“Yellow Sky”: Crisis for the Han Dynasty sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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After a short silence, Yuan Shao said, “I am aware that your father is
respected at court, as is mine, and that he has perhaps benefitted from some of
the corruption, as has mine… not deliberately, maybe, but by taking advantage
of situations to preserve his family and retain status. Such is the way of
things these days… to protect the ‘partisans’ is a matter of moral
righteousness and honour, but at the same time, one has to protect oneself, in
order to protect others… a form of altruistic selfishness, if you will. Can a
man feed the poor if he cannot feed himself?”
Zhang Miao nodded soberly and said, “That dilemma is a sad fact in
life.”
“…My father will not tell me if he is helping them,” Cao Cao said
quietly. “Or rather, I daren’t ask… but if you know so much, you know that… so…
is he…?”
“I am not head of the clan yet,” Yuan Shao replied cagily. “I cannot
answer that, for I am not high enough within the ranks of the ‘Keepers’ to know
that. My father simply tests me with questions from time to time… for he has to
be sure… even though I am his son now. Shu, on the other hand, has a different
attitude, and is much more opportunistic; I doubt my father would dare risk
allowing him to know.”
“Sadly, I must agree,” Cao Cao admitted. “I have never warmed to Shu… he
has no moral boundary to check his ambition, and that may one day do him harm.”
“…Although he is family,
Mengde, and I would rather he lived long and was happy,” Yuan Shao retorted.
“But he is who he is… the matter here is the two of you. Zhang Mengzhuo, I have
never known a kinder soul than you.”
Zhang Miao bowed slightly, and said, “I simply do what I must to be
content.”
“You, however, Mengde… are a conundrum to me,” Yuan Shao admitted as he
turned to look at Cao Cao. “I see a man with principles behind the foolery and
the flippancy… yet I wonder what you truly see.”
“I see a land ruined by the selfishness of a few that would not feed the
poor if they had a mountain of food… they would sooner see them rot, food and
poor alike,” Cao Cao replied. “But the world is a balance… ‘yin and yang’, is
it not…? One cannot have good without evil, or rich without poor, or peace
without strife, or order without chaos… such is life, sad to say. But while I
share my father’s - and the eunuchs’ - notion that one should see opportunity
in chaos, the only opportunity that one should see is to restore order, not
prolong the chaos for personal gain.
“I have, since I was a child, examined the case of the
‘partisans’ time and time again, and I can see no fault in them that deserves
persecution. No one should be hunted down like an animal, have their entire
clan labelled as traitors, be herded into prisons and summarily executed for
the crime of making legitimate protests about the way in which the stability of
the state is being eroded.
“We live in difficult times, friends… where we are
surrounded by other races like the Qiang
and the Xiongnu that might be
prepared to attack us to increase their own fortunes, and benefit from the
chaos that consumes us… and a man that cannot feed himself cannot fight others,
any more than he can feed them. Our land is under threat… from within and
without. To persecute those that try to address the problems and resolve them,
all the while draining the coffers and feeding themselves to excess while
others starve… is self-destruction. I hope one day to pacify the borders… but
for now… I’ll make do with challenging the enemy within, so there is a point to
that.”