When they first slipped out of Xuchang, the biting chill of early northern spring had been cold enough to seep straight into the bones.
But here, after crossing into Jiangdong territory, the frost had already given way to warm, blooming spring weather. The sky stretched wide and clear, and across the glittering river surface, flocks of waterfowl darted and splashed through the gentle currents, as if intoxicated by the season itself.
After passing through the heavily guarded naval checkpoint at Ruxu, the trio finally disembarked at the bustling port town of Chungu County.
The town itself was not particularly large, but it brimmed with lively energy. Everything a traveler could need could be found there. Nestled between rolling green hills and the vast Yangtze River, the county was crowded with merchant ships constantly arriving and departing. Thanks to the endless river trade, the place carried an air of remarkable prosperity. Finding a comfortable inn to rest in was effortless.
But first things first.
"We have escaped our confinement. Our hearts are finally free once more!" Xu Shu declared, his eyes shining with carefree excitement. "We should celebrate properly and drink until we collapse!"
The proposal passed unanimously.
After spending days cramped aboard a rocking boat, surviving on river fish and strips of dried meat, Dong Jue felt as if his legs barely belonged to him anymore. What he needed now was proper food.
Likely because it catered to the endless stream of wealthy merchants passing through, the tavern in Chungu County was surprisingly grand, with a menu impressive enough to make their mouths water.
They ordered generously. Steaming wheat buns, rich bowls of hot noodle soup, roasted dog meat, sizzling pork, and hearty stewed vegetables soon filled the table.
And to properly celebrate the successful rescue of their brilliant strategist, Dong Jue acted as the generous host and spent a hefty sum on two large, extravagantly expensive sweet melons.
The moment the tavern keeper split the melon open and set it down, the rich, sugary scent hit Xu Shu and Shi Tao like a physical slap. Forgetting all scholarly dignity, the two of them lunged forward like starving wolves, tearing into the fruit. In seconds, only clean-scraped rinds were left behind.
Leaning back with his stomach full and slightly distended, Xu Shu let out a long, blissful sigh.
"Thanks to you, Gongxi," Xu Shu said, using Dong Jue's courtesy name, "I finally feel like I'm alive again."
In Xuchang, the northern elites could grow winter fruit using heated springs and elaborate geothermal setups, but the cost was obscene. That kind of luxury belonged only to Cao Cao's inner circle. It was not something a sidelined strategist like him could even dream of touching.
With his stomach warm and full, Xu Shu's mood soared.
The three of them reclined, slowly sipping rice wine, letting the servants clear the table while they enjoyed the rare peace of doing absolutely nothing.
As the alcohol warmed his body, Xu Shu's sharp hearing caught fragments of conversation from a nearby table. A group of merchants was venting loudly over their cups.
"…I'm telling you, Tao San'er got dragged off by the magistrate two days ago! They said he was running a private paper mill!"
"Doing business in Jiangdong is going straight to hell. I swear, sooner or later I'm packing everything up and moving to Jiangling!"
"You think you can just move your whole estate? Are you out of your damn mind? You'd have better luck crawling into one of those aristocratic clans and begging to marry in!"
"Shut up, keep your voice down."
"Keep my voice down? Screw that!" I'll say whatever the hell I want!"
The frustrated merchant slammed his cup down. "Everyone and their mother knows the recipe for Liu Bei's Mulberry Paper. Hell, even their grandmas know it. But only the prominent, blue-blooded aristocratic clans are legally allowed to manufacture it. What kind of twisted, stupid system is that?"
The tavern owner, looking absolutely terrified of a treason charge, sprinted over to their table, whispering frantic apologies and pouring free wine until the irate merchants finally lowered their voices.
With the political rant thoroughly squashed, Xu Shu listened as the men seamlessly pivoted to a new, equally passionate topic.
"My cousin just came back from Jiangling," one of them said bitterly. "He says the markets there are flooded with a new luxury good. Red malt sugar. Insanely sweet. Better than anything we've ever seen. If we could get the rights to sell it, we'd be set for life."
Another merchant scoffed, his voice dripping with cynical depression. "Pray it's just a decent opportunity. If it was truly the business opportunity of a lifetime, do you honestly think bottom-feeders like us would even get a foot in the door?"
That killed the mood completely. The group fell silent, finished their drinks in a dull haze, paid, and left one by one.
Swirling his wine, Xu Shu tilted his head, genuinely intrigued.
"Gongxi," Xu Shu said, glancing at Dong Jue. "Is Jiangling truly that prosperous a commercial hub right now?"
