[Day 152] Alone Through Seventy Rings

At that very hour of the same evening, Zhao Yun’s (趙雲) horse had already entered Cao Cao’s (曹操) encirclement of five thousand cavalry. In his breast, Liu Bei’s (劉備) infant son Adou (阿斗) lay sleeping.

How had he come to be inside? Zhao Yun’s memory remained only a short fragment. Around the middle of the afternoon, at the rear of the twenty-four thousand, he had turned his horse and chased the trace of Lady Gan (甘夫人). In the thickets of a hill at the rear, Lady Gan had already laid down her breath. Beside her, the infant Adou was crying alone. As Zhao Yun drew Adou into his breast and turned his horse south again, Cao Cao’s five thousand cavalry had already wrapped around that hill.

Zhao Yun had one horse. One spear. Above his armor, another layer of Adou’s swaddling cloth was wrapped. One horse, one spear, and one layer of swaddling cloth began, alone, to move inside the five thousand this evening.

A “seventy-ring” encirclement meant the five thousand cavalry had drawn their rings layer upon layer. Pierce one layer to the east, another closed to the west; pierce one to the south, another closed to the north. Zhao Yun pierced one layer, circled another, and pierced one more. His spear thrust upward in front, then downward behind. With each motion, another enemy rider fell from his horse.

One layer, two layers, three layers. Upon Zhao Yun’s armor, the enemy’s blood gathered, layer by layer. Five layers, seven layers, ten layers. As the blood piled on the outside, the swaddling cloth inside his breast remained apart, quietly, on the opposite side of that blood. Each time another layer of blood went on the outside, the cloth within deepened, quietly, by one more layer.

Adou, within Zhao Yun’s breast, went on sleeping through it all. The rhythm of an infant’s sleep rose and fell, quietly, on the opposite side of the rhythm of the five thousand outside. Two breaths in one body. The breath outside, and the breath within. Zhao Yun moved his spear between them.

The number of enemy generals he had pierced reached fifty. Fifty breaths settled quietly upon the earth of Changban (長坂). Zhao Yun did not count those fifty breaths. He counted only this: that Adou’s breath, inside his own chest, did not stop.

Cao Chun (曹純), at Cao Cao’s main camp, watched this single horse from afar. Cao Chun opened his eyes wide. Inside the five thousand cavalry, one horse had become a single point, passing through five layers, six layers of the interior, outward. Cao Chun spoke.

“That general — I would take him alive. Shoot no arrows.”

Toward Zhao Yun’s horse, in that instant, not a single arrow flew.

The last ring was now before his eyes. Zhao Yun raised his spear. With one downward stroke, the final rider fell from his horse. Zhao Yun’s horse kicked outward, past that last ring.

The interior of the seventy rings was pierced through, together, by one horse, one spear, and one breast holding Adou.

The air outside was cool. The evening wind flowed from Zhao Yun’s back into his face. It was a wind running from north to south — from inside the encirclement toward the outside.

Far off, upon a slope of the western hill, a corner of Liu Bei’s main body was visible. At the center of that corner, Kongming’s (孔明) fan swayed. Zhao Yun turned his horse toward that corner.

Adou was still sleeping inside Zhao Yun’s breast. Through the entire evening, he had not cried. The breath, unbroken inside the five thousand, was still unbroken outside the five thousand, within Zhao Yun’s breast.

It was the first evening of Book 6, How to Wait for the Wind. The direction of the wind still ran from north to south. Yet from inside one layer of that north, this evening one horse had pierced through in the opposite direction. Before the wind would, one day, turn its direction, this evening one horse and one breast holding Adou had, first, pierced the direction of the encirclement.

That single piercing was the first note of Book 6.

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