A year after the fire of Boyang Slope (博望坡) had scattered the hundred thousand of Xiahou Dun (夏侯惇), Cao Cao (曹操) personally led five hundred thousand great army southward toward Jingzhou (荊州).

Liu Biao (劉表) passed away that autumn of illness. His second son Liu Cong (劉琮) inherited the governorship (荊州牧) under the counsel of Cai Mao (蔡瑁). Liu Cong handed a single writing of surrender (降) to Cao Cao. The whole of Jingzhou passed beneath Cao Cao’s hand.

Liu Bei (劉備) received the news upon the tower of Xinye (新野). His two eyes sank a shade deeper. “Kongming. Today, even the small walled city of Xinye cannot be held before Cao Cao’s five hundred thousand. We must move southward toward Jiangling (江陵).”

Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) lowered his head. “Governor. That is the right course. Only one matter remains. The common people of Xinye have asked to move together with us.”

Liu Bei drew a deep sigh. “Kongming. Do the five thousand households (五千戶) of Xinye wish to move with us?” Zhuge Liang nodded. “Governor. The five thousand households have already gathered before the gate this morning.”

Liu Bei descended from the tower. Before the gate, five thousand households had gathered beneath carts and back-bundles. An old grandfather stepped forward and spoke in a low voice. “Governor Liu. Xinye has long been warm beneath your hand. Today, we wish to move together with Your Lordship’s single step.”

Liu Bei’s two eyes grew lightly wet. “Old father. Today I shall move southward together with the five thousand households of Xinye.” The old grandfather bowed his head deeply.

The five thousand households of Xinye, together with Liu Bei, Guan Yu (關羽), Zhang Fei (張飛), and Zhuge Liang, began to move southward toward Jiangling. A cart’s wheel pressed its track into the dirt road. Five thousand footsteps of the households lay together upon that track.

Along the southward road, the march was slow. Five thousand households with their carts, their elders, their small children, and their draft animals moved no faster than twenty li a day. Behind them, to the north, Cao Cao’s cavalry scouts had by the third evening already reached the outskirts of the abandoned Xinye. Cao Cao’s main army was a few days behind the scouts. Still, before the scouts could overtake Liu Bei’s slow column, some days of grace remained. Zhuge Liang counseled Liu Bei not to abandon the column. Liu Bei answered with a single word: “I cannot.” A governor who has received the bowed head of an old grandfather at a small walled city’s gate does not afterward abandon the households that followed him. The answer would cost Liu Bei, in the coming weeks at Changban (長阪), many tens of thousands of those households’ lives; yet the answer remained the answer he had given that morning, and he did not take it back.

Inside the column, Zhuge Liang rode beside Liu Bei and did not reproach him. A counselor who has measured the full weight of his lord’s resolve does not reproach that resolve for its cost in one season; he plans instead for the season after. Zhuge Liang was already, on this third evening of the march, turning over a plan for a second fire and for a southern alliance with Sun Quan (孫權), though the first fire at Boyang had not yet cooled to ash in any record. The second fire lay a year away at the Red Cliff (赤壁); the alliance, two seasons. Both would fall beneath the arc of Session A.

Upon the dirt road, an old woman of perhaps seventy walked slowly beside a small cart that carried her grandson. The cart’s wheel had squeaked at every third revolution since midmorning; she had tried to wipe the dust out of the axle with a rag, and the squeak had not lessened. She did not stop. A grandmother of seventy walking beside a small cart that carries her grandson does not stop for a squeak that will not lessen; she walks with the squeak as with a second breath. The squeak would persist for three days of the march, and on the fourth morning a young soldier of Zhang Fei’s rearguard would kneel beside the cart with a small leather flask of cart oil and silence the axle. The grandmother would not thank him; she would only nod. The soldier would not need the thanks. Some quietings are wage enough in the nod itself.

Upon a low hill in the distance, behind the last cart of the column, a single figure stood for a long breath and watched the column pass. None from the column looked back to see the figure. It may have been a scout of Cao Cao, a villager of an abandoned field, the ghost of a Han soldier from some older war, or a trick of the afternoon light. No record, in the histories or in the variants, says who stood there. Yet the figure stood, and the column passed beneath that quiet gaze, and the one hundred and five nights of Session D1 passed together beneath it.

The final episode of Session D1 was drawing its curtain quietly upon the footsteps of the five thousand households of Xinye. The three characters Sinya-song (新野送, the escort from Xinye) were planted as a seed: on one breath lay Liu Biao’s passing, Liu Cong’s writing of surrender, the carts of the five thousand households, and the old grandfather’s bowing head. The ashes of Day 104’s Bakmang-hwa (博望火) had, this morning, reached the footsteps of the five thousand households.

From Day 1’s oath at the Peach Garden (桃園) to today’s Day 105 escort from Xinye, one hundred and five episodes of character-making and one hundred and five nights lay together this morning upon the footsteps of five thousand households. From Day 106 onward, this story moves beneath the arc of Session A.

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WIA Code 스캐너로 비추면 인터넷 없이 발행 사실과 위·변조 여부를 확인할 수 있습니다.
휴대폰 기본 카메라로 찍으면 스캐너 안내 페이지가 열립니다 — 기사 바로 열기

움직이는 코드(스트림) 한 장에 기사 전문(사진 포함)이 담겨 있습니다 — WIA Code 스캐너로 약 51초 비추면 폰에 저장되어 인터넷 없이도 읽을 수 있습니다. Stream.mp4 도 여기서 받습니다.