Chapter 4: Depression Party
With the intimidating Lu Bu by his side, the imperial courtiers are now suddenly a lot more agreeable to Dong Zhuo than they were, and they suppose that deposing the emperor is actually not that bad an idea, after all.
Well, except for Yuan Shao, who at least is smart enough to not say anything and bugger off back to his province. And a couple of other guys, who do say something and promptly get executed.
Thus, Bian is removed from the throne, and Xie is made emperor in his place. Bian and his mother, Empress He, are kept under house arrest for a while so they can't cause trouble, but eventually they're unceremoniously dispatched. Because, you know, tyrant.
So yeah, Dong Zhuo is a really bad dude, and now he basically has unchecked power. He takes his run of the palace and helps himself to the emperor's things. He also takes his troops out to go slaughter some people in the middle of celebrating a holiday. For... fun and profit? I don't know; all this is hard to joke about. So let's joke about Cao Cao instead.
One of the ministers, Wang Yun, isn't taking the tyrrany thing so well, and he fakes a birthday party just so he can get people to come console him. You know, one of those attention-seekers. One of the people who attends is Cao Cao; but instead, he just laughs at Wang Yun. He tells the minister, geeze, you'll bitch and moan about Dong Zhuo, but you won't actually do a damn thing about the guy. Not like Cao Cao, who, in fact, has spent his time getting pretty close to the despot, and he just might be able to carry out an assassination. Before putting his money where his mouth is, though, he asks to borrow a particular jeweled dagger from Wang Yun to actually do the deed with.
Once equipped, Cao Cao makes his move. When he finally gets a moment alone with Dong Zhuo, he draws the dagger; but the latter has a mirror sewn into his clothes (somehow) because he's a sneaky son of a bitch, and he spots Cao Cao. And also in that moment Lu Bu happens to walk in. At that point if I were Cao Cao, I might have just stabbed myself and saved everybody the trouble; but he is also a sneaky son of a bitch, so he drops to his knees and offers the dagger as a gift. In case you wondered why he specifically needed a jeweled dagger. Man thinks ahead.
Dong Zhuo accepts the gift and Cao Cao leaves, but Zhuo is still pretty suspicious, so he puts out a warrant for Cao's arrest, and Cao Cao flees the capital. He's ultimately arrested in another city by a magistrate named Chen Gong; but instead of turning Cao Cao in, Chen Gong quits his job and goes with him, because he, too, wants to do his duty to the empire and get rid of Dong Zhuo.
On the way to wherever the hell they're going, they stop by a Cao family friend's place to stay the night. They're entertained for a while, but eventually the friend says, would you look at that, we're out of wine, I need to go a town over to get some more. While he's away, from outside, Cao Cao and Chen Gong hear a knife being sharpened and somebody saying "let's tie him up and kill him!" To which Cao Cao reasons, well, is this guy a good enough friend not to turn me in for the bounty?
So he and Chen Gong preemptively kill the entire family. ...Only to find out they were actually talking about the pig they were about to butcher for dinner.
You know. Everybody's made that mistake at some point in their lives.
So the two of them understandably don't stick around. However, they run into the family friend on the road out, returning with the wine. Surprised to encounter his guests on the road, he asks, hey, where are you guys going?! Somehow, he doesn't ask them why they're covered in blood. I would want to know that if I were him, but whatever.
In a measured response, Cao Cao straight-up kills him, too. Chen Gong is NOT okay with this, because this guy, at least, they knew was innocent. But Cao Cao figures, well, he'd return home to see what they'd done, and would demand retribution.
And in his words, "Better to wrong the world than to have the world wrong me."
Which is the kind of thing guys with pointy black goatees say. I'm just saying.