Chapter 93: We Ruined Your Life, Now Come Work For Us
Correctly guessing that Zhuge Liang is trying to lure them out of the city and into an ambush, Jiang Wei says, let's take some of our army out of the city and leave the rest inside. Then, when they come here expecting to take the empty city, not only will we ride out to meet them in battle, but we'll swing the second half of the army back around to completely surround them.
This plan works great, and Zhao Yun is actually forced to flee for the first time in his life.
Thus, Wei chases away the Shu ambush. But Jiang Wei knows they'll be back to try a traditional siege this time, and he also guesses that Shu 100% expects them to play hard defense in response. So instead of doing that, he decides to pull his army out of the city and let Shu march up it, at which point he marches his troops back around and traps the Shu army against the city walls. This plan also works great.
Zhuge Liang reads the battlefield reports with confusion and flicks his cigarette butt away. "We're losing?! What the shit is this?! I don't lose." But when he hears about how he's been thwarted twice now by Jiang Wei, he starts getting some ideas. And you know what happens when Zhuge Liang starts getting ideas.
That's right. It's a convoluted scheme.
First, he finds out where Jiang Wei's mother lives and sends Wei Yan to go attack that place. In response, Jiang Wei pulls out of the city to go protect his mum.
While Jiang Wei is busy hammering planks over the windows of his childhood bedroom, Zhuge Liang releases the Wei commander he captured last chapter. The commander makes for the city, but on the way he "runs into" some "civilians from Jiang Wei's hometown" who are "fleeing" from the "attack" Jiang Wei launched after he "defected to Shu". Of course Zhuge Liang orchestrated all this, and when the commander arrives at the city, he warns its leaders of the betrayal.
There is some disbelief amongst the others that Jiang Wei would go turncoat like that, but the rumor is confirmed that night when Jiang Wei shows up leading a bunch of Shu troops to attack the city. He even goes up to the city walls to yell at everybody up top, making sure he's being as visible as possible in the middle of the night, and everybody agrees, yeah, that guy looks kinda like Jiang Wei, he must have really gone over to Shu.
The real Jiang Wei, meanwhile, is still barricaded in his mother's house, waiting for an attack to happen. The guy at the wall was just some soldier Zhuge Liang picked out who happened to look enough like Jiang Wei to fool people from a distance. Although I have to say, if my commander told me to "put on this costume and go taunt the enemy really loudly", I'd for sure be asking some follow-up questions.
With that done, Zhuge Liang redirects the Shu army towards Jiang Wei's hometown. The latter was so busy with barricades that he forgot to stop at the grocery store, so when Zhuge Liang drives the grain caravan out in plain sight, Jiang Wei has no choice but to go after it. At this point you probably have some idea how this works out for him, which is to say, poorly; and after Wei Yan sneaks in to take the town, Jiang Wei has nowhere to go but back to the city. You know, the city that is full of people who are now convinced that Jiang Wei doesn't work for them anymore.
Jiang Wei finds this out the hard way when he arrives and they fire arrows down at him, insulting him for his traitorous actions. So he figures, well, if all my friends are stupid enough to think I'd ever betray Wei to go work for Shu... then fuck it, I guess I'll betray Wei to go work for Shu.
It turns out that Jiang Wei follows Zhuge Liang's "let's use the same trick that worked last time" school of thought, because he shoots an arrow over the walls asking his old friends to open the city gates for the Shu army. The Wei commander intercepts the message and decides that those guys need to be executed. So the friends figure, if we're going to be executed because they think we'd surrender the city to Shu... then fuck it, we'd better surrender the city to Shu.
In the capital Cao Rui is starting to get concerned about Zhuge Liang's victories and sends reinforcements. Traveling with them is one of his ministers, who believes he can convince Zhuge Liang to back down by insinuating that this incursion amounts to nothing less than a rebellion against the empire.
But when they meet up to parley, Zhuge Liang calls the old minister a traitor so hard that the guy drops dead on the spot.
So now the Wei army needs to hold a funeral. But they sense an opportunity here; they know Zhuge Liang likes to seize an advantage, so they think he's going to attack in the middle of the night while their army is in mourning. In response to this, they lay a trap for him.
Zhuge Liang, however, is far too clever for that noise; he predicts that the person running the show over there is just smart enough to set up an ambush, and he can capitalize on that. Drawing up another complex, multi-part scheme, he directs his soldiers to pull Wei into their own ambush, and then giggles himself to sleep as the Wei troops battle each other in the dark.