Summary: Zhuge Liang sends a 70-something general and a tax collector to lead the way for his Northern expedition.<br> <br> * <a href="http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/2017/06/05/episode-117-go-north-old-man/#transcript">Transcript</a><br> * <a href="http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ep_117.png">Map of Key Locations</a><br> * <a href="https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=15mrPC8RvYsnuMnwEXVdFdSgWfF0TUk7TWdvwADy9">Graph of Key Relationships</a><br> <br> <br> <a id="transcript"></a>Transcript<br> <a href="http://www.3kingdomspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/3kingdoms117.pdf">PDF version</a><br> Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is episode 117.<br> Last time, with a new emperor on the throne in the kingdom of Wei and the wiley Sima Yi having been stripped of his position, Zhuge Liang sensed an opportunity to launch his long-awaited Northern expedition to conquer Wei, reunite the empire, and resurrect the glory of the House of Han. He handed out assignments to his officers and was just about to head out when an old general barged in and demanded that he receive an assignment as well.<br> This was none other than Zhao Yun, now a senior statesman in the officer corps. Zhuge Liang tried to talk him out of it.<br> “After I returned from pacifying the South, General Ma Chao died from illness,” he said to Zhao Yun. And yeah, Ma Chao, one of the greatest warriors in this novel, got killed off just like that, off screen with barely a mention. I always felt that he was a vastly under-utilized character. The novel built him up as this awesome warrior, but aside from one losing campaign against Cao Cao and one day-long fight against Zhang Fei, he wasn’t really used much. Seems like every time we heard him mentioned after he joined Liu Bei, he was just being tasked with minding the shop at some key defensive location. Oh well.<br> Anyway, Zhuge Liang continued with Zhao Yun, “I regret Ma Chao’s death deeply, as though I have lost an arm. General, you are advanced in age. If something goes wrong, it would tarnish your heroic lifelong reputation and hurt our kingdom’s morale.”<br> But yeah, that weak sauce wasn’t going to cut it with Zhao Yun.<br> “Ever since I joined the First Emperor, I have never shirked from battle and have always led the way whenever we encountered the enemy. Fortunate is the man who gets to die on the battlefield. What regret would I have? I am willing to lead the vanguard!”<br> <a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.3kingdomspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/quotes_ep117a.jpg"></a><br> So Zhao Yun is basically living up to the cliché of the stubborn old warrior who refuses to bow to age, which is ironic because a while back, he was on the other end of that equation, trying to talk old guys like Huang Zhong out of seemingly foolhardy missions to prove that they weren’t old and useless. Zhuge Liang tried time and again to change his mind, but to no avail.<br> “If you do not make me the vanguard, then I will smash my head on these steps and die here!” Zhao Yun declared.<br> Well, what can you really say to that? Zhuge Liang relented, but he also said, “If you want to be the vanguard, you must have someone else accompany you.”<br> Before he was done speaking, Deng (4) Zhi (1) stepped forward and volunteered to be that someone else. Now, the last time we heard his name mentioned, Deng Zhi was in charge of tax administration. He was instrumental as an envoy who opened the negotiations that restored peace between Shu and Wu, but THIS was no negotiation. THIS was war, and Zhuge Liang was sending an old man and basically the director of the IRS to lead the front column of his army, which just sounds crazy. But he gave them 5,000 crack troops and 10 lieutenants and sent them on their way.<br> On the day that Zhuge Liang’s army set out from the capital, the emperor Liu Shan (4) personally led all the court officials several miles...
