The late Han era was a time when natural disasters and human cruelty always walked hand in hand.
Ever since the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out, the Ten Attendants had thrown the court into chaos, Dong Zhuo had marched his troops into the capital, the regional lords had formed a coalition to stop him, and Yuan Shu had even dared to claim the imperial title for himself.
More than twenty years of endless war had given birth to heroes and legends, lifted up brilliant ministers and fierce generals. But it had also crushed countless ordinary lives into the dirt.
People sold their own children just to get by. Families chewed on tree bark to stay alive. Plagues of locusts swept across the land. And then there were those four words no one ever wanted to speak out loud: people eating people. Everyone in Jingzhou had seen or heard of such horrors over the years. But what Cheng Yu did… that was something else entirely.
"Cheng Zhongde was truly that ruthless?" Liu Bei said, completely stunned.
"No wonder everyone in Xuchang described Cheng Yu as harsh and difficult, always picking fights," Guan Yu shook his head, his voice thick with disgust. "What a truly vile man."
"All that just to serve Cao Mengde with blind loyalty," Zhuge Liang sighed, shaking his head in dismay.
Even if Cao Cao conquered the whole world, what would Cheng Yu actually gain? Even if he rose all the way to the rank of one of the Three Excellencies, his own hometown would forever remember him as the monster who turned his neighbors into food for an army.
Four hundred years ago Xiang Yu had refused to cross the river to safety and chose to die rather than face the people of Jiangdong he had led to their deaths. Yet this man had fed his own people to soldiers without a second thought.
"Then why would the future ever drag big brother's name through the mud?" Zhang Fei was having none of it.
Liu Bei just took it all in his usual calm way. "What is false can never be made true, and what is true can never be covered up. Even across one thousand seven hundred years our descendants will still see right through every lie."
That kind of grace made Huang Zhong think, Truly worthy of being the Liu of Jingzhou.
Zhang Fei alone was still fuming. His mind was already racing ahead.
'Hah, Cao Mengde, you better watch out. I will find a few good storytellers in town and pay them to spread all kinds of embarrassing tales about you. The man has a well known weakness for widows, right? Perfect. Give him five... no, eight, ten widows in every single story!'
[Lightscreen]
[Of course the novel's selective blindness when it comes to Cao Cao goes way beyond just the Cheng Yu incident. Flip through the pages and you will find plenty more examples.
The Records of the Three Kingdoms clearly state that Cao Cao attacked Lu Bu in the tenth month and massacred the people of Pengcheng while capturing Hou Xie, a high ranking official who served as chancellor of the region.
The novel skips this ugly fact entirely and just moves right along.
The Records also tell how Zhang Miao and Zhang Chao betrayed Cao Cao. Cao Cao besieged Yongqiu for months, broke through the defenses, massacred every single person in the city, and executed Zhang Chao along with his whole family.
The novel wipes out the massacre completely and changes Zhang Chao's death into a noble self sacrifice by fire.
The Book of the Later Han records that Cao Cao had eighty thousand surrendered soldiers from Yuan Shao buried alive right after the Battle of Guandu.
The novel rewrites those eighty thousand deaths as casualties of active fighting during the battle itself.
The same book explicitly states that Cao Cao massacred the people of Yecheng and seized the women of the Yuan household. The novel twists this into a story where Cao Cao strictly ordered his troops not to harm civilians or the Yuan family after taking the city.
It basically acts like his shoe shine boy, because during that exact campaign he took Yuan Shao's daughter in law Lady Zhen for himself.
She later became the wife of Emperor Wen of Wei and the mother of Emperor Ming.
The Records of the Three Kingdoms mention multiple times that Cao Cao had a standing military rule: anyone who only surrendered after being surrounded would be shown no mercy whatsoever.
The novel erases this harsh order completely.
The Records also document on several occasions that under Cao Cao's rule the burden of forced labor was so heavy and the people suffered so badly that they rose up in open rebellion.
The novel hides all that away too.
All these little changes add up, leaving readers with the impression that Cao Cao's crimes were not actually that bad.
Then some people call that kind of editing historical authenticity and turn around to mock Liu Bei for shedding tears, calling him a fake saint and a hypocrite.
It is honestly so ridiculous it makes you want to laugh out loud.]
"Big brother cries a lot?" Zhang Fei's ears perked up like a hunting dog catching a scent.
"That must just be a rumor spread by later generations," Guan Yu laughed. "The last time I remember big brother crying was when Tian Guorang said goodbye. He shed tears and said he regretted that they could not achieve great things together. I recall that being the only time. He absolutely does not qualify as a crybaby."
"Good thing Tian Guorang left when he did," Zhang Fei said, staring off into the distance. "Right after that we lost to Lu Bu at Xiaopei, got tangled up with Cao Cao again, and spent years running from one place to the next. If he had stayed with us his body probably never would have survived all that hardship."
Liu Bei said nothing.
He just shot Zhang Fei a razor-sharp glare that clearly communicated: 'Yide, have you stopped to think about why Lu Bu was able to take over our territory in the first place?'
Zhuge Liang and Zhao Yun kept their heads down, transcribing everything.
But between strokes, Zhuge Liang's eyes lit up. "This implies that someone eventually wrote an official history dedicated to us."
