The fight lasted all night, but both sides drew off in the morning. The next few days saw a series of skirmishes, during which Cao Cao directed construction of floating bridges. On shore, Cao Ren built a barricade of wagons around the camp.
As soon as they were done, Ma Chao’s troops raced in and burned everything to the ground. Cao Cao’s forces ran screaming, and Ma Chao controlled both sides.
“Well, so much for that,” said Cao Cao dejectedly. “What do we do now?”
“We could build an earthen rampart,” suggested Little Xun.
It was theoretically a good idea, but the sandy river soil crumbled as fast as the redshirts could build. Things got worse and worse, and Cao Cao began to get seriously worried. Besides, it was now the beginning of winter, and the weather was getting very chilly.
“Boss?” said a guard. “There’s a Mr. Lou Zibo to see you.”
In walked an old man in a wizard’s robe. “I prefer to go by ‘Plum-Blossom Dreamer,’” he said. “So, Cao Cao, I hear you wanted to build a camp. What’s stopping you?”
“The shitty soil quality,” grumbled Cao Cao. “Say, you’re a wizard. Do you have any magical tips?”
“I have a completely mundane tip,” said Plum-Blossom Dreamer. “There’s plenty of water. Wait till the temperature drops below freezing, then build an ice fortress.”
“That’s brilliant,” said Cao Cao. “Do you accept credit cards?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Plum-Blossom Dreamer. “I’m registered with Deus Ex Machina Services, Inc. Your subscription covers it.” He took off.
Cao Cao went outside. “New orders! Pile up dirt, then dump a bucket of water over it and let it freeze!” This worked like a charm, and Cao Cao hummed an impromptu song about letting it go as he watched the bucket brigades do their work.
In the morning, Ma Chao woke up to see a massive ice fortress that had sprung up overnight. “Witchcraft,” he muttered. “Or physics. They’re pretty much the same.” He mustered his troops and charged up to the ice fortress.
Cao Cao rode out to meet him, accompanied only by Xu Chu. He flicked his whip. “Hey. Ma Chao! Wanna talk things out?”
Ma Chao lowered his spear and kept charging.
“Or not,” said Cao Cao. “Look, don’t you see the gods built me a magic ice fort overnight? Just give up already!”
Ma Chao growled, and was about to attack Cao Cao when he spotted Xu Chu behind him, brandishing a sword. He stopped short, and waved his whip in Xu Chu’s direction. “Is that Tiger Dude?”
“That would be me!” roared Xu Chu, lifting his sword high into the air. Suddenly, he blasted Ma Chao with laser beams from his eyes.
Ma Chao took a step back. “Nope. Fuck that. I’m not fighting a guy with a tentacle dick and eye lasers. Wrong genre.” He turned around and went back to his own camp.
Cao Cao and Xu Chu went in the opposite direction. “That was awesome!” said Cao Cao. “Hey, guys, you know what the enemy’s calling Xu Chu? ‘Tiger Dude!’”
“That is the best nickname ever,” said the redshirts, impressed.
“I am so capturing that guy tomorrow,” bragged Xu Chu.
“Careful,” warned Cao Cao. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“Either he dies, or I do.” Xu Chu grabbed a blank postcard.
Ma Chao! You vs. me, tomorrow!
“Oh, is that so?” said Ma Chao. “I’m not scared of him!” He made himself a post-it note saying ‘Kill Tiger Dude.’
The next day, the two armies faced off again, and Ma Chao rode forward. “Hey, Tiger Dude! Come fight me!”
Cao Cao, chilling by the flag, whistled. “Damn,” he said. “This guy is basically Lu Bu 2.0!”
The two combatants burst out of their ranks and went at it. The fight went on for a hundred furious rounds, and neither warrior gave an inch. Soon, their horses were exhausted, and they took a quick break to get new ones. The fighters still showed no signs of tiring. Their weapons continued flashing for a hundred more rounds.
Xu Chu had had enough. “Timeout!” he called, and rode back to his own corner. Hastily, he stripped off his armour and clothes, and jumped back on his horse completely naked. Everyone’s jaw dropped in horror.
