Chapter 108: Knives Out
Sima Shi is lucky enough to escape the ensuing rain of crossbow bolts, but a lot of his guys aren't quite so fortunate, so he buggers off. Jiang Wei also lost a lot of soldiers when he was surrounded in the pass, so he goes home too, and the invasion pretty much stalls out.
Then a lot of important characters start to die off.
Sima Yi passes away, leaving the fortunately-still-alive Sima Shi in his place. His second-eldest, Sima Zhao, is made a cavalry commander or something, he's high up in the ranks of Wei too.
Sun Quan also dies, which makes sense because he's been in charge of Wu for a very long time now. His heir is Sun Liang. Lu Xun dies in the background around this time as well.
After Sun Quan dies, Sima Shi goes, well, the death of a leader is always a good opportunity to attack, let's invade Wu. So the Wei forces cross the river into Wu on a floating bridge and camp on the other side. Don't know that I would trust a "floating bridge", but I guess it works. Also don't know that I would launch an invasion in the middle of winter. But nobody's given me command of an army, what do I know.
A man named Zhuge Ke now has Lu Xun's job, and he sends general Ding Feng to skirmish with the Wei invaders. Ding Feng decides to float about 3,000 guys in patrol boats up the river. The Wei forces see him coming, but they count up the boats and say, ah, that's what, three thousand dudes? We're 100,000 strong over here, what can they do to us?
They're feeling all the more confident when they see Ding Feng tell his guys to take off their armor and carry no weapons besides daggers. Wei figures, oh yeah, no need to get out of our warm, cozy sleeping bags. Those guys are just looking to float on by.
Nah.
Ding Feng lands his men and immediately launches an attack that the Wei forces are ENTIRELY unprepared for, and the Wu troops go to town shredding people up with their daggers. Ding Feng himself takes out two officers wielding a spear and halberd against him. The Wei forces are thrown into a panic, and the floating bridge collapses as they all try to retreat over it.
Zhuge Ke decides to press the advantage and counter-invade Wei, but he gets stymied sieging the first city he encounters and is held up for a couple months. Eventually he gets tired of waiting an orders one last-ditch attack on the city. This actually looks like it's working; Wu even manages to knock a wall down.
In response, the Wei administrator sends a messenger out to Zhuge Ke, basically saying, yeah, so it's obvious you're going to win this and I would like to surrender... but you've only been sieging 90 days, and Wei law says if I wait until 100 days have passed before I surrender, then I'm legally off the hook for whatever happens; so if you'd just chill for a couple more days I'd really appreciate it. Meanwhile, he starts transferring all of the city's census data and other stuff that Zhuge Ke would need to run the place.
This law seems so stupid that I have to believe it's real. I guess Zhuge Ke does too since he agrees to the request and lays off a bit.
Unfortunately, the administrator uses the extra time he's negotiated for himself to fix the wall, at which point he sticks his tongue out and goes neener neener, I've still got six months of grain in here. Meanwhile, all of the Wu troops are catching the flu and don't want to fight anymore.
So Zhuge Ke has to go home. He's feeling pretty stupid at how this turned out, so he hides himself away pretending to be sick. But also part of the reason he backs off is that the book says he takes an arrow square to the forehead? But there isn't a big deal made about this and I guess he heals right up. There's no detail about any of it, the arrow is just a casual mention. Still, I dunno, if you're using the phrase "square in the forehead" you need to explain to me why this guy is not deceased.
Whatever the case, during this hiatus, he also happens to put a couple of his friends in charge of the Royal Guard. This kind of pisses off the guy who WAS holding that position, a second cousin of emperor Sun Liang named Sun Jun.
The book doesn't say this, but I looked it up and Sun Liang is about 10 years old at this time and Sun Jun is also operating as his regent, so you think he'd have a little bit more say in these matters. I don't know. These politics are honestly so confusing that I just have to shrug and go with whatever the book is telling me. Which is probably what it wants me to do.
Anyway, long story short, Sun Jun plans an elaborate assassination that actually works for once. Zhuge Ke gets beheaded at a banquet, and Sun Liang makes Sun Jun prime minister of Wu. I guess if you're 10 you don't really have much of an opinion on who your prime minister is anyway.