Chapter 92: The Mailman's Credentials
As Shu decides how they want to proceed with their invasion, Wei Yan has an idea. While Zhuge Liang directs the bulk of the army straight north, he wants to take some troops northeast into the Wei heartland, then circle back and isolate Wei's western troops between two fronts. It seems like a reasonably sound strategy, but ever since Liu Bei's disaster at Yiling, Zhuge Liang has pretty much been micromanaging every aspect of the empire because if it's not done his way then it's not going to be done correctly.
I guess there was also that time back in Chapter 53 where Zhuge Liang made a big deal about how Wei Yan couldn't be trusted and would definitely betray them someday; but that hasn't been mentioned ever since, and Zhuge Liang is actually super-reliant on Wei Yan these days and treats him like every other general, so maybe he forgot that he said that or something. Anyway Wei Yan is kind of resentful that Zhuge Liang shot his idea down, but that doesn't go anywhere either.
Instead, the Shu army just advances north and begins its skirmishes with Wei. Despite being 85 chapters old, Zhao Yun is still out there killing it; he single-handedly slays, captures, or maims four sons of a Wei officer all in the same duel before finishing the officer off, too. So his body is clearly still in top shape, but his mind must be going, because he takes a rare L when he doesn't heed a warning about potentially being ambushed and subsequently gets ambushed. Guan Xing and Zhang Bao show up at the last possible moment to bail him out, though, so no harm done if you don't count all the troops (which we don't).
Anyway, the no-name commander that Cao Rui sent to fix all this barricades himself in the walls of a nearby city because Zhuge Liang is just too overpowered. Case in point: Zhuge Liang begins layering ploys upon ploys to get this guy out. This is the plan:
- Dress a guy up as a Wei messenger.
- Send him to the city next door and ask for reinforcements.
- Capture the governor when he comes out and take that city.
- Use the governor's keycard to slip into the original city with some Shu troops and open the gates.
- Deal with the governor when he inevitably tries to sabotage Step 4, exactly as planned since the beginning.
- Capture the commander, take the city, and get drunk on plum wine.
And that's what happens.
The whole thing works so well, in fact, that when they discover there's another city nearby that's also sealed up tight, Zhuge Liang figures, shit, let's do that messenger trick again.
This time, though, there's a problem. One of the advisors living in this city is a young man named Jiang Wei, and he just so happens to be the only person in western Wei who has half a brain. He recognizes that it's incredibly unlikely that the commander was able to slip a messenger outside the barricaded city gates in the middle of a siege; and also, this guy isn't carrying any ID, which is instantly sus. This must be a trick.
So Jiang Wei, having predicted Zhuge Liang's ambush, begins to set up countermeasures of his own.