Dong Zhuo moves the capital and turns the journey into a traveling horror show as only Dong Zhuo can, while the coalition becomes distracted when it discovers the one thing of value that Dong Zhuo left behind.

The coalition forces are marching for the capital, but first, they will have to get past Dong Zhuo’s top generals. The result is two of the most famous battlefield encounters in Chinese lore.

It’s a busy episode for Cao Cao. He gets out of a sticky situation, screws himself out of a delicious pork dinner, drops some life wisdom on his traveling companion, and then stirs up a whole lot of trouble for Dong Zhuo.

As Dong Zhuo rises to power, he bestows endless kindness on all mankind. He’s doing such a great job, in fact, that someone decides to give him a beautiful, bejeweled knife with a razor-sharp edge while he was lying down with his back turned.

“Only with Yi Yin’s talent can you act like Yi Yin.” So who is this Yi Yin? We dive into the story behind one line of dialogue from episode 4.

We’ve had rebellions, palace intrigue, a deadly power struggle, and a bloodbath at the imperial residence. But all of that was just the warm-up act. We are finally getting into the meat of the story, starting with ascension of Dong Zhuo, who’s like Santa Claus, just less jolly and more stabby.

He Jin makes his officers bang their heads against walls with his pathological inability to dispose of the eunuchs. Meanwhile, a bit character from episode 1, Dong Zhuo, drops by the capital with 200,000 of his best friends, just to say hi and see what’s up.

Liu Bei discovers that landing a government job in the Han court takes connections, patience, and a lot of dead rebels. And that’s BEFORE the leeches start ransoming you for a bribe. Fortunately, Zhang Fei resolves the matter diplomatically.

The first episode finds the empire in turmoil and three men of valor vowing to do something about it.