On the very night when Emperor Xian's carriage moved toward Xuchang, inside Cao Cao's tent a counselor was laying a low line into his master's ear.

The counselor's name was Xun Yu (荀彧), style Wenruo (文若), of Yingyin (潁陰) in Yingchuan (潁川). Of the eight names who had knelt before Cao Cao's tent in Day 43, he was one. Tonight, his single line was being set down as the first sentence of a large plan that would decide the grain of all under heaven.

Xun Yu brought out eight characters in a low voice. "Phongcheonja iryeongjehoo (奉天子以令諸侯)." To uphold the Son of Heaven and, by that, command the lords of all under heaven — the first line of a great plan.

"My Lord. Among the lords under heaven, whose name stands now the greatest? Yuan Shao (袁紹), Yuan Shu (袁術), Liu Biao (劉表). These three names stand several grains greater than Your Lordship's. Yet one thing alone: none of the three has the Son of Heaven at his side. From today, if Your Lordship keeps the Son of Heaven at Your side, every name under heaven will lie beneath the shade of Your Lordship's name. More than the count of Your Lordship's armies, the Son of Heaven's name laid upon Your Lordship's will be the greater force."

Cao Cao's two eyes widened. After a breath of silence, he answered low. "Wenruo. Your line has settled tonight upon a quiet grain. Since I have brought the Son of Heaven beneath the roof of Xuchang, I shall begin, from today, the first step of this plan."

Xun Yu bowed his head deeply. His hand took up the brush and began to write the first line of an edict: "Chancellor Cao Mengde, bearing the command of the Son of Heaven, lays the lords under heaven beneath one law."

Before that night reached dawn, the edict was completed. The seat of the seal upon it was left for Emperor Xian's own hand to press. The next morning, that seal would be pressed, and one edict would go down to the lords of all under heaven.

The first recipients would be the nearest: Zhang Yang of Hanei, Zhang Xiu at Wancheng, and Liu Biao at Jingzhou. The next ring: Yuan Shu at Shouchun, Lü Bu at Xiaopei, Liu Bei at Xuzhou. The outermost ring: Yuan Shao at Jizhou, Ma Teng at Xiliang. Each of these men would, within a week or within a month, receive an edict that bore Cao Cao's hand behind the Son of Heaven's seal. Each would have to decide whether to kneel to the seal or to unfold, beside it, a counter-edict of his own. That single decision, once made, would fix each man's place in the chronicle of the next ten years.

Xun Yu, folding his brush, did not pretend that his plan was new. It was old: Guan Zhong had used it; the Han ancestor Guang Wu had used it; the Founder of Han had used it in another form. Xun Yu only reached for the oldest coin in the pouch and laid it upon the newest table. That a plan's antiquity does not diminish its grain is a lesson older counselors teach younger ones with a single gesture: they simply set the old coin on the table and do not explain it.

Cao Cao tapped Xun Yu's shoulder lightly. "Wenruo. Tonight's single line is the first line of a chronicle of thirty years." Xun Yu smiled quietly. Within that smile, a recognition was buried. He could already see the long court-nights that his own line would, for long, set in order behind it.

Meanwhile, at the main camp of Yuan Shao at Jizhou, a counselor named Ju Shou (沮授) had laid the same grain of a line to Yuan Shao a year earlier. "My Lord. Bring the Son of Heaven to Ye (鄴). Keep Him at Your side, and then command the lords of all under heaven." Yuan Shao had hesitated and refused that plea. Beside him in that hour Guo Tu (郭圖) and Chunyu Qiong (淳于瓊) had leaned against Ju Shou's proposal, naming the burden of housing a wandering emperor larger than the gain. Yuan Shao, whose house had produced three dukes in four generations, believed that his name alone was a mountain sufficient to all under heaven. The Son of Heaven, he felt, would only be a second lantern hung in a hall where his own lantern already burned.

The line of one counselor that had lain long beneath the lamp of Yuan Shao's camp had, tonight, crossed into Xun Yu's line beneath Cao Cao's lamp. It was the night a line missed by one person was received by another. Ju Shou, in the coming months, would hear of the edicts going out of Xuchang and would understand, without weeping, that the mountain of his lord had just been quietly undercut by a lamp in another tent. He would continue to serve Yuan Shao; men of his grain rarely leave a seat only because the seat is wrong. Yet from that month on, every order Yuan Shao issued would carry a second reading for him — the reading of a counselor whose line had long ago been laid and long ago set aside.

The fifty-second night of Book 2 deepened quietly under the lamp of Cao Cao's tent. The three characters Bongnyeongil (奉令一, the first word of uphold and command) were planted as a seed: the breath on which a line missed by one person was laid at another person's ear. The wheel of Day 51's Hoedocheon lay, this night, before the seat of the seal of one edict.

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