“Turmoil”: Battle for the Han Empire sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne

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“Will it be Cao Cao or Liu Bei…?” a woman asked.
“Their lives were mostly intertwined,” the traveller chuckled. “To speak of one usually invites speaking of the other. But their lives were long, and their exploits many. What shall I speak about…? The later days, or-?”
“Nobody ever talks about how they got strong!” one boy complained. “My father says there was an idiot called Yuan-something, and… I forgot.”
“Ah! Thank you, young man,” the traveller said. “I shall talk about the Yuans, Shao and Shu, and the famous Lü Bu, about the Battle of Guandu.”
The crowd chattered excitedly.
“Of course, there are a lot of different versions of that story, spoken and written,” the traveller continued. “Chunyu Qiong the drunk, Guan Yu’s exploits, and so on… but we’ll start with… mm… where should I…?”
The traveller pondered the stories that he had heard and read, and wondered where he should truly begin. The story that he would tell would be different to the one in the records of history, it would be different to the centuries-old written works attributed to ‘Luo Guanzhong’, and it would be different from the one in his mind’s eye: this would be a story told in many ways and for many different audiences in the ages to come.

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ACT I: AN UNWELCOME STABILITY

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