With Guan Yu bearing down on a couple of his key cities, Cao Cao dispatches a general who pledges his life to victory and shows he means it.

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Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is episode 94.

Last time, Liu Bei had just made himself the King of Hanzhong. Cao Cao responded by initiating a scheme to form an alliance with Sun Quan in the Southlands and make a move to take Jing Province. When Liu Bei caught wind of this, he told his brother Guan Yu, who was overseeing the defense of Jing Province, to launch a preemptive strike on the city of Xiangyang (1,2).

Oh and by the way, from here on out, there will be times when I refer to the opposing sides by the name of the kingdoms that they eventually become, even though those kingdoms do not officially exist yet at this particular point in the novel. So that’d be the kingdom of Shu (2) for Liu Bei. I might also call it Xishu (1,2), meaning West Shu. We also have the kingdom of Wei (4), or Beiwei (3,4), aka, North Wei, for Cao Cao. And then there’s the kingdom of Wu (2), or Dongwu, meaning East Wu, for Sun Quan.

Ok, back to the battle at hand. Xiangyang was being defended by Cao Cao’s kinsman Cao Ren, and Cao Ren decided to go meet Guan Yu head on. When Guan Yu heard that the enemy was approaching, he drew up a scheme and sent his son Guan Ping and the officer Liao Hua to go meet Cao Ren.

When the two sides ran into each other, Liao Hua rode out to challenge for battle, and one of Cao Ren’s officers went out to take him on. After a few bouts, Liao Hua turned and fled, and Cao Ren’s army gave chase for a few miles before stopping for the day.

The next day, Liao Hua and Guan Ping came to challenge for battle again, and this time, two of Cao Ren’s officers went out to greet them, and the enemy soon turned and fled again, and Cao Ren’s officers gave chase again.

This time, though, they followed Guan Ping and Liao Hua right into a trap. After chasing for a few miles, they suddenly heard loud roars, drums, and horns behind them. Cao Ren hurriedly ordered his troops to fall back, but by now, Guan Ping and Liao Hua had turned their army around and were charging back this way. Cao Ren’s men fell into disarray, and Cao Ren said, the heck with this, and made a beeline back toward his home base of Xiangyang.

When he was a couple miles away from the city, however, Cao Ren found his path cut off by a cluster of banners and men, led by none other than Guan Yu himself. Cao Ren was too intimidated to trade blows with Guan Yu, so he changed directions and made a run toward the city of Fancheng, the other location he held in this region. Guan Yu didn’t bother giving chase.

Momentarily, the two officers that Cao Ren had sent out to fight earlier arrived on the scene, and they weren’t as smart as their boss. They actually tried to fight, but you can guess the results. Within a bout, Guan Yu and Guan Ping had each cut down one of those two officers. With their leaders dead, the Wei troops were crushed, with most of them being swept into the river, where they drowned. So just like that, Xiangyang belonged to Guan Yu.

Once things settled down from the battle, Guan Yu’s officer Wang (2) Fu (3) came to see him and said, “General, you have taken Xiangyang in one fell swoop and struck fear into the enemy, but in my humble opinion,