#cao cao

[its-not-a-pen]

Not gonna add glaze or a watermark. The AI data scrapers can have this one. on the house :)

No writing version under the cut:

[kakmem]

I like them i think

[foxounderscorecube]

don't suffer like he did

[zhoudadudugongjin]

Yeah these are the only options you're getting. Now perish.

P.S you can be as weird and freaky as you like in your reasonings for your answers and I will not judge.

[wingupingu]

[yaka06210]

三陣營老闆

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

translation of Heroic Mother Cao Mengde by 江城十四州 aka the Cao Cao mpreg fic.

Cao Cao lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his head tilted back. Ever since the defeat at Red Cliff, his migraines had been making it difficult to sleep at night. 

The feeling only got worse and worse as time passed. The wild game he had eaten that afternoon roiled in his stomach. Nausea filled his stomach and throat, so he sat up and began to sharpen his knife. The sound brought him comfort.

It was pouring with rain outside the window, and there were bursts of thunder. Cao Cao, the most powerful man in the land, lay with his body half-raised and dismissed his attendants.

Hua Tuo finished his diagnosis and bowed. He looked down at Cao Cao and said;

"The Prime Minister has a tumour in his stomach, and there is a living thing inside. You will need to drink a cannabis potion. I will cut it out with a sharp knife and suture the wound with medicinal thread. It should heal in one month, or perhaps twenty days."

Cao Cao was furious and threw the blade onto the table.

"What living thing? Are you insulting me?"

A thunderbolt struck and the sky went black, as if the sun and moon had both fallen. 

Ten years ago, the same thunderbolt produced two heroes.

One dropped his chopsticks in shock, while the other remained calm.

Eventually, the sky became clear again and Cao Cao’s pain subsided. He gave a shout and several soldiers rushed in to drag Hua Tuo away.

Cao Cao roared in anger. He picked up the knife and hacked off a corner of the table.

Once he was alone,  he murmured, "Cut off one of the four corners of the table, and there will still be five left."

Did Hua Tuo intend to humiliate him?

Cao Cao soon returned to being his calm self. He told Xu Chu that all great generals will suffer defeat at some point. The more people a famous doctor kills, the more advanced his medical skills become. A real man should be like Han Xin, who can endure the humiliation of crawling between a bully's legs. Who can sleep on sticks and taste gall. There were roughly two types of humiliation in the world, one is being forced to do something against one's will; and the other is being insignificant and having no influence. Cao Mengde was capable of enduring all the slander in the world, because all the slander in the world did not bother him.

Cao Cao had met countless people and heard their idiotic talk. He had always laughed heartily at them. He thought of Hua Tuo. Logically, his words were so ridiculous that Cao Cao disdained to even kill him for it, but deep down he felt a lingering fear in his heart.

Cao Cao began to have nightmares. That night, he dreamed that his subordinates presented him with a box. When he opened it, he found Guan Yu's head inside. His hair and beard were white, his eyes glaring. He was calm and composed, so what was there to be afraid of?

He woke up, feeling cold all over.

He dreamed about when Cao Ang and Cao Pi were born. Cao Cao had rushed back home to see them, but when he saw those bald babies he felt sick again.

The next night, Cao Cao saw three big pear trees whose branches and roots had transformed into hands and feet. He grabbed an axe to chop them down, but not only could the trees not be cut, sparks flew from the axe and set most of them ablaze. As the fire spread, the trees became frenzied and pounced upon him, waving their hands and feet.

Cao Cao woke up screaming: "It's the fire of Red Cliff, it's burning my head!"

A few days later, he dreamed that he had personally killed that blabbering Hua Tuo. He swung his sword and Hua Tuo became two. Another cut, and he became three. A horizontal slash, and he became six...

Cao Cao had been having nighmares for so long he began to feel groggy during the day. He thought it must be caused by the Battle of Red Cliff and attributed it to the migrane that had been bothering him for years.

He began to have hallucinations during the day. That afternoon, he saw Cao Pi sitting in Liu Xie's seat, wearing the emperor's crown. Suddenly, Cao Cao was at the riverside and he saw Liu Xie with his daughter, the two of them were sitting in a small boat which sank in the middle of the river.

He kept dreaming about life and death, and life and death were always intertwined.

Cao Cao eventually returned to being his calm self. Life and death were important matters. Werent these visions proof that he will achieve great things?

Heaven will surely give me a great responsibility!

A year was not a long time for Cao Cao. If he wanted the Sun-Liu alliance to develop a rift, it was necessary to wait decades. Even if he died, his descendants would inherit his throne and continue to wait.

But this time he was finally defeated.

The strange disease that had afflicted him for a year had not gotten better. Cao Cao had become increasingly irritable and could not bear it any longer. He called for Hua Tuo, who had been imprisoned for half a year.

"Sir, you are a great doctor indeed. The fault is mine. For the past six months, I have been suffering from intense vertigo, exhaustion and strange dreams. I am afraid I am not long for this world."

