Cao Cao’s death in AD 220 brings a powerful career of conquest to an end beneath the weight of apparitions, an exhausted claim to Heaven’s mandate, and the urgent question of succession. At sixty-six, he looks back on decades of warfare, names Sun Quan and Xuande as the adversaries who eluded him, and designates his eldest son, Pi, to succeed him. The scene turns a deathbed into a reckoning: Cao Cao’s political achievements remain substantial, but the novel places them beside the people he killed and the dynasty whose authority he came to control.

Background and the final reckoning

The account belongs to the novel’s epic retelling of the Han dynasty’s disintegration, an era whose recorded events provide the story’s historical foundation while oral storytelling, theatre, poetry, and the novelist’s shaping give them dramatic form. Cao Cao’s death is therefore more than the end of one ruler’s life. It comes at a point when the Han’s political order is giving way and the succession within Cao Cao’s own family has immediate consequences for the emerging Wei regime.

The reckoning begins at night. Cao Cao sees the ghosts of Empress Fu, Lady Dong, two imperial sons, and many others he has had killed. He tries to drive them off with his sword, but the southwest corner of the hall collapses, and he collapses as well. The next night, cries from beyond the walls disturb him again. He tells his advisers that, despite thirty years of warfare and his disregard for supernatural events, he cannot understand what the apparitions mean. Their appearance brings the consequences of earlier killings into the scene just as his life is ending.

When advisers suggest that a Daoist priest perform an exorcism, Cao Cao refuses the proposed remedy. He invokes the principle that one who offends Heaven has no one left to pray for him, and declares that his mandate from Heaven is exhausted. The line makes his recognition of impending death inseparable from a judgment about his political and moral position. Where the story elsewhere uses omens and ritual to argue over who possesses legitimate rule, here Cao Cao himself reads his condition as a sign that his authority cannot continue.

Illness, counsel, and succession

As morning comes, Cao Cao’s headache grows worse. Xiahou Dun is summoned to approach him, but Xiahou Dun also sees the ghosts, runs away in terror, and is never the same afterward. The episode extends the visitation beyond Cao Cao’s own perception: the apparitions affect a trusted military figure too, though the account does not explain them away or offer a separate interpretation.

Cao Cao summons Cao Hong, Chen Qun, Jia Xu, and Sima Yi to hear his final instructions concerning the succession. They try to reassure him that he will recover, but he dismisses their assurances. He says that in thirty years of conquest and killing he has failed to overcome only Sun Quan and Xuande, and that now it is too late. The admission gives his last review of his career a specific limit: two leading rivals remain beyond his reach when his own power is about to pass to another generation.

He discusses his four sons, weighing their strengths and weaknesses, before identifying the eldest, Pi, as the one fit to take over. He asks the assembled advisers to support him. Succession here is not left as a private family matter; Cao Cao’s explicit designation and appeal for support make it a political decision entrusted to men who can help secure the transfer of authority.

Instructions for the household and burial

Cao Cao’s final orders reach beyond the state. He tells the women of his household to perfect their needlework so they can make and sell goods such as silk shoes and provide for themselves after his death. The instruction anticipates their abandonment and offers a practical means of survival, in marked contrast to the military and dynastic scale of his other concerns.

He also orders some of the women to pray for him every day in the Bronze Bird Tower, placing devotional observance alongside the work he expects them to do to support themselves. For his burial, he commands that seventy-two false tombs be constructed outside Jiangwu in Zhangde County to mislead grave robbers. These precise arrangements show a dying ruler still controlling the terms of what follows his death: the household’s livelihood, prayers for his soul, and the concealment of his resting place.

Death and political aftermath

After giving a great sigh and weeping, Cao Cao dies at sixty-six in AD 220. His body is placed in a gold coffin inside a silver casket, and mourning spreads throughout the land. The contrast between that public ceremony and the false tombs he ordered is telling: his death is openly marked across the country, while the location of his burial is meant to remain uncertain.

Pi is overcome by grief when he hears the news, but his advisers urge him to take control of power. Sima Fu warns that he must seize the reins, and Chen Jiao argues that it would be disastrous if one of the other sons tried to usurp the kingdom. Hua Xin then arrives from Xuchang carrying a decree he has drawn up and compelled the emperor to sign, confirming Pi as King of Wei, prime minister, and governor of Jizhou. Cao Cao’s choice of heir thus meets an immediate political test: his death creates a dangerous opening, and his supporters move to make Pi’s succession effective.

The scene’s supernatural reckoning and practical arrangements pull in opposite directions without canceling each other out. Cao Cao recognizes that his mandate is spent and is haunted by those he has killed; at the same time, he makes carefully considered plans for his heir, his household, and his tomb. His death closes his personal contest with Sun Quan and Xuande, while the succession struggle that follows carries his power forward into the Wei state and another stage of the Han’s dissolution.