A few rounds later, Xu Chu took a gigantic swing at Ma Chao’s head, but Ma Chao anticipated it. He ducked, and thrust his spear right at his opponent’s heart. Xu Chu twisted aside and trapped the spear under his arm. In an instant, they were wrestling for control of the spear.
Xu Chu reached up, caught it in the middle with his prehensile penis, and snapped it in half. Ma Chao was left holding a length of the shaft, but without missing a beat he bashed Xu Chu on the head with it. Xu Chu responded in kind, and the epic duel devolved into the two warriors smacking each other with sticks.
“Alright, it’s just gotten silly,” said Cao Cao. “Xiahou Yuan, Cao Hong, go help him out!” They ran forward, but Ma Dai and Pang De came out to meet them. Soon it was all a confused mess, and the redshirts got involved.
It didn’t go well for Team Cao Cao. He lost half of his redshirts and was driven back into his ice fortress. “Screw that,” he said. “We’ll hide for a while.” He secretly sent some parties to get behind Ma Chao’s lines.
After the fight, Ma Chao went to Han Sui, shaking his head admiringly. “I’ve never fought anyone as good as that Tiger Dude! Even if he is a weirdo.”
Ma Chao and his posse took to riding up and down in front of Cao Cao’s walls, taunting him. Of course, Cao Cao didn’t charge out wildly, but he was still annoyed. After a few really good “Yo Mama” jokes, he’d had more than enough. “For fuck’s sake!” he yelled, throwing his hat on the ground and stamping on it. “So help me, I will kill that guy or die trying!”
Xiahou Yuan happened to be nearby, and overheard that. “I’ll get him for you, boss!” he called, and before Cao Cao could even turn around, he was out the door.
“No!” shrieked Cao Cao. “Xiahou Yuan! I thought you were sensible!” Without thinking, he ran out after his general.
Ma Chao wheeled around to fight Xiahou Yuan, but when he spotted Cao Cao, he made a beeline for him instead.
“Shit,” said Cao Cao, and ran for it. Luckily for him, one of his outside parties swooped in to the rescue, and Ma Chao withdrew.
That night, he and Han Sui huddled with their advisors. “This isn’t really going anywhere,” said Ma Chao. “We need to try something fresh.”
“Or we could take a timeout,” said Li Kan, one of the advisors. “It’s winter. Why not negotiate an armistice till spring?”
“He’s right,” said Han Sui. “No sense in fighting in the middle of winter.”
Ma Chao wasn’t happy, but eventually they argued him round. The camp sent Yang Qiu and Hou Xuan to talk to Cao Cao.
“I’ll get back to you,” said Cao Cao, and called a huddle of his own.
“Okay boss, what’s your idea?” said Jia Xu.
“Guess,” said Cao Cao.
“It’s obvious,” said Jia Xu. “Pretend to agree, then trick them into fighting each other.”
“Precisely,” said Cao Cao, and sent back a letter agreeing to the armistice. He immediately started construction on a floating bridge.
“I don’t trust him,” said Ma Chao, looking at the letter suspiciously. “We should be on our guard. I’ll take Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
“Good thinking,” agreed Han Sui.
Cao Cao watched them watching him for a few days. “It’s working,” he said to Jia Xu. “Who’s taking the next shift?
“It’s a Tuesday, so Han Sui.”
“Cool,” said Cao Cao. The next day, he rode outside with only a small party, then pulled ahead of the crowd.
He looked up and down Han Sui’s nervous redshirts and laughed. “Didn’t you want to see the famous Cao Cao? Here I am! Don’t be scared, I don’t have four eyes or two mouths or anything.”
The soldiers didn’t say a word, but their knees trembled. Cao Cao rolled his eyes. “Anyway, where’s your boss? I want to talk to him alone, no tricks.”
Han Sui poked his head out, and saw that Cao Cao wasn’t wearing any armour. “Hmmm, he must mean it then,” he thought. Not to be outdone, he rode out in his underwear. Cao Cao approached him, and they played chicken until their horses’ heads crashed together.
