I split up the story into small sections -- Wang Yun and Tiao Chan's meeting in the yard is one section and Lu Pu and Wang Yun's talk is another. In all there were 18 sections, and I discovered that 16 of them had their origins in earlier material. Lo Kuan-chung only created the two sections focusing on benevolent Confucian thought.
例如三國演義中第八、九回講連環計，我把故事分成小段，王允和貂蟬在庭院中見面為一段，王允和呂布的談話是一段，共分十八段，發現其中十六段，母題均來自過去的資料，只有在表達儒家思想的兩小段內容是羅貫中創造的。