Chapter Twenty-Four: They, Too, Once Lived

The sun was high in the sky above Dongcheng County, Xiapi, as a caravan slowly made its way south toward Huainan.

The migration of the Zhuge family was much swifter than that of the elders from Huangmen Pavilion Village. Zhuge Xuan, leading his entire household, had left Langya in April. At the start of May, their journey through Xuzhou was delayed when Cao Cao besieged Yan County.

After Cao Cao’s forces withdrew, Tao Qian heard that a small armed group was passing through his territory. Upon learning it was the Zhuge family from Langya, he invited Zhuge Xuan to Yan County for a meeting. Such courtesies were commonplace. Later, on his way to Liu Biao, Zhuge Xuan was intercepted by Yuan Shu, who recommended him as Governor of Yuzhang—proof that noble families like the Zhuge, with their reputation, were valued by warlords.

Zhuge Xuan stayed with Tao Qian for a few days. Only in mid-May did he bid farewell, leaving the Principality of Donghai and entering Xiapi.

People of that era understood little about plagues. They did not know that disease spread from the bacteria of rotting corpses, so Zhuge Xuan had no intention of avoiding Xiapi. The route from Xiapi to Huainan was the shortest and fastest; disregarding the threat of plague, it was undoubtedly the best choice.

Safety was another concern.

For tens of thousands of square kilometers, the land was deserted, white bones exposed in the wilderness, and not a rooster’s crow could be heard for a thousand miles.

Unless the tens of thousands of Xiapi’s people had become ghosts, turning the region into a haunted domain, there would be no security issues.

And yet...

Zhuge Xuan could never have foreseen that, precisely because he chose the shortest and safest route to Huainan, he would alter the course of Zhuge Liang’s life forever.

He would also, unwittingly, set the stage for a legendary episode in the final days of the Han, in the last remnant state founded by a true scion of Liu Bang—Shu Han.

On May 16th, the caravan formally entered Xiapi. Passing through Liangcheng and Siwu Counties, the devastation seemed less severe; Cao Cao had only feigned an attack on these two counties, so casualties were limited.

However, after Cao Cao’s massacre in Xiapi, word spread and people from these counties fled north to Donghai and other lands, leaving them sparsely populated.

Still, there were signs of life.

But on May 20th, upon entering Xiaxiang County, Zhuge Xuan sensed something was wrong.

He had heard tales of violence following Cao Cao’s campaigns, but tales are not the same as witnessing the aftermath.

Just beyond Siwu County, nearing the Si River, the stench of rot carried for miles.

The surrounding plains were dotted with villages, now utterly abandoned. Houses were in ruin, fields overgrown, waystations reduced to rubble.

Such scenes were not unique to Xiapi; the entire Han was scarred by similar desolation. In Qingzhou, for example, famine and war had driven a million Yellow Turban rebels to the wind—some to Jizhou, where Gongsun Zan crushed them, others to Yanzhou to become Cao Cao’s captives, and still others south to Xuzhou, only to be destroyed by Tao Qian’s general Zang Ba.

But the further they pressed toward the Si River, the more terrible the devastation became. Soon, they saw their first corpse—lying by the roadside, long since decayed.

Maggots and flies swarmed. The body had been rotting for over twenty days, the summer heat accelerating its bloat and liquefaction. Yellowish putrefaction oozed out, sickening all who passed.

The caravan moved slowly by. Zhuge Liang frowned and gently covered his younger brother Zhuge Jun’s eyes.

“Don’t look,” he whispered.

“But I can smell it,” the boy replied, wrinkling his nose. “It’s awful.”

Zhuge Jun was only ten. Even with his eyes covered, the glimpse he’d caught haunted him.

“Try not to think about it,” Zhuge Liang said softly. “Don’t breathe it in if you can help it—once the wind changes, it will be better.”

“All right, brother,” Zhuge Jun replied.

They assumed a corpse by the road was nothing unusual—after all, the battle for Xiapi had ended only twenty days ago.

But less than a hundred meters ahead, they saw what true hell looked like.

The entire village was dead. In the fields, in vegetable gardens, at doorsteps, beside brooks, under mulberry trees, in the ponds—everywhere lay corpses and dark, dried blood.

Some had been beheaded, others stabbed through the heart, others shot with arrows. The village was transformed into a slaughterhouse.

Even the old, the weak, women, and children had not been spared. In fact, most of the dead were them.