“Hey, Han Sui, long time no see,” said Cao Cao, and sighed wistfully. “You know, your father and I graduated in the same year. We were friends! Shame it’s come to this. How old are you now?”
“I’m forty,” said Han Sui.
“Wait, what?” said Cao Cao. “I went to school with your dad! And I’m fifty-five! The hell? And wasn’t Ma Chao seventeen in Chapter Ten? That was, like, fifteen years ago! His dad was the same age as you! When are you all getting conceived?”
Han Sui shrugged.
“That’s extremely disturbing,” said Cao Cao. “What is wrong with you people? Well, never mind. Like I was saying, I went to school with your dad. Life was so much better in those days, before all these civil wars. If only things could go back to the way they were.”
“I know,” sighed Han Sui. They talked about the good ol’ days for a couple of hours.
“What was that all about?” asked Ma Chao afterwards.
“Darned if I know,” said Han Sui. “He just wanted to wax nostalgic.”
“Nothing about the war?”
“No, nothing.”
Ma Chao snorted. “Sure, seems legit to me.” He went out.
“Did you see that?” said Cao Cao to Jia Xu.
“Yep,” said Jia Xu. “And it went without a hitch. Still, I doubt that’s actually enough to make them kill each other.”
“You have some more ideas?” asked Cao Cao, interested.
“Well, Ma Chao might be brave, but he’s not very bright,” said Jia Xu. “Write a letter to Han Sui saying something vague about ‘danger.’ Then white it out really badly and write something normal on top. Make sure Ma Chao sees the mailman, so he’ll demand to see the letter. It’ll make him even more paranoid. I’ll work on their underlings.”
“Brilliant,” said Cao Cao, and did it right away.
Han Sui was puzzling over the letter when Ma Chao came in and grabbed it. “What’s this?” he demanded.
“Cao Cao’s letter,” shrugged Han Sui. “I think he wrote it drunk or something.”
“Why is it all smudged up?” said Ma Chao. “It’s covered with whiteout!”
“It came like that!” protested Han Sui.
“Bullshit,” said Ma Chao. “No one sends their rough drafts.”
“They do when they’re drunk texting.”
“Not Cao Cao,” said Ma Chao, probably unaware that Cao Cao drunk texted all the time and occasionally drunk stabbed. “What are you hiding, Uncle? We’re on the same side!”
“Seriously?” said Han Sui. “I’ll prove it! Tomorrow, I’ll go out in front of the army and get Cao Cao to talk. You can listen. There’s nothing going on.”
“That’s fair,” said Ma Chao, calming down. The next day, he hid behind the flag as Han Sui rode out and waved. “Hey! Cao Cao!”
Instead of Cao Cao, out rode Cao Hong. “The Prime Minister got your message!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, then rode away. Ma Chao burst through the flag. “Oh, is that so? You traitor!” The generals held him back as he glared at Han Sui.
“I’m not a traitor. Trust me!” said Han Sui, very confused, but Ma Chao just stormed off. Han Sui looked at his generals. “Okay, I have no idea what to do here. How can I fix this?”
“You could go join Cao Cao for real,” suggested Yang Qiu.
“I couldn’t!” said Han Sui. “His dad was my brother!”
Yang Qiu shrugged. “Gotta save your own skin. Ma Chao never really liked you, and he has terrible impulse control. Even if we beat Cao Cao, he’ll kill you one of these days.”
Han Sui wavered. “That’s awful…”
“We don’t have a choice,” insisted Yang Qiu.
“I guess not,” said Han Sui unhappily. “Go tell Cao Cao I’ll do it.”
Yang Qiu sped off. Cao Cao was delighted, and promised to make Han Sui the lord of Xiliang. They all agreed on a fire as the attack signal.
Han Sui chucked the last log into the back of his tent. “There we go. All ready.”
“Wait, are we lighting the fire inside?” asked Yang Qiu.
“Yep, for stealth. Go invite Ma Chao for a party.”
Ma Chao had definitely noticed them carrying wood into Han Sui’s tent, and he soon found out about the plot. “I knew it!” he snarled. Grabbing a few redshirts, he crept up to Han Sui’s tent just in time to hear them whispering.
