[Lightscreen]
[In ancient China, plague was never just about getting sick.
The Chinese never drew a hard line between the natural world and the political world. Heaven, the ruler, the land, and the people were all part of one big interconnected system. When that system worked, the realm prospered. When it broke down, the signs showed up everywhere. In the fields, in the skies, in the rivers, and sometimes inside the bodies of the people themselves.
At the heart of this idea was the Mandate of Heaven.
The emperor did not rule just because he inherited the throne. He ruled because Heaven had granted him the right. And that right was not permanent. At least in theory, it depended on whether the ruler was virtuous and whether he could keep the realm in order.
This did not mean every drought or epidemic automatically meant the emperor had lost Heaven's favor. Ancient thinkers understood disease could have natural causes, and physicians had their own theories about how illness spread through the body and environment.
But when disaster became widespread, people started asking a much bigger question:
Why now?
And when corpses began piling up faster than grain could be distributed, that idea of cosmic harmony became very hard to defend.
For ordinary people, though, the math was simpler.
They did not need a political philosophy to understand what a plague meant.
Someone in the village started coughing.
Then another.
Then ten.
Then the dead were being carried outside the walls.
At that point, whether the disease came from bad air, corrupted qi, Heaven's displeasure, or some combination of all three hardly mattered.
People were dying.
And when enough people died, the Mandate of Heaven stopped being just a theory.
It became a question.
If the Son of Heaven could not protect his people, how long would Heaven's patience last?
And in the final years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, even Cao Cao could not escape the chaos.
In the twenty-first year of Jian'an, around 216 CE, Cao Cao took a major step toward controlling the Southern Xiongnu. Their Chanyu, Hu Chuchuan, was brought into Cao Cao's orbit and eventually settled at Yecheng. The Southern Xiongnu were divided into five administrative divisions and relocated inland.
The policy had clear goals: control the Xiongnu population, stabilize the frontier, and gradually integrate them into the Han political order.
But Cao Cao could never have guessed that a policy designed to control the present would end up shaping Chinese history centuries after his death.
One of the Xiongnu leaders who emerged from this system was Liu Bao. He adopted the surname Liu, a name carrying enormous political weight, since it was the surname of the Han imperial house.
And his son would play a far greater role.
His name was Liu Yuan.
But before that happened, a catastrophe was already sweeping through Cao Cao's world.
Down at the Ruxu River, Cao Cao had just received a letter of submission from Sun Quan. He ordered a triumphant withdrawal. His northern armies marched home with their heads held high.
But the moment he returned to Yecheng, victory turned to ash. A great plague had swept through the army and the capital. This was no isolated outbreak. It struck the military camps at Ruxu first, then spread north, raging through the winter of 217 to 218. Contemporary records describe it as a febrile disease that spread rapidly through overcrowded camps and cities.
Zhang Zhongjing, one of the most influential physicians in Chinese history, later wrote that within a decade, over two-thirds of his own extended family had perished from such illnesses.
The death toll was staggering. Four of the Seven Jian'an Masters, Xu Gan, Chen Lin, Ying Yang, and Liu Zhen, died within months, along with the famous poet Wang Can.
Sima Lang also died in 217 CE after volunteering to treat the sick and falling ill himself.
And his death had political consequences.
Sima Lang was Sima Yi's elder brother.
By then, Sima Yi had already entered Cao Cao's political orbit and was growing increasingly close to Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, who was locked in a bitter succession struggle with his brother Cao Zhi.
When Cao Pi was eventually confirmed as Cao Cao's heir, Sima Yi's position grew stronger.
He later became known as one of Cao Pi's four close associates, alongside Chen Qun, Wu Zhi, and Zhu Shuo.
And from this point onward, history seemed to hit the fast-forward button.
From that fateful twenty-second year of Jian'an, the timeline began to sprint.
In 219 CE, at Mount Dingjun, Xiahou Yuan fell in battle.
That same year, at Maicheng, Guan Yu was captured and executed after his defeat in Jingzhou.
In 220 CE, Cao Cao died in Luoyang, leaving instructions to divide his incense among his concubines and for them to earn their own living weaving shoes.
The state he had spent decades building did not die with him.
Cao Pi took power and, later that same year, formally ended the Han Dynasty and established the state of Wei.
Then another generation of great figures began to disappear.
Lu Meng died in 220.
Zhang Liao died in 222.
Ma Chao died in 222 in obscurity, coughing up blood from frustration and illness.
Zhang Fei was assassinated in his sleep by subordinates he had mistreated.
