Pang Tong and Fa Zheng never seriously considered conquering Guanzhong.
The place was a trap.
Chang'an was a nightmare to defend. Tongguan Pass was a meat grinder to attack. The entire Guanzhong region felt like a corrupted save file, a logistical black hole that devoured resources faster than anyone could replace them.
Even if they managed to seize it, holding it would be another matter entirely.
Historically, Guanzhong had been a paradise.
Its population had once been immense. Its granaries overflowed with grain. Vast stretches of fertile farmland could support hundreds of thousands of troops. For generations, it had served as one of the greatest strategic foundations in the empire.
That was history.
The reality in front of them was very different.
Decades of warfare had torn the region apart. Supply networks had collapsed. Fields lay abandoned. Government coffers were nearly empty. Refugees drifted across the countryside like wandering ghosts.
Capturing Guanzhong was a mandatory endgame objective.
Starting that questline now, would bankrupt their faction.
Pang Tong understood the psychological game.
Cao Cao was terrified that Liu Bei might charge into Guanzhong, establish a permanent base of operations, and secure the foundation for future domination of the north.
Since Cao Cao was already sweating, Pang Tong saw no reason not to help him along.
He ordered Huo Jun and Wei Yan to launch aggressive raiding operations deep into enemy territory.
This move served two purposes. It provided cover fire for Ma Chao, and it pulled massive enemy aggro by faking a full-scale invasion of the western passes.
While the enemy stared westward, Pang Tong executed his actual strategy. He stealthily deployed Zhang Fei with five thousand elite shock troops.
They slipped down the Han River from Hanzhong, bypassed Fangling and Shangyong, crossed into Jingzhou territory, and launched a blistering backdoor strike aimed straight at Wancheng.
"Brother, Kongming's Flowing Horses are a damn cheat code!"
The reunion beneath the walls of Wancheng had barely begun before Zhang Fei's voice filled the command tent.
He was so worked up he practically shoved his nephew Guan Ping aside, already launching into a breathless debriefing before Guan Yu could get a word in.
"Back at Yangping Pass, I thought these things were just fancy wheelbarrows for hauling grain,"
Zhang Fei said, his voice rattling the canvas. "Then we hit Hanzhong, and Shiyuan showed me what they actually do. Each Flowing Horse has interlocking joints at both ends. You snap them together, seal the gaps, and suddenly your wooden cart is a modular riverboat. Just like that."
Before Guan Ping could react, Zhang Fei slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make the young officer stagger half a step.
"My nephew here volunteered for the vanguard. Fifteen hundred men, riding those boats down the rapids. Locked the chokepoint before the enemy could even get a warning out. If anyone gets MVP for this operation, it's him."
Guan Ping had his father's stone-faced composure. He rarely showed emotion.
But getting that kind of praise from his famously hard-to-please Third Uncle made his chest puff out before he could stop it.
Guan Yu was stingy with compliments. His son had long since stopped waiting for them.
But this time, Guan Yu turned and looked at him directly. Sharp. Assessing.
"You executed perfectly," Guan Yu said.
Zhang Fei grinned and jumped back in. "I camped at Gucheng's western pass for days. Before we moved, Pang Shiyuan told me the Cao army would figure out a counter to your dreadnought sooner or later. He grew up in Jingzhou. He knows the local meta better than anybody. He said they'd either chop wood and firebomb the channel, or dam the river upstream to drop the water level."
He scratched his bristly chin. "Pang Shiyuan had me scatter scouts everywhere. The moment we spotted Cao engineers moving to cut timber or pile dirt, I was supposed to raise Big Brother's banner and charge Wancheng. He promised you and Xu Shu would sync up for the crossfire."
Zhang Fei rubbed the back of his head and gave a sheepish grin.
"I just didn't expect you to reach the objective before I did, Brother."
A rare smile flickered across Guan Yu's face. He reached out and gripped his sworn brother's shoulder.
Then he stood, throwing back the tent flap. His frame filled the exit. Past him, the walls of Wancheng rose against the sky.
"Yide," Guan Yu said, his voice low and hard. "There is only victory here."
Zhang Fei was on his feet in an instant. "Point me at whatever wall you want knocked down, brother. I'll beat them into the ground myself."
With both forces combined, Guan Yu now had over ten thousand men. Still, throwing those numbers against a fortress like Wancheng in a direct assault was asking to be slaughtered.
