Repeatedly Enjoined

Chapters 83-84

The Romance is still good! Chapter 83 was one of my favorites so far. Liu Bei gets his revenge at the cost of Huang Zhong, his third tiger general. And even after they recover the Green Dragon sword and have vengeance on all of Lord Guan’s and Zhang Fei’s killers, Liu Bei but can’t help from further pursuing the South. 

But Liu Bei is stopped by the scholar general, Lu Xun. He is a character. The translator must have had fun with Lu Xun’s scholarly word choices. “It would behoove you” to help him, we’ve “repeatedly enjoined” you to do this, etc. (pp. 1476-77). Lu Xun he leads the Wu to some victories that nearly annihilate Liu Bei’s army. Without Zhao Zilong, Liu Bei would have been captured.

Before his rescue, Liu Bei loses several of his minor heroes. One of them first appears in Chapter 83 and dies in the next chapter, a fearsome fighter named Shamoke with “bulging green eyes.” (p. 1467). I had high hopes for him . . . too bad, he didn’t last very long. Beyond the death of the men, we also get a surprising death. Lady Sun kills herself on a false report that Liu Bei has died. I had thought she would play more of a role in the story.

As far as Magic cards, I think we missed the flavor text from “Vengeance” last week or the week before (Liu Bei demanding vengeance for the death of Guan Yu). “Virtuous Charge” and its flavor text sound like something said when Liu Bei declared himself Emperor. And most obviously, we have the “Eightfold Maze” (Lu Xun is finally stopped by Kongming’s “eightfold maze” around p. 1497).