Suzhou City.
Luo Jing handed Tang Pidi a cup of tea: “Is Cao Ying really going to give us grain? And send it over himself?”
Tang Pidi smiled but said nothing.
Luo Jing glanced sideways at him: “Playing mysterious again.”
Tang Pidi laughed: “You shouldn’t have had to ask.”
Luo Jing gave a dismissive snort.
Tang Pidi said: “I wrote the letters. Cao Ying isn’t thinking about whether to give — he’s thinking about how much will satisfy me.”
Luo Jing asked: “If he gives, you really won’t fight?”
Tang Pidi said: “Really won’t fight.”
What Luo Jing actually wanted to know was simply whether they were fighting or not. They had been garrisoning Suzhou for several months now, and just sitting around idle made him feel they might as well have gone to the northern frontier.
At least there was fighting to be done up north. Staying in Suzhou like this, day after day, he was bored senseless.
He was truly unable to sit still now. He was the kind of person born for the battlefield. For others, months without a battle felt like a rare chance to rest. For him, months without a battle made his whole body uncomfortable.
“Why aren’t we fighting?”
Luo Jing couldn’t help asking one more time.
“The four months of not fighting Li Xionghu’s people — that was us repaying a favor to Li Xionghu. Not fighting now is us repaying a favor to Prince Wu.”
When Luo Jing heard this answer, he couldn’t help another snort.
He understood Tang Pidi’s meaning. Earlier, the Mandate of Heaven King Yang Xuanji had been preparing to push north into Yuzhou, but Prince Wu’s forces had kept pressing the Mandate of Heaven Army, forcing Yang Xuanji to flee back to Shuzhou.
Yuzhou was now stable, and that owed greatly to Prince Wu.
But then he thought it over — if they didn’t fight Cao Ying, Li Xionghu had no worries at his back, and could focus entirely on fighting Prince Wu in a decisive battle. How was that repaying a favor to Prince Wu? It looked more like doing Li Xionghu an additional favor.
Luo Jing sat there and puzzled it out on his own. He figured he wasn’t dull — he could work out the logic.
After thinking it over for a good while, he finally had some inkling.
He ventured a guess: “Is it because if we don’t fight Cao Ying, Li Xionghu will keep besieging Daxing City without worrying about his rear, pressing the assault with full force — and from the perspective of that old scoundrel Yang Jiju, this is actually beneficial, because as long as Li Xionghu doesn’t withdraw, the attrition and casualties are going to be far greater on Li Xionghu’s side than on his?”
Tang Pidi murmured in assent: “Yes. But not entirely.”
Luo Jing fell silent again and continued working through Tang Pidi’s ultimate objective.
Suddenly a light went on in his mind. Luo Jing said: “You’re waiting for Yang Xuanji’s army to arrive. Once Yang Xuanji returns in force, Li Xionghu is certain to lose.”
Tang Pidi said: “So what’s the rush? We’ll sit here and wait for Cao Ying to send us grain. If Li Xionghu suffers a crushing defeat in Jingzhou, we may not even need to fight at all — Cao Ying delivers grain this time, and next time he’ll deliver himself and his two hundred thousand men.”
Luo Jing couldn’t help raising his thumb: “When it comes to how well-seasoned a silver coin is, you’re the standard to beat…”
Tang Pidi glanced at him.
Luo Jing said: “Compared to you, even our own lord comes across as rather pure.”
Tang Pidi: “I have noted it down. On such-and-such a day, in such-and-such a month, Luo Jing said to Tang Pidi that Li Chi’s silver coin is purer than Tang Pidi’s.”
Luo Jing: “Damn it?!”
Tang Pidi said: “I have an exceptionally good memory. What I remember, I don’t easily forget.”
Luo Jing: “Jingbao Tower — my treat…”
Tang Pidi: “What was I just saying? Ah… at my age, the memory really is getting worse and worse.”
Luo Jing: “You said your silver coin is the purest.”
Tang Pidi: “You see, something that one dinner could have resolved, you’ve gone and made into something two dinners might not fix.”
