My comment from last night to a small article about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong(c.1330-c.1400):

The irony is that nobody really won the long and bloody contest to rule China that had began with the rebellion of the secret Taoist  revolutionary societies in 184.

By 281, all the original three dynasties - Wei(221-264), Wu(222-280) and Shu Han(223-263) - were gone. In 263 Wei conquered Shu Han, but in 264 the Wei dynasty itself was overthrown in a place coup and replaced by the Western Jin(265-316) which conquered Wu in 280 and briefly united China.

In 291 a new civil war began - The War of the Eight Princes - which lasted until 306 and weakened the Western Jin, which experienced then attacks by partly sinicized semi-nomadic tribes which captured and killed two teenage emperors in 311 and 316.

Jin dynasty withdrew to the south, becoming the Eastern Jin(317-419) and the north of China was fragmented to numerous competing dynasties for over a hundred years until the Tuoba-led Northern Wei(386-534) united northern China by the 440s.

The unification of northern and southern China would come only with the brief Sui dynasty(581-618) from the north, which conquered the southern Chen(557-589) dynasty in 589. After a natural disaster and failed attempts to conquer Korea Sui itself started to fall in 616 and from among its ruins rose the Tang dynasty(618-907), which had asserted control by the mid-620s, defeating its competitors.