Chapter 115: Bosses, Am I Right
After Jiang Wei gets the roads rebuilt, he wants to launch another campaign against Wei. Even Liu Shan is beginning to think that this is getting a bit excessive, and Shu definitely can't take the strain of prolonged warfare any longer, so he makes it clear that this is going to be the last one he's authorizing. It's either now or never.
Jiang Wei sets his plan and heads out. Deng Ai knows that Jiang Wei is going to aim for the city he thinks Wei suspects to be the least likely target, so he pulls the citizens out of the city and leaves the gates wide open. It looks completely abandoned by the time Xiahou Ba pulls up, and right off the bat he's incredibly suspicious that it's a trap. But poking around the walls doesn't reveal anything odd, and everyone tells him "no, this doesn't look like a trap!", so he decides to try entering the city; even then he's still super keyed-up as he leads his troops in. Which... was a good call. Since it absolutely was a trap. He doesn't make it out though.
After Shu's main army arrives, they take another loss after Deng Ai attacks their camp at night. Still, Jiang Wei knows he has to make this work, and he's resolute. There is a bunch of back-and-forth scheming the next few days where Deng Ai and Jiang Wei keep intuiting each other's intentions, with the end result being that Shu launches a covert raid on a supply depot, Deng Ai arrives to surround the raiding party, and Jiang Wei arrives to surround Deng Ai.
As a matter of fact, things aren't looking too good for Deng Ai right now.
Well, around this time, a bunch of competent people in Shu are kind of losing confidence in Liu Shan and jumping ship, which is how one of the eunuch Huang Hao's loser buddies ends up a high-ranking general. Huang Hao then suggests to Liu Shan, hey, so Jiang Wei kind of sucks and isn't accomplishing anything. Why not replace him with my guy instead?
So just as Jiang Wei has Deng Ai surrounded, he gets a letter ordering him to bring the army home. I have to assume that several new swear words were invented that day.
When he finds out that Huang Hao was behind the order, he storms into the palace, intent on having the eunuch put to the sword. But Liu Shan isn't willing to denounce his favorite ass-kisser, and Huang Hao does an awful lot of groveling, so Jiang Wei leaves unsatisfied. He figures at this point his only real option is to look out for number one, so he gets approval to take the troops and go set up farms up north. The goal here is get their minds off war for a bit and build up a grain supply for whenever their next campaign might be. And, presumably, to keep as far away from the capital as possible so that he doesn't give in to temptation and strangle somebody.
(He still stays in command of the army, by the way, because Huang Hao ultimately decides he doesn't actually want to put his dumbass friend on the front lines against Deng Ai.)
But at this point, Jiang Wei has launched a total of eight expeditions against Wei, and Sima Zhao is starting to get a little irked about it. Now that he's shored up his power in the capital a bit, it's time to do something about this pest.
It's time to take the fight to Shu.