Cai Mao

Cai Mao is a prominent Jingzhou official and the brother of Lady Cai whose political maneuvering first places Xuande in danger and later helps determine the balance of naval command before the Battle of Red Cliffs. His course moves from using family influence to undermine Xuande to serving Cao Cao, where a deception devised by Zhou Yu turns his military experience into a liability: Cao Cao orders him executed on the strength of a forged letter.

Position in Jingzhou

Cai Mao resents the rising influence of Xuande, who has joined Liu Biao’s forces with his sworn brothers and Zhao Zilong and helped suppress a local rebellion. Through his sister, Lady Cai, Cai Mao spreads doubts about Xuande’s loyalty to her husband, Liu Biao. The rumors have a direct political result: Liu Biao removes Xuande and his men from the city and gives him command of Xinye instead. Xuande remains in Liu Biao’s service, but Cai Mao’s influence has helped push him away from the center of Jingzhou power.

Cai Mao’s hostility becomes more dangerous when Liu Biao discusses the succession to his two sons with Xuande. Xuande advises Liu Biao to follow the principle of naming his elder son, Liu Qi, as heir, and recommends gradually curbing the power of Lady Cai’s clan so it cannot seize power. Lady Cai overhears the exchange and turns against Xuande; she presses Cai Mao to kill him. Cai Mao then takes action on his own behalf, faking a slanderous poem and writing it on the wall of Xuande’s room so that it appears to be Xuande’s work. The deception causes Liu Biao to suspect Xuande, but he hesitates to authorize a killing because he cannot recall Xuande writing poetry.

The failed poem scheme does not end the threat. Cai Mao next plans to lure Xuande back to Jingzhou under the pretext of celebrating a good harvest. Xuande accepts despite warnings from Zhao Zilong and Sun Qian. At the banquet, he receives a secret warning that Cai Mao intends to kill him that night and escapes. Cai Mao pursues with five hundred men, but Xuande reaches the Tan River and crosses it on his horse. The pursuit fails, and Cai Mao’s attempt to eliminate Xuande gives way to the broader struggle over Liu Biao’s succession.

Succession and political conflict

When Liu Biao is dying, he entrusts responsibility to Xuande and gives Liu Qi, his elder son by his first wife, the right to rule. Lady Cai opposes this decision because she intends the succession for her own son. She orders her men to close the city gates against Liu Qi. Cai Mao, her brother and Xuande’s established enemy, blocks Liu Qi outside Jingzhou and argues that leaving his post at Jiangxia has endangered it and may distress his father. Liu Qi is unable to enter and ultimately returns to his command, grieving that he cannot reach Liu Biao.

Cai Mao’s place in the succession crisis is thus practical as well as familial: he helps enforce the exclusion of Liu Qi at the gate, while Lady Cai’s faction works against the heir selected by Liu Biao. The account records the immediate obstruction and its emotional consequence for Liu Qi, but does not describe Cai Mao’s later role in determining the succession. His best-attested political pattern remains the use of access, rumor, and calculated deception against Xuande and Liu Qi.

Service to Cao Cao and naval command

Cai Mao later appears in Cao Cao’s campaign against the southern forces as a commander with experience in naval warfare. After Gan Ning’s fleet attacks Cao Cao’s ships, Cai Mao’s younger brother Cai Xun is killed, and the northern troops suffer a severe defeat. Cao Cao responds by ordering Cai Mao and Zhang Yun to establish a training center to teach his land-based soldiers to fight on water. This appointment makes Cai Mao’s expertise strategically important: Cao Cao’s forces need to overcome their lack of naval experience before confronting the southern fleet.

Cai Mao’s command also reflects the novel’s repeated emphasis on the difference between military knowledge and the ability to interpret information correctly. At the Battle of Bowang, Kong Ming’s plan assigns Guan Yu to wait in the hills and strike the enemy’s rear and supply train when fires appear; Zhang Fei is to attack the army stores, and Zhao Zilong is to feign retreat. These instructions show the strategic environment in which Cai Mao’s later naval role matters: battles turn on deception, positioning, and supply as well as numbers. The evidence places Cai Mao among the experienced water commanders, but does not assign him a role in that earlier land battle.

Zhou Yu’s deception and death

Zhou Yu identifies Cai Mao and Zhang Yun as the commanders most concerning to him because of their naval ability. He uses Jiang Gan’s visit to create a false appearance of treachery. Pretending to sleep after a banquet, Zhou Yu leaves a forged letter where Jiang Gan can find it. The letter purports to come from Cai Mao and Zhang Yun and claims that they are serving Cao Cao under false pretenses, with the intention of killing him and delivering his head to Zhou Yu. Jiang Gan steals it and carries it back to Cao Cao, hoping the supposed revelation will redeem his failed effort to persuade Zhou Yu to change sides.

Cao Cao has the room cleared before Jiang Gan shows him the letter. Enraged by its apparent evidence of betrayal, he orders Cai Mao and Zhang Yun executed immediately. Only after their heads are brought in does Cao Cao realize that he has been deceived. He refuses to acknowledge his error, while his remaining commanders are appalled. Zhou Yu, by contrast, is relieved: the two officers he feared most have been removed from Cao Cao’s command. The episode ends Cai Mao’s career through a misread document rather than defeat in battle, and deprives Cao Cao of the experienced naval commanders whose training had been intended to strengthen his fleet.

Narrative role

Cai Mao’s story links household politics to military consequence. His resentment of Xuande works through Lady Cai’s access to Liu Biao, then through fabricated evidence and a planned ambush; in the later campaign, a forged letter exploits Cao Cao’s readiness to act on apparent intelligence. In both conflicts, deception changes what powerful men believe and prompts decisions with lasting consequences.

The contrast is especially sharp in Cai Mao’s final episode. His naval knowledge is valuable enough to trouble Zhou Yu, yet that value cannot protect him once Zhou Yu’s ruse persuades Cao Cao that he is a traitor. His execution therefore removes a real military capacity from Cao Cao’s forces while demonstrating how the novel makes political suspicion and strategic misdirection turn on a single piece of supposed evidence. The historical and fictional materials in the novel are presented through a layered tradition of recorded events, theatrical and oral storytelling, and later literary composition; Cai Mao’s dramatic reversals belong to that larger mode of epic retelling.