No one in Zigui slept well that night.
Before dawn had fully settled, a rumor crept through the city like cold water seeping into bedding: servants dismissed from General Li Yi's estate were whispering that an Imperial Uncle Liu had arrived from Jingzhou—and that Li Yi had already been executed, branded a traitor and cut down on the spot.
Imperial Uncle Liu?
The common folk exchanged looks. The name sounded important, but unfamiliar. Some, uneasy and unable to sit still, sought out Mr. Li, the refugee from Yanzhou who had fled south years ago. If anyone knew the temper of men from the Central Plains, it would be him.
To their surprise, when Mr. Li heard the name, his shoulders visibly relaxed.
He let out a long breath.
"If it is Imperial Uncle Liu," he said slowly, "then you may sleep easy. He is a benevolent man. He does not trample the people."
With that, he dismissed his visitors and barred his door, convinced for the first time in many nights that he might actually rest until morning.
New Governance
At first light, the city stirred—and froze.
Every street, every alley, every market wall was plastered with notices.
People crowded forward, craning their necks.
"Li Yi—who betrayed his lord three times…"
"The first betrayal…"
"The second betrayal…"
Unlike the usual official proclamations—short, vague, and stingy with ink—these notices were dense, written plainly, almost bluntly.
Li Yi was named a turncoat.
Imperial Uncle Liu, a scion of the Imperial House and Governor of Jingzhou, had personally led troops to remove this malignant growth, to ensure the Han house was no longer endangered.
Then came the part that made the crowd hold its breath.
Spring plowing was approaching.
Oxen would be brought from Jiangling.
Curved plows.
High-quality seeds.
Craftsmen would be dispatched to build water-powered mills along the river, open for public use. Officials would teach new farming methods—fertilization, composting, soil rotation.
And finally, written in bold characters, stamped with a crimson seal:
This year's grain tax: thirty percent.
For a heartbeat, the crowd was silent.
Then the street erupted.
No one cared much about Li Yi's crimes—they barely knew the man. But agriculture? Food? Taxes?
That was life itself.
Those who had been to Jiangling or Gongan began speaking all at once, describing stone mills turned by flowing water, pestles that rose and fell without human hands.
"Zigui sits on the Yangtze!" someone shouted. "If they can do it there, they can do it here!"
Thirty percent.
Black ink. Official seal.
Could such a thing be false?
The anxiety born of Li Yi's death evaporated. People who had lived too long under crushing burdens were already calculating harvests not yet sown, imagining granaries that might, for once, not be scraped bare.
The Push Westward
Liu Bei rested only one night in Zigui.
At dawn, the army moved again—straight toward Wu County.
The county's two hundred guards shut the gates in panic. But when their captain saw Li Yi's severed head thrown before the walls, and the two thousand disciplined soldiers arrayed behind Liu Bei, wisdom overcame fear.
The gates opened.
Just as Zhao Wei's rebellion had collapsed the moment Zhao Wei died, Li Yi's death shattered resistance across Ba Commandery. Liu Bei followed a single principle:
Speed above all else.
A few hundred troops were left to garrison Wu County. The main force pressed on.
Three days to Yufu.
Fifteen days to Quren.
Eight days to Linjiang.
Twelve days more to Jiangzhou.
Jiangzhou marked the end of Li Yi's territory.
By now, the army was lean, the road long behind them. Yet standing atop Jiangzhou's walls, Liu Bei felt no fatigue—only exhilaration.
Yizhou lay before him.
Chengdu was within reach.
Pang Tong stood beside him, barely containing himself. Though the plan had begun with Kongming, it was Pang Tong who had refined it, driven it forward, executed it flawlessly.
The sense of triumph filled his chest.
That old feeling—forever standing in Kongming's shadow—was gone.
"If we had ten thousand battle-ready troops," Pang Tong said, gazing northwest where mountains hid Chengdu, "the city would fall within two months."
