Chapter 110: This Book Really Has a Thing for Eyeballs
A couple people get mad at Sima Shi for deposing Cao Feng; a bunch of them are also people who liked Cao Shuang and didn't particularly care for how Sima Yi overthrew him. So a bunch of districts revolt.
Honestly, it's not very exciting, except that Sima Shi had just had a tumor removed from his eye right before this happened, so he was supposed to be resting. But I guess nobody else would have pacified the uprising as well as him, so he personally leads the army.
But then at one point, one of the rebels surprise-attacks Sima Shi's camp at night, and this raid is such a shock that his eye falls out of its socket. Like, presumably dangling by the optic nerve. Supposedly, this isn't just a fictional account; it actually happened.
I guess they pop the eye back into place for a bit, but it doesn't do any good; the pain is too much, and Sima Shi dies shortly after. He doesn't have a son to replace him, so his position goes to his brother, Sima Zhao.
At this point, Sima Zhao is pretty much tied up in the capital because if he leaves, he might not have a position to come back to. Over in Shu, Jiang Wei picks up on this and says, saddle up, let's go take on the north again.
He wins his first battle by pulling a trick that I believe was attempted earlier but didn't work then; he lines his troops up with their backs against the river so they can't coward out and run away. Given that it's now fight-or-die time, his troops opt for fighting instead of dying.
Which, if I was a soldier, would really make me feel like I wasn't being supported by upper management. Thanks for putting me in this high-stress situation.
But then Wei sends out a new general named Deng Ai, and he comes in and starts ordering his troops around like he's got this big scheme. Even though I'm pretty sure the scheme isn't anything more than "go out there and make ambush sounds when they come by so they think it's an ambush and run away".
Still, it works so well that Shu gets jittery and Jiang Wei goes home. I don't know how this doesn't become the prevailing combat strategy for the remainder of the book, but it doesn't.