Disclaimer: All usual disclaimers apply
-Interview with Jia Xu-
I must say, I am certainly surprised that you would come to me about this. Truthfully, I don't know where to start. Would you like me to start before or…
The beginning? Well, I can't say much about Cao Cao's beginning. I guess I could start with myself. Would that be alright?
Well, I'm not well known for my glaring loyalty. My first master, Dong Zhuo, called me a snake. He didn't trust me much. But little did he know that I am at heart a very simple man. If I am given opportunity and adequate pay, I will work. No questions asked.
After Dong Zhuo died, I was left in the dust, wandering from place to place. Finally I ended up with Zhang Xiu. He was…alright. He was clever in his own right, but when pressured, his brain seems to stop working. That's where I usually come in. Cao Cao invaded Wan castle and I admit, I was a little skeptical that everything was going to turn out well. Cao Cao at that time was very well known and feared. Yet my trap succeeded. There was no way he could've lived…if it weren't for his bodyguard that took all of my arrows thrown at him. I saw Cao Cao's face. He was mortified, vulnerable. The supposedly stone-hearted warlord was susceptible to emotion like the rest of us.
He launched a counter with a large force that even an airtight strategy couldn't defend against. He muscled his way through rather than use basic strategy, but it worked. And I was captured.
It's human nature to preserve oneself and at first I thought of begging to be spared. I thought that would appeal to Cao Cao's miniscule emotional side. But as I was dragged before him, any thought of begging faded. I suppose it was because I knew I was going to die. It was wasted energy.
Yet, you see me before you, so naturally I didn't die. Let me explain. The odd thing about Cao Cao was that if he saw something he liked or something that could benefit him, he tried to obtain it. He…inexplicably…saw me as having talent and that I was worth more to him alive than dead to avenge his fallen retainer.
"You can better make up for his loss by serving me," he said to me.
I'm not so noble to demand my death to preserve my honor. I don't care about honor, and I think that benefited him more than me. A man with too much honor runs the risk of gaining too much of a conscious and would rebel against heavy handedness and tyranny. You see, Cao Cao was no saint. Yet, I will go on the record to say that he was no demon either. Sure, some of his methods of gaining the upper hand were downright cruel and unusual, but at the heart of hearts he felt what he was doing was necessary.
Perhaps that was what short sighted him. That and his growing annoyance with Shu. He was under the very realistic impression that the Han were dead or dying. The Emperor, praise him eternally, but he was spineless, most likely due to his youth. The Emperor had been pushed around by Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu, Cao Cao, and to some extent Liu Bei.
But the Shu, for whatever they were, were conservative and ideological. They had this deep seeded desire for those "good ol' days" of the Han. Cao Cao thought that to go back was to destroy progression.
"Let time flow as it should," he wrote once. "The world itself cannot afford if one desires to push it back."
It was a legitimate fear in my opinion. He had heard of conquerors from the West, beyond the sands. Many of these…creatures appeared in court before. But the point was there. They would not stop from swallowing up lands here as they did with Turkish tribes in the sands. If we were to stagnate as a country, there would be no stopping them conquering us. Maybe in reality it was my fear. My global fear. The continued existence of the Han would only push us into ruin.