The Gangdong Pacification Campaign (9)
Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Sea.
A phrase meaning to deceive the heavens and cross the sea—put plainly, to cloud the enemy's eyes before accomplishing one's true aim. It was one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a body of military wisdom that would not be set down in writing until the Ming Dynasty, centuries yet to come.
And whenever that first stratagem was named, there was one figure who was always mentioned alongside it.
"Leave it to me! I will break through the enemy's encirclement and summon the General-in-Chief's reinforcements—on my honor, it will be done!"
Taishi Ci, courtesy name Ziyi.
The general who had first revealed her worth in a ferocious short clash against Sun Ce, the woman history would remember as the Little Conqueror. The two of them had rolled across the bare earth, wrestling away each other's hand halberds, tearing off each other's helmets, matching strength in a contest of extraordinary violence. But before the duel could reach its end, troops from both sides came swarming in, and the pair withdrew with no victor decided.
None of this was Luo Guanzhong's later invention; it was written in the official histories themselves. Just as the annals record Lü Bu running Guo Si through and sending him tumbling from his saddle, so this stood as one of the precious few accounts of single combat preserved in the official histories.
"...Can you truly see it done?"
At Taishi Ci's cry, Liu Yao posed his question, his face grown a shade gaunter. Had his illness deepened in that brief span? The imperial clansman of the Liu family, who had suffered greatly in spirit since taking up his post in Gangdong, did not look long for this world.
Taishi Ci, ever perceptive, tactfully pretended not to notice her lord's condition and answered with spirit.
"Yes, my lord! It will be done!"
"...Then I shall choose to trust you."
After all, things could hardly grow any worse than this.
Liu Yao replied in a level voice, then opened his mouth once more.
"Is there anything you require before you depart?"
"A few quivers of arrows and a few days' time will be quite sufficient!"
So confident did Taishi Ci look, as though she already held some plan in hand, that Liu Yao could not help but wonder what it might be.
The day after that conversation, Taishi Ci appeared beyond the city gate, her body sheathed in armor and her bow in hand.
"...Huh? What's that about?"
"Don't tell me she means to break the encirclement alone."
The Shanyue, who as ever kept their net so tight that not even an ant could slip through, readied themselves.
"That bitch can't tell courage from foolhardiness. Kill her the moment she comes—"
Shweee—!
"Gah?!"
At the sudden hiss of an arrow from the direction where Taishi Ci stood, the man broke off mid-sentence and flinched. But contrary to the Shanyue's expectations, the arrow never came flying at their comrades. Standing out beyond the gate, Taishi Ci had simply picked a nearby tree and was silently running target practice against it.
"...What is this?"
Paying the Shanyue's bewilderment no mind, she kept loosing shafts into the tree; and after a good while of nothing but bow drill, she withdrew meekly back inside the gate once her arrows ran dry.
The Shanyue who had watched the whole display began to murmur.
"What is she even trying to do?"
A woman who had flung open the gate without warning, done nothing outside but shoot arrows, and gone back in. Naturally, from this alone, they could not possibly fathom her intent.
After a moment's deliberation, one of them spoke up.
"Sounds like she's simply lost her mind."
"Yeah, looks that way."
To step outside in a situation where battle could erupt at any moment, idle away her time, and stroll back in—was she trying to goad them into assaulting the walls? If so, the only answer they could offer was their regrets. For all their belligerence, they were not so foolish as to forget the orders handed down from above.
"They cannot hold out forever!"
So had Yan Baihu, leader of the Shanyue, declared, wagging his head as he spoke.
"If we simply form the encirclement and sit tight, the victory delivers itself! Am I understood?!"
"Yes, sir!"
A siege, after all, ends in the attacker's favor so long as nothing unexpected befalls. It is the side that holds the advantage on the field that lays siege in the first place. There had been times when a force besieged a city at a disadvantage and even triumphed, taking the walls—but such cases were exceedingly rare. The defenders' only recourse was to endure, waiting on relief from without. Yet no matter how carefully one stockpiled, supplies were never infinite; even their endurance had a limit. And was the very fact that the enemy was behaving so strangely not proof that they had been driven close to theirs?
Having reasoned it through, the Shanyue snorted.
"She means to provoke us, I'd wager. Not a chance."
The others nodded along in agreement.