Zhang Fei volunteered to run the lumber operation. Yangping Pass had taught him what siege towers and scaling ladders were worth.
He had brought two hundred engineers specifically for this. Guan Yu gave him the go-ahead to start building.
Meanwhile, the pirate captain Gan Gui was running the logistical backbone. After dropping off the shock troops, he immediately reversed course, racing to exploit the narrow window before the Fancheng garrison realized what was happening and blockaded the Yu River.
He had to funnel as much grain and munitions north as he could physically move.
During one of his supply runs past Xinye, he spotted something unexpected.
A crowd of civilians had gathered along the muddy riverbank, waving frantically at the passing convoy.
Gan Gui signaled the main fleet to hold speed. He throttled back his own skiff and drifted toward the shore.
"You look like a new face, General," a weathered farmer called out. "Do you truly serve Imperial Uncle Liu?"
Before Gan Gui could answer, someone in the crowd laughed.
"Did you not see General Guan standing on the bow earlier? No one mistakes that beard."
Gan Gui hopped over the gunwale, his boots splashing in the shallows. He walked up and helped an elderly man settle onto a dried log.
"I am from Yizhou," Gan Gui said. "I joined Lord Liu Bei a little over a year ago."
The old man nodded slowly. His hand was rough as bark. He reached out and patted Gan Gui's armored wrist.
"We just want to know," the old man whispered. "Is General Guan marching to take Wancheng?"
Gan Gui hesitated. Operational security was absolute.
A younger man in the crowd smiled bitterly. "Little General, we have lived in Xinye our whole lives. Wancheng is barely a hundred miles away. Before Imperial Uncle Liu came, and after he was forced to leave... has this land ever known peace?"
Gan Gui looked at the dirt. "Military law is strict. I cannot discuss troop movements."
The old man nodded, as if he had expected that answer. Then he asked something else entirely.
"Does General Guan have enough grain?"
The question hit Gan Gui like a fist to the chest.
In Jiangdong, civilians had looked at him with fear. In Yizhou, they had watched him with cold suspicion. But these people of Xinye were starving, and they were asking if the army needed food.
Gan Gui turned his face away and stared at the river.
"My job is running supplies," he muttered, his voice rough. "Don't worry, old man. We won't let General Guan go hungry."
He turned and marched back to his boat. At the water's edge, he paused and looked back over his shoulder.
"General Guan will win this war," he called out, his voice carrying over the wind. "Keep your heads down. Take care of yourselves. General Guan will drive out the tyrant himself. Just wait for us."
He vaulted onto his skiff, and the boat shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, chasing the current downstream.
Behind him, dozens of weathered farmers stood on the muddy bank, watching him go with something they had not felt in years.
Zhao A finally understood what Old Li had been trying to tell him.
When the dreadnought fleet withdrew from Fancheng, Guan Yu formally transferred him to Gan Gui's command. In practice, very little changed. He still spent his days rowing boats, hauling supplies, and moving crates of arrows wherever the officers told him.
Then the war caught up with him.
Less than a day after delivering Guan Yu's strike force north, the Cao army reacted. Troops moved quickly to seal the junction where the Han River met the Yu River, establishing a blockade across the channel.
Gan Gui's orders were straightforward.
Get through.
One of the lead assault boats raised its sail and surged forward ahead of the fleet. Only when the vessel was already charging toward the blockade did Zhao A realize what was happening. The sailors abandoned ship. One after another, they dove into the freezing river and swam toward the vessels following behind.
Moments later, the unmanned boat slammed directly into the Cao barricade. The impact shattered part of the obstruction.
Immediately, arrows and bolts began raining down from the riverbank.
"ROW!"
Gan Gui's roar cut through the chaos.
Zhao A ducked beneath a wooden shield and pulled at the oar with all his strength. His hands were trembling so badly that he could barely keep hold of it. Around him, the fleet surged through the gap. The sky seemed filled with arrows. For nearly a mile, Cao soldiers raced along the banks, firing whenever they found an opening. Only after the convoy finally pulled away did the pursuit come to an end.
Breathing hard, Zhao A cautiously lifted his head.
The sight before him left him frozen.
Corpses drifted across the river. Some belonged to sailors who had failed to reach safety after abandoning the decoy vessel. Others had been struck during the breakout. Blood spread across the current in long crimson streaks. The bodies rose and fell with the water as they drifted southward.
