Chapter 90: Seventh Time's the Charm
Meng Huo begins to call in reinforcements from other tribes. In the meantime, we meet his wife, Lady Zhurong, who is supposedly descended from a fire god. She rides into battle with throwing knives and sets to work being totally metal. She captures two of Shu's lesser officers right off the bat; witnessing this, the currently-undefeated Zhao Yun doesn't even risk a straight duel with her and tries the fake-running-away trick instead. Zhurong is too clever to fall for this, although is admittedly less clever after she falls for Wei Yan doing the same thing with some additional name-calling. Then they trip her horse with rope and capture her.
Another chieftain arrives to assist Meng Huo; he rides an elephant and can summon jungle animals to fight for him. So like Aquaman, but with practical applications. Shu can't fight off the animals, but Zhuge Liang tells his men, I fully assumed we'd encounter a jungle-Aquaman at some point during this campaign, so I prepared something before we set out from the capital.
He has a couple wagons uncovered to reveal that he's got... I don't know how to describe them. Beastly parade float kinda things. They spit smoke and fire and make a lot of ugly noises that end up scaring all the animals away. I have to figure out what this thing is so I can keep the squirrels off my damn bird feeder.
A short while later, Meng Huo's brother-in-law shows up at the Shu camp with the Man king himself all tied up—along with his entire family—and offers to hand them over. Zhuge Liang takes them in, but in the back of his mind, he knows there's no way Meng Huo is getting captured by his own men three times. So he has his captives searched, and daggers are found hidden in their socks; this one was all a ruse to shank the Shu commander in his sleep.
This time, Zhuge Liang goes, okay, well, we're in the heart of the jungle like you said you wanted, are you giving in? But once again, Meng Huo says, listen, this one doesn't count because I basically just handed myself over to you for free. And so he's let go again.
Meng Huo calls in some favors and brings in another chieftain, who has troops with cured jungle vines as armor. Shu's weapons can't penetrate the stuff, so they start to panic and wonder what they're going to do.
As always, Zhuge Liang has a plan. This plan is called "bait thousands of native soldiers whose home I am blatantly invading into a sealed-off canyon and burn them all up".
Uh, it works, of course. For what little it's worth, Zhuge Liang does feel somewhat bad that it "had to be like this". He even acknowledges afterward that whoever is in charge of meting out justice in the universe is going to make his afterlife slightly less cushy for pulling that particular stunt.
Anyway, Meng Huo is brought before Zhuge Liang one last time. And finally he says, all right, you caught me seven times, I can no longer deny that you are stronger than me and deserve my allegiance.
No mention of not wanting his people to be burned alive en masse. I think you have to read between the lines on that one. But hey, at least that hearts-and-minds thing worked out.
And thus Zhuge Liang pacified the Man people and everybody was happy. Not least of all Skep, who can now get back to the main damn plot.