Wang Shuang

Aide to Chang Diao's van in the Ruxu disaster.

Cao Zhen's find and the campaign's wrecking ball: a nine-span man of dusky complexion and yellowish eyes, wielding a ninety-pound sword, bending a three-hundred-pound bow, carrying three concealed meteor maces, from Didao in West Valley Land. Cao Rui laughs at the sight of him — 'No need to fear anything with such a man!' — gives him a silken robe, a golden breastplate and the title General Who Possesses the Tiger Majesty, and makes him Leader of the Van. He kills Xie Xiong almost immediately, kills Gong Qi in the third bout, then feigns flight and puts a meteor hammer into Zhang Ni's back when he pursues. Ends the chapter camped outside Chencang building a stockade, so the city has double walls and a deep moat.

Cao Zhen sends him to prowl the by-roads and choke Shu's supply line, which is the whole basis of Sima Yi's month-long starvation plan. When the Shu camps empty he pursues Wei Yan toward Hanzhong, closes to hailing distance and shouts 'Do not flee, Wei Yan!' — then a guard spots the blaze Wei Yan's thirty hidden men have set in his own camp behind him. He wheels back, and as he passes a hill Wei Yan rides out of a wood with 'Here is Wei Yan!' and takes him down at the first stroke. His troops scatter thinking it a full ambush; there were thirty men. The chapter's quatrain closes on 'And Wang Shuang's dead body marked where they had been.'

Named in passing only, and dead since last chapter. The Emperor's edict counts him as the year's first success: 'that was a glorious exploit last year when Wang Shuang was slain' - which independently confirms that his death belongs to ch98 and not ch97.