kongming turned back toward the grain sacks, his eyes bright with amusement. "If I had to guess, this game of hide-and-seek has something to do with Lady Wu?"
Liu Bei let out a long groan and stepped out, pacing restlessly between the grain bins.
"The whole situation is absurd, Kongming.
The woman is genuinely pitiful. The only reason Liu Yan forced her to marry his son, Liu Mao, was because some rambling fortune teller claimed she possessed the facial features of an Empress. It was a completely ridiculous, a baseless superstition."
He spread his hands in frustration. "And look how it turned out. Liu Mao had a history of violent, manic episodes, and he literally went insane and dropped dead last year. The poor woman is a widow trapped in a political web."
Kongming was silent for a moment, a hint of sympathy passing over his face. "And Zhang Song?"
"Ziqiao means well," Liu Bei said with a sigh, rubbing his temples. "He believes it will benefit the people of Yizhou. He wants me tied to the local clans."
"Then why not accept?" Kongming asked lightly. "It is a sound move. Marry the widow, secure the loyalty of the Yi elites, and stabilize the province at once. A clear political gain."
Liu Bei snorted and turned back to his bamboo slips.
"What gain? Will these local clans suddenly grow wings and cross the river to deal with the Sun family in Jiangdong? Or fly north and kill Cao Cao for me?"
He tossed a bamboo slip onto the table. "If I give in and marry Lady Wu just to appease them, what then? When we take Hanzhong and Guanzhong, will my advisers press me to marry into the Zhang clan, then the Ma clan, one after another, all in the name of 'stability'?"
Liu Bei paused, then a smile broke through, the irritation giving way to quiet amusement. A recent remark came back to him.
"You know," he said with a soft chuckle, "Zilong raised an interesting question the other day. He wondered whether the fine legs of these Yizhounobles can run faster than the hooves of our baima yicong cavalry across the plains of Chengdu."
Kongming could not hold back his laughter. He shook his head, genuinely surprised. Their lord's thinking had grown sharper, more decisive of late. And that was no bad thing.
After all, when Emperor Gaozu founded the Han, he did not secure his realm by taking a wife in every city he conquered. He relied on force and strategy.
If their lord could stabilize newly taken lands without resorting to political marriages, that spoke of real strength.
It only meant that Lady Wu would have to seek her fortunes elsewhere.
A man with a round, easy face sat at ease atop a supply cart. The heavy pouches of silver he had scattered along the road had smoothed his passage through Cao Cao's supply lines until it felt effortless.
He crossed Tong Pass without delay. Even the ruins of Luoyang offered no resistance.
Looking out over the land, the man felt a quiet heaviness settle in his chest. The world had turned upside down. Tong Pass, a place meant for war and iron, now teemed with life and trade, while Luoyang, once the heart of the empire, lay silent and broken.
"Dong Zhuo's fire truly burned a paradise to ash," he murmured, drawing his cloak tighter.
A few days later, the walls of Xuchang rose before him.
At once, his expression shifted. The warmth drained away, replaced by a practiced, ingratiating smile. He bowed again and again as he parted from the officer escorting him, words of thanks pouring out without pause. At the same time, his hand slipped forward, pressing two heavy gold beads into the man's palm.
The officer weighed them, satisfied. He tossed over a wooden tally.
"This will let you move through the outer districts. Finish your business quickly. Earn your coin and leave. Do not cause trouble that leads back to me."
"Of course, my lord. A thousand thanks."
The man watched him go. Once the officer disappeared, he turned and melted into the crowded streets like a drop of water into the sea.
Two days later, the same man walked along a quiet residential lane. A large woven basket hung from his shoulder, damp with the scent of fish. He stopped at a rear gate and knocked in a steady rhythm.
The door opened. A sleepy gatekeeper squinted at him.
"Hold on. You're Old Zhang's nephew? When did you get so fat?"
The man smiled, harmless and disarming.
"Forgive me, uncle. I'm just filling in at the fish market for a couple of days. Zhang Tong will return soon and resume deliveries."
The explanation was ordinary enough. The gatekeeper yawned and waved him through.
"Kitchen's that way. Just leave it there."
The man nodded and stepped inside. The gatekeeper turned away at once, already losing interest.
The courtyard was small and poorly kept. Overgrown plants crept along the edges. Nothing here suggested comfort or pride. It was a place meant only for passing days.
From within, a clear voice recited classical texts, steady and unbroken.
The man followed the sound. Through a half-open window, he saw a lone figure seated at a desk, back turned.
His heartbeat quickened. He circled the courtyard once, then again, making certain no one else was nearby.
Only then did he step forward.
"Military Advisor Xu," he said quietly, his tone no longer that of a trader. "It has been a long time."
The recitation stopped.
The man inside froze.
For a long moment, he did not move. Then, slowly, he turned.
The face was lean, worn, cut with strain, yet the sharp light in the eyes had not dimmed.
Shock flashed across his features, then disbelief, then joy.
"Gongxi? By the gods, how are you here? How did you get inside the capital?"
Xu Shu stared at the incredibly fat man standing in his courtyard, his sharp mind struggling to reconcile the image with his memories.
"And how in heaven's name did you get so fat? How are you supposed to charge into battle looking like a stuffed dumpling?"
Dong Jue, the friendly-faced merchant, let out a shaky breath, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
Looking at the man before him, it felt as though twenty years had passed, rather than just three or four short, brutal years.
The weight of the era had crushed them all in different ways.
Dong Jue shook his head slowly, a sad, nostalgic smile touching his lips.
"I may have gained much weight," he said, voice low, "but looking at you…"
He paused, the words catching for a brief moment. "It seems you have lost far more."