Cao Cao felt that placing the bronze sparrow inside the imperial palace would not do justice to its beauty and value. For this reason, he had a pavilion built, which he named the "Bronze Sparrow Terrace," and placed the bronze sparrow statue at the very top of the high terrace, so that all could behold it.
On the day the Bronze Sparrow Terrace was completed, Cao Cao decided to hold a banquet called the Bronze Sparrow Banquet. Before the banquet, he commissioned a painter to render the bronze sparrow as a painting, and invited the court musicians to perform music during the banquet.
Cao Cao's true purpose in building the Bronze Sparrow Terrace and hosting the Bronze Sparrow Banquet was not to show off his own prestige and power, but to give thanks for the gift bestowed by the divine beast, the Vermilion Bird.
Earlier, when Cao Cao first acquired the bronze sparrow, he had already heard the story of the cultivator and the Vermilion Bird clan, and was deeply moved by it.
Yu said that Cao Cao held a strong and genuine faith in the gods. At this point, Yu En felt puzzled: surely someone who believed in the gods would have a strong sense of morality and a heart of compassion. But the Cao Cao she had in her impression was not like that at all — rather, he was the archetype of the cunning hegemon: a man of bold vision and grand strategy, but ruthless in his methods and without regard for moral scruple.
[Note: Cao Cao is one of the most famous figures of Chinese history and is traditionally portrayed in popular culture — especially in the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms — as a brilliant but treacherous and morally compromised antihero.]
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