Heroic Reunion

Joe Anderson

22 Mar 2026 — 1 min read

Chapters 27-28

Lord Guan returns to his brothers. As a bonus, Zhao Zilong joins them as well.

These chapters demonstrate the advantages of the episodic structure of Romance. Lord Guan leaves Cao Cao to return to Liu Bei. But along the way, Lord Guan is stopped at waypoints by Cao Cao’s men who have not heard that Lord Guan is supposed to be allowed safe passage outside of their lands. So Lord Guan has to get past them. Sometimes he kills them, sometimes he tricks them, and sometimes they try to trick him but fail and end up getting killed themselves.

It is easy to imagine this journey of Lord Guan becoming its own favorite episode for later readers. It is a righteous, heroic, and action-packed journey with good throwaway characters. If everyone were conversant in Romance, I can imagine this would be a good common phrase in our lexicon. We could say, “like Lord Guan on the road to Liu Bei” as shorthand for overcoming heroic obstacles.

Death by Indignation

Chapters 31-33 The plot takes us farther north than we’ve been before, into the desert. We meet a “khan.” And we finally get the “Desert Sandstorm” Magic card (p. 607). The desert is dangerous; Cao Cao only survives his visit through luck. When he returns from it, he rewards

Enter el-Hajjaj

Nights 228-246 (Although I had originally scheduled only through night 245 this week, night 246 was only 2 pages and resolved the story from nights 237-245). The two stories this week aren’t the best stories of lovers, but they are fast-paced. The first story is better. In it, al-Amjad,

Millennium: Purification and Guidance

Chapters 29-30 Sun Ce has a memorable death. A poison arrow ultimately killed him. He could have recovered, but he insisted on burning a holy man to death. The holy man haunted him, greatly distressing Sun Ce and exacerbating the poison until he finally died. His legacy passes to Sun

Peak Misogyny

Nights 210-227 Wow, this story really fell apart. It had been one of my favorites, but it took a very bad turn in this week’s reading. We left Princess Budur, dressed as a man, betrothed to Princess Hayat. Through some twists and turns (and some homophobia), the problem is

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Death by Indignation

Enter el-Hajjaj

Millennium: Purification and Guidance

Peak Misogyny