Zhao Zilong of Changshan: From the Start, Three Hundred Loyal Riders Take on the World

Zhao Yun, courtesy name Zilong, was from Zhending in Changshan. When the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out, he led three hundred volunteer troops north to join the army. He only wanted to fight for a chance to survive in a world that devoured the weak. Outside Jixian, he met Liu Bei, a distant relative of the Han imperial family who made a living weaving mats and selling sandals. Liu Bei was so destitute he didn't even have a proper tent, yet he crouched among the ruins and gave the last piece of his dry rations to a starving man. At the Battle of Jieqiao, the White Horse Volunteers were wiped out, and Gongsun Zan suffered a crushing defeat. Zhao Yun followed Liu Bei to Pingyuan. Yuan Tan's tens of thousands of troops surrounded them, the city had run out of food and reinforcements, and people were eating their own children to survive. Someone asked him, “What are you fighting for?” He touched the rough breastplate against his chest. His fiancée back home had forged it herself, hammer blow by hammer blow. A crooked “Zhao” was carved into it. “I'm fighting for peace.” Over the decades that followed, he rode from north to south with his white horse and silver spear, never suffering a defeat. At Changban Slope, he rode alone through the enemy lines to save his lord. By the Han River, he held off the enemy with an empty camp, striking fear into Cao Cao's army. Some called him the most perfect general of the Three Kingdoms. But he knew there was no such thing as perfection in this world. He had simply never forgotten the weight of that one word: “wait.”