Three Kingdom

The year was 155 AD, and the Han Dynasty—that great and ancient empire which had ruled the Middle Kingdom for over four centuries—was already rotting from within. In the small county of Qiao, in the province of Pei, a child was born who would one day become the most feared and admired man of his age. They named him Cao Cao, styled Mengde.

The Cao family claimed descent from the legendary Emperor Huangdi himself, and more recently from Cao Can, a famed chancellor who had served the founding emperor of Han. But the branch that produced Cao Cao had risen through less glorious means. His grandfather, Cao Teng, had been a eunuch in the imperial palace—a man of such discretion and loyalty that he had served four emperors over thirty years without ever falling from favor. The eunuch had risen to become a palace attendant of the highest rank, and was eventually enfeoffed as the Marquis of Fei Pavilion.

Cao Teng had adopted a son named Cao Song, who rose to become Grand Commandant—one of the three highest offices in the empire. But rumors whispered that Cao Song was not of Cao blood at all, that he was in truth a son of the Xiahou clan, and that the family’s rise was built on the shifting sands of palace intrigue. These rumors would follow Cao Cao all his life.

The boy himself gave little indication of future greatness. Young Cao Cao was sharp-witted and calculating, but he was also wild, unrestrained, and utterly indifferent to the respectable pursuits of scholarship and moral cultivation. He loved to hunt with hawks and hounds, and roamed the countryside in idle dissipation. His contemporaries dismissed him as a wastrel. His own uncle repeatedly complained to Cao Song about the boy’s scandalous behavior.

Only a few discerning eyes saw what lay beneath the surface. The scholar Qiao Xuan of Liang, a man of great reputation, looked at the young Cao Cao and said: “The empire is about to fall into chaos. Only a man of destiny can save it. Perhaps that man is you”. Another, He Yong of Nanyang, shared this rare judgment.

When Cao Cao turned twenty, he was nominated as a Filial and Incorrupt candidate—the standard path to office for men of good family—and was appointed as a gentleman attendant. He was then made Commandant of the Northern District of the capital Luoyang. In this post, the young man who had seemed so indifferent to discipline revealed a different nature. He had five-colored clubs made and placed at the four gates of his district, with orders that anyone violating the curfew should be beaten to death【citation needed】. When the uncle of the most powerful eunuch in the palace was caught breaking the law, Cao Cao had him executed without hesitation—an act of such audacity that the entire capital buzzed with shock.

But the empire was far beyond the reach of any one man’s justice.

In 184 AD, the Yellow Turban Rebellion erupted like a plague across the land. The rebel leader Zhang Jiao, a sorcerer and prophet, had gathered hundreds of thousands of followers who wore yellow scarves on their heads as a sign of their devotion to the “Way of Great Peace”. They burned temples, slaughtered officials, and swept through province after province like a tide of locusts. The Han court, paralyzed by factional strife between eunuchs and the families of empresses, was nearly powerless to stop them.

Cao Cao was given command of cavalry and sent to suppress the rebels in Yingchuan. He fought well, and was rewarded with the governorship of Jinan, a wealthy commandery. There he found the local officials colluding with powerful families, their hands deep in corruption. He dismissed eight of the ten county magistrates, forbade the licentious local cults, and drove the corrupt and treacherous into hiding. The commandery became orderly and peaceful.

But the winds of fortune shifted quickly. He was recalled to the capital and offered the governorship of Dong Commandery—a promotion, on the surface. Cao Cao refused, pleading illness, and returned to his native village to wait.

He did not wait long. A conspiracy was forming.

The Governor of Jizhou, Wang Fen, together with the adventurer Xu You and others, plotted to depose Emperor Ling and place the Marquis of Hefei on the throne. They approached Cao Cao, hoping to win his support. But Cao Cao refused. “To depose a sovereign is the greatest of crimes,” he said. “If you succeed, you will not enjoy your glory for long. If you fail, your families will be exterminated.“【citation needed】 The conspirators went ahead without him—and were destroyed.

Cao Cao’s caution had saved him. But the chaos was only beginning.

In the northwest, the rebels Bian Zhang and Han Sui killed the governor and commandery chiefs of Jincheng, raising an army of over a hundred thousand men. The empire groaned under the weight of rebellion after rebellion. Cao Cao was summoned again, this time to serve as a colonel of the imperial guard.

Then, in 189 AD, Emperor Ling died.

The struggle for succession tore the court apart. The young Prince Liu Bian ascended the throne, with the Empress Dowager acting as regent. The Grand General He Jin—brother of the Empress Dowager and the most powerful man in the capital—plotted with the ambitious official Yuan Shao to exterminate the eunuch faction once and for all. But the Empress Dowager refused to give her consent.

Desperate, He Jin made a fateful decision. He summoned the fierce frontier general Dong Zhuo to bring his army to the capital, hoping to use the northern barbarian troops to intimidate the court into compliance.

Dong Zhuo was a brute—a massive, scarred warrior who had spent his life fighting the Qiang tribes on the border. He was utterly without loyalty or mercy. When he marched his army toward Luoyang, his soldiers came with the cruel intent of plunder.

But before Dong Zhuo could arrive, He Jin was betrayed and assassinated by the eunuchs within the very palace he sought to control. The capital erupted in chaos. The eunuchs were massacred; the young emperor and his brother were spirited away into the night.

