Chapter 113: They Grow Up Quick I Guess
Regent-Marshall Sun Chen reads the previous chapter and learns that some of his officers had no other option but to surrender to Wei. Despite this seeming like a perfectly reasonable thing to do under the circumstances, Sun Chen is enraged, and has all their families put to death in retaliation.
Emperor Sun Liang sees this and realizes that it's not what you'd consider a cute look. Although he's only 16, he's apparently a clever kid; the book goes off on a side tangent to tell a story about how he had a mouse poop cut open to show how dry it was, proving that a courtier had placed it in a pot of honey to get the steward in trouble. I guess this kind of breaking news is why we haven't heard much from Wu in a while.
But since it's looking like Sun Chen is vibing with the whole "cruel despot" thing, Sun Liang decides that he must be stopped.
Now, we've already seen two or three examples of an emperor putting a hit out on their power-hungry regent, and, uh... they haven't exactly gone great, to say the least. Well, this one fails even faster than usual, because the guy Sun Liang picks to organize everything is actually Sun Chen's nephew. He does stress, okay, it's SUPER IMPORTANT to make sure your mother doesn't find out about this and tell her brother Chen! But then the guy goes home and immediately tells the plot to his father, who then tells his wife. So I guess Sun Liang isn't really that clever after all.
So Sun Chen comes in, executes a bunch of folks, and denounces Sun Liang for his "years of wanton depravity".
...Kid is 16. I think the book forgets about the ages of these emperors sometimes.
But in the end, Sun Liang is deposed, and Sun Xiu—the sixth son of Sun Quan, to show you how far down the line of succession we're getting—is made emperor instead.
This goes pretty well. For a few months. Then Sun Chen decides to bring the new emperor a grand gift of beef and wine, which Sun Xiu ultimately turns down.
Hrm... hang on. *wikis*
...Kid is 13. Maybe he just wants pizza for dinner.
But Sun Chen takes this super-personally, and he starts thinking, "Ugh, I figured that little shit I gave ultimate power to would be a bit more agreeable. Maybe I should just be emperor." In preparation, he moves the army to the capital. This understandably freaks out Sun Xiu, so he brings in Ding Feng—the badass from Chapter 108 who charged into a Wei camp armed only with daggers—to figure out what to do. Ding Feng says, that's easy. The New Year's Eve party is around the corner, right? He'll come if you invite him, so just execute him there.
Sun Chen goes to the party, feeling super-confident despite a couple of bad omens because he's in control of all the palace guards, so what could possibly happen to him? You would expect, then, that Sun Xiu would opt for something sneaky, maybe try one of those "I'll drop my cup to signal the assassin" or "my guy will do a sword dance" plots that never seem to work. But, uh, no, one of his officers just marches in a bunch of armed guards to apprehend Sun Chen. No mention at all of where these "armed guards" came from or how they got past the rest of palace security. Whatever, Sun Chen is executed.
After this, Shu sends Sun Xiu a "congratulations on assassinating a powerful political rival!" Hallmark card. The two kingdoms get to talking and pass some envoys back and forth. When Wu's envoy to Shu returns back to the Southland, he tells Sun Xiu about how the eunuch Huang Hao has curried so much favor with Liu Shan that he has the Shu court in his grip, and things in Shu are really starting to deteriorate. To which Sun Xiu shakes his head like, man, Zhuge Liang never would have let things get that bad.
...The shit kid, you're 13! You weren't even born until the year after Zhuge Liang died! That would be like me going "Man, Walter Mondale really would have gotten it done!" Don't you push the author's propaganda!
Anyway, part of the discussion between the two nations is the agreement that, oh, Sima Zhao is probably going to overthrow the Wei emperor soon. This causes Jiang Wei's ears perk up, and before long, he sallies forth on invasion attempt number... probably like sixty at this point, I lost count.
Well, Deng Ai has fended off enough of these attacks at this point that now he's spending his time setting up tricks for the next time Shu happens to show up. For this campaign, he'd had certain areas of terrain cleared out to make very tempting camp sites, with an underground tunnel leading right into one of them. When he launches an attack shortly after Shu's arrival, he sends men in through the tunnel to sow confusion, but Jiang Wei succeeds on a very challenging charisma check to rally the defense, and they hold the line through the night.
The next day, Jiang Wei and Deng Ai agree to meet in the open field for a gentleman's battle, and both sides arrange their men in that eight-gate formation that this book seems to love so much. Instead of sending men into the gates to break them apart from within like we've seen before, though, both sides just smash their formations against each other like those top fighter toys from the 90s.
90s commercials were so hype.
However, Jiang Wei unexpectedly shifts his formation to swallow up Deng Ai's, and the latter only escapes because reinforcements show up to bail him out, as it usually goes. Deng Ai admits to his advisors that he hasn't really studied army formations all that much and can't match Jiang Wei, so he figures that when they meet up to do the same thing tomorrow, he'll just sneak around and sucker punch Shu in the back of the head instead. You have to admire practicality.
But Jiang Wei knows Deng Ai's going to try something, figuring that if Deng Ai sucks so bad at fighting like this then why would he attempt to challenge me again? So when the armies meet in the field again, he lays an ambush for Deng Ai, who makes it away once more despite taking four arrows in the process.
Now that Jiang Wei's actually winning for once, Deng Ai ragequits the war. Instead of fighting, he sends off a spy to Shu, spreading the rumor that Jiang Wei is dissatisfied and might defect back to Wei, while also giving a generous bribe to Huang Hao the eunuch. Huang Hao convinces Liu Shan to recall Jiang Wei just to be safe, and the commander reluctantly leaves the front lines. When he returns to the capital, he goes to see Liu Shan, wondering why the hell he was being recalled from the cusp of victory.
Liu Shan awkwardly taps the tips of his index fingers together and goes... well... I guess I just wanted to know how the troops were doing, is all...
If I were Jiang Wei, defecting might actually be sounding pretty good right about now.