Liu Bei nodded calmly.
Since leaving Linju, only three soldiers had been executed for breaking military law. Twelve had died to cliffs or poisonous insects.
That was all.
A miracle of a march.
Zhao Yun followed behind with the main army, securing each city in turn. Supplies flowed forward; the troops left in Zigui had already caught up.
"We have taken six cities," Liu Bei said. "Seven-tenths of our stores are spent. But the soldiers are unharmed, the people untouched. We paid with grain and coin, not blood."
He smiled.
"That is a true victory."
"If we attack Chengdu now," Pang Tong replied quietly, "victory becomes mutual ruin."
The river wind felt different here. Pang Tong suddenly wondered aloud, "I wonder how Jingzhou fares."
Liu Bei paused, then laughed softly.
"Li Yi's head has served its purpose. I will write to Liu Jiyu—and send the head with the letter."
"If I have come to this land," he said, eyes distant, "then I must explain myself to its master."
The words of the light-screen echoed faintly in his mind:
'Nine heavens open up a Chengdu.'
What kind of prosperity lay there now?
The "Truth" of the Plague
Back in Gongan, Kongming barely slept.
As Liu Bei and Zhao Yun advanced, wealth and logistics poured through his hands like a river in flood. Wooden Oxen creaked along the roads toward newly taken cities. Packhorses carried grain deep into Yizhou.
Water-powered workshops ran day and night, grinding coal from Jingzhou and beyond into fine powder for the front.
Mi Zhu converted profits into grain so rapidly that even Lu Su was alarmed, sending a letter demanding an explanation.
Kongming replied with half the truth:
Zigui belonged to Jingzhou.
Governor Liu was merely reclaiming what was his.
Meanwhile, Zhang Zhongjing's workshops expanded again. Beyond wound powders, they now produced medicines against insects, miasma, swelling.
During a rare pause, Kongming asked quietly, "What exactly is smallpox?"
Zhang Zhongjing stroked his beard.
"Do you recall the eighteenth year of Jianwu?"
"Ma Fubo," Kongming answered instantly.
Zhang Zhongjing retrieved a bamboo slip.
"When Ma Yuan suppressed Jiaozhou, victory came suddenly—after a plague broke out behind the rebels. But when the army returned, our own soldiers bore it too. Fever like typhoid. Pustules on the skin."
"They called it Captive Sores."
Kongming's fingers tightened.
"The Romans fell to a plague from Parthia… Parthia borders Kushan… and the Ancient India Road runs south…"
A vast, unseen beast seemed to open its jaws across the southern lands.
"Is there a cure?" Kongming asked.
Zhang Zhongjing shook his head. "It appears rarely, never as catastrophe. Why do you ask?"
Kongming did not lie.
"Because the fall of a great western empire may have begun with this."
The Plow and the Future
In Zigui, the people watched the armies depart without fear.
Then came what truly mattered.
Beside the government office stood a new room. Inside: a curved plow, and a crude model of an ox.
Those with money could buy.
Those without could rent—free of charge. The price was simple: an extra ten percent of the harvest.
Thirty percent tax.
Ten percent rent.
Forty percent total.
Still far less than Li Yi's sixty.
People signed without hesitation.
Mr. Li bought his outright. In the fields, he tested it with his son—lighter, smoother, saving strength with every furrow.
During a rest, a local named Zhao A poured tea.
"If all governors were like Imperial Uncle Liu," he said, "you'd never have fled south."
Mr. Li was silent.
"But didn't he defeat Li Yi?" Zhao A pressed.
Mr. Li shook his head. "Li Yi would not last three days in the north."
After a pause, Zhao A asked carefully, "Will the northerners come for him?"
"Most likely."
"That's a shame," Zhao A said. "It would be good if he stayed."
Mr. Li thought of Cao's soldiers—steel, fire, terror.
He sighed.
"For now," he said, gripping the plow handles, "we plow the land."