After punching Cao Cao in the mouth, Liu Bei tries his best to keep his men from declaring him king, to no avail.

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Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is episode 93.

Well, I hope you enjoyed our 100th episode Q&A last week. And now, let’s pick up where we left off. Last time, Cao Cao was stuck in a bad situation against Liu Bei in the region of Hanzhong. If he attacked, he wasn’t sure he’d win. What he really wanted to do was to quit the battlefield and go home, but he was afraid Liu Bei would laugh at him. But then his secretary Yang Xiu read his mind and decided to start packing for the trip home. When Cao Cao found out about this, he got really mad and executed Yang Xiu. He then gave the order to attack the next day.

So the next day, Cao Cao and his army marched out of the gorge they were in and were greeted by an enemy army led by Liu Bei’s general Wei Yan. Cao Cao told Wei Yan to surrender, but Wei Yan replied with a string of expletives, so Cao Cao sent out the general Pang De to deal with him. Just as the two were dueling, Cao Cao’s camp suddenly caught on fire, and word came that Liu Bei’s general Ma Chao had launched a sneak attack on the middle and rear camps.

Cao Cao, however, refused to panic. He pulled out his sword and declared, “Anyone who takes a step back will be executed!”

Given this ultimatum, all of Cao Cao’s men surged forward, holding nothing back, and Wei Yan turned and fled. Now, Cao Cao split off a portion of his troops to go fight Ma Chao, while he himself watched from a high vantage point.

But suddenly, a detachment of Liu Bei’s troops appeared right in front of him, and the guy at their head was none other than Wei Yan. Wei Yan let fly an arrow, and it struck Cao Cao in the face. Cao Cao tumbled off his horse, and Wei Yan tossed aside his bow, grabbed his saber, and galloped up the hill to finish the job.

Just then, though, another warrior flashed onto the scene and shouted, “Do not harm my lord!”

This was Pang De, and he charged forward and put up a dogged fight to defend Cao Cao, eventually fighting off Wei Yan and helping Cao Cao retreat. By now, Ma Chao had called off his raid of Cao Cao’s camp, so Cao Cao was able to limp back to what remained of that camp. Fortunately for him, Wei Yan’s arrow had struck him in the mouth, taking out two front teeth but leaving him otherwise unharmed, and Cao Cao was ok after getting some treatment.

 

After this embarrassing setback, Cao Cao finally realized that Yang Xiu, his dead secretary, was right after all. So he ordered that Yang Xiu’s body be given a, you guessed it, fancy funeral, and then Cao Cao led his army toward home. He told the general Pang De to bring up the rear so as to fend off any enemy pursuit. Cao Cao himself rode in a carriage, licking his wounds while surrounded by his imperial guard.

Suddenly, word came that both sides of the canyon they were in were on fire, and that an enemy force had sprung out of hiding and was in hot pursuit. Turns out that Zhuge Liang figured Cao Cao was going to abandon Hanzhong and quit the fight, so he dispatched 10 detachments of troops to stage on-and-off surprise attacks as Cao Cao’s army limped home. The morale of Cao Cao’s men was in the gutter, and they couldn’t get out of Hanzhong fast enough.