Chapter 61: Dance-Off of Death
After rolling into the Riverlands, Liu Bei hosts a banquet for Liu Zhang. Seeing an opportunity to open up the governor's seat for his boss, Pang Tong tries to have Wei Yan perform a sword dance in an effort to get close and assassinate Liu Zhang.
However, somebody working for Liu Zhang jumps in on the dance to counter Wei Yan, and then somebody jumps in to help Wei Yan out, and before you know it there's a dozen random guys sword dancing against each other before Liu Bei pulls a Monty Python and breaks things up for getting too silly.
Zhang Lu—the governor of the territory sitting squarely between Cao Cao and Liu Zhang—finally decides to begin his invasion of the Riverlands, so Liu Bei does what he was brought in for and goes to defend.
But we're going to cut away from that action to go check in on Sun Quan, who thinks now might be a decent time to go attack Jing while the master is out of the house. He has a problem, though: his sister Lady Sun is still married to Liu Bei, and thus, still located in Jing; and she would definitely be put to death if Sun Quan tried anything funny. So he decides to get her out of there first.
He writes to inform her that their aunt, Queen Mother Wu, is dying, and she needs to come pay her last respects. This isn't true, but I guess "why don't you swing by for Christmas this year" didn't work. He also Ubers a boat to go pick her up.
The problem is, Lady Sun can't find anybody to babysit Liu Shan on such short notice, so she brings the kid with her. Which... boy, that would be real bad for Liu Bei if his heir ended up in the hands of his political opponents. Seems like somebody should have thought that one through before now.
Luckily, Zhao Yun is on patrol when he spots her getting into the Uber boat. So he leaps onto the boat, kills the Uber driver, and heroically yanks the infant from the arms of the only mother figure it has.
And despite the boat's pilot being dead, it returns Lady Sun back home to the Southlands anyway. I know I'd sure hate to be the one to tell Liu Bei that his wife ran away while he was out on campaign.
Also there's a scene where Cao Cao attacks one of Sun Quan's naval yards, but he doesn't win and it's not particularly exciting so he goes back home instead, kind of making it pointless to mention.