Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast.

This is a supplemental episode.

So right before our break for the 100th episode Q&A session,

we found Cao Cao stuck in a stalemate against Liu Bei.

He knew attacking would not give him victory, but he also did not want to retreat, because then

Liu Bei might laugh at him. His secretary, Yang Xiu, was clever enough to deduce his master's

quandary from the password he handed out for the night watch,

chicken ribs.

Chicken ribs, Yang Xiu explained, had no meat to eat but enough flavor that he did not

want to just throw it away, making it a metaphor for Cao Cao's present predicament.

So Yang Xiu decided that this meant Cao Cao's heart was not in waging a real war

and that he would soon pack up and go home, so Yang Xiu figured he should get a head start

on the packing part. When Cao Cao found out though, he was enraged and had Yang Xiu executed

for spreading rumors that hurt the army's morale. As I mentioned toward the end of episode 92,

there was more to this than just chicken ribs.

In this supplemental episode, I'm going to tell you about the back story

between Yang Xiu and Cao Cao,

which provides a warning in being too clever for your own good.

So one time, while he was still prime minister, Cao Cao went to inspect a garden that his workers

had just finished constructing. After making the rounds, Cao Cao did not say a word, and simply

picked up a brush and wrote the character for

alive on the door. The workers were all befuddled, but Yang Xiu was all too happy to explain.

...