Realizing that everyone was looking at her—some with amusement, others eager for a show, and still others dismissing her out of hand—Miao Shu realized that she had spoken rather sharply. Offending the other party would only make her situation more difficult. She had no choice but to rein in her temper, though her words still carried a barb.
It wasn't that she couldn't listen to unpleasant truths.
She simply couldn't stand hearing people sing Shen Tang's praises.
"According to the Registrar, Shen Thief acts with care and considers every detail. She wouldn't do anything that destroys her own foundations. So those twenty thousand troops outside the city can't possibly be cooks posing as soldiers. Otherwise, what would Shen Thief gain from it? Bringing over ten thousand elite troops under her command to attack Sibao Prefecture and hand us military merit?" Miao Shu returned the Registrar's words to him verbatim. Shen Tang was only human. Surely