along the shores of the Yellow River. Kong Rong held a pessimistic view, telling Cao Cao's adviser Xun Yu that Yuan Shao would be extremely difficult to defeat as he had ample food supplies, far superior troop strength and many capable and loyal subjects. However, Cao Cao took advantage of Yuan Shao's weaknesses and eventually defeated him at the Battle of Guandu in 200. Yuan Shao died two years later, leaving his eldest and youngest sons, Yuan Tan and Yuan Shang, to contest his legacy. In 204, Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shang and conquered the city of Ye, whereupon he married Lady Zhen to his son Cao Pi. When Kong Rong heard of this, he wrote Cao Cao a letter, saying, "When King Wu of Zhou defeated Zhou, he married Daji (a beautiful consort of Zhou blamed for the downfall of the Shang dynasty) to (his brother) the Duke of Zhou." Thinking that Kong Rong was citing a classic text to praise him, Cao Cao asked about the source, but Kong merely said, "I saw what happened in our day and thought it must have been so." Death In 208, Kong Rong spoke ill of Cao Cao before an emissary from Sun Quan, a warlord who ruled the territories in the Jiangdong region. Cao Cao then ordered Kong Rong to be executed on various charges including, among others, "plotting a rebellion", "slandering the imperial court" and "disrespecting court protocol". According to the Spring and Autumn Annals of Wei (魏氏春秋) by Sun Sheng (孫盛), Kong Rong's two eight-year-old sons (a nine-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter according to the Book of Later Han) were playing a game of weiqi when their father was arrested. When others urged them to escape, they answered: This later became a Chinese idiom (覆巢之下，安有完卵), used to describe that when a group suffers, all individuals belonging to it will be affected. An alternate but similar story could also be found in A New Account of the Tales of the World by Liu Yiqing (劉義慶), which is written in a more elaborate style. After Kong Rong was executed along with his entire family, his body was left in the streets. Not a single official who used to be close to him dared to collect the corpses for burial except Zhi Xi (脂習), who came to Kong Rong's body and cried, "Now you have left me for death, whom