And then Dong Zhuo arrived.

The general seized the capital without resistance. He deposed the young emperor, installed his brother Liu Xie as the new sovereign—the Emperor Xian—and declared himself the master of all China. He made the Emperor a puppet, terrorized the court, and allowed his soldiers to loot and rape at will.

The court had never known such brutality. The empire was now in the hands of a monster.

Dong Zhuo, recognizing Cao Cao’s talents, offered him a high military command—the post of Colonel of the Swift Cavalry. He wanted Cao Cao as an ally.

Cao Cao looked at Dong Zhuo—at the burning palaces, the weeping emperor, the soldiers drunk on plunder—and made his decision. He would not serve this man.

He changed his name, disguised himself, and fled eastward through the passes. At Zhongmu, a village official grew suspicious of the stranger and had him arrested. But someone in the town recognized him and quietly secured his release.

Cao Cao continued his flight until he reached the town of Chenliu. There, he made a choice that would define the rest of his life. He sold his family’s property and used the money to raise an army of loyal men. The tyranny of Dong Zhuo, he proclaimed, must be ended.

In the twelfth month of that year—the sixth year of the Zhongping era—Cao Cao raised the banner of rebellion at Jiwu. He was thirty-five years old.

All across the empire, other men were making the same choice. In the first month of the following year, the lords of the realm gathered their forces: Yuan Shu, Han Fu, Kong Zhou, Liu Dai, Wang Kuang, Yuan Shao, Zhang Miao, Qiao Mao, Yuan Yi, and Bao Xin—each with an army of tens of thousands. They elected Yuan Shao as their盟主—their league leader. Cao Cao was appointed General Who Promotes Martial Valor.

The coalition against Dong Zhuo had been formed. But the alliance was a house of cards—a gathering of ambitious men who trusted no one and hated each other almost as much as they hated the tyrant. They would, in time, tear each other apart.

For now, however, they marched. Dong Zhuo, learning of the army gathering against him, seized the Emperor and moved the capital to Chang’an in the west, burning Luoyang’s magnificent palaces to the ground. The ancient capital, the heart of the Han Empire for two hundred years, was reduced to ashes.

The coalition armies hesitated. Dong Zhuo’s forces were strong, and no one wanted to be the first to strike. Cao Cao, seeing the indecision, addressed the assembly:

“We have raised a righteous army to destroy the tyrant. The host is assembled—why do you hesitate? Dong Zhuo has burned the palaces and kidnapped the Son of Heaven. The whole realm is in turmoil. This is the moment when Heaven itself has decreed his destruction. One battle will decide everything. We must not let this chance slip away.”

He led his own troops westward, intent on seizing the strategic pass of Chenggao. But at the Bian River near Xingyang, he encountered Dong Zhuo’s general, Xu Rong. The battle was disastrous. Cao Cao’s men were cut down in great numbers. He himself was struck by a stray arrow, and his horse was wounded. His cousin Cao Hong gave him his own mount, and Cao Cao fled through the night.

Xu Rong, seeing how few men Cao Cao had led and how fiercely they had fought, concluded that the main coalition camp at Suanzao would not be easily taken. He withdrew.

When Cao Cao reached Suanzao, he found the allied armies—over a hundred thousand men—spending their days in drunken feasts, making no move to attack. The grand coalition against tyranny had become a carnival of cowards.

Cao Cao confronted them. “Listen to my plan,” he said. “Let Yuan Shao bring the forces of He’nei to Mengjin. Let the commanders at Suanzao hold Chenggao, seize Aocang, and block the mountain passes of Huanyuan and Taigu. Let Yuan Shu lead the army of Nanyang through Wuguan to threaten the three commanderies of the capital region. Build high walls and dig deep moats—do not engage the enemy directly, but use feints to confuse them... ”

But they would not listen. They were content to feast while the empire burned.

Cao Cao looked at these men—these lords and generals, these self-proclaimed saviors of the realm—and saw the truth. They did not want to destroy Dong Zhuo. They wanted Dong Zhuo to destroy the Han, so that they could pick over the ruins.

That night, as the fires of Suanzao blazed and the laughter of drunken officers echoed across the camp, Cao Cao sat alone in his tent. The arrow wound in his shoulder still ached. The face of the young emperor, weeping on the throne, haunted him.

The empire was falling apart. The Han Dynasty—that great vessel which had carried the Middle Kingdom for four hundred years—was splintering into pieces. And in the chaos, a new world was being born.

Cao Cao did not know then that he would become the architect of that new world. He did not know that he would one day rule the north, that his son would claim the imperial throne, that the dynasty he fought to save would be replaced by the kingdom he built.

All he knew was that the tyrant must be stopped. All he knew was that if no one else would act, he would act alone.

He was the son of a eunuch’s adopted son, a wild youth who had become a sober general, a loyal subject who would become a king. He was Cao Cao, and his age was just beginning.

Outside the tent, the wind carried the distant sound of the Yellow River—the great, eternal river that had witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties, the birth and death of heroes. Its waters flowed eastward, as they always had, as they always would. And in their endless current, the fate of an empire was carried away, moment by moment, into the darkness of the past.