Xu Shu’s defection to Cao Cao is a calculated act of political deception that removes Xuande’s valued adviser while revealing the limits of coercive recruitment. Cao Cao exploits Xu Shu’s devotion to his mother, using her to draw him away from Xuande; the scheme succeeds in separating the two men, but its false premise is exposed, and the consequences are devastating for Xu Shu’s family. Even as he departs, Xu Shu identifies Kong Ming as a far greater adviser and points Xuande toward the next stage of his political and military course.

Background and the Lure

After hearing of Xu Shu’s value, Cao Cao asks how he compares with Cheng Yu. Cheng Yu answers that Xu Shu is ten times better, and Cao Cao decides to lure him to his side. Rather than persuade Xu Shu directly, Cheng Yu proposes exploiting his filial attachment: Xu Shu’s mother lives alone, and the plan is to bring her to the capital and make her write to her son.

Cao Cao’s men bring the mother to the capital and keep her there. She scorns Cao Cao and strikes him with an ink stone. Cao Cao nearly has her killed, but Cheng Yu warns that her death would make Xu Shu his permanent enemy; keeping her alive, by contrast, may bring the son to her. Cao Cao therefore suppresses his anger and pretends to treat the old woman with affection, securing examples of her handwriting for a forged letter.

The false message presents itself as a plea from Xu Shu’s distressed mother. Because he believes she needs him, Xu Shu leaves Xuande and rides toward the capital. The operation achieves its immediate purpose: a trusted adviser is removed from Xuande’s service without a battle. Its weakness is that it depends on a lie about the mother’s wishes, a deception the real woman will soon confront.

Departure and the Recommendation

Xuande is dismayed at losing an adviser he considers invaluable. Yet the stated reason for Xu Shu’s departure is filial duty, and Xuande cannot challenge a journey undertaken to care for a mother. Xu Shu’s exit thus places Xuande’s political need for counsel against a family obligation he respects.

Before riding away, Xu Shu tells Xuande that a man ten times greater than himself could serve as his adviser, though he cannot simply be summoned. He names Zhuge Liang, known as Kong Ming, and describes his reputation and circumstances: he comes from Yangdu in Langye, moved to the Jingzhou area after his uncle’s death, and lives with his younger brother, Zhuge Jun, on a farm near Nanyang. Because his farm lies by Sleeping Dragon Hill, he has taken the name Master Sleeping Dragon. Xu Shu urges Xuande to visit him, making his own departure the point from which Xuande’s pursuit of Kong Ming begins.

Xu Shu also recognizes, as he travels, that he may have been too forward in recommending Kong Ming without consulting him. He visits his friend on the way to the capital. Kong Ming is indignant when he learns what Xu Shu has done. The recommendation therefore does not amount to an agreed transfer of service: it opens the possibility of Xuande seeking Kong Ming, while leaving Kong Ming’s own decision unresolved.

The Forgery Exposed

At the capital, Cao Cao assures Xu Shu that he will provide whatever is needed for his mother. But when Xu Shu appears before her, she responds with anger rather than relief. She condemns his failure to verify the letter and rebukes him for leaving Xuande, whom she regards as virtuous, to serve Cao Cao, whom she considers a traitor. In her judgment, filial attachment has been turned against loyalty: Xu Shu acted quickly to answer an apparent family emergency but did not establish whether the message was genuine.

Xu Shu falls at his mother’s feet in submission. She leaves him there, humiliated and unable to rise until a servant reports that she has hanged herself. He rushes to her room, but she is dead. The deception has brought the son to the capital, yet it cannot restore the relationship on which Cao Cao’s plan depended. His mother’s death leaves Xu Shu with the knowledge that he abandoned Xuande in response to a forged appeal and failed to recognize the fraud before it was exposed.

Political and Narrative Consequences

The episode turns on competing duties rather than a change of allegiance freely chosen by Xu Shu. Cao Cao’s stratagem treats filial devotion as leverage; Xuande, by contrast, accepts that it would be wrong to oppose Xu Shu’s apparent duty to his mother. Her rebuke then reveals the cost of acting on the letter without checking it, while her death makes the family consequence of the deception irreversible.

Xu Shu’s departure also redirects the larger story. Xuande, feeling the lack of an adviser, remembers the recommendation and sets out with his two brothers to find Kong Ming. Later, Kong Ming frames Xuande’s ambitions against the political landscape: Cao Cao holds the emperor and commands substantial power in the north, while Sun Quan’s support among the southern people makes him a potential ally. When urging Xuande to become emperor after his victories, Kong Ming argues that Cao Cao has usurped the true ruler and that Xuande’s reputation for benevolence supports his claim. Xu Shu’s brief intervention thus precedes the strategic counsel through which Xuande’s campaign to restore Han rule is articulated.

The episode belongs to a novel built from historical records, dramatic traditions, and a novelist’s synthesis. Its account of the forged letter and the mother’s death turns political recruitment into a tightly linked moral and familial crisis; the story’s later treatment of loyalty and legitimate rule extends that conflict from a household to the question of who may govern the empire. The remembered outline of Xu Shu’s defection also supplies an explanation for how Xuande is directed toward Kong Ming, whose counsel becomes central to the novel’s ensuing political design.