After Cao Cao breathed his last, chaos took hold. Cao Pi received the news of his father’s death and inherited the family fortune with a little trickery. Back in Luoyang, he staged a grand usurpation: he cowed Cao Zhang’s cavalry with the imperial seal, psychologically manipulated Emperor Xian of Han into retreating into himself and abdicating, lured the aristocratic clans into his talent pool with the Nine Ranks System, and finally ascended the throne “with great reluctance.”
The Cao family’s fake brotherly affection collapsed in no time: Cao Zhang choked to death on poisoned dates, while Cao Zhi saved his life with his “Seven Steps Poem.” When Cao Pi toured Luoyang, Sima Yi was obediently recuperating at home: the very man who would later dig up the Cao family’s ancestral graves. And so it went, all the way to the warlords of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, with their hardcore game of “taking turns killing the boss.”
