y are all off; that will teach you to make pledges.”

“Still I have a mouth that can swallow a traitor and a tongue that can curse him,” said Ji Ping.

Cao Cao told them to cut out his tongue.

Ji Ping said, “Do not. I cannot endure any more punishment, I shall have to speak out. Loosen my bonds.”

“Loose them. There is no reason why not,” said Cao Cao.

They loosed him. As soon as he was free, Ji Ping stood up, turned his face toward the Emperor's palace and bowed, saying, “It is Heaven's will that thy servant has been unable to remove the evil.”

Then he turned and smashed his head into the steps and died.

His body was quartered and exposed. This happened in the first month of the fifth year of Rebuilt Tranquillity (AD 200), and a certain historian wrote a poem:

There lived in Han a simple physician.

No warrior, yet brave

Enough to risk his very life

His Emperor to save.

Alas! He failed; but lasting fame

Is his; he feared not death;

He cursed the traitorous Prime Minister

Unto his latest breath.

Seeing his victim had passed beyond the realm of punishment, Cao Cao had Quin Quington led in.

“Do you know this man, Uncle?”

“Yes,” cried Dong Cheng. “So the runaway servant is here; he ought to be put to death.”

“He just told me of your treachery; he is my witness,” said Cao Cao. “Who would dare kill him?”

“How can you, the First Minister of State, heed the unsupported tale of an absconding servant?” “But I have Wang Zifu and the others in prison,” said Cao Cao. “And how can you rebut their evidence?”

He then called in the remainder of his followers and ordered them to search Dong Cheng's bedroom. They did so and found the decree that had been given him in the girdle and the pledge signed by the conspirators.

“You mean rat!” cried Cao Cao. “You dared do this?”

He gave orders to arrest the whole household without exception. Then he returned to his palace with the incriminating documents and called all his advisers together to discuss the dethronement of the Emperor and the setting up of a successor.

Many decrees, blood written, have issued, accomplishing nothing,

One inscribed pledge was fraught with mountains of sorrow.

The reader who wishes to how the fate of the Emperor must read the next chapter.