郭嘉

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The prodigy Cao Cao called "the man who will complete my great work." Leaving Yuan Shao for Cao Cao, he foretold victory with his "ten reasons you will win," then called every shot: the flooding of Lü Bu, the Yuan brothers’ self-destruction, the lightning Wuhuan campaign. Dead at thirty-eight — after Red Cliffs, Cao Cao wept that with Fengxiao alive, it would never have come to this.

Key events

1. 200

   Battle of Guandu

   Cao Cao shatters Yuan Shao’s far larger host by burning the Wuchao grain depot — the war for the north. Zhang He defected to Cao Cao here.

   Cao CaoYuan ShaoXun YuZhang HeXu Huang

2. 207

   White Wolf Mountain and the Death of Guo Jia

   Following Guo Jia’s "speed is everything," Cao Cao crushes the Wuhuan at White Wolf Mountain — but loses Guo Jia on the road home.

   Cao CaoZhang Liao

History vs. the novelHistoryvsNovel

One of the rare figures the novel barely needed to embellish — though his deathbed "final stratagem" for pacifying Liaodong is fiction.