"Gentlemen." Kuai Liang rose to his feet and swept his gaze across everyone before saying word by word, "I don't know whether Liu Bei's target is Jingzhou. I don't know whether Zhang Xiu and Zhang He have already sent out their troops. I don't know how King of Wei will react if Liu Bei's target really is Jingzhou, or whether he'll fight Liu Bei's army to the death with all his might."
"I don't know any of that, because the initiative isn't in our hands at all."
"Guan Yu can attack Yiling, or simply bypass Yiling and follow the river downstream to attack Jiangling. He can also head straight north and attack Xiangyang. The choice of where to fight rests with Guan Yu. We can only be manipulated at will."
"But we don't have much time left!"
"We must make a decision. Either we bet on Guan Yu following the standard procedure and advancing step by step to attack Yiling, while we defend each city in turn and stall for enough time to await King of Wei's reinforcements; or we concentrate all our troops and supplies in Xiangyang, hold out in a single city, and live or die with Xiangyang."
"We have to choose—and we have to do it right now!"
Kuai Liang's impassioned speech left everyone's spirits soaring... Yeah, right!
The hell, he hadn't given them a concrete answer from beginning to end. Were they supporting the attack or not? Did he think they were Liu Biao, whom he could fool with empty talk?
Huang Zu glared fiercely at Kuai Liang, looking ready to stab him to death on the spot if he dared keep playing with words. Damn it, these people always dropped the ball at the critical moment. Not one of them was worth a damn!
"Uh..."