In the twenty-fourth year of Jian'an, Guan Yu's wei zhen Huaxia, Cao Cao's alliance with Eastern Wu, Sun Quan ordered Lü Meng to sneak into Jingzhou, and according to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Guan Yu's biography, Quan Dispatch counterattacked Yu, beheaded Yu and Zi Ping in Linfeng. Luo Guanzhong accepted this sentence, so he arranged the same method of death for Guan Yu in the rendition, but Guan Yu's death, in history, was not the case, even in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Chen Shou's records are contradictory. In the Biography of Guan Yu, Pei Songzhi concluded that Chen Shou was mainly based on Wei Luo, because there was no official historian in the Shu state, and Pei Songzhi had been carefully examined, so the problem should not be big. However, many historical books after the Three Kingdoms Era, such as the Classics, the Book of Shu, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, have different records of this.
[1] According to the "Canon Strategy", Quan sent Meng into Jingzhou, and ordered Pan Zhang and Ma Zhongzhu to be depressed, to trace the north of the stone, to break the YongDao, to capture Yu and Ziping, and to supervise Zhao Lei. - "DianLuo"[2] Quan dispatched the general to strike Yu, and obtained Yu and Ziping. Quan wanted to live against Liu and Cao. - "Shu Ji"[3] Quan Shu will counterattack Yu, xiazhi, and return to Wu. - "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms"
None of them said whether there was a killing. Therefore, Pei Songzhi dared to confidently judge: when Guan Yu died, it was not easy to determine. Later, Luo Guanzhong adopted the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", unless he paid special attention to this matter, few people would look for the root cause, and naturally in the end, it became: Guan Yu died in the battle of Linfeng, and it happened to be his identity as a martyr.
In fact, even if we put aside the correct history, only from the perspective of reasonable analysis, Sun Quan's killing of Guan Yu is extremely unreasonable. First, both Jiangdong and Shu Han adhered to the national policy of uniting with each other against Cao Wei, and the only contradiction between the two sides was the ownership of northern Jingzhou, especially Jiangling County and Nan County. Therefore, Jiangdong had already taken the whole territory of Jingzhou, and even the four southern counties of Jingzhou that Liu Bei had laid down had not been spared, and he had already got what he wanted. Secondly, killing Guan Yu is harmful to Jiangdong without any benefit, and it is true for public and private. Yu Gong and Guan Yu were captured, completely unable to pose a threat to Jiangdong, just treat it well, transport it back to Shu Han intact, and send it to Cao Wei. In private, although Guan Yu once scolded All over Jiangdong, in the game, Sun Quan could not let this boring personal feeling participate.
On the contrary, if Guan Yu was killed, Jiangdong would get nothing but the hatred of the entire Shu Han, and this kind of completely loss-making business, as clever as Sun Quan, would not be able to do. However, the ancient books recently unearthed in Xinjiang may be able to unravel the mystery for people and make the truth of this history clear. In 2015, the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology excavated a large number of cultural relics from the Wei and Jin dynasties of the Two Han Dynasties in the Shanshan area of Xinjiang, and found an ancient manuscript of the Supplementary Notes on the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms in the Four Libraries, which is many different from the Supplementary Notes on the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms in the Siku Quanshu, which involves the time before and after Guan Yu was captured, and has the following records:
Twenty-four years later, Wu Yu returned to Chai Sang, returned to Jianye, and Dong, Yu and Ziping killed themselves, and the prison material died.
The gist is that in the twenty-fourth year of Jian'an, Eastern Wu captured Guan Yu, returned to Chaisang, and then returned to Jianye. In the winter, Guan Yu and his son Guan Ping committed suicide in prison.
Therefore, if we accept the record in the Supplement to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, then Guan Yu was indeed captured in Jingzhou, but did not die immediately in Jingzhou. Instead, Jiang Dong did not intend to kill him at the beginning, but took him back to Chaisang (the vice capital of Eastern Wu) and then back to Jianye. Guan Yu's defeat was around August 24, and historical records say that he committed suicide in the winter of that year, so it can be inferred that he did not stop for a long time, probably not more than two months at most. This record is quite consistent with the record in the Book of Shu. It is clearly stated in the Book of Shu that Sun Quan did not want to kill Guan Yu at first, and as we speculated earlier, doing so would not benefit Eastern Wu at all, and Sun Quan could not have made such a choice.
The Supplement to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms says that Guan Yu committed suicide in prison, but this makes perfect sense. On the one hand, this is very much in line with Guan Yu's personality. At first, he did not commit suicide because he had hope, as he had when he retired from Fancheng. Later, he chose to commit suicide because he did not want to be humiliated, which was very consistent with his character. Guan Yu attaches great importance to loyalty and honor, and would rather cut off his head than steal his life. He ended himself in his own way. Of course, we don't know how Guan Yu ended his life, which may forever become a mystery of history.