Writing an official history was no small honor! He could not help but wonder what role he played in that record. How would future generations judge him?
In the hall only Huang Zhong looked thoroughly lost. As a career military man he had only been made a General of Zhonglang under Liu Biao when he was already forty years old. Twenty long years he had spent drifting on the fringes of power without a single real achievement to show for it. He had finally made up his mind to dedicate whatever years he had left to this new lord of Jingzhou. Now barely two days after arriving he found himself witness to all these incredible things beyond his wildest imagining.
But he understood the events the light screen listed one by one. And from what the lord implied, a descendant from over a thousand years in the future was narrating all of this. A fanciful wish floated up in Huang Zhong's heart.
"So Cao Man's kid became Emperor Wen of Wei? What a shameless family!" Zhang Fei was on a roll, completely missing the sharp look his big brother was giving him.
"Emperor Wen of Wei might be Cao Man's son…" Guan Yu offered, choosing his words carefully.
"Everyone knows Cao Cao has a hobby for married women! That is exactly how his eldest son, Cao Ang, died!" Zhang Fei argued with total confidence. "He takes over a city and helps himself to the women, and this one was Yuan Shao's own daughter-in-law? That fits Cao Cao's taste perfectly."
Guan Yu had no reply. He just tried to keep his younger brother in line. "Cao Cao and Yuan Shao were friends from the same generation. Taking a friend's daughter in law goes against every rule of decency and respect."
"Since when has Cao Cao ever cared about decency? Fair point though, second brother. Still, if Emperor Wen really is his son, it makes perfect sense. Father and son both have a fine hobby chasing married women like it is some kind of family tradition!" Zhang Fei threw his head back and roared with laughter.
The room went still for a moment. Zhang Fei's words were rough, but he was not wrong.
"Cao Cao truly is a butcher of men," Zhao Yun muttered between brush strokes.
The title butcher of men had originally belonged to Bai Qi, who buried four hundred thousand surrendered soldiers in a single battle. Cao Cao's body count from massacring cities might not have matched Bai Qi's single greatest atrocity, but the sheer frequency of his slaughter earned him the same epithet. No one argued.
[Lightscreen]
[Now that we have covered what Cao Cao actually looked like in the historical record, let us get to today's main topic: when did the Cao clan lose the world?
Again, we start with the novel. Because it only shows the surface, and because Sima Yi becomes a half-protagonist in the later chapters, most readers get the impression that the Cao emperors were sitting pretty, eating hotpot and singing songs, when suddenly the Sima family swooped in and hijacked everything!
If I had to sum up the real story in one simple sentence: Cao Wei officially fell to the Sima clan but in truth it was destroyed by its own internal fighting.
If Sun Wu failed to unify the land because the host was too weak and the guests grew too strong then Cao Wei's problem was two tigers tearing each other to pieces inside the same house.
The most naked display of Cao Wei's internal power struggle is Cao Zhi's Seven Steps Poem. This poem gave us the famous line: We grew from the same root. Why the rush to boil each other?]
"Why the rush to boil each other?" Liu Bei felt a deep personal resonance.
In the early days, when Cao Cao was still technically a Han minister, the man had tried to kill him countless times.
And now it turned out Cao Cao's own sons went at each other even harder? Well, well.
Liu Bei picked up his tea and downed the whole cup in one gulp. Refreshing!
[Lightscreen]
[Cao Wei had always been split into two major power blocs.
First came the Ru Ying scholar faction, led by key strategists like Guo Jia and the influential Xun clan.
Then there was the Qiao Pei military faction, made up of generals from the Xiahou and Cao clans who hailed from Cao Cao's own home region.
In the early days when Cao Cao was busy fighting one war after another, the military wing held all the real authority.
But later on after the Battle of Red Cliffs the borders of Cao Wei had mostly settled. Large scale campaigns became fewer. Cao Cao was getting older and the matter of who would inherit his power became more urgent. Tension between the two factions kept climbing higher and higher.
Things finally turned deadly over a man named Wei Feng who launched an uprising in 219 AD. His battle cry said it all: I am defecting to the Han!]
Liu Bei: ????
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Fun Fact: In Extreme Famines, Families "Exchanged Children" to Survive
During the collapse of the Han Dynasty, famine conditions became so severe that a practice known as "yi zi er shi" (易子而食) emerged—literally meaning "exchange children and eat them."
This sounds shocking, but it reflects a grim form of survival logic under total societal breakdown:
Parents avoided the psychological trauma of consuming their own child.
By exchanging children with another family, the act became emotionally and socially "distanced"
It shows that even in extreme desperation, people still tried to preserve a sense of moral boundary
Why did it happen?
This wasn't caused by hunger alone—it required multiple systems collapsing at once:
Agriculture failed → farms abandoned due to war
Government failed → no grain relief or distribution
Military pressure → armies seized remaining food supplies
When all three broke down simultaneously, famine escalated into what historians call "catastrophic subsistence crisis"—where normal food sources disappear entirely.
Educational Insight
This phenomenon is important for understanding history:
It shows how human behavior adapts under extreme conditions, not just through chaos, but through grim forms of reasoning
It demonstrates that the fall of a dynasty is not just political, it is also a humanitarian collapse at the lowest level of society
In short:
What looks like unimaginable cruelty is often a sign that every structure supporting human life has already failed.