Based on everything he had gathered from military reports during his time in Xuchang, Jiangling was supposed to be a grim iron fortress, the absolute frontline. High walls, deep trenches, bristling with weapons, a heavily militarized zone designed to stare down Cao Cao's forces in Xiangyang and Fancheng while anchoring the defense of southern Jingzhou.
That was what Jiangling was supposed to be.
But listening to those merchants, it sounded like an economic paradise. It did not match his mental map at all.
Dong Jue merely offered a slow, deeply smug smile.
"Why so impatient, Yuanzhi?" Dong Jue teased, sipping his tea. "Just wait a few more days. You'll see it with your own eyes."
Fair enough. Xu Shu had always been a man who appreciated the journey as much as the destination. He shrugged off the confusion and returned to his wine with a cheerful laugh.
They ate like kings, slept in proper beds at a clean, comfortable inn, and did not bother waking until the sun was high the next morning.
After a leisurely breakfast, the trio strolled back toward the docks, completely refreshed.
Their relaxed mood vanished the moment they saw the harbor. The entire dockside had been sealed off by Chungu County's local militia.
Dong Jue's heart did a violent backflip. Had Cao Cao's spies tracked us?
A quick glance at the crowd of deeply annoyed, sighing merchants huddled near the barricades told him this was a localized nuisance, not a manhunt.
Given his sensitive identity, Dong Jue could not afford to draw attention. Instead, he put on a perfectly rehearsed, obsequious merchant's smile, slipped into the crowd, and quickly gathered information.
"A few slave laborers managed to escape from one of the prominent local estates," Dong Jue whispered when he returned. "The County Commandant believes they are hiding among the docked boats."
Xu Shu casually scanned the perimeter. Behind the line of bored spearmen, a spectacularly overweight official lay sprawled on a folding wooden stool, yawning as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
So we just wait? Xu Shu thought, completely unbothered. They carried nothing incriminating. All sensitive materials were strapped to their bodies, and their boat was as plain as could be. Let the guards search. They would find nothing but empty teacups.
But strangely, the county militia made no move to actually inspect the ships. They simply stood there, blocking access.
A short while later, one of the older merchants peeled away from the frustrated crowd and approached Dong Jue. A brief, whispered negotiation followed. Xu Shu watched in mild amusement as Dong Jue, looking like he was physically pulling out a molar, produced his heavy coin purse, counted out a painfully large stack of silver, and handed it over.
The elder gathered similar "contributions" from the other ship owners. Once the collection was complete, he trotted over to the fat Commandant, bowed so low his nose nearly scraped the ground, and discreetly handed over the heavy sack of cash.
The effect was immediate. As if by miracle, the Commandant suddenly decided the harbor was perfectly clear. He barked an order, and the militia packed up and marched away without inspecting a single vessel.
Xu Shu chuckled, finally understanding the shakedown. His right hand, which had instinctively drifted toward the hilt of his concealed sword, relaxed and fell back to his side.
The elite clans of Jiangdong likely could not care less about a few escaped slaves, Xu Shu mused. But for a corrupt local magistrate, it was the perfect excuse to seal off a port and extract a "search fee" from merchants desperate to keep moving.
The real show came a few minutes later.
When the three men finally boarded their small boat and opened the cabin door, they were greeted by four ragged, violently shivering figures huddled in the corner, their eyes wide with pure terror.
Xu Shu stared at the runaway slaves. Then he slowly turned his head toward Dong Jue.
And then he burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter.
"Well, Gongxi!" Xu Shu wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye. "It seems your bribe was money exceptionally well spent!"
With the boat pushing off from the dock, the four terrified fugitives were thrown Xu Shu and Shi Tao's spare clothing. Realizing they were not going to be handed over to the authorities, the men dropped to their knees in gratitude and immediately volunteered to row. The three strategists happily accepted, enjoying a surprisingly effortless journey upriver.
Standing at the stern, Xu Shu leaned against the railing, taking in the sweeping scenery of Jiangdong. The riverbanks were dotted with massive wooden waterwheels, slowly turning in the current to irrigate the surrounding farmland. Even the low, humble peasant houses clustered around the machinery felt fresh and unfamiliar to a man who had spent years in the arid north.
Dong Jue, however, took one look at Jiangdong's infrastructure and scoffed openly.
"Yuanzhi, these rickety waterwheels in Jiangdong are complete trash," Dong Jue snorted. "Compared to the hydraulic mills in Jingzhou, it is like comparing mud to clouds."
