Chapter 112: Into the Besieged City, Everyone!
Zhuge Dan gains the command of a bunch of Wu's troops to combat Wei in order to... save Wei, I guess. Or at least save his own skin.
Neither looks particularly likely after the initial confrontation, though. Wei hatches a plan to lure Zhuge Dan into attacking some weak-looking soldiers, who proceed to flee, leaving behind a lot of tempting-looking valuables. The Wu troops get distracted and subsequently ambushed, and Zhuge Dan is forced to flee into a nearby city.
This isn't a hopeless position though; he has enough supplies to hold out a siege for months, and since Wu's main army is stationed nearby, he could coordinate a pincer attack to put Wei at a serious disadvantage. Recognizing this, Wei reorganizes their siege to surround only three of the city's four walls, hoping to tempt Zhuge Dan into fleeing the city so they can catch him. It seems like a very obvious trap, but maybe you get desperate after being holed up a couple months, I don't know.
Instead, the Wu army is being overseen by Regent-Marshall Sun Chen (who has since replaced the last Wu regent whose name I forget but obviously doesn't matter). Sun Chen is getting kind of miffed that his generals aren't performing, and he sets an ultimatum: they need to save Zhuge Dan's city.
Suffering somewhat from performance anxiety, the Wu generals decide to march part of their army into the city, with the thinking that they'll be better able to set up the pincer attack. The Wei troops didn't expect this to happen and don't know what to do about it, so they just sit there and watch as a slew of Wu soldiers reinforce Zhuge Dan.
Sima Zhao sees this, recognizes that the pincer attack is going to happen... and then sends troops to bar the other Wu force from entering the city. Which wasn't Wu's plan at all, except now Wu is marching toward the city entrance anyway. I think the author might be checked out at this point. Anyway, Wu gets blocked and ambushed from behind, and that force is pretty much decimated. Sun Chen goes home in disgust and leaves some token soldiers behind to make one final push on the city, but they end up surrendering to Wei out of sheer hopelessness.
So now Zhuge Dan is in a bit of a pickle because he never planned on having to feed all the Wu soldiers who actually made it into the city on the initial go-around, and his food surplus isn't looking all that surplus-y right about now. A couple of his advisors try to convince him that a last-ditch battle might be their only hope here, but Zhuge Dan stubbornly seems to think staying on defense is going to get them out of this mess despite having literally no hope of rescue, so I have no clue what his plan is supposed to be here. Neither do his advisors I guess, because they immediately surrender to Wei.
As the defenders start to drop from hunger, one of the Wu generals suggests to Zhuge Dan, maybe we let the Wei soldiers you're commanding leave so we have fewer mouths to feed? Well, that guy ends up losing his head for the trouble, causing his sons to flee and submit to Wei as well. These sons are treated so well by Sima Zhao that they then go back to the city walls and convince a bunch of their former troops to surrender too.
Zhuge Dan starts executing dissenters to maintain order, but things are so bad that when Wei finally attacks, the gate is left wide open for them. Zhuge Dan tries to flee but doesn't even make it out of the city.
But hey, while all this is going on, Jiang Wei decides it's a great time to launch another attack!
Except the book takes a moment to point that Shu maybe isn't as cool as it used to be. For one, Liu Shan has taken a particular liking to a self-serving court eunuch (UH OH); meanwhile, Jiang Wei's constant failed incursions are becoming increasingly unpopular and sapping the army of resources and morale.
But like, surely this has to be a good time to attack Wei, right?
His first target is a city that, for some unknowable reason, happens to be both well-supplied and poorly-defended. After a minor Shu general does some cool duel stuff where he pulls one guy off his horse and throws a pitchfork into another guy's head, Jiang Wei presses the advantage as uses fire arrows to set the city alight, to the point where he is within an inch of victory.
Just then, a contingent of Wei troops shows up as reinforcements, and Jiang Wei gets distracted chasing around who he thinks is Deng Ai but is actually Deng Ai's son. When Deng Ai himself shows up, Jiang Wei goes, hey, I want to fight you personally but my horse is tired! Let's do it tomorrow instead! This is incredibly dumb because Jiang Wei should really be focusing on capturing the city—that, again, had ALMOST FALLEN—rather than calling off the battle for the day.
Especially because that night, Deng Ai goes, yeah, we can't actually win in a straight fight, we just need to hold them off until we can get more reinforcements here. So when Jiang Wei sends a letter formally asking Wei to come battle tomorrow, Deng Ai goes "oh, yeah, I'll totally be there." But then he plays sick and doesn't show up, and goes "sorry about that, we'll totally do it tomorrow."
This goes on for four or five days before Jiang Wei finally starts to suspect something is a little fishy about this. Then he receives the news about Zhuge Dan's defeat, meaning Wei is no longer distracted on that front, and Shu has basically lost all opportunity.
He really should have just taken the stupid city. I like Jiang Wei but goddamn he makes me want to tear my hair out.