Zhang Fei sat atop his horse like a statue carved from obsidian. His face was a mask of cold fury, his eyes sweeping across the battlefield with a predator's focus.
Every few seconds he would let out a roar that sounded less like a human voice and more like the earth cracking open, barking orders that shifted the flow of his troops like pieces on a board.
Up on the battlements of Yangping Pass, Yang Ren was having a far worse day.
The siege engines currently hammering his walls were unlike anything he had ever seen. The folding ladders and mobile well towers moved with a strange and mechanical precision that overturned everything he understood about siege warfare.
But his biggest problem was not the wood and the iron.
It was the creeping realization among his soldiers that their commander might be a fool.
Before the assault began, Yang Ren had stood before them and sworn these machines were useless toys, cheap tricks meant to frighten cowards.
Now the 'useless toys' were delivering a steady stream of elite Shu archers to eye level with the battlements, and the Hanzhong soldiers were looking at Yang Ren with a very particular kind of sideways glance.
No one dared say it aloud. Yang Ren had promised a swift execution for any man caught disturbing the army's heart.
But now the thought spread through the ranks all the same.
The General is the one disturbing our hearts, one soldier thought bitterly as he ducked behind a merlon to dodge a bolt from a siege tower.
He told us these were props. Since when do props shoot back?
Yang Ren, blind to the quiet fury brewing in his own ranks, kept screaming for more bodies to be thrown into the grinder.
He knew the iron rule of Yangping Pass. If this wall fell, the heart of Hanzhong lay wide open. He could not afford to lose a single inch of stone.
Zhang Fei did not care about the stone.
He was watching the sun.
He checked the angle of the light, ignored the whistle of a stray arrow that passed far too close to his ear, and decided the moment had finally come.
Behind him, the reserve units were waiting.
Liu Feng was trying to look calm.
Ma Su was back to fidgeting, his nerves clearly shot. He opened his mouth, probably to beg for another piece of sugar to settle himself, but the loudest sound he had ever heard cut him off.
"Fan Jiang! Zhang Da!" Zhang Fei's voice exploded.
"Prepare to lead the vanguard! We are taking that wall ourselves!"
Liu Feng's jaw nearly hit the mud. He watched his uncle slide off his horse with the ease of a man half his size. Zhang Fei did not reach for a ceremonial spear or a fancy banner. He walked over to a pile of discarded equipment, snatched up a massive iron-rimmed shield and a heavy long-blade, and began strapping on the last pieces of his plate armor.
He looked like a mountain that had decided to stretch its legs.
Zhang Fei did not glance back at his nephew. He simply slammed the flat of his blade against the center of his shield. The metallic clang rolled across the valley.
"Sons of the Han!" Zhang Fei bellowed, his voice hitting a register that made the horses in the rear whinny.
"Follow me! Kill the rebels!"
A wave of heat tore through Liu Feng's chest. The fear clawing at his stomach vanished. In its place, one single urge remained. Follow that enormous back into the fire.
Of the three of them, Liu Feng actually had the least real combat experience.
Mi Fang had been trailing Liu Bei since the Xu Province days, and Ma Su had served on the tactical staff during the conquest of several Yizhou cities.
Liu Feng only knew the desperate running retreat out of Jingzhou. He was a trainee thrown headfirst into a hurricane.
But standing behind Zhang Fei, Liu Feng understood. He did not need to be a veteran. He only needed to be a shadow.
Why should I be afraid? He tightened his grip on his sword. My uncle is the man who held a bridge against ten thousand. I am just going for a stroll with a legend.
Liu Feng slammed his blade against his shield. "Great Han! Victorious!"
The chant caught among the vanguard, a few voices picking it up. Then Zhang Fei broke into a run for the base of the folding ladders, and the ripple swelled into a roar that swallowed the noise of every siege engine on the field.
"GREAT HAN! VICTORIOUS!"
In the rear, Pang Tong watched the black tide of Shu infantry surge forward.
A faint and satisfied smile settled on his face. "Taking a city is supposed to be a slow and agonizing process," he mused to the empty air.
"But when you pair the cutting-edge mechanics of our siege works with a general who fights like a demon, the math changes. Today is not a siege. It is an execution."
He paused, glancing around for a moment. He truly wished Zhuge Liang or Fa Zheng were here to see this. Being this right about a tactical forecast felt wasted without an intellectual peer to gloat to.
"Still," Pang Tong murmured, his eyes narrowing as he fixed on Zhang Fei's distant silhouette.
"If he does not break that gate within the hour, the Hanzhong boys might find their footing. We need a clean break."
The folding ladders were a masterpiece of 'IKEA-style' ancient engineering. The iron hooks at the top had been forged with a specific curvature. Once they bit into the stone battlements, the weight of the men climbing pulled the hooks deeper. Short of the wall itself collapsing, those ladders were not going anywhere.
The Hanzhong defenders knew nothing of physics and a great deal about dying. They heaved against the ladders in vain. Four men would brace themselves, throw their full weight into the push, and feel the wood shift barely a finger's width before the mass of a dozen armored soldiers yanked it back down.
Then they saw who was leading the climb.