Xu Shu had heard Dong Jue boasting about the "miracles" happening in Jingzhou, but he remained skeptical. In the end, he had only been gone for four years. Even with a genius like Kongming managing the province, how much could the world really have changed in such a short time?
Seeing the doubt on Xu Shu's face, Dong Jue smiled knowingly. He turned to one of the newly acquired rowers, who was pulling the oar with steady, practiced rhythm.
"You there," Dong Jue called. "Do you know how much it costs for a peasant to use one of those Jiangdong waterwheels over there?"
The slave quickly bowed his head, not daring to stop rowing. "I would not dare lie to my benefactors," he said hoarsely. "For the military-agricultural peasants of Jiangdong, the base tax rate is exactly fifty percent of the harvest. But if you want access to the waterwheel network, the tax immediately rises to sixty percent."
Without waiting for Dong Jue to prompt him, the man's voice filled with desperate, almost reverent excitement. "Everyone in the south knows the truth. Governor Liu Bei of Jingzhou is a saint of benevolence. To use his state-sponsored hydraulic mills, the government only charges a flat fee of twenty copper coins. They call it a maintenance tax. That is all!"
Xu Shu quickly did the calculation in his head. The economic difference was staggering. A ten percent harvest tax versus a negligible flat fee. It was the difference between lifelong poverty and genuine prosperity.
Sensing the friendly attitude of his passengers, the rower added boldly, "To be honest, sirs… we were planning to escape all the way to Jiangling anyway. We are grateful to the heavens that we met you three. You are just as kind as Governor Liu himself!"
Xu Shu smiled faintly and turned his gaze back to the wide river. His curiosity toward this "Jiangling" was quickly reaching its peak.
As their boat continued upriver, river traffic increased dramatically. The small merchant vessels soon gave way to large fleets.
They passed the vast expanse of Lake Poyang, where hundreds of ships were anchored side by side like a floating city. They crossed the famous waters of Lake Dongting, surrounded by thousands of white sails moving in a chaotic but beautiful rhythm.
Leaving Dongting behind, they moved north along the main channel of the Yangtze River.
A few days later, Dong Jue stood at the very front of the bow, the wind whipping his robes. He pointed a trembling finger toward the horizon.
"Yuanzhi! Jiangling! Jiangling is right there!"
Xu Shu ducked out of the cabin and stepped onto the deck. The moment his eyes locked onto the horizon, he stopped breathing.
His mind could not immediately process the sheer scale of the scene before him.
In the distance stood two massive twin fortress cities side by side, dominating the skyline. Above the towering stone walls, an enormous banner bearing the single character "HAN" snapped violently in the wind, casting a long shadow over the land.
Beneath the banner, arranged at precise intervals along the battlements, were rows of heavy siege ballistas. Even from this distance, the cold, lethal gleam of their iron mechanisms sent a chill down Xu Shu's spine. Elite, heavily armored patrols moved in strict, synchronized formations along the walls.
That was the military side. The ground below was even more overwhelming.
The Jiangling docks stretched farther than the eye could see, a sprawling maze of wooden piers packed with thousands of merchants and tens of thousands of cargo crates.
Mountains of finely woven, vividly dyed silk and textiles were stacked high, shimmering under the sunlight like fields of gold.
On the other side, raw ore was piled into artificial hills, towering even higher than the defensive walls of most smaller counties.
The people flooding the harbor, merchants, laborers, scholars, and travelers, were dressed in vivid, saturated colors, completely devoid of the dull gray despair of the north. Even the most prosperous districts of Xuchang would pale in comparison to this overwhelming tide of wealth.
Carriages and palanquins jammed the wide paved streets, moving through chaotic, vibrant congestion. The deafening calls of peddlers shouting prices, the rhythmic chanting of laborers hauling cargo, and the sharp exchanges of guild masters blended into an intoxicating, chaotic symphony.
For a breathless moment, Xu Shu felt violently displaced in time. It was as if he were staring at the mythical golden-age splendor of the ancient capital Luoyang, resurrected on the banks of the Yangtze.
"This… this is Jiangling?" Xu Shu whispered, utterly stunned. "This is supposed to be a frontline military stronghold?"
His strategic mind immediately rejected the scene before him. "If Cao Cao launches a surprise attack, how is this defended? The civilian losses alone…"
Dong Jue burst out laughing and slapped his thigh. "Yuanzhi, look at the water. Half the city's wealth is already on ships. If war horns sound, the entire commercial sector can unmoor and evacuate downstream within an hour."