Luo Jing: “…”
—
Two or three more days passed, and evidently unable to settle his nerves, the rebel great general Cao Ying proactively sent a letter.
In it, he indicated that the rebel forces on their end also didn’t have an enormous surplus of grain — after all, two hundred thousand men, two hundred thousand mouths to feed, and the autumn harvest hadn’t come in yet. Even so, he had decided to do everything in his power to help General Tang and the people of Suzhou through this grain shortage. He proposed to provide two hundred thousand shi of grain, to be delivered outside Suzhou City within the next few days.
Luo Jing looked at Tang Pidi: “He’s really going to send it?”
Tang Pidi smiled and set the letter to one side, looking as if he had no intention of writing back.
Luo Jing asked curiously: “Didn’t you tell him you enjoy writing letters? How come you’re not planning to reply this time?”
Tang Pidi said: “Let Cao Ying’s mind run a little longer.”
This time, Tang Pidi’s silence left Cao Ying somewhat anxious. Three or four days passed with no letter from Tang Pidi. Cao Ying summoned his subordinates to discuss the matter.
A roomful of people talked over each other, saying all manner of things — but not one of them said that Tang Pidi was being insufferably overbearing.
In the end, they reached a consensus: Tang Pidi thought the amount was too little.
So Cao Ying wrote another personal letter and had it sent to Suzhou City, where it reached Tang Pidi promptly.
After Tang Pidi read it, he passed it to Luo Jing. Luo Jing read it and his eyes went wide.
Because he felt this was pure farce — a thoroughly absurd farce, like something out of a joke — and yet, absurd as it seemed, this was no farce at all.
Cao Ying said in the letter that he’d been careless earlier and hadn’t checked carefully enough. After reviewing things again, he’d found some provisions that hadn’t been tallied. So… he actually extended his apologies to Tang Pidi.
And then, of his own accord, he raised the amount of grain to be gifted to the Ning Army from two hundred thousand shi to two hundred and fifty thousand shi.
Luo Jing: “You didn’t reply earlier so you could wait for Cao Ying to raise his offer on his own?”
Tang Pidi put on an expression of boundless compassion and said: “One must not be too overbearing with people. Especially when it comes to threatening others — try to do it as little as possible. Leave people room to maneuver, room to negotiate. Being kind to others is also laying up virtue for oneself.”
Luo Jing raised his thumb as high as it would go: “Pure silver. You are pure silver.”
This was essentially extortion dressed up as generosity — and he could still talk about leaving people room to maneuver, letting them negotiate…
Luo Jing watched Tang Pidi set the letter casually to one side and move on to other matters.
“Still not replying?”
Luo Jing asked.
Tang Pidi said: “How can you be so hard on people?”
Luo Jing: “Me? I’m being hard on people?”
Tang Pidi: “Don’t always think about writing letters to pressure people. Always wanting to bully others is wrong. You have to let people decide for themselves, and act according to their means.”
Luo Jing: “Well said — ‘act according to their means.'”
—
On Cao Ying’s end, several more days passed and still no reply from Tang Pidi arrived. This time Cao Ying was genuinely rattled. He convened another meeting with his subordinates, and they too grew somewhat anxious — because analyzing Tang Pidi’s silence, they could draw roughly two conclusions.
First, naturally, Tang Pidi was unsatisfied — thought the amount too low. Second, Tang Pidi wasn’t merely unsatisfied — he actually wanted to fight.
One rebel general slammed the table and rose to his feet: “Just who does he think he’s looking down on!”
The entire room turned to stare at him.
This general said loudly: “Not even writing back — it’s obvious he thinks we can’t come up with any more grain, and can’t be bothered to deal with us. Such contempt is something we absolutely cannot tolerate! General, I think we genuinely must not stand for it. We have to make Tang Pidi understand he’s wrong about us — we have what it takes!”
Those present could barely restrain themselves from applauding.
Brilliant… this was truly brilliant.
Some were already starting to envy it — how had they not thought of something so good?
The force left behind here was one that had been savaged by the Ning Army — savaged by a Ning Army far smaller in number than themselves.
The nightmare of the Battle of Suzhou, where three hundred thousand Ning soldiers had chased and slaughtered seven hundred thousand rebel troops, still hadn’t passed.