Zhang Fei did not climb the ladder so much as he swallowed it in a handful of strides. He cleared the top of the battlement in one motion. His long-blade swept out in a wide arc. The first three men in his path never had time to register the blow before they dropped, and a gap opened along the wall.
A Hanzhong officer, desperate for glory and clearly not thinking straight, lunged at Zhang Fei's side. Zhang Fei did not even bother with his sword. He swung his iron-rimmed shield like a door slamming shut and caught the officer square in the chest.
Liu Feng, right behind his uncle, watched the officer leave his feet and vanish over the inner parapet.
Zhang Fei's combat had no grace and no flourish. It was sheer momentum. When his blade finally notched and dulled on bone and stone, he tossed the useless weapon aside.
He took his shield in both hands and drove forward along the length of the wall. Men were smashed into the stone or chose to leap rather than face the iron mountain bearing down on them.
By the time Liu Feng vaulted onto the battlements, he found himself standing in the wake of a massacre. His uncle was fifty paces down the wall, literally "plowing" through the enemy ranks.
"Victorious!" Liu Feng screamed. He parried a desperate thrust from a Hanzhong survivor and answered with a counter-strike born of a thousand drills. He was no Zhang Fei. But he was damn good.
Zhang Fei finally halted his charge when he spotted a cluster of armored officers rallying near the stairs.
He kicked a fallen long-blade off the stone, caught it in mid-air, and gave it a testing spin.
"Surrender now, and you might actually live to see breakfast tomorrow!" Zhang Fei shouted.
"Like hell! Do you have any idea who I am?"
Yang Ren stepped forward, his face burning with rage. He was the champion of Hanzhong, a man undefeated in every duel within his home province.
All his life he had been told he could stand shoulder to shoulder with any general in the north.
Then their blades met.
The first blow nearly tore Yang Ren's sword from his hands.
"Yang Ang! Get over here! Help me!" Yang Ren screamed. His pride had evaporated on the spot.
For a few desperate moments, the two Hanzhong generals held Zhang Fei in place, their combined strength and technique just enough to keep the black-clad giant at bay.
Then a new sound drifted over the walls. Screaming. Coming from inside the pass.
"General! Fire in the rear! Someone is shooting fire arrows from the mountain path!"
The Hanzhong generals froze. That split second of distraction was all Zhang Fei needed.
"DIE!"
Zhang Fei unleashed a roar that hit like a physical blow. It was the Spring Thunder roar, a sound that seemed to rattle the minds of his opponents. Yang Ren and Yang Ang stumbled. Their vision blurred.
Zhang Fei did not waste the opening. He dropped his shield, reversed his grip on his blade, and drove it through Yang Ren's chest in one clean thrust.
Before Yang Ang could even register the death of his comrade, Zhang Fei had already wrenched the blade free and brought it down across his neck. Both generals crumpled to the stone. Blood streaked across Zhang Fei's face. He did not even twitch.
Down in the Shu camp, Pang Tong spotted the thick black smoke rising behind Yangping Pass.
"Fa Zheng and Huo Jun did it," Pang Tong murmured. Relief swept through him. "They took the mountain path. The pass is ours."
A moment later, Zhang Fei's voice rolled out from the highest point of the battlements.
"I AM ZHANG YIDE OF YAN!!!
THE ENEMY GENERALS ARE DEAD! SURRENDER AND LIVE! RESIST AND DIE!"
While Yangping Pass was being carved open by blood and iron, Chengdu was experiencing a very different kind of chaos.
The first month of the new year was the busiest Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang had ever known. It was also the loneliest.
Both their families were still back in Jiangling, and the government offices of Chengdu felt cold and cavernous without the laughter of their children or the quiet presence of their wives.
They shared a simple, quiet New Year's dinner together, and then Kongming immediately went back to work.
He was currently overseeing the creation of three new government bureaus: the Brocade Bureau, the Iron Bureau, and the Sugar Bureau. He also had plans to personally inspect the salt wells near Jiangzhou.
The man worked with a relentless energy, seemingly fueled by nothing but tea and the pursuit of order.
Liu Bei, meanwhile, was stuck on the social side of the conquest.
He spent the first week of the year in an endless cycle of banquets and informal meetings with the powerful clans of Yizhou. With Zhao Yun standing silently behind him like an armored guardian, the local elites clans were remarkably polite.
They did not cause trouble, naturally. Open defiance was for commoners. These men had perfected a far more elegant weapon: the art of smiling while doing absolutely nothing.
"So," Liu Bei said, studying the man standing before him. "You are Li Miao?"
The scholar stood with his chin tilted high, the look of a man bored and entirely certain of his own greatness. "I am."
Liu Bei leaned back in his chair, a faint smile on his lips. "And do you have some wisdom to share with me, Master Li?"
Li Miao did not hesitate. He had been rehearsing this speech.
"General Liu, you entered this province under the banner of brotherhood and the restoration of the Han. Yet you have treated the rightful master of this land, your own kinsman Liu Zhang, with nothing but contempt. You have seized his authority and overridden his laws. Your methods are... unrefined. Crass, even."
