Zhao Lei

Wang Fu's candidate for Jingzhou — loyal, trusty, clean-handed, and straight — kept instead at the commissariat Guan Yu judges too important to disturb.

The voice of what's left: proposes the appeal to Chengdu and the land road home, then the letter to shame Lü Meng, then the plea to Shangyong — every plan sound, every one outrun by the collapse.

Proposes abandoning Maicheng for Yizhou to rebuild — and falls in the melee of the first ambush, the breakout's first death.