Dong Guifei 董貴妃

In Chapter 23 of the Romance, the Imperial Physician Ji Ping, who had tried to give Cao Cao poison, dashes his head against the steps and dies after being tortured, and the Romance dates this to the 1st month of the 5th year of Jian'an (200). Cao Cao finds the edict from the robe and belt and the signed pledge in Dong Cheng's bedchamber, and in Chapter 24 he has Dong Cheng and the others, five men in all, together with their entire households old and young, taken to the city gates and beheaded; more than seven hundred people die in all. Romance, Ch. 23 §54 · 57Romance, Ch. 24 §1–2

His anger still not subsided, Cao Cao enters the palace wearing his sword, intending to kill Dong Guifei. The Romance writes that the Noble Consort was Dong Cheng's younger sister, favored by the emperor and already five months pregnant. That day the emperor, in the rear palace, is talking privately with Empress Fu about how there has still been no word on Dong Cheng's affair, when he sees Cao Cao come in wearing his sword with anger on his face, and in great alarm he turns pale. Romance, Ch. 24 §5

When Cao Cao asks whether he knows that Dong Cheng plotted rebellion, the emperor answers, 'Dong Zhuo has already been put to death,' and when Cao Cao shouts that he means not Dong Zhuo but Dong Cheng, the emperor, trembling, says that he truly does not know. When the emperor cannot answer Cao Cao's question whether he has forgotten biting his finger to write an edict, Cao Cao bellows at his guards to seize Dong Guifei and bring her. When the emperor asks him to take pity on Dong Guifei since she is five months pregnant, Cao Cao says that had Heaven not made the plot fail, he would already have been killed, and that he cannot leave this woman alive to become a source of future trouble. Empress Fu pleads that it would not be too late to banish her to a cold palace and kill her after she gives birth, but Cao Cao asks in return whether she wants to keep this rebel's seed alive so that it can avenge its mother. Romance, Ch. 24 §6–7

Dong Guifei weeps and begs to be allowed to die with her body whole and not to have her corpse exposed to shame, and Cao Cao has a length of white silk brought and placed before her. The emperor weeps and says to the Noble Consort, 'In the Nine Springs below, do not resent me!', and Empress Fu too weeps aloud. Cao Cao says angrily, 'Are you still behaving like women and children!', then bellows at his guards to drag the Noble Consort out, and she is strangled outside the palace gate. The Romance then adds a poem in which a later writer laments Dong Guifei; the poem says that even the dragon's seed was cast away with her, and that the majestic Son of Heaven, unable to save her, could only cover his face and weep. Romance, Ch. 24 §7–9

Afterwards Cao Cao instructs the officials supervising the palace to behead any imperial in-law or clansman who enters or leaves the palace gates without his orders, and fills the Imperial Guard with 3,000 of his trusted men, placing them under Cao Hong. In Chapter 78, Cao Cao, who has lain down slumped over a stool with his head swimming, sees in the middle of the night more than twenty people in the hall, among them Empress Fu, Honored Lady Dong, the two imperial sons, Fu Wan and Dong Cheng, standing within gloomy clouds covered all over in blood, and hears voices demanding his life. Xiahou Dun, who later arrives at the hall gate at Cao Cao's summons, also sees them, faints, and from this falls ill. Romance, Ch. 24 §10Romance, Ch. 78 §26 · 28