[Day 18] The Mirror Turned First
January · *Stars Gather* | about 3 min read
The two horses of Cao Cao and Chen Gong ran eastward for three days. By the time they reached the land of Chenggao (成皋), the sun was tilting west. Cao Cao lifted his whip and pointed toward the deep side of a thicket. “Nearby lives one Lü Boshe (呂伯奢). He is my father’s sworn brother. What if we take a meal and lodge a night there?” Chen Gong nodded. The two dismounted in front of Lü Boshe’s house.
Lü Boshe ran out and took Cao Cao’s hand. “Nephew. I heard that a warrant seeking you has been scattered on every side. Your father has already fled to Chenliu.” Cao Cao told the matter of Zhongmou and the face of Chen Gong simply. Lü Boshe bowed deeply before Chen Gong. “Had you not been there, the house of Cao (曹氏) would have fallen to extinction this night. Though humble, take your rest in the thatched hall. I shall go to the western village and bring back a jar of wine.”
Lü Boshe mounted a donkey and hurried out. The two sat down upon the veranda and caught their breath. In that very moment, from behind the house, came a short, low sound of a blade being whetted.
Cao Cao’s neck stiffened. He turned his head toward Chen Gong. “Lü Boshe is not my father’s own brother. That sound of a blade being whetted makes today’s road suspect. Let us go behind and listen.” The two muted their footsteps and went to the back of the thatched hall. Beyond the wall, someone let out a low line: “How about binding and killing?” Cao Cao’s face darkened. His right hand dropped quickly to the hilt at his waist. “So it is. If we do not strike first, we shall be taken.” Cao Cao drew his blade; Chen Gong drew too, helplessly. The two rushed into the hall. Without asking, they swung their blades. Eight of the household fell, one after another.
When they reached the kitchen, the two saw a single pig tied to a pillar. It was a pig that had been tied, for this evening, to feast the nephew and his friend. The owner of the whetting sound was no man of Grand Preceptor Dong. A servant of Lü Boshe’s household had been sharpening the blade to cut the pig’s neck.
Chen Gong stepped back a single step. His face set white as paper. “Mengde. Your suspicion ran too heavy. We have killed the innocent by mistake.” Cao Cao gave no reply. Without wiping his blade, he simply passed Chen Gong and led his horse out of the house.
Outside, the two met Lü Boshe returning upon a donkey, with two jars of wine in one hand and a basket of fruit and vegetables in the other. Lü Boshe smiled and raised his hand. “Nephew. Why are you leaving already? I told the family to slaughter a pig and feast you.” Cao Cao made a courtesy from his horse. “A man who has committed a crime cannot linger. I shall leave first.”
He drove the horse a step forward. Yet after a few paces, he turned on horseback. In his right hand the blade was held again. The blade came down upon Lü Boshe’s shoulder, heavy. Lü Boshe fell quietly beneath the donkey. The two wine-jars broke in a single stroke upon the dust.
Chen Gong was shocked. “Mengde. The first time may have been a mistake, but this time you killed knowingly. This is greatly unrighteous (不義).”
Cao Cao’s face darkened again beneath the setting sun. “If Lü Boshe returns home and sees his eight kin dead, how will he stay still? If he leads men and chases us, we shall surely be taken. Rather, I would betray the men of all under heaven (寧敎我負天下人), than let the men of all under heaven betray me (休敎天下人負我).”
Chen Gong gave no reply. His lips trembled, yet no word came out.
That night, the two found a tavern. Cao Cao fell asleep first. Chen Gong could not sleep. He drew a blade from his bosom and looked long upon the side of Cao Cao’s sleeping neck. He slid the blade back into its sheath. He whispered a low line to himself. “I came this far following this man for the state. To kill this man is not righteous. Yet to go together with this man is no longer my road.”
Before that night had dawned, Chen Gong mounted his own horse and left the tavern quietly. The direction of the road was toward Dongjun (東郡). After Chen Gong’s back vanished, a single blade hung unwiped in the outer yard of the tavern, beside the saddle of Cao Cao’s horse. Upon that blade the line of blood left from the evening before had hardened into one black line under the cold air of the dawn.
The eighteenth dawn of Book 1 opened quietly upon the outer yard of the tavern. The three characters Gyeongseonban (鏡先反, the seat where the mirror turned first) were planted as a seed: the posture on which the silence of one sitting beside turned back before the decision of another. The single recognition of Day 17’s Okjungsik had, this dawn, been crossed into a single turning-back.
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📌 Knowing Apart — History (正史) vs Romance (演義)
🟢 That Cao Cao (曹操), after being released at Zhongmou, stopped at the house of Lü Boshe (呂伯奢) and slaughtered his family is recorded close to history in several sources. 🟢 Pei Songzhi’s (裴松之) commentary upon the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Biography of Emperor Wu) transmits three variant accounts side by side: first, the Shiyu (世語) holds that Lü Boshe’s sons attempted to rob Cao Cao and he killed the family; second, Sun Sheng’s (孫盛) Yitong Zayu (異同雜語) holds that Cao Cao, hearing the sound of dishes, grew suspicious and killed the family; third, Wang Shen’s (王沈) Wei Shu (魏書) holds that Lü Boshe’s sons tried to seize Cao Cao’s goods and Cao Cao acted in self-defense. 🟠 Romance of the Three Kingdoms chapter 4 takes up the second account, composing that Cao Cao overheard the “sound of whetting a blade” and the talk of “binding and killing.” 🟠 The scene of cutting down the returning Lü Boshe deliberately on the road is also an adaptation of Romance, as is Cao Cao’s line “I would betray the men of all under heaven rather than let them betray me.” 🟡 Chen Gong’s (陳宮) companionship and parting are also Romance‘s composition. Pei Songzhi’s Biography of Chen Gong records him as a figure who served Cao Cao once and later crossed to Lü Bu; whether the beginning was the pass of Zhongmou cannot be determined from history alone. 🔴 The three-character creation Gyeongseonban (鏡先反) and the mirror reading by which the silence of one sitting beside turns back before another’s decision are reconstructions of this commentary. The character-creation line has reached, today, its eighteenth seat.
“✒️ A Word from the Commentator — Dr. Yeon Samheum
There is an evening on which one very quick decision changes a person’s name more greatly than the decision’s own rightness. Whether that decision was right or not, one cannot, at that seat, usually tell; yet after that decision, the silence of the one sitting beside may follow long. Within your day today, is there perhaps a quick decision set before you? As much as the decision itself, might you look quietly into the length of the silence of the one sitting beside it?
🌍 That Year, on the Other Side of the Earth…
In the autumn of 190 CE, at the house of a friend on the outskirts of Rome under Commodus, it is said that a fleeing officer killed the friend’s family by mistake and then cut down the returning friend himself upon the road. A companion who had stood at his side, that night in a tavern, looked long upon the side of the officer’s neck, then slid the blade back into its sheath and departed quietly. The Latin phrase testis prior aversus (the seat where the witness turned first) was, it is said, inscribed at the margin of that autumn’s record of the tavern. On the dawn when, at the eastern edge, Chen Gong’s turning-back rose in the outer yard of the tavern at Chenggao, at the western edge the same manner of turning-back was rising beside a tavern.
📅 Tomorrow, Day 19: The First Banner of Chenliu
“Cao Cao reached his hometown of Chenliu (陳留). A friend of his father laid down the whole of his household’s fortune before Cao Cao, and the first banner of righteousness was rising upon the walls of Chenliu.” — Sam H. Yeon, Ph.D.
Commentary — Yeon Samheum, the Commentator · Sam H. Yeon, Ph.D. · 延三欽博士
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