"If you had used my method a year ago, the tumour would have only been the size of a fist. Now, if it is not removed immediately, the Prime Minister's life will be at stake."

"Do what you will," Cao Cao turned around and dragged his heavy body to face the wall, lost in throught.

——

The dream brought on by the cannabis potion disturbed Cao Cao greatly. In his dream, he saw Lü Boshe swinging a butchers knife at him, muttering indistinctly under his breath. When Cao Cao finally made out the words, it was about killing cattle and sheep for Cao Mengde.

Lü Bushe was talking about cattle and sheep, but he was butchering Cao Cao. After two cuts, he became paralysed and was laid on the table.

Cao Cao saw a younger version of himself looking down at him from on high. Young Cao Cao picked up his chopsticks and laughed at the Cao Cao lying on the table. Suddenly, his expression changed. He roared in fury, he howled with laughter, and Lü Boshe's blood splattered all over him.

The two of them merged into one, and Cao Cao began to weep bitterly. The pain of the sheep and the pain of Lü Boshe became knives cutting into his flesh.

But he hadn't woken up yet, he wasn't allowed to.

After a while, the pain gradually subsided, and he saw two people. One was a man of great talent and strategy, named Luo Guanzhong. The other was dressed in strange clothes, had short hair, and talked eloquently, he was named Yi Zhongtian. The two people criticized each other and fought fiercely.

Cao Cao woke up gradually, feeling refreshed, and suddenly felt that this strange dream which connected the past and the present must have been an act of divine guidance. Such a good omen must mean a great calamity in his life had passed. He felt that this strange disease was a test of fate for him. With this calamity over, his ambitions for hegemony were within reach.

His abdomen still hurt, but it was normal pain now. He was overjoyed and wanted to ask Hua Tuo about the nature of that stubborn disease.

But Hua Tuo was nowhere to be seen. One of the servants said he had disappeared after the treatment.

Cao Cao asked, "what did he remove?"

The servant came out with something in his arms, and said tremulously, "before he left, Doctor Hua said you must not get angry."

It was a solemn, newborn baby.

Cao Cao was furious, he roared and slammed his soup bowl upside-down onto the table.

"Drag this servant out and behead him! Search the whole city for Hua Tuo, how dare this bastard insult Cao Cao!"

The baby began to cry. Cao Cao looked at it closely and realized that he had seen this child before. It happened ten years ago, when he drank wine with Liu Bei and spoke about heroes. During that time, he also met general Sun Jian, who brought his smart little son with him. Cao Cao had pinched his cheeks and said that if anyone had a child, it should be like this one.

The crying baby had the same little face he had seen ten years ago.

It was Sun Quan!

Notes:

How did I do? let me know if I've made any mistakes! my goal was to translate this as faithfully as possible with minimal anglicisation. here are the parts where i took some artistic lisence: 匹夫 "ordinary man" is translated as "bastard" because it gets across the insult better. The idiom of Han Xin is changed to "crawling between a bully's legs." because the chinese version "humilation of the crotch" sounds really weird in english ;UnU

minor changes include changing first-person pronouns to the person's name for clarity. Cao Cao also refers to himself in the third person AND by name several times e.g. "He, Cao Mengde," which i've also pared down for the sake of clarity.

[thecrimeofmans-laughter]

hello dynasty warriors fans. are these anything

[exhalcyon]

THE BABIES ARE HERE 😭😭😭

[the-kingdom-of-wei]

ok listen to me yap for a sec bc this abomination that i made needs context

basically theres this show/book series called 如果历史是一群喵 (if Chinese history were a bunch if cats) and thats how i even got interested into 3k uh highly recommend im pretty sure its on yt, the cat in the vid is cao cao btw

[fleursetrebellion]

Burning Cao Cao's men alive but shaking my head the whole time so my soldiers know I disagree with it

[its-not-a-pen]

romance of the three kingdoms FURRY EDITION! (Part 1)

I was listening to the Kung Fu Panda soundtrack and got inspired by their amazing animal designs. ok i gotta explain liu bei's design. the obvious choice is to make him a dog because of his loyalty to his sworn brothers, but i think he's much closer to a tenacious, wily hare who manages escape every encounter by whisker, and thrive in a dangerous world surrounded by much stronger opponents.

[kakmem]

doodles

[trisshawkeye]

For entirely unrelated fic research reasons, I stumbled upon this great academic book chapter on gift giving and associated letter writing in early medieval China including letters from Cao Cao and Lady Bian to the parents of Yang Xiu, letters from Cao Pi dissing the fruit of the Shu and Wu regions, and letters from the later Liang Dynasty on the qualities of oranges (making reference to previous Three Kingdoms writings while doing so). There's also a fun little story right at the end about the possible ways of interpreting a gift of cloves from Cao Cao to Zhuge Liang.

With much appreciation to the author for having the chapter publicly available on her academic website!

[zhoudadudugongjin]

"I want your love and I want your revenge. You and me could make a Bad Romance (of the Three Kingdoms)"

My C Drama Music Edits [x]