Chapter 87: Skip to Chapter 91
Things are now going well for Shu. The land is prosperous and the people are happy. Everything is going so great, in fact, that a rebellion breaks out in the south.
The southern Man tribes—who represented one of the five armies two chapters ago—start raiding the bountiful grain stores and sowing further dissent. Their chief complaint seems to be "You're telling us there's three kingdoms now? Who the hell is actually supposed to be in charge of China? We can't keep up with this shit."
Some Shu governors in the area throw in and coordinate with the Man, but Zhuge Liang plays some mind games with their soldiers and turns the governors against each other, effectively clearing them out with little effort. This secures Shu's borders for now, but Zhuge Liang needs to go march on the Man lands because he can't have them getting feisty when he's out campaigning against Wei.
Anyway, if you thought that Europe was the only continent that had problematic views on people it considered as "outsiders" to their society, just know that China at least was equally as bad. The book repeatedly points out how ugly the Man are and at one point calls them "barely human". I can't really verify this ISN'T true (I checked Wikipedia to see what these folks were actually like, but it might as well have said "yeah nobody cared about the Man tribes enough to write down anything about them"), but something tells me someone was being a little too dramatic.
And just to give you an idea of where we're headed with all this, Zhuge Liang seeks out advice for once, talking with Ma Su—the guy Liu Bei straight-up dissed in his dying breath (although this isn't relevant here)—who tells him, it's not going to be enough to conquer the Man through bloody warfare. You're going to have to break them psychologically, too.
This won't be a problem for Zhuge Liang, of course. In fact, he's already negging Zhao Yun and Wei Yan, manipulating them into winning their first few skirmishes by insisting that he doesn't believe in their abilities. So destroying the spirit of an entire culture should be a cakewalk.
That said, this effort will take him the next three and a half chapters. Given how quickly this book jumps around at times, this is an insane amount of time to dedicate to something that's going to be completely inconsequential to the plot. Hell, it's looking like my spirit's going to be crushed by then, too.
At this point, the Man king takes to the field; his name is Meng Huo, and he will be a driving figure for the remainder of this arc. To further illustrate how pointless this portion of the story is, there's debate among historians whether this guy actually existed. Really, I'm pretty sure these chapters were created just so Zhuge Liang can go Harlem Globetrotters on some "dumb barbarians" for a while.
Well, Meng Huo doesn't really get a chance to put up much of a fight; Zhuge Liang already has ambushes lying in wait when he shows up, and positioned soldiers to block all his escape points. Needless to say, it isn't long before Wei Yan captures Meng Huo and brings him before Zhuge Liang.
Zhuge Liang asks, hey, you know what you're doing is an act of rebellion? To which Meng Huo replies, is it? Because from my perspective, y'all keep taking our lands and pushing us further and further away.
Naturally, Zhuge Liang responds as any person from civilized society would to this argument: he acts like he didn't hear it.
Instead he tells Meng Huo, I'm going to release you; what do you think of that? To which Meng Huo replies, I mean, I'm gonna have to keep attacking you. I can win now that I know your tricks.
Zhuge Liang shrugs and says, okay, well, it'll be fun watching you try. And he lets Meng Huo go free.
For the first time.