Chapter 13: DoorDash Banquet
With nowhere to go after the end of the last chapter, Lu Bu writes to Yuan Shao and see if maybe he can get back in with him again. To which Yuan Shao actually sends a bunch of men to reinforce Cao Cao rather than helping Lu Bu.
So with that bridge totally burnt, Lu Bu turns to Liu Bei instead, because that guy's seriously a chump.
Lu Bu rolls in and Liu Bei is like, oh hey, remember how I said I would temporarily govern Xuzhou? I may as well give it to Lu Bu since he's the first guy who showed up. Lu Bu almost accepts the province, but Zhang Fei threatens to fight him and generally acts pissy whenever Lu Bu is involved in anything. Which, I mean, fair. Thanks to Zhang Fei, Lu Bu isn't feeling very welcome, so Liu Bei says, hey, why don't we put you up in the city of Xiaopei right next door? I promise I won't let Zhang Fei visit you over there. So that happens.
Anyway, in case you've been wondering what's been up with the emperor and Dong Zhou's rebel generals that we left back in Chapter 10... Well, things in the capital ain't been going so hot.
One of the ministers has a plan to turn the two head honchos of the rebel troops, Li Jue and Guo Si, against each other. I hope you can make sense of this plan, because I sure can't:
The minister has his wife visit Lady Guo, who is told that her husband, Guo Si, is sleeping with Li Jue's wife. Upon receiving this (fake) news, Lady Guo starts pretending like Li Jue knows about the affair and is trying to poison Guo Si. So like, she hears that her husband is shtooping his friend's wife, and her go-to play is to trick her husband into being afraid of his friend? I can't connect the dots on this one; I'm not even sure who this is meant to punish. I think normal protocol is just to get an axe involved.
There's one part in all of these shenanigans where Li Jue is having a banquet, but Lady Guo put Guo Si is in the doghouse (again, for something he didn't do), so Li Jue sends over some banquet food like a real bro. But Lady Guo poisons the food when Guo Si isn't looking, and then feeds it to the dog to prove that Li Jue has it out for him.
...But, like, you just poisoned your dog. What the actual shit.
Anyway, look, the rest of this chapter is way too long and nobody in it is very important. So here's the short version: The generals leading Dong Zhuo's rebel forces all start fighting back and forth with one another, and they all keep stealing the emperor. He escapes eventually, but the entire flight home is just goddamn misery for the poor bastard, and he doesn't even get to go home; he has to go to Luoyang instead for some reason, which I guess isn't burnt down anymore.
I'm honestly just going to put a note at the start of this chapter telling myself to skip it next time, because everything that happens after we cut away from Lu Bu and Liu Bei is just so tedious.