As long as there was a way not to fight, and everyone could go about their business in peace — wasn’t that better than fighting to the death?
So when Cao Ying heard his subordinates rising with such righteous indignation, he felt they made complete sense, and nodded. “You’re right. Tang Pidi looks down on us like this — it truly is something we cannot stand for.”
The whole room burst into agreement.
“Exactly! When has our rebel army ever been so belittled? He thinks we can’t come up with it, and we can’t? We’ll show him we can — and throw it right back in his face!”
“I say, this time we go all the way in one shot. We have to make Tang Pidi never dare look down on us again.”
If Luo Jing had been present, he might have found this scene even more farcical, even more absurd.
But were these people truly fools?
Once you reached their position, you couldn’t help but think about more things — about yourself, about the future, about life and death.
They were no longer who they used to be — men who’d stormed the world with a woodcutter’s cleaver, going at anyone who didn’t submit.
Now they were all generals. They had rank and standing. They no longer held in their hands that cleaver that had once given them boundless courage and strength, and having traded it for a fine sword, none of them wanted the cleaver back.
Cao Ying included — none of them had any real confidence that the Overlord Li Xionghu could defeat Prince Wu.
They even had to consider whether Prince Ning Li Chi’s chances of becoming the master of the realm might be greater than those of their Overlord.
Even setting aside Prince Ning Li Chi, they had to wonder whether Yang Xuanji’s chances of eventually ascending the throne might be greater still.
At Cao Ying’s level, though still regarded as a rebel force in others’ eyes, were they not — in some sense — regional lords?
Holding two hundred thousand soldiers was Cao Ying’s capital for survival.
If Li Xionghu were defeated in Jingzhou, those two hundred thousand men would allow Cao Ying’s position to rise sharply overnight. Never mind contending for the realm — whoever eventually won it, if Cao Ying came with two hundred thousand men to submit, wouldn’t that still be the capital of a regional lord?
After fighting all these years, the truth was most people were tired of fighting.
Cao Ying’s subordinates felt the same as he did. In the end, if they could live in peace as officials, under whoever’s banner, so long as they could hold onto their current position — that would be the best outcome.
Fight the Ning Army?
Which of the generals present could guarantee walking away without a scratch?
When all was said and done, their lives had become precious.
So the next day, Cao Ying’s personal letter was sent to Suzhou City, where it was promptly laid before Tang Pidi.
“Five hundred thousand shi?”
Luo Jing heard what Tang Pidi said and his eyes went wide — wider than the last time.
He asked: “Has Cao Ying lost his mind?”
Tang Pidi said: “He hasn’t lost his mind. Looking at you, though, you’re nearly there.”
Luo Jing said: “Of course I’m nearly losing my mind. He’s giving this much — how can we still bring ourselves to attack? I haven’t fought a battle in several months!”
Tang Pidi laughed: “Even you feel it would be shameless to attack now. So truly, we cannot fight.”
Luo Jing: “Right… wait, no — what do you mean, ‘even you’?”
Tang Pidi: “Let me ask you something.”
Luo Jing: “What?”
Tang Pidi said: “With Cao Ying being this cooperative, can you still push him?”
Luo Jing’s eyes narrowed slightly: “You mean you want me to be the villain?”
Tang Pidi said: “He’s been wanting to meet in person all this time. After we collect his five hundred thousand shi of grain, go and meet him in my stead.”
Tang Pidi tapped his fingers lightly on the table: “Ask him whether he’d like to go to Yangzhou and live a comfortable life. If he’s willing, the Ning Army will never trouble him. Take his twenty thousand men, settle down properly in Yangzhou and watch how things unfold. I think that would suit him nicely.”
A light appeared in Luo Jing’s eyes.
Subduing the enemy without fighting — and it could be done like this?
Old Tang had used a few letters and five hundred thousand shi of grain to determine that Cao Ying simply did not want to fight — and not just a little bit reluctant, but every-possible-way-he-could-think-of reluctant. That kind of “don’t want to fight” was worlds apart from “somewhat reluctant.”