After Cao Cao's few words, silence fell outside the Ancestral Shrine. The young men looked elated, while the older men exchanged glances, appreciation in their eyes.
Some people in this world were born to accomplish great things.
For they possessed great qualities ordinary people lacked: unyielding tenacity, a will that never surrendered, the courage to take the lead, and fearlessness before hardship were among them.
Cao Cao was such a man. He possessed many qualities found only in those capable of great deeds, such as perseverance and determination.
Viewed from a god's-eye perspective, the right course in most worldly affairs was perfectly clear, and those who came afterward could always freely judge how wise a person had been.
But in truth, when surrounded by darkness and fog, unable to tell whether opportunity or danger lay ahead, how many dared commit themselves firmly to a course?
Raising troops to rally to the emperor was easy to speak of, but extraordinarily difficult to do.
The resources consumed in building an army capable of fighting were unimaginably vast. Calling it a gold-swallowing beast was no exaggeration.
And once an army had been raised, it had to fight. Victory was all well and good.
But one defeat would turn every investment to nothing, wiping everything out in an instant.
Even with the Cao Clan's reserves, if they formed a King-Protecting Army, they could endure no more than two defeats.
Any more, and the entire clan would go bankrupt. A clan was a composite political and economic group bound by blood; without its wealth and reserves, its complete decline would only be a matter of time.
Why did those foremost aristocratic clans support feudal lords rather than strike out alone?
Was it because they thought the feudal lords had too much power?
Or was the