And in 223, Liu Bei died at Baidi City after entrusting his young son, Liu Shan, and the collapsing Shu regime to Zhuge Liang.
One by one, the men who had defined the age of the Three Kingdoms were disappearing.
And through all of it, Sima Yi remained.
He was not as celebrated as Guan Yu.
He did not command an empire like Cao Cao.
He did not possess Zhuge Liang's legendary reputation.
But he possessed something potentially more dangerous: patience.
He watched closely how the Cao family had manipulated the Han Emperor. Decades later, his own family would do something remarkably similar to the Cao family.
In 249 CE, Sima Yi launched the coup known as the Incident at Gaoping Tombs.
From that moment, political power within Wei increasingly fell into the hands of the Sima clan.
Eventually, Sima Yi's grandson, Sima Yan, founded the Jin Dynasty in 265 CE.
But the story did not end there.
Cao Cao's earlier policy toward the Southern Xiongnu would also have consequences far beyond what anyone could have imagined.
Back in Bingzhou, the descendants of those relocated Xiongnu families grew in strength. Liu Yuan, son of Liu Bao, was educated in the Chinese classical tradition and styled himself a restorer of the dynasty.
In 304 CE, he established the state known as Han Zhao, honoring Liu Bang and the last Han Emperor Liu Shan in his rituals.
He presented his regime as a continuation of the Han tradition.
But what emerged from that claim was not the restoration of the Han Dynasty.
It helped open the door to something much larger.
The collapse of Western Jin, civil wars, migrations, famine, epidemics, and the rise of competing states would soon tear northern China apart.
In 311, Luoyang fell.
In 316, Chang'an fell.
Western Jin collapsed.
China then entered one of the most turbulent periods in its history.
For nearly three hundred years, northern China would be divided among competing regimes while war, migration, famine, and disease repeatedly reshaped society.
The poet Cai Wenji, once kidnapped by raiders, had written:
Heaven is merciless to send down this chaos;
Earth is merciless to make me meet this time.
Those two lines are the most accurate footnote for that entire three-hundred-year nightmare.
The people living through those events could not have known where history was taking them.
They only knew that the world they had inherited was disappearing.
And perhaps that is the cruelest lesson of epidemics in history.
They do not care about kings.
They do not care about generals.
They do not care about dynasties, ambitions, or carefully planned futures.
These microscopic diseases have always walked beside humanity. They take the grand plans of kings, generals, and statesmen, and kick them straight into the fire. They shove history onto roads no one mapped.
And sometimes, without ever intending to, a microscopic organism can destroy plans that took generations to build, and push history onto a road that nobody had ever planned to take.
History is often shaped not only by the people who seize power, but by the things they can never control.
And as we all know, the devastation never ends there.]
Ma Chao stood frozen, his mouth hanging slightly open. The first emotion that hit him was pure disbelief.
"Xiahou Yuan, really?" he blurted out, staring at the screen like it had just told him water flowed uphill. "Killed at Mount Dingjun? I know exactly what that man is worth on a battlefield!"
He let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.
"If he could push a campaign all the way into Hanzhong and fall fighting like that... then by that logic, I could ride my cavalry straight through the gates of Chang'an without even breaking a sweat!"
He shook his head, still reeling. Then the next piece of news hit.
"And General Guan Yunchang? Defeated? Executed at Maicheng?"
His voice dropped, the bravado fading.
"He just shattered the northern defenses in Jingzhou! His name alone shakes the heavens! Who on earth had the strength to corner a legend like that?"
He did not even have time to process the grief before the next line landed like a fist to the chest.
"Me?"
The word came out as a cracked whisper. Ma Chao pointed a trembling finger at his own face, his eyes wide with something between horror and insult.
"I die... coughing up blood and being depressed? That is it? That is how the great General Ma Chao goes out? Not in the saddle, not taking a hundred enemies with me... just sad?!"
Hearing the future timeline lay out every tragedy so plainly, Liu Bei felt his vision blur.
He stared at the floor, his hand resting over his heart as if trying to hold something together.
Zhuge Liang sat perfectly still, his feather fan slowing to a complete stop. He let out a soft, barely audible sigh that carried more weight than any speech.
Zhang Fei, meanwhile, was the calmest person in the room. Not because he did not care. He felt every bit of the grief for his brothers and the Prime Minister. But he had already seen his own death scene before. The sheer indignity of being murdered in his sleep had been burned into his brain, and now... well, at least he was not going to go out moping in a sickbed.
He looked across the tent and saw Ma Chao still staring at the screen like it had personally insulted his ancestors. The usually arrogant cavalry commander looked thoroughly rattled, and Zhang Fei could not help but grin.