“You bastards!” he screamed, slicing open the tent. “How dare you!” He slashed his sword at Han Sui’s face. Han Sui barely got his hand up in time to lose it instead of his head. The five generals quickly surrounded Ma Chao, who fended them off single-handedly. Soon Ma Wan and Liang Xing were on the ground. The other three booked it.
The servants had spirited Han Sui away, and Ma Chao drew his sword and galloped through the camp looking for him. Pang De and Ma Dai were right behind them. The Xiliang redshirts began to brawl. Just as the chaos was at its height, Cao Cao’s army hit them.
The Xiliang forces were cut to pieces. Ma Chao soon realized the situation was out of control. He cut his way out of the melee and made for the floating bridge.
Li Kan happened to be crossing the bridge at dawn the next morning when Ma Chao and a few survivors ran onto it. “Joust me!” yelled Ma Chao, pointing his spear straight at Li Kan and whipping his horse.
“Nope,” said Li Kan. He turned around and ran in the other direction, just as Yu Jin came to the head of the bridge. He couldn’t possible catch up with Ma Chao, so he notched an arrow, carefully lined his sights up with Ma Chao’s head, and fired.
Ma Chao was close enough to hear the bowstring twang. He ducked as low as he could, and the arrow whistled harmlessly over his head.
Already on the other side of the bridge, Li Kan dropped to the ground with the arrow sticking out of his back.
Ma Chao wheeled around. “Nice shot!”
Yu Jin stood still a moment. “Oh fuck,” he muttered, and, as Ma Chao got nearer, he too ran away.
But Ma Chao was still in the middle of the bridge, and Cao Cao’s troops were closing in from both sides. The Tiger Guards, headed by Xu Chu, fired a cloud of arrows at him, but he twirled his spear around and knocked them out of the air like flies. He did a few flying kicks and anachronistic Tai Chi forms before his wire snapped and he was forced to cut his way out like a normal person.
Ma Chao fled north, sans all redshirts, and wasn’t even clear before a crossbow bolt knocked him off his horse. He fell in dramatic slow motion, only for Pang De and Ma Dai to charge in at the nick of time and save him.
They stole some unfortunate redshirt’s horse, and Ma Chao kept galloping north, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
“After him!” ordered Cao Cao. “Dead or alive! Bigger reward for alive!”
They pursued Ma Chao across the countryside for days. He was making for Lingtao, but they couldn’t know that. Cao Cao gave up after a while, and one by one all his generals dropped out of the chase.
“Well, that wasn’t ideal,” said Cao Cao. “But we won.” He gave Han Sui, Yang Qiu, and Hou Xuan the rewards he’d promised, and gave the order to go home.
Yang Fu raised his hand. “Er, boss, you know the massive loose end isn’t going anywhere, right? And that guy’s basically the reincarnation of Lu Bu?”
“Yeah?”
“We probably shouldn’t just leave things here.”
Cao Cao shrugged. “I still have the South to conquer. But hey, if you want to volunteer…”
“Absolutely,” said Yang Fu. “Can I have Wei Kang?”
“Sure.”
“And a decent-sized army?”
Cao Cao brushed it off. “Yeah, it’s all taken care of.”
As soon as Yang Fu left, Cao Cao’s generals all sat him down. “Boss, we’re concerned.”
“About what?”
“Your, um, erratic behaviour. For one thing, you could have crossed the river days earlier, but you sat all our asses in the Pass.”
“Think about it,” said Cao Cao. “I kept them all here, facing me, while Xu Huang and Zhu Ling moved in from the east.”
“Did that actually happen?”
“No, but it’s the principle of the thing,” said Cao Cao. “Anyway, I crossed eventually.”
“You didn’t even land successfully.”
“No, but I did catch them in pit traps when they came after us,” said Cao Cao. “Anyway, forget all that. I ingeniously tricked them into killing each other.”
“Fine,” said a general. “But what about the time you laughed when their reinforcements all came in?”
