222 AD

The novel marks AD 222 through two linked moments in Xuande’s disastrous campaign against Wu: the spring fighting, in which Huang Zhong rides out despite being an older commander, and the summer defeat that drives Xuande to Baidi. Between them, the contrast is stark. The campaign’s momentum rests on indignation and action; its aftermath brings recognition of ignored counsel, responsibility for the defeat, and mercy toward a stranded subordinate.

Spring: Huang Zhong Rides to Battle

In the spring of AD 222, Huang Zhong hears that Xuande has slighted his older commanders. Outraged, he takes up his sword, mounts his horse, and sets out for battle. At Wu Ban’s camp he insists that he remains fit and strong enough to fight. When news arrives that Wu’s troops are approaching, he mounts again and rides out, while Wu Ban orders Feng Xi to follow and protect him.

Pan Zhang commands the opposing forces. Huang Zhong challenges him to single combat and drives him back, pursuing him before returning triumphantly to his own side. Zhang Bao and Guan Xing meet him there with Xuande’s order to escort him safely home. Huang Zhong ignores them. His battlefield success thus unfolds alongside an unresolved conflict between his own martial resolve and the protection his ruler’s order requires.

Summer: Defeat at Baidi

By summer, Lu Xun has defeated the Shu armies. When Ma Liang reaches Baidi, he is distressed to find Xuande taking refuge there and blames himself for what has happened. Xuande answers that if he had listened to Kong Ming, the disaster would not have occurred. Rather than return to Chengdu after the defeat, he raises the status of his quarters at Baidi and formally names them the Palace of Eternal Peace.

The defeat also brings news that Huang Quan has gone over to Wei. Advisers recommend executing Huang Quan’s entire clan, but Xuande rejects collective punishment. Huang Quan, he reasons, had been cut off from the rest of the army and had no other option; if anyone betrayed anyone, Xuande says, it was he who betrayed Huang Quan. The decision makes the campaign’s consequences personal: the ruler who had suffered a disastrous loss accepts responsibility rather than transferring it to a subordinate’s family.

Cao Pi welcomes Huang Quan and offers him rank and authority. Huang Quan declines to serve him, explaining that Xuande had always treated him generously and that Lu Xun’s movements left him unable to retreat to Shu or surrender to Wu. He asks only that his life be spared. His refusal underscores the divided loyalties left in the campaign’s wake, even as Xuande’s own response has been to recognize the constraint that trapped him.

The Meaning of the Year

AD 222 binds the campaign’s forward rush to its reckoning. Huang Zhong’s spring challenge to Pan Zhang presents combat as a test of personal fitness and honor, but the summer defeat exposes the larger cost of action without the counsel Xuande later says he should have heeded. At Baidi, the name Palace of Eternal Peace sits against the reality of a ruler in refuge after military failure.

The year also distinguishes Xuande’s treatment of defeat from a simple search for culprits. He acknowledges his own role in Huang Quan’s predicament and refuses to punish the man’s family for circumstances that left him trapped. In this sequence, the campaign’s political and military damage is measured not only in defeat, but in the choices that follow it: a ruler’s admission, a subordinate’s constrained departure, and a refusal to turn misfortune into vengeance.