Tiger Marquis: I’ll Face the World for Mengde

The stories of the Three Kingdoms have told of strategists’ words and generals’ blades, but no one has ever written about how my life, Xu Chu’s, came to be bound to Cao Cao’s.

All it took was one bend to tie his shoe. The mud on his fingertips was hotter than an imperial edict. I hid away that scrap of coarse cloth, and from then on I took arrows for him at Guandu, fought Ma Chao at Tong Pass, and killed Xu You to protect his dignity. Every blow of my blade was repayment.

Then he was gone. I knelt before his spirit and coughed up blood. Our promise to “return to Qiao County and drink until we’d had our fill” became a debt I could never repay.