“Because they could have held a solid line all the way to Xuchang, but when they were all here, I could get them to all kill each other in one swoop!”
Cao Cao’s generals exchanged glances. “Yes. Sure Mr. Prime Minister. You definitely planned all that from the beginning.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you, boys!” said Cao Cao happily. He handed round some bling, left Xiahou Yuan in charge, and headed home.
The Emperor welcomed him personally. “You have a bunch of new honours, for that great victory,” he said to Cao Cao.
“Sweet,” said Cao Cao. “What are they?”
“For one, you don’t have to call yourself ‘Mister’ in front of me,” said the Emperor. “Plain old ‘Cao Cao’ will do.”
“Okay…”
“And you don’t have to run around like a maniac when you’re in court any more.”
“Do I do that?”
“You do,” said the Emperor. “And when you’re in the palace, you can wear shoes.”
“Are these honours, or just things I do that annoy you?” asked Cao Cao suspiciously.
“Oh, definitely honours,” said the Emperor. “I’ve already issued proclamations to go throughout the country.”
This in fact irritated many people, but one of the first to get irritated was a cult leader in Hanzhong named Zhang Lu.
Zhang Lu came from a wizard family named Zhang, but not that one. His Grandpa Ling had been a hermit, who’d lived on Mount Humming and had written a holy book. Papa Heng had come up with the idea of charging people for faith healing. The rate was five carts of rice per healing, and people called him “the Rice Thief” behind his back. They kept coming anyway.
Lu had stepped things up a notch. “I shall be called Master Superior,” he announced, and his disciples all clapped. “Do we get titles, too?” asked one.
“Sure,” shrugged Zhang Lu. He flipped through a dictionary. “How about ‘Commonly Devil Soldiers?’”
The disciples stared. “What is that supposed to mean? Did you just run it through Google Translate?”
“It’s a sacred mystery,” said Zhang Lu grandly. “We’ll set up a whole hierarchy! I want in the organized religion game. Local heads can be called, uh, Libationers.”
The disciples were impressed. “How do we get more people?”
“Get the Libationers to go door-to-door handing out pamphlets,” said Zhang Lu. “If they make a lot of converts, they’re promoted to Chief Libationers, and they make a cut.”
“Nice,” said the disciples.
“And they can’t lie to us,” added Zhang Lu. “We’ll become their family and know all their secrets. When they sin, we’ll lock them in a little room and pray for him – oh yeah, we need a prayer guy. Call him the Superintending Libationer. Then they confess their sins, and we write them down and scatter them everywhere.”
“Will people sign up for that?” asked a disciple.
“They will if we feed them,” said Zhang Lu. “We’ll set up soup kitchens everywhere and feed the hungry. If they take advantage, we give them a couple chances, then punish them.”
The last disciple put up his hand. “Is any of this relevant?”
“No,” said Zhang Lu. “Hang on, there’s just a little more exposition. This whole cult gig is what made me the de facto ruler around here, and it was just easier to make me the Governor so I’d pay taxes.”
The disciples drew a sigh of relief.
“Anyway,” continued Zhang Lu. “Back to the present. Cao Cao’s probably going to attack us next. I should probably declare myself Prince or something.”
“That’s definitely going to make Cao Cao attack us next,” pointed out a disciple named Yan Pu. “How about we gather up all of the Ma family’s old redshirts, take the Riverlands, and fortify ourselves there?”
“Excellent!” said Zhang Lu. He and his brother Wei started organizing the army.
In the Riverlands, Liu Zhang, son of Liu Yan and descendant of Prince Gong, yadda yadda, looked at the report and frowed. “They’ve been talking about invading me for five chapters now. Couldn’t I have had some backstory earlier? Ahem. Zhang Lu is gathering at the border. Maybe I shouldn’t have killed that guy’s mom and brother, but I kept getting his mail and it was really annoying. Pang Xi, can you go fight him off?”
Pang Xi went, but Liu Zhang kept pacing around nervously. “I don’t know if we can beat him…”
One of his advisors stepped forward from the crowd. “Don’t worry, I know how we can get rid of this wannabe wizard.”
Saxo Dramaticus 