Three Kingdoms: I Refuse to Be the Emperor Xian of Han

The first year of Jian'an. The final reign era of the Han in the truest sense. The ancient empire is counting down to its end... For whom does the funeral bell toll? That year, the battered court returned from Chang'an to Luoyang, as if stepping from one ruin into another. The burned-out eastern capital, collapsed palaces, looted imperial tombs, skeletons by the roadside... There was no time to grieve. A warlord named Cao Cao was on his way to rescue the emperor. Use the Son of Heaven as a hostage, imprison the Empress, poison the princes, and extinguish the Han rites! Slaughter the loyal, seize control of the court, abolish the Three Excellencies, and proclaim himself King of Wei! In the Imperial Ancestral Temple, before the spirit tablets of his forebears, Liu Xie solemnly swore an oath. “I would rather die than become Emperor Xian of Han!”