Chapter 109: Always Take a Few Levels In Monk
I neglected to mention this last chapter, but when Zhuge Ke counter-invaded Wei, he sent a letter to Jiang Wei asking him to attack at the same time. Naturally, Jiang Wei is more than happy to do this. In fact, he manages to actually get the Qiang tribesmen to show up for war today.
He also gets tired of having his stupid supply lines cut off, so he sets up barricades and stuff that indicate they're digging in and camping for a while, and then runs the wooden oxen carts nearby. When Wei comes in to attack the grain, Jiang Wei surprises them with an ambush, showing that he is at least a little competent.
Following this battle, some Shu troops put on Wei uniforms and infiltrate Sima Zhao's camp, launching a surprise attack from the inside and forcing him to run away.
Shu chases after Sima Zhao and ends up trapping him in a gorge that has exactly one well of water that can sustain maybe a hundred men. Sima Zhao has 6,000. He's like, yeah, guess I'm done for then.
One of his advisors pipes up and says, hey, there's a story from long ago about a guy getting trapped in this exact same place, and he prayed to the well and it spit out more water. Maybe you should do that?
Skep says this sounds crazy. Sima Zhao says it's crazy enough that it just might work.
Of course it works. Can you imagine if they mentioned this old rumor representing their last shred of hope and he tries it and nothing happens? I'd be making fun of the book for doing that.
Meanwhile Guo Huai hears about Sima Zhao's predicament, and through a series of misadventures manages to capture the Qiang leader and flip him to supporting the Wei army. So when the Qiang rock up to the gorge entrance and Jiang Wei says "great, happy to have you," the Qiang go, "not for long you're not."
Together, Wei and the Qiong break the Shu blockade and save Sima Zhao. Jiang Wei ends up on the run again, being chased down personally by Guo Huai; at this point, Jiang Wei doesn't have his spear and all the arrows have fallen out of his quiver. Still, he pretends to fire some arrows from his bow to try to throw off Guo Huai.
This only makes Guo Huai realize that the sucker doesn't have any arrows, so he pulls out his own bow and fires. Not only does Jiang Wei manage to snatch the bolt mid-flight, but he whips his bow around and uses the arrow to plug Guo Huai "full-force in the forehead".
Guo Huai at least is smart enough to realize that an arrow smack to the forehead isn't really a minor inconvenience (unlike SOME characters), so he does the courteous thing and dies. But both sides have suffered enough losses that that's the end of that campaign.
Back at Wei HQ, Sima Shi is starting to abuse his power, because that's just the natural thing do when you have the emperor under your thumb I guess. The Emperor of Wei, Cao Feng, meets with a couple friends after court one day, and agree that, yeah, Sima Shi needs to die.
Do you remember Dong Cheng from a while ago, who plotted against Cao Cao because the emperor hid a decree in a belt, and brought on Liu Bei and Ma Teng before cocking the whole thing up? These guys basically try the same strategy. They're even like, now remember, Dong Cheng tried this and it didn't go well, we have to be waaay more careful.
Anyway they make it two steps out of the courthouse before Sima Shi stops them because he's already suspicious, and he finds their blood-written document and everything. Well, so much for that. Of course they're executed. Then the empress is executed just like that time Cao Cao executed that one empress that plotted against him, even though this one didn't even really do anything, except I guess her father was one of the conspirators. Sure, why not make that enough of a reason.
Then Sima Shi goes, right, so this emperor sucks, who wants to help me choose a new one? And just like that, Cao Feng is bounced out, and Cao Pi's grandson Cao Mao is brought in instead.
If it's starting to feel like we're simply rotating through Wei emperors that are names without faces now, maybe consider that there are reasons for that.