Old Li's stories suddenly came back to him.
The old veteran often spoke about Cao Cao's slaughter in Xuzhou. According to him, so many people had died that the corpses clogged the Si River itself. Zhao A had always assumed the old man was exaggerating.
Looking at the river now, he was no longer so certain.
After forcing their way through the blockade, Gan Gui withdrew the surviving vessels back to the supply hub at Dangyang. For several days, Zhao A watched the officers move crates back and forth across the docks. Eventually he learned what was happening. Gan Gui had requisitioned dozens of heavy crossbows and mounted one on the bow of every transport ship under his command.
The weapons were a simplified version of the massive triple-bow ballistas designed by Huang Yueying. They lacked the raw power of the original machines but were easier to manufacture, transport, and operate. Zhao A recognized them immediately. Not long ago, he had personally helped deliver the same weapons to the defenders at Fancheng. Now they were being turned toward a different purpose.
With Fancheng temporarily cut off, Gan Gui had no intention of allowing his supply fleet to become an easy target.
General Guan already had enough enemies to deal with. As far as Gan Gui was concerned, nobody was going to bully his supply line.
Guan Yu, meanwhile, had troubles of his own.
A few days earlier, he had sent Guan Ping north to scout the surrounding region. The report his son brought back was not encouraging.
Just north of Wancheng lay a miserable little county called Bowang. Calling it a fortress would have been generous. Its walls barely reached a man's chest, and from a military perspective, the place was almost worthless.
With the help of local informants, Guan Ping quickly tracked down the county magistrate and brought him back for questioning. The official did not hold out for long.
"Cao Cao has ordered a mandatory grain levy," he confessed. "The grain is being gathered to support the relief army marching south from Ye."
The moment he heard those words, Guan Yu understood.
Xu Shu's strategy had succeeded. Perhaps a little too well. They had pulled the ultimate aggro. The capital army was on the move, and they knew nothing about it. No troop count. No commander. Nothing. For the first time since arriving outside Wancheng, uncertainty crept into the command tent.
Zhang Fei stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"Cao Cao's coffers can't be looking too healthy these days," he said. "Even if he scraped together a relief force, how many men could he realistically send? Three thousand? Five thousand?"
After a pause, another thought occurred to him. His expression darkened.
"He is the Prime Minister of the Han now. He wouldn't start eating people again, would he?"
Guan Yu let out a cold snort.
"If he's willing to strip the peasants of their grain, why would he worry about how much food an army consumes?"
He rose to his feet and picked up the Green Dragon Blade resting beside him. The heavy weapon gleamed beneath the lamplight.
"Third Brother. Beginning tomorrow, we attack the city."
Everyone in the command tent understood exactly what a "mandatory grain requisition" meant under Cao Cao's rule.
The army took your grain today and promised compensation tomorrow.
Did they care if that grain was your family's only food source? Of course not.
Whether that grain happened to be your family's only chance of surviving the winter was not considered a military concern.
As the days passed, the siege of Wancheng turned into a desperate DPS race. Outside the walls, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei threw everything they had into the assault.
Inside the city, Cao Cao was everywhere at once.
Sword in hand, he raced from the eastern wall to the southern wall, then from the southern wall to the northern wall, personally directing the defense wherever the fighting was fiercest.
Whenever a section of the line wavered, he appeared.
Whenever morale began to crack, his voice cut through the chaos.
"Hold the line!"
"Reinforce the ladders!"
"Push them back!"
One exhausted adjutant finally dropped to a knee. "Prime Minister, we must send an elite cavalry detachment through the southern gate and request reinforcements."
Cao Cao immediately shook his head. "No." The answer came without hesitation.
"Guan Yunchang is here. If Guan Yu is standing outside Wancheng, then Fancheng cannot be far from collapse. The moment Fancheng falls, our forces seal the Yu River. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei will be trapped in a kill box with no way out."
He tightened his grip on the battlement stones. "But if I divert troops now, the pressure on Fancheng eases. And if Fancheng survives, I lose the board."
The words silenced everyone.
This was the kind of battle Cao Cao understood better than anyone.
He had endured Guandu when the entire north seemed ready to crush him. He had crossed Bailang Shan and survived conditions that would have broken lesser commanders. Again and again, he had clawed his way back from the edge of disaster.
Turtle up. Endure the cooldown. Let the enemy break first.
