"Lord Yang, here, let me pour you some tea!"
Cao Mao stood beside Yang Zong with a beaming smile, a pot in his hand. Yang Zong, who had still looked drunk a moment earlier, hurriedly rose to his feet.
No one dared let His Majesty wait on them with a teapot.
Watching Yang Zong sober up in an instant, Cao Mao pulled him back into his seat.
Cao Mao poured two cups of tea, then sat down opposite Yang Zong.
"Lord Yang, it has been a very long time since we last met."
"I have missed you dearly. How could you run away?"
Yang Zong had been brought before Cao Mao under arrest. He had fled the day the army stormed Sima Zhao's camp.
Unfortunately for him, Wen Yang had later discovered him while searching for deserters and marched him back into Luoyang.
Now Yang Zong merely hung his head, neither speaking nor looking at Cao Mao before him.
Cao Mao smiled and said, "Do you remember how, back in Yuan City, you repeatedly tried to dissuade me? You said I could never succeed, that whatever I did would be futile. What do you think now?"
Yang Zong felt somewhat dazed. Once again, he remembered that youth in Yuan City who had been "too hungry to be choosy."
Living beneath the shadow of defeat, Yang Zong truly had not believed Cao Mao could succeed. By then, his convictions had utterly collapsed, and everything he had upheld had ceased to exist. When he saw a frail youth preparing to change all of this, all he offered was ridicule, perhaps with a little pity as well.
No one understood better than Yang Zong how weak Cao Mao had been then.
He had even been reduced to mingling with lowly farmers, Wanderers, and