"Hey, Mengqi," he called out, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "You look like you have seen a ghost. Want to hear all the juicy details about those events?"
Ma Chao nodded so hard his head nearly bobbed right off his neck. "Yes! Tell me! Did I at least take someone famous with me? Or was it really just... coughing?"
Zhang Fei's smile widened, showing a mouthful of teeth. "I will tell you everything. Every last gory detail. Easy to arrange. How about you hand over two thousand elite warhorses first?"
"Two thousand horses?!" Ma Chao roared, jumping to his feet. "For a story?! I would rather start coughing blood and drop dead right here on this carpet!"
From the side of the table, Pang Tong watched the whole exchange with a lazy, knowing smile, swirling his tea in a cup. For him, dwelling on these tragedies felt a little... surreal.
"Honestly," he mused, "if we were strictly following the official history they are showing us, I would not even be sitting here. I would have died years ago. My memorial would already be gathering moss."
He took a slow sip of tea.
"So since I am apparently a walking ghost, I have got the luxury to think about the bigger picture. When a plague runs rampant, life and death stop making sense. The rich hoard wealth because they know tomorrow is not promised. Powerful men start plotting treason because they figure, why not? Who knows how long any of us will be around?"
He tapped a finger against the table.
"Look at Cao Pi. The plague scarred him deeply, and yet he still clawed his way to the throne. And the moment he got there? He pretended he had earned it all through virtue alone! No mention of threats, no mention of pressure. Just the Han Emperor stepped down because I am so wonderful. And then Sima Yi watched him do it, thought oh, so that is how it works, and then did the exact same thing to the Cao family, only worse."
Pang Tong chuckled darkly. "Makes you wonder. If no one expects to live long enough to face consequences, do oaths even mean anything anymore? The future folks had a funny name for Sima Yi's broken vow at the Luoshui River... something about a fart. And honestly? I get it. When the world is ending, you do not worry about keeping your word. You just worry about surviving the week."
Standing nearby, Fa Zheng nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. He leaned in, his voice growing sharper as he picked apart the strategy.
"The Cao family's policy toward the Xiongnu. Dividing them, resettling them, trying to integrate them. On paper it was brilliant. Tidy, logical, effective. But they never accounted for something as messy as a massive plague."
He gestured with one hand as he explained. "Think about it. Both sides get sick. The Xiongnu are nomads. Someone falls ill, they mount up and scatter across the plains. Spread out, keep moving, keep distance. But us? We are farmers. We are tied to our fields, our villages, our ancestors' graves. We cannot just vanish into the wind. Dragging an entire family away from a spreading plague? Practically impossible. That one difference alone changed everything."
Liu Bei finally lifted his head, pushing the terrible visions of fire and ruin out of his mind.
He focused instead on the figure of Liu Yuan, and the strange, twisted story the Screen had told.
"A Xiongnu descendant," he murmured, half to himself. "Taking the surname Liu, honoring Emperor Gaozu and the late Emperor of Shu, claiming to restore the Han... and yet it all ended in such chaos. It is so strange. He was not of our blood, and yet he showed more respect for the Han legacy than many who were."
He sighed softly. "I cannot say if his cause was true or false. But I can say this: if the world had been whole, if people had not been dying by the millions from war and plague, no one would have needed to build a new dynasty on top of the ruins of the old one."
He turned his gaze toward the tent opening, where the camp stretched out before them under the afternoon sun.
"And Cai Yan... Cai Wenji. I have heard tales of her poetry for years. But hearing those lines today. Heaven is merciless to send down this chaos; Earth is merciless to make me meet this time. No words could ever carry more weight than those."
Zhuge Liang nodded slowly, his gaze drifting toward the map on the wall.
"Plague does not care about rank," he said quietly. "It does not care about oaths, or lineage, or great plans. It comes for the general and the farmer alike. The only question left for us is... when it comes, do we let it tear everything apart? Or do we build something strong enough to hold together even when the world falls apart around us?"
Fa Zheng, and Pang Tong all nodded in silent agreement.
They looked out the open flaps of the command tent.
They could see the bustling military camp and the distant walls of Chang'an.
If they were being honest with themselves, nobody would ever willingly choose to be born into this chaotic, blood-soaked era.
The world was broken. But since they were already here, they had no choice but to fix it.
Ma Chao was still muttering to himself, pacing a small circle. "Coughing up blood... honestly. If that is what happens, I am going to ride north and fight three battles a day just to keep my spirits up!"