After Luoyang had become ashes, the alliance council opened again. Cao Cao rose from his seat and spoke. “Today, on the day Dong Zhuo has burned Luoyang and withdrawn westward, if we let this chance of pursuit pass, it shall not come again. Let us raise an army from the east and strike the west.” Yuan Shao and the lords shook their heads. “Our armies are weary; Chang’an is far.” Cao Cao’s face reddened. “These children are not worth planning with (豎子不足與謀).” A sigh deepened through the seat. Cao Cao left it.

Cao Cao led his ten thousand on eastward pursuit. They reached a slope near Xingyang (滎陽) around the second watch (二更). The same redness of this evening had settled upon the faces of the six captains behind him — Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren, Cao Hong, Li Dian, Yue Jin.

Li Ru (李儒) had foreseen this pursuit. The three roads of Lü Bu, Li Jue, and Guo Si lay in front, and the ambush of Xu Rong (徐榮) lay behind: a double net. As Cao Cao’s column rounded the slope, Lü Bu’s iron cavalry appeared first from the front. Lü Bu laughed. “You have not escaped Li Ru’s reckoning.” From the left came Li Jue, from the right Guo Si, and the three columns bore down together. Cao Cao’s army was greatly broken.

Cao Cao halted in flight at the foot of a barren hill. As they tried to kindle a fire and cook, shouts rose from all sides. Xu Rong’s ambush sprang upon them. Cao Cao quickly mounted and tried to break a path. Xu Rong drew his bow and loosed an arrow. It struck Cao Cao’s shoulder. His horse too collapsed under two spears. Cao Cao fell from the saddle and was seized by two foot soldiers.

At that moment, a horse like the wind came rushing up. The rider swung a great blade. Two foot soldiers fell upon the grass in a single exchange. The rider sprang down and lifted Cao Cao up in his arms. It was Cao Cao’s cousin Cao Hong (曹洪).

“My Lord. You cannot die at this seat. Mount my horse quickly.”

Cao Cao shook his head. “My fate is to die here. Younger brother, at least your life must live to go back first.”

Cao Hong took off his own armor and cast it away. “There may be no Cao Hong in all under heaven; yet there must not be no my Lord (天下可無洪, 不可無公).” That single line drove deep, this night, into one place of Cao Cao’s chest.

At dawn, a great river lay across their path. The shouts from behind were closing in. Cao Hong had Cao Cao dismount and carried him across the river upon his own back. The water came up to below his chest. Arrows flew from behind, yet the two reached the opposite bank. Cao Cao laughed for the first time. It was the laugh of a man who had crossed death twice in a single night.

They rode on some thirty li and rested below an earthen ridge. At that moment Xu Rong came across the river from upstream and bore down again. Cao Cao’s breath stopped once more. From the dust ahead, Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan rushed up with a dozen riders. “Xu Rong, do not harm our Lord.” Xiahou Dun’s spear drove into Xu Rong’s flank. Xu Rong fell beneath his horse. Soon after, Cao Ren, Li Dian, and Yue Jin arrived, each leading the remnants. Some five hundred scattered soldiers gathered again into one seat.

That night, before a small campfire, Cao Cao looked far toward the direction of Luoyang’s single heap of ashes. The arrow drawn from his shoulder trembled in his hand. In that breath, Cao Cao told himself one thing clearly for the first time. Until yesterday he had been one person of the alliance. From today, he was one person upon a road taken alone. Behind him, the seventeen banners were no more. Only the breath of five captains, the gaze of five hundred rough soldiers, and a low memory of the horse that had died in his place.

Upon the direction of the ashes, one character — alone (獨) — rose for the first time, this night, in one place of Cao Cao’s chest. That single character would, for the next thirty years, become the quietest friend of every night of this man.

He looked again at the five captains and five hundred soldiers. Their breath was low and ragged; yet within that lowness, a different grain was rising this night than the grain of seventeen banners. The seventeen had breathed the air of a common name; these five hundred breathed the air of a name now spoken only inside one chest. The two grains were not the same.

The twenty-sixth night of Book 1 deepened quietly before the campfire at Xingyang, upon the direction of the single heap of ashes. The three characters Hoejeondok (灰前獨, the alone before the ashes) were planted as a seed: the breath in which one settled from the seat of seventeen banners down to the seat of five hundred. The ashes of Day 25’s Bunnagyang had, this night, moved into the seat of one character inside one person’s chest.

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