Outside Luoyang, fierce winds howled beneath the blazing sun.
After everyone swore a common oath to destroy Dong Zhuo, wind and clouds surged.
The surging Luo River Divine Water, the Great Han soldiers drawn up in formation, the sabers, spears, swords, and halberds pointing forward as one, the earthshaking shouts.
Yuan and Cao stood at the head, with the Cao and Xiahou clansmen, Yan Liang and Wen Chou, and the others arrayed in a line. Even the weakest among them had martial strength just below that of a Ten-Thousand-Man Foe, and they were still improving.
When the Great Han's Mandate of Heaven collapsed, all these men had received the blessing of starlight.
Solemnity touched Yuan and Cao's faces. Dong Zhuo's military strength now surpassed everyone else's in the world. If all the troops east of the passes were mobilized, they could naturally defeat him, but here there were only Yuan and Cao, the remnants of the Imperial Guards formed from the former Taiping Army, and a few minor feudal lords whose strength scarcely mattered.
Powerful feudal lords such as Liu Bei, Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shu, Sun Jian, Liu Biao, and Liu Yan either refused to come at all or were too far away to arrive anytime soon.
If waiting were truly an option, Yuan and Cao would naturally have been willing to wait longer. They could even have held the strategic strongholds and perilous passes of Xingyang and Hulao while slowly gathering the world's heroes. The problem was that Luo Kong, the Marquis of Unshuang, could wait no longer.
His injuries were simply too severe. In the words of the Xiahou and Cao generals, Yan Liang and Wen Chou, and the others-"The Marquis of Unshuang has survived this long solely through his undying conviction. Every moment he waits burns away