Chapter 114: If You Give a Wei a Grain Cart
Sima Zhao starts thinking the Wei emperor Cao Mao is getting a little too feisty. For one, while reading Cao Mao's diary, he notices a piece of emo poetry about how the emperor feels trapped in his current situation. Then there's this time where the courtiers all go "Hey, you should really consider making Sima Zhao the lord patriarch of Jin!", to which Cao Mao remarks, "Psshyeah, like I even have a choice." If you're going to have the emperor under your thumb, it's probably a bad sign when he starts to get bitter about it. So I guess it's time for him to go.
Cao Mao realizes his time is up, and leads a handful of guards to attack Sima Zhao because what the hell else can he do. Even though his party is made up of a couple hundred armed servants and attendants who can't hope to match up against Sima Zhao's thousand-strong, war-hardened imperial soldiers, the imperial troops are so stunned at the sheer badassery of Cao Mao standing on top of his Rolls-Royce swinging his sword around that Sima Zhao just gets one of his loyalists among Cao Mao's force to stab him in the chest with a halberd. It's a bit of an underwhelming end to things, but credit to Cao Mao for at least trying to go out like a damn champ.
Sima Zhao's advisor/lackey Jia Chong then goes, all right, so I guess we're taking over now? Like you wanted to do this whole time, right?
But Sima Zhao responds, no no no, I'm too loyal to do something like that! I picture myself as more of a Cao Cao type. He never usurped the Han, you know, because he was loyal, even if he did set his son up perfectly to institute a regime change. So yeah, think of me like that and just give me that patriarch of Jin thing and I'm good, that's all I want, really! Anyway, this is Cao Huan, he's the emperor now and he's also going to do everything I say, except this time he's actually going to be nice about it.
If you're wondering if it's worth remembering the names of all these new emperors anymore... probably not.
However, you should have a pretty good idea at this point about what happens any time there's political upheaval over in Wei. Yep, Shu launches yet another invasion.
Deng Ai has another scheme this time: he sends an officer over to the Shu camp feigning defection, with his explanation being he's outraged that his entire family was executed during the aftermath of the scuffle in the capital. Jiang Wei says, great, it turns out that somehow I made it all the way here without remembering to pack any food for my troops. Would you mind taking half of your guys over to go grab the grain carts for us?
While the turncoat is off doing that, Xiahou Ba—the guy who swapped over to Shu after the last revolt—tells Jiang Wei, yeah, I used to work for Wei, and I'm pretty sure that guy isn't a member of the family he says he's from. But it turns out that Jiang Wei was already suspicious, reasoning that if Sima Zhao is exterminating clans, he's too smart to not only miss that guy but to keep him posted in an officer's position. He's obviously lying about being a defector.
Meanwhile, the "defecting" Wei agent goes to get the grain, then sends a letter to Deng Ai telling him when and where to meet up so he can deliver the carts to Wei instead. But the mailman gets intercepted by Jiang Wei, who alters the letter to push the meeting date three days earlier, and then has it sent to Deng Ai like everything is fine. When the "meeting day" arrives, Jiang Wei fills up some spare grain carts with flammables, and then tells the half of the defected Wei troops that he kept to push the carts to the meeting spot.
When Deng Ai shows up, he sees that his agent's troops are accompanying the carts, and as such suspects that nothing is wrong until the carts go up in flame. Deng Ai is ambushed in the chaos, and he ends up dressing as a common soldier in order to escape.
It's a tremendous victory for Shu! ...With just one glaring oversight. They left the Wei agent in charge of the actual grain carts.
Well, in retaliation, he sets fire to the carts, and then burns up Shu's roads home for good measure; and a grumbling Jiang Wei has to withdraw yet again so that all the damage can be repaired.