As long as Wancheng remained standing, he believed victory would eventually swing back to his side.
Far to the south, Cao Cao was placing all his hopes on Yue Jin.
The conditions were perfect. It was time for him to make a play.
Down in Xiangyang, Yue Jin had reached the same conclusion.
The western sandbar was exposed. From his vantage point, he could see Fancheng completely enveloped by Cao Ren's forces. He did not fully understand why the enemy navy had swapped their dreadnoughts for small skiffs, but he could see them tangled in a vicious firefight at the river crossing.
The board was clean. No one left to check him. If he did not launch a flanking maneuver now, he did not deserve to wear the armor.
For the first time in nearly a month, the heavy gates of Xiangyang groaned open.
Yue Jin spurred his warhorse and led five thousand heavy cavalry out of the city, charging straight toward the distant Guan banner snapping in the wind.
The geography of Xiangyang was a fortress designer's dream. The Han River bordered the north. Two steep mountains flanked the south. The only exit was a narrow valley road that emptied onto an open plain. Liu Biao had leveraged this exact terrain to dominate the region for years.
Today, that same terrain was actively griefing Yue Jin.
He wanted to deploy his entire thirty-thousand-man garrison, but the valley pass created a brutal bottleneck. Five thousand was the maximum he could squeeze through at combat speed. He rode at the front of the vanguard. Leading the dive was his signature.
The thunder of five thousand horses was impossible to hide. Huang Zhong saw the charge coming from miles away.
He held his breath. Calculated the distance, the speed, the angle. Waited until Yue Jin's vanguard hit the exact midpoint of the valley pass.
Then he raised his massive bow, aimed at the clouds, and released.
The arrow shaft was hollow. It tore through the air with a shrieking whistle.
The signal.
Hidden in the dense mountain foliage, Jingzhou infantry swung their axes. Retaining ropes snapped. An avalanche of pre-staged boulders tumbled down the slopes, picking up lethal momentum as they crashed toward Yue Jin's cavalry column.
Yue Jin blew a sharp whistle. He and his forward thousand riders slammed their spurs and burst out of the kill zone. The remaining four thousand cavalry scrambled to brake, swerving to dodge the environmental carnage.
The formation fractured.
Huang Zhong sat calmly in his saddle. His expression never changed. He watched Yue Jin drag his surviving riders through a gauntlet of pre-dug trenches and hidden spike traps. With every hazard they cleared, the riders behind him grew fewer.
Yue Jin was furious, but he did not panic. He just needed to close the gap. Isolate the enemy commander. Secure the kill. The traps would not matter. That was the truth of playing a vanguard shock trooper.
When the gap closed to five hundred paces, Yue Jin roared across the field.
"Old man! Enough hiding behind tricks! Do you dare fight me face-to-face?"
To his delight, the old general urged his horse forward. Accepting the duel.
You want to drop your ranged attacks and fight in melee? Fine by me.
Yue Jin screamed to hype his remaining bodyguards. He leveled his heavy lance, aiming a lethal thrust directly at the old general's face.
Huang Zhong's blood ran hot. He embraced the kinetic thrill of the clash.
"The one sending you to the Yellow Springs is Huang Zhong!"
Yue Jin watched the old general shift his grip, holding his lance entirely in his left hand. As Yue Jin's weapon closed in, Huang Zhong smashed his right elbow into the center of his own lance shaft.
The heavy wood bowed under the pressure.
Then it snapped back.
The wood rebounded like a coiled spring, parrying Yue Jin's thrust with explosive force. The shockwave tore down Yue Jin's weapon, nearly ripping the lance from his hands.
Yue Jin's eyes went wide.
Damn... this old man!!!
Huang Zhong gave him no time to recover. His right hand dropped to his waist, drew the heavy saber he had carried for decades, and launched a backhanded upward slash in one fluid motion.
An arc of blood sprayed into the air.
Crimson droplets settled against Huang Zhong's white beard. The surrounding Cao cavalry froze.
No one was laughing anymore. No one saw an old man anymore. What stood before them was a battlefield monster.
Huang Zhong glanced back at the valley.
Xu Shu's kiting tactics were flawless.
During that split-second exchange, he had casually discarded his heavy lance. Now he sat on his horse, holding only his dripping saber in his right hand. He leveled the bloody blade at the terrified Cao cavalry.
His voice rolled through the mountain valley like thunder.
"Surrender, and you live!"