On the morning after the gates of Shouchun had been firmly shut, the twelve jade strands of the usurper’s crown of pendants (冕旒冠) began to snap strand by strand and fall upon the table.

The first strand had snapped of its own accord the night before. The second snapped the moment the first water burst beneath the southern wall of Shouchun that morning. Sun Ce’s water forces had drawn the Yangzi to the foot of the southern wall and begun to pour it through a gap. The sand floor inside the walled city grew lightly wet.

The third strand snapped the moment the bar of the eastern gate first stirred. Guan Yu’s Green-Dragon Crescent Blade struck a single column of the eastern gate at one stroke; Zhang Fei’s Serpent Spear drew a deep crack across the bar; in that instant, the third strand snapped.

The fourth and fifth strands snapped together beneath a single shout at the northern gate. Xiahou Dun raised a great cry before the northern gate; in that instant, inside the walled city, two strands of jade fell together upon the table.

The sixth, seventh, and eighth strands snapped when Yuan Shu (袁術) raised a hand to remove the crown of pendants. He started, and pulled his hand back. Half of the crown’s jade had already come down upon the table. Yuan Shu’s voice shook low. “Today’s crown is trying to remove me itself.”

That evening, above the grain storehouse inside the walled city of Shouchun, the ninth strand snapped. It was the moment the last measure (斗) of grain was distributed into the bowls of soldiers. The tenth strand snapped the moment Ji Ling (紀靈) loosed a single arrow from the wall into the empty air. The arrow fell outside the northern gate and left a light wound upon the forehead of one of Xiahou Dun’s soldiers. A single drop of blood from that wound fell to the ground at the same instant as the tenth strand of jade within Shouchun.

The eleventh strand snapped the moment the armies of Yang Feng (楊奉) and Han Xian (韓暹) broke before Man Chong’s three thousand light cavalry. That evening, the end of the western gate’s road of escape was quietly closed by a single trap of Man Chong’s. The last thread of escape for the king of Shouchun was cut from the outside that way.

The twelfth strand snapped the moment Yuan Shu, alone upon the altar (壇), lifted a single cup of wine. The cup tilted in his hand; a single drop of wine fell upon the table. With that drop, the twelfth jade strand came down upon the table. No strand of jade swayed any longer upon Yuan Shu’s brow. The crown of pendants, now an empty crown (空冠), sat upon his head.

The news rose to the tables of the four-direction generals at the same hour. Cao Cao laughed low. “The twelve-strand crown has taken off its own master. Tomorrow morning, let the blades of four directions move one step farther in.”

Inside the altar-chamber, Lady Feng watched her husband. She did not move to steady his cup. A lady who has watched twelve strands of jade fall, one by one, upon a single table rarely raises a hand to arrest the thirteenth thing that is falling, even if the thirteenth thing is a husband. She stepped to the side of the altar and picked up from the floor the first strand, the one that had snapped the night before. She slipped the jade into her sleeve and walked back through the door. In the decades to come, that single strand would be the only piece of the crown any member of the Yuan household would ever carry out of Shouchun. The other eleven would remain upon the table, and the table would be burned within a few mornings.

At the southern pier, Zhou Yu looked at the waterline beneath the wall and knew, without counting, that by morning the floor of Shouchun would be ankle-deep. He did not order the pace of the pour increased. A water-attack whose grain has already been laid rarely needs a second measure in the same night. He laid a palm upon the rope of the nearest ship and felt the knot he himself had tied three days before. The knot had not come loose. He took his hand back and walked toward the lamp of Sun Ce’s cabin.

The sixty-third evening of Book 3 deepened quietly beneath the empty crown upon the altar of Shouchun. The three characters Myeonryurak (冕旒落, the fall of the crown of pendants) were planted as a seed: the breath in which the water of the southern gate, the bar of the eastern gate, the shout of the northern gate, and the trap of the western gate lay at one seat together with the twelve jade strands. The snap of Day 62’s Suseongpye (壽城閉) — that first strand — had, this evening, been joined into the fall of twelve strands together.

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