Genius or Drunkard?

In these chapters, we have a quick goodbye to Zhou Yu, reintroduce Pang Tong (Young Phoenix), spend most of our time on the rise and fall (?) of Ma Chao, and finally end with introducing two confusingly named enemies: Zhang Lu and Liu Zhang. 

There are some good highlights. Pang Tong is a fun character. At first, he is appointed to a minor post where he spends most of his time in idle drinking. When he’s called on it, he quickly completes all his duties in under a day. (pp. 985-986) It’s supposed to be a lesson about how great men shouldn’t be put into minor posts. I imagine that many real-life idle drunkards have seen themselves as Pang Tongs, without actually completing their duties.

Ma Chao gives us a nice image: he dreams that “tigers had attacked him when he fell in the snow.” (p. 995) He fights a warrior named Xu Chu that is compared to a tiger. Ma Chao hold his opponent to a draw. It's not combat that undoes him; in the end, it’s Cao Cao’s treachery that defeats Ma Chao. 

The last time we saw Ma Chao was around Chapter 10. Incidentally, in that chapter, Cao Cao’s beard was nearly burned off in a battle. In one of these chapters, Cao Cao is nearly identified and killed by his enemies. One of the things he does in a panic to disguise himself is cut off his beard. That’s twice that Cao Cao has lost his beard while he was in peril. I wonder if this is supposed to be particularly shameful for him, as the author clearly dislikes Cao Cao and wants to make him suffer.