Zhuge Liang saw, with his own eyes, a man with a hoe lying at the gate of a house at the eastern edge of the village. He had been run through the heart by Cao’s soldiers, falling rigidly just outside a bamboo fence. Inside the gate lay another body—a woman. She had fallen on her face, one arm reaching toward the door, as if begging the soldiers to spare her husband.

To the right of the house, an old man cradled a small child in his arms. Nearby lay an elderly woman and three children.

Zhuge Liang reconstructed the scene in his mind.

Cao’s army had stormed the village, burning, killing, and looting. The man, hearing commotion outside, grabbed his hoe and went to the gate, only to be slain on the spot. His wife, witnessing his death, called for the elders to flee with the children through the side door, then stumbled toward her husband’s body—only to be cut down herself, her corpse sprawled toward the main gate, arm outstretched.

The elders, leading the children out the side, were intercepted—two old people, three children between six and ten, and a toddler in arms—all slaughtered.

Now their bodies were liquefying in the heat. The reek was suffocating, and the air teemed with flies as thick as locusts during a plague.

Zhuge Liang closed his eyes, unable to endure the sight.

He thought a massacre like this was the worst horror the world could offer, but the closer they drew to the Si River, the more he realized these ruined villages were mere appetizers.

Xiaxiang County lay at the confluence of the Sui and Si Rivers. Zhuge Xuan chose this route for the ferry crossing, then planned to head south through Tongguo, Xuxian, Hualing, and Dongcheng—counties with the best roads and the fastest route to Huainan.

Yet he had not foreseen that precisely because this route passed through the most populous towns and villages, the slaughter here would be the most severe.

By mid-morning, they passed Xiaxiang County’s main city.

It was a scene of utter devastation: broken walls, heaps of corpses, blood everywhere. The city was deserted. The walls were blackened by fire. Inside, everything had been reduced to ashes except the rammed-earth ramparts, which stood as grim witnesses to history.

The caravan crept along outside. Hundreds of bodies hung from the city walls, swaying in the summer breeze, filling the air with the stench of death—a ghastly forest of corpses.

By afternoon, they reached the Si River.

They had seen mass graves, groves filled with butchered bodies, ponds thick with human remains. Yet only now did they grasp what true horror meant.

The Si was not a modest stream; in Han times, it was one of the Eight Great Rivers—surpassed only by the Yellow, Yangtze, Huai, and Ji. Downstream, near where it joined the Huai River, it widened greatly.

And now, across its expanse—hundreds of meters wide—countless bodies floated, stretching as far as the eye could see. The stench carried for miles. The banks and sandbars were piled high with corpses.

Looking upstream, the river was choked with a slow-moving tide of the dead. Downstream, the same unending sight—bodies upon bodies.

The river seemed not to flow; it was clogged with this dreadful cargo, the sky darkened by swarms of flies, the world awash in blood-red.

Hell itself could not compare to this earthly torment.

The bodyguards could hold back no longer. One after another, they vomited violently onto the roadside.

In truth, they had already retched more than once on this journey.

Even the finest soldiers Liu Biao had sent—hardened veterans, men who had escorted Zhuge Xuan through bandit-infested lands and fought without flinching—now seemed as fragile as children, if not more so.

For at least Zhuge Liang did not vomit.

Yet—

The sickness was not of the body, but of the soul, at the sight of that river teeming with the dead.

Zhuge Liang gazed in numb horror.

First there was terror in his eyes, then sorrow, then compassion—until at last all these emotions gave way to an overwhelming grief.

They, too, had once been living, breathing people.

They were not beasts of the forest.

They were not livestock.

They were men and women like you and me—capable of laughter and tears, of joy and despair.

How... how could it come to this?

Why had they, like lambs to the slaughter, been cast into the river—

left to rot, to stink, to dissolve, vanishing silently from the world—

not even a name remaining?

Tears filled Zhuge Liang’s eyes. He closed them, unable to bear the sight, as a single tear slipped down his cheek.

He could not understand.

If Cao Cao sought vengeance for his father, why not seek out Tao Qian? Why turn his wrath upon these common people?

Didn’t these innocents, too, have fathers and mothers?

Was it right to satisfy one man’s grief with the lives of hundreds of thousands?

Was this truly what was called filial piety?

At that moment,

Zhuge Liang’s feelings defied all words.

Perhaps,

In this world, there were wrongs that must be righted, hatreds that must be avenged.

But who would tell him—what crime had these innocents committed?

Why must these peasants, who struggled daily just to eat, suffer such a fate?

Was it the world that was wrong?

Or was it Cao Cao?

Perhaps both.

The young Zhuge Liang stared upon this nightmare, lost in thought, unable to recover for a long, long time.