On the morning Yuan Shu (袁術) swallowed his last breath beneath an empty crown (空冠), the blades of four directions moved one step inside the walled city of Shouchun (壽春).

Beneath the southern wall, the foot of the wall had been deeply soaked in the water of the Yangzi; a mass of earthen wall collapsed at a single stroke. Sun Ce’s water forces pushed a ship through the collapsed gap. Zhou Yu stood at the head of the lead ship. The sand floor of Shouchun rose to their ankles.

The bar of the eastern gate snapped cleanly under the last force of Guan Yu’s Green-Dragon Crescent Blade. Zhang Fei’s Serpent Spear shoved the wood of the bar aside. Lü Bu’s cavalry poured through the opened gap, the Sky-Piercing Halberd at the head.

The northern gate opened of its own accord under a great shout and the step of one hundred and seventy thousand. Cao Cao stood at the head of the main army. Beside Xiahou Dun stood Cao Ren and Xiahou Yuan.

The western gate had already been closed by the trap of Man Chong’s three thousand light cavalry. The four gates of Shouchun were each opening and closing, grain by grain, within a single breath.

Yuan Shu came down from the altar. The empty crown of pendants sat upon his head. Ji Ling (紀靈) stood at his side. “My Lord. The one remaining road is a back alley of the western gate. Ride a single horse along that road, and move toward the seat of Yuan Yin (袁胤) at Jianghuai (江淮).” Yuan Shu nodded. His two eyes shook lightly.

Before those words were finished, Cao Cao’s main army poured inside the gate of Shouchun. Yuan Shu stepped back. Ji Ling lifted a blade and stood in front. After the crossing of one round, two rounds, and three rounds, a single blade of Cao Cao’s subordinate Yue Jin (樂進) reached beneath Ji Ling’s throat at a single stroke. Ji Ling sank to his knees upon the ground. The first general’s name inside the walled city of Shouchun had thus come down.

Yuan Shu mounted his horse. A single horse began to ride toward the western gate. Inside his bosom, a fragment of jade seal was held. It was a morning on which every name inside the walled city of Shouchun was left behind.

Inside the city, Sun Ce ascended the altar (壇). The empty crown of pendants lay upon the table. Of the twelve jade strands, eleven were scattered upon the tabletop. The first strand was nowhere to be seen. Sun Ce quietly lifted one hem of the empty crown. He laid that crown upon the ground. It was a morning on which a usurper’s crown had been completely set down upon the floor beneath the altar of Shouchun.

Cao Cao came inside the city. He stood beside Sun Ce. The two men’s eyes settled together upon the seat of the empty crown. Cao Cao spoke low. “Today, a usurper’s crown has been laid upon the ground. From today, the first line of a different battle will begin.” Sun Ce answered low. “My father’s jade seal is still inside Yuan Shu’s bosom. A blade that follows that jade remains to us.”

Liu Bei came inside from the eastern gate. Lü Bu stood beside him. The four names of the four-direction generals were once more laid together at one seat.

At the outer edge of the altar chamber, Taishi Ci stood a step back, bow across his shoulder, and watched the four names without speaking. He had ridden for Sun Ce through a mountain path at Shenting a season ago; he had returned a helmet and a halberd the morning after. Today, he saw the same lord standing beside three other lords whose names had come to Beihai across his own mother’s old kindness. He did not count the strands of the crown upon the floor. A man whose mother’s breath still sits upon one shoulder rarely counts jade. He only watched the floor, and knew that the morning had just quietly gathered four kindnesses older than it looked into a single room.

Behind Cao Cao, Xun Yu walked into the altar-chamber alone and lifted a single scroll of accounts from beneath the tabletop. The scroll listed the granaries Yuan Shu had drawn down, the coin he had minted for the new reign, and the names of the officials he had appointed in the nine months of his usurpation. Xun Yu did not read the names aloud. A counselor who has just watched a usurper ride out on a single horse rarely reads aloud the names his opponent inked. He rolled the scroll closed and tucked it inside his sleeve. The scroll would, within a week, reach the hand of a clerk in Xudu, and from that clerk each named official would, in one morning or another, receive a letter that opened not with an accusation but with a line of formal inquiry. The inquiry would be enough. Some clean-ups, once written in a single scroll, require no second document to be completed.

The sixty-fourth morning of Book 3 opened quietly beneath the empty crown of Shouchun. The three characters Suseongnak (壽城落, the walled city of Shouchun laid upon the ground) were planted as a seed: the breath on which the water of the southern gate, the bar of the eastern gate, the main army of the northern gate, and the trap of the western gate lay together with a single empty crown, at one seat. The fall of the twelve strands of Day 63’s Myeonryurak (冕旒落) had, this morning, been connected into the fall of the whole crown.

—