Guan Yu releases Cao Cao at Huarong is the decisive encounter in Cao Cao’s retreat: Guan Yu has the opportunity to capture the defeated commander, yet lets him pass because gratitude and pity complicate his duty. The episode turns a military escape into a test of loyalty and righteousness, and its consequences reach beyond the two men: Cao Cao survives, while Guan Yu returns to his own victorious camp expecting to answer for what he has done.

Causes and the retreat

After defeat, Cao Cao’s men must choose between a longer main road and the shorter but more difficult route toward Huarong. Seeing smoke along the difficult road, Cao Cao assumes that Kong Ming has placed fires there to drive his force toward an ambush on the main road. He therefore chooses Huarong, reasoning that the apparent warning is part of the enemy’s deception. His confidence in reading the stratagem leads him into a route made perilous by its terrain.

The retreating force is already worn down. Its men are hungry and exhausted, and many are unable to walk unaided. Rain has turned the narrow path into deep mud, stopping the horses and obstructing the column. Cao Cao orders the soldiers to lay branches and brush over the ground so the force can continue; he also has horsemen patrol to enforce his order. The men are divided among those who struggle onward, those clearing the path, and those escorting Cao Cao. Once they pass the worst of the mud, only about three hundred soldiers remain with him. Even when his men plead for a pause, he insists on pressing forward.

Cao Cao then laughs at the thought that Kong Ming and Zhou Yu have failed to set a trap at this especially favorable place. The reversal is immediate: explosions sound, and five hundred swordsmen block the road. Guan Yu stands at their head, carrying his Green Dragon Sword and mounted on Red Hare. Cao Cao recognizes that his force cannot fight its way through. His officers point to Guan Yu’s reputation for righteousness and recall the kindness Cao Cao once showed him, urging their lord to make a personal appeal.

The appeal and release

Cao Cao approaches with his head bowed and recalls their past acquaintance. Guan Yu replies that he has orders from his commander and has waited for Cao Cao. He acknowledges that Cao Cao treated him kindly, but argues that he repaid that kindness by killing two enemy commanders and relieving the siege at Baima; he cannot simply put duty aside for personal feeling.

Cao Cao counters by recalling Guan Yu’s passage through the five passes, during which Guan Yu killed Cao Cao’s officers. He invokes the story of Yugong and Zizhuo Ruzi, in which a student sent to hunt down his former master lets him go rather than turn what he learned from that master against him. The appeal makes Guan Yu confront not only an old debt but also the deaths of the officers at the passes. Seeing Cao Cao and his men in their desperate condition, he is moved by pity.

Guan Yu orders his troops to spread out along the road and turns his horse away, opening a way through. Cao Cao and his officers seize the chance to escape. Guan Yu then confronts the remaining soldiers, but relents when Zhang Liao rides forward and allows the whole group to go free. The release is therefore not limited to the commander: Guan Yu’s decision extends to the surviving force, even as he lets the most consequential fugitive escape.

Consequences and significance

Cao Cao leaves Huarong with only twenty-seven men still accompanying him. They find refuge at Nanjun, and Zhang Liao later arrives to report that Guan Yu also spared the rest of Cao Cao’s men. The immediate military result is clear: Guan Yu does not capture Cao Cao, and the defeated commander survives to return toward the capital and raise another army. The episode makes a successful escape depend not on victory in battle but on Guan Yu’s judgment at the point of interception.

Back at the victorious camp, Guan Yu returns without prisoners or trophies. Kong Ming greets him with ironic congratulations, saying the army should have prepared a triumph for him for getting rid of its worst enemy. Guan Yu says nothing at first; when Kong Ming continues, he declares that he has come back to die. Kong Ming identifies the reason: Guan Yu deliberately let Cao Cao go because of past kindness, despite having signed an agreement whose consequences must now be enforced, and calls for the guards to execute him. The account emphasizes that Guan Yu has risked his life to honor kindness, and links that choice to the enduring pride in his name.

The event sets military obligation against personal gratitude without making either disappear. Guan Yu knows that Cao Cao is his enemy and that his orders require him to act, but cannot treat the earlier kindness as irrelevant when Cao Cao stands before him defeated. His release changes the outcome of the retreat and puts his own life at risk; its narrative force lies in the cost of acting according to a personal code within the demands of war. In the novel’s larger practice of turning historical material into dramatic moral scenes, this encounter gives the escape a sharply defined ethical hinge: the route is blocked, the defeated commander is vulnerable, and Guan Yu’s decision—not the force of arms—determines who passes.