Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao Wants Me as His Strategist

“Doctor, if you stay up all night writing Three Kingdoms papers, you’ll work yourself to death!” His colleague’s words were still ringing in his ears when Lin Yuan found himself kneeling in the mud in the first year of Chuping. Cao Cao was fretting over how to establish himself among the regional lords. Lin Yuan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “Let’s ambush and kill Dong Zhuo. That’ll be our proof of loyalty.” From that day on, strange things began happening in Cao Cao’s camp. When the strategists discussed the state of the war, Lin Yuan would suddenly pull out a charcoal pencil and draw a “strengths and weaknesses chart” on parchment. When training soldiers, he didn’t shout “Kill!” but instead held “team competitions,” with the winning team getting first pick of the meat. Even when urging Cao Cao to resist Yuan Shao, he said, “Ten strengths and ten weaknesses. This isn’t empty talk; it’s calculated.”

Most remarkable of all was Cai Zhaoji, daughter of Cai Yong. She had been an “unexpected bonus” when Lin Yuan went to ask Cai Yong to collate and annotate the Book of Han. The two went from discussing “how to reduce casualties in wartime” to “taxation after the unification of the realm,” and somehow, love took root amid the chaos.

When Cao Cao’s banners had spread across the land, Lin Yuan touched the copy of Record of Ending the Wars of the Chaos Years, written by Cai Zhaoji, tucked against his chest, and finally smiled. “I traded history for a different answer: this land deserves peace.”