Dong Jue pointed proudly at the monolithic stone walls. "Furthermore, Yunchang did not just build a fortress. He built double citadels. The internal capacity of those combined walls is large enough to safely shelter nearly a million people."
Xu Shu quickly ran through the logistics of feeding and organizing a million people during a siege. He shook his head in absolute awe. Yunchang must be permanently stressed over the city's maximum capacity limits.
Squinting against the sun, Xu Shu stared at the highest watchtower. For a fleeting second, he thought he could see the silhouette of an extremely tall, majestic general in green robes, calmly stroking a magnificent beard while gazing down at the bustling city.
"Just my imagination, Xu Shu thought with a quiet laugh. I must have missed Yunchang far too much."
Their boat did not join the chaotic congestion of the main commercial docks. Armed with official military clearance, Dong Jue guided their newly recruited oarsmen to veer north, bypassing the main harbor and entering through Jiangling's heavily guarded northern water gate.
As the boat slowly turned and the southern riverbank came into view, Xu Shu's eyes widened so far they nearly popped out of his skull.
Directly across the river from Jiangling stood the fortress of Gongan. And along the Gongan shoreline were waterwheels.
But these were not the rickety, inefficient irrigation devices he had seen in Jiangdong. These were colossal, impossibly complex machines.
A dense array of iron gears and massive wooden mechanisms were perfectly synchronized, harnessing the violent force of the Yangtze River and channeling it with terrifying precision.
The truly mind-bending part was what those wheels were powering.
Stretching from the river's edge deep into the heart of Gongan Fortress were massive continuous tracks made of interlocking wooden mortise-and-tenon joints. They functioned like giant moving belts.
Attached to these heavy wooden belts were large square buckets.
As Xu Shu watched in absolute, stunned silence, a heavily loaded cargo ship carrying raw iron ore maneuvered into a specialized docking cradle beneath one of these mechanisms.
The moment the ship locked into place, the wooden belt engaged. The continuous loop of square buckets descended from the Gongan walls, slammed into the ship's cargo hold, scooped up massive loads of ore, and were seamlessly lifted back upward, carried into the city's interior foundries by the relentless motion of the belt.
It was an endless automated cycle of extraction.
Xu Shu quickly ran the calculation in his head. "Heavens above. One fully loaded ore ship, with maybe three laborers just stabilizing the cargo… emptied in half an hour."
There were no legions of sweating dockworkers with wheelbarrows. No struggling mules hauling carts. Only the constant, booming churn of the river doing the work of a thousand men.
Even as their small boat passed through the water gate and officially docked in Jiangling, Xu Shu remained frozen, his mind struggling to categorize what he had just witnessed.
He vaguely remembered a letter from Kongming casually mentioning that his brilliant wife, Huang Yueying, had been deeply engaged in theoretical research and had made a "minor breakthrough." He recalled the specific term she insisted on using.
"Department of Engineering…" Xu Shu muttered to himself, his voice trembling with awe. "How have they reached this level of godlike mastery?"
"Madam Huang constantly corrects us," Dong Jue replied as he stepped off the boat. "She insists we call it Engineering Studies. Or simply, science."
Before Xu Shu could process the term, he looked up and froze.
Standing on the stone pier, surrounded by heavily armored elite guards, was a face he thought he might never see again.
"Yunchang!" Xu Shu shouted, a surge of pure joy crashing through him.
Guan Yu stepped forward, his famously stern and proud features softening into a warm, deeply emotional smile. He reached out and gripped Xu Shu's shoulders firmly.
"Yuanzhi!" Guan Yu's booming voice echoed across the docks. "Since we parted in northern Jingzhou… I never imagined it would be years before we met again!"
He released Xu Shu, then threw his head back and let out a roaring laugh that shook the dock itself. Turning, he clapped a heavy armored hand onto Dong Jue's shoulder.
"And you, Gongxi! To pass through the jaws of death and deliver our military advisor safely home… your merit today is equivalent to breaking into enemy ranks and tearing down their banner!"
Dong Jue smiled modestly and gave a precise bow. His journey had taken him across Jingzhou, into Yizhou, through Chang'an, into Xuchang, down river networks, and finally back to Jiangling. He had been forged by fire, returning far more capable and composed than before. But in this moment, seeing two old comrades reunited, that was reward enough.
Without further delay, Guan Yu seized Xu Shu by the sleeve.
"Come, Yuanzhi!" he boomed, eyes bright with pride. "Walk with me. You must see the city I have built!"