In the sixth year of Zhongping, Dong Zhuo was in chaos, and troubled times were coming. Gongsun Lin, Tong Yuan's disciple who traveled through the late Han Dynasty, saw clearly that Yuan Shao, Liu Biao and other princes could not achieve great things, and gave up the choice of following the trend in troubled times. He persuaded his master and took his three junior brothers, Zhao Yun, Zhang Ren, and Zhang Xiu, to lead eight hundred black-armored knights down the mountain, bucking the trend and betting on the dormant Cao Cao. At the same time when Cao Cao and Chen Liu were raising troops, Gongsun Lin proposed strategies in an advanced manner and joined hands with the top adviser Xi Zhicai to assist Cao Cao in starting his quest to conquer Dong's hegemony and seek a path to becoming a famous official in troubled times, hoping to sweep away the troubled times and avoid the catastrophe of the late Han Dynasty.
