Cao Mengde: A Hero of Troubled Times

In the second year of Jianning, 169 AD, outside Luoyang. Dusk settles heavily. Lead-gray clouds hang low, as if ready to crush the sweeping eaves of this magnificent imperial capital. Withered locust trees rustle in the wind on either side of the road, their branches stabbing at the sky like ghostly hands. A troop of Imperial Guards cavalry gallops past in a cloud of dust. Their hooves startle the crows, whose cries pierce the silence. “Another member of the partisan faction has been executed...” An old farmer by the roadside curls up and stuffs half a piece of bran bread into his grandson’s mouth. “The world’s gone so bad, even the heavens are about to fall.” And indeed, the world is collapsing. The four-hundred-year foundation of the Han dynasty is being gnawed to ashes, inch by inch, by the blades of eunuchs and imperial relatives, the blood of border generals and displaced people, and the flames of famine and plague. Meanwhile, in Qiao County, Pei State, Yuzhou, a fourteen-year-old boy has just raised the ring-pommel saber his father secretly kept and struck the first gash into an old locust tree in the courtyard. As wood chips fly, he squints against the sting of sweat in his eyes and seems to glimpse an ancient prophecy in the tree’s shadow: “A capable minister in times of peace, a treacherous hero in times of chaos.” The boy is named Cao Cao, courtesy name Mengde.