Mi Fang

Mi Fang is a commander serving Xuande, appearing in accounts of Kong Ming’s military plans and the army’s flight from Xinye. His roles range from receiving an assigned position in a coordinated ambush to reporting that Zhao Zilong has supposedly joined Cao Cao; the latter claim is immediately challenged by Xuande, who insists on Zhao Zilong’s loyalty.

Military role and orders

When Kong Ming prepares to meet Cao Cao’s advancing army, Mi Fang and Liu Feng receive a specific assignment. They are to position two thousand soldiers at Xi Wei slope, split evenly between blue and red banners. On contact with the enemy, the groups are to retreat in opposite directions, confusing the pursuers and delaying their advance. Once flames rise from Xinye, they are to prepare an ambush, attack the enemy, and then continue to the upper waters to assist the other forces.

The plan depends on coordination and misleading appearances rather than a direct stand: the separated banners are intended to draw and disorient the enemy, while the later fire signals when the commanders should shift to the next phase. Mi Fang is named as one of the officers entrusted with this part of Kong Ming’s larger operation. The account gives the orders, but does not specify Mi Fang’s individual actions or the outcome of his assignment.

Mi Fang is later included in a separate order during the retreat after Cao Cao’s defeat. Kong Ming sends Mi Zhu, Mi Fang, and Liu Feng to attack the enemy on the river and seize as many weapons as they can. This task makes capture of equipment an explicit objective, alongside the broader effort to harry the retreating forces. No further details are given about how Mi Fang carries it out.

The report about Zhao Zilong

During the flight from Xinye, Xuande is left with roughly a hundred men and does not know what has happened to his family or followers. Mi Fang then staggers up the hill, with arrows in his face, and reports that Zhao Zilong has joined Cao Cao’s side. The report threatens to turn a desperate retreat into a crisis of trust within Xuande’s party.

Xuande rejects the accusation at once. He calls Zhao Zilong one of his oldest friends and argues that Zhao has remained steadfast through their adventures and disasters; no promise of power, he says, would sway him. Zhang Fei, by contrast, entertains the possibility that Zhao has acted to secure his own interests and threatens to search for him and kill him if he finds him. Mi Fang’s report therefore becomes a point of contrast between suspicion and Xuande’s confidence in a long-standing bond. The passage does not confirm Mi Fang’s interpretation, and supplies no resolution to the disagreement here.

Limits of the account

Mi Fang is associated with more than one military assignment, but these appearances do not provide a personal history, describe his motives, or establish his eventual fate. In the scenes preserved here, he is defined by his place in Xuande’s command structure: an officer trusted with a tactical role, then the bearer of troubling news whose claim Xuande refuses to accept without question. That contrast links battlefield coordination with the fragile problem of information and loyalty during a retreat.