"Right. We just ignore her. Simple as that."
"So this tedious standoff is finally ending."
Realizing that those damned holdouts could not resist much longer, the Shanyue's faces brightened. It felt as exhilarating as a tooth that had ached for years finally coming out. How their eyes had smarted, these past several hundred years, at the sight of them squatting on their land and lording it over everyone. And now, at long last, they would drive those thieves from their homeland.
One of the Shanyue spoke up.
"Still, let's not drop our guard. You never know what might happen."
"True. On that point I agree."
The Shanyue had racked their brains desperately in their own fashion, yet one thing had escaped them: just how formidable was the martial prowess of the general who had done nothing but shoot arrows outside the walls and gone home.
The next day, and the day after that, Taishi Ci kept coming out beyond the gate to practice with her bow. As several days passed with no change in her, the Shanyue split into two camps.
"There she goes again."
"Doesn't she ever get bored?"
Those who gave her a single glance, pulled a fed-up face, and looked away.
"Whoa! Now that's some skill!"
"Hey! Try hitting that spot next!"
And those who kept their distance, watching her like a traveling show and cheering her on. Not a shred of wariness toward Taishi Ci remained among the Shanyue. In fairness, her archery was so far beyond the ordinary that one would struggle to find her equal; to the tribesmen, who fought at close quarters and nothing else, it must have been an utterly novel spectacle.
"Tsk... If it were up to me, I'd carry her off right this instant..."
"Give it up. An arrow would plant itself between your eyes first."
The hot-blooded tribesmen flung out other words besides—words that would have shamed any woman who heard them—but Taishi Ci did not so much as blink, buried in her training. And once again that day, the Shanyue thought:
That woman will just shoot her arrows today and go back in, same as always...
But that prediction missed, and missed beautifully.
"...This should just about do it."
"Huh?"
Though daylight had yet to fade, Taishi Ci gathered up her arrows once more and swept her gaze across the Shanyue ranks—
"Ghk—!"
She came charging, snuffing out the life of the Shanyue nearest to her in a single heartbeat. ...That the first man to die was the very one who had spewed the foulest abuse at Taishi Ci was surely no coincidence.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"The woman's finally lost her mind!"
At the sight of her bearing down on them, the Shanyue jolted in alarm and scrambled to form up. A single general, charging an army numbering a good ten thousand or more. To any outside eye it would have looked like nothing short of suicide, but Taishi Ci was anything but an ordinary woman.
"Hngh!"
Before the tribesmen could even set their feet, she had drawn her bowstring and was loosing arrow after arrow.
"Aaagh!"
"Ghk!"
Shanyue toppled like wind-stripped leaves—who knew how many shafts she had fired in so brief a span?
"What in the hell is with those arrows...?!"
At the impossible sight, the tribesmen could only goggle, their shock beyond containing.
Taishi Ci nocked several arrows at once and bellowed,
"Out of my way! All who bar my path die!"
Formidable as the tribesmen's fighting strength was, no sword or spear could turn aside arrows flying straight at a man.
"D-dodge! Get down, all of you!"
Convinced that today, too, she would finish her practice and withdraw, the Shanyue had made no preparations whatsoever. Had turning aside arrows with blade and haft been possible, they would long since have served as generals entrusted with entire fronts, not common soldiers. Had they only kept their wits about them, they might have blunted her charge. But with their discipline dissolved, if only for the moment, no one remained who could stand in Taishi Ci's way.
Shweee—!
At every hiss of an incoming arrow, the tribesmen scrambled to duck,
"Ugh!"
and one unlucky Shanyue, too slow to grasp what was happening, died blocking her path.
How many times did those arrows fly?
Neigh—!
The cry of Taishi Ci's mount faded slowly into the distance. She had slipped through the Shanyue's encirclement without the slightest hindrance.
…….
Only when their surroundings had gone quiet did the Shanyue timidly poke their heads out and glance around. All that remained nearby were comrades wearing blank, dumbfounded expressions, and the corpses of those felled mid-charge.
"What in the world just happened?!"
A Shanyue officer came sprinting up on a belated report, but the deed was long since done.
Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Sea.
Deceive the heavens, and cross the sea. It was the moment a tale was born—the story of a general who clouded her enemies' eyes into complacency, then pierced their encirclement all alone.