桓阶 / Huan Jie (late Han)
桓阶 / Huan Jie enters the wiki through Hanji 1027 as the Changsha local-elite actor who persuades 张献 to resist 刘表 and attach to 曹操. The episode identifies him as a Changsha gentry representative whose family also has a deep connection with 孙坚.
His source role is to make the breakaway legible as local-elite strategy. Huan Jie does not simply tell Zhang Xian to fight; he proposes combining Changsha, Lingling, and Guiyang, then seeking external authorization from Cao Cao. That design turns southern Jingzhou’s local grievance into a lever against Liu Biao’s broader Jingzhou policy.