Nobody bothered to avoid him when they told the joke any more. Him, the sole illiterate officer of Wu. He couldn’t even read or write his own name.
He studied laboriously, beginning with the simplest tomes and using whatever he had on hand to practice the precise strokes of the Han language. They laughed at him even more as they watched his hands dance through the air.
By the campaign at Fan, he had managed to combine his field experience with the knowledge of Wu’s most brilliant minds.
When the God of War fell to his blade, they stopped laughing.
Unnecessarily Long and Tiresome Authoress’ Notes:
Historical accuracy was somewhat sacrificed in this drabble, but Lü Meng really was made fun of for being unlearned; of course, as one of Zhou Yü’s successor’s meant that he had pretty big shoes to fill. Lü Meng’s amazing advance eventually inspired a Chinese idiom that roughly means “to look at with new eyes”.