The room went silent. Zhao Yun's hand moved an inch closer to the hilt of his sword.
Liu Bei remained calm. He looked at Li Miao for a long beat before asking a simple question. "Tell me, Master Li. Do you truly believe Liu Zhang was a competent ruler?"
Li Miao sniffed. "He was the rightful ruler. Order must be maintained by the elite, not by the whims of a wandering general."
"And did you see the crowds outside the gates when you walked in today?" Liu Bei asked.
"I saw a mob of peasants looking for a handout, yes," Li Miao replied. "The common people lack the intellect to understand true governance. Are you suggesting you intend to rule this province based on the desires of the ignorant?"
Liu Bei's interest in the conversation vanished on the spot. The man was a relic, a beautiful porcelain vase with nothing inside. He shook his head.
"If you find my methods crass, Master Li, then I suggest you return to your home and wait for a ruler who meets your high standards. I have a province to rebuild, and I do not have time to debate the refinement of survival with a man who thinks his neighbors are garbage."
Li Miao stood frozen, his mouth hanging open. He had expected an apology, or at least a debate. Instead, he had been dismissed like a bitch. He turned and stormed out, his silk robes rustling with indignation.
Liu Bei turned to Zhao Yun and let out a long sigh. "I finally understand why the legends say there are Three Dragons of the Li family in Guanghan, yet Li Miao is never counted among them. The man is all scales and no heart."
Zhao Yun nodded. "You were merciful, my lord. Many would have taken his head for insolence like that."
Liu Bei stretched, his joints popping. "I am not in the business of making martyrs out of idiots. Zilong, do me a favor. Go outside. Invite the people waiting at the gates to come in."
"Into the government office, my lord?"
"It is a bit chilly out there," Liu Bei said, already walking toward the great hearth. "It is warmer in here. We have plenty of wine and plenty of space. Let us hear what the people actually want for the new year."
For the first time in the history of Chengdu, ordinary citizens came forward. Carpenters, farmers, street vendors. They stepped into the opulent halls they had helped build.
The atmosphere was chaotic. No one knew how to address him. Some called him Imperial Uncle. Others said Governor Liu. A few simply called out General. Liu Bei did not care. He sat among them, listening to their complaints about grain prices and their hopes for the coming harvest.
When he promised that taxes would not be raised and that new laws would be written to check the abuses of the land-owning elite, a cheer went up that rattled the very rafters of the hall.
Outside, a cluster of young noblemen watched the scene with open disgust. "He is letting the rabble drink in the Great Hall? This Liu Bei is a disgrace to his title."
"Quiet!" his companion hissed, seizing his arm. "Do you want to find out exactly how sharp Zhao Yun's spear is? Shut your mouth."
By the end of the month, word from the east finally reached the capital.
Zhang Fei had not only seized Yangping Pass but had driven Zhang Lu's forces all the way to the borders of Hanzhong. Zhang Lu, shattered and terrified, had fled northwest, seeking shelter somewhere in the Guanzhong plains.
The effect on Chengdu was immediate. The powerful clans who had been so difficult suddenly transformed into the most loyal supporters of the new regime.
Scholars whispered in the tea houses about the Three-Foot Sword of the Imperial Uncle. The phrase had caught fire. A blade sharp enough to sever the mountain passes of the west.
The opportunists were already doing the sums. If Liu Bei was this strong, maybe he truly could stand against Cao Cao's million-man army. And if he did, it would be very profitable to be on the winning side.
Liu Bei, now the darling of the political scene, sat in his office with Kongming, reading a secret report from Jian Yong.
The report had come through the Qi Mountains, changing hands half a dozen times before reaching Chengdu.
Kongming finished reading and nodded slowly. "Jian Yong has more than proven himself a master of diplomacy, that man could sell sand to a desert.
"The report says Ma Chao, Jin Ma Chao, struck Xiahou Yuan like lightning in the twelfth month," Liu Bei noted. "He pushed Cao Cao's forces all the way back to Chang'an. The road to Liangzhou is effectively cut."
Kongming sighed, his expression darkening. "It is a victory, yes. But Liangzhou is a powder keg. Ma Chao can win over the Qiang chieftains and the Di tribes, but the educated clans of the region will never fully accept him. That is the first problem."
He began counting on his fingers.
"Second, Han Sui is only working with Ma Chao out of necessity. They are two tigers sharing a very cramped cave.
Third, Jian Yong reports that Han Sui's top general, Yan Xing, is constantly whispering in his ear, urging him to defect to Cao Cao."
Liu Bei rubbed his eyes, 'The Three-Foot Sword' had won them a province, but the world outside was only growing more tangled.
"Zhang Lu has fled north," Liu Bei mused. "He has nowhere left to go but to kneel before Cao Cao. When he does, the whole realm will know that the balance of power in the west has shifted."
Kongming laughed, a sound of genuine delight. "Let them look, my lord. You have drawn the sword of Yizhou. Let the realm tremble at its edge."
Liu Bei smiled, but his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere, back to the man who had set so much of this in motion. "I wonder... how is our friend Xu Yuanzhi faring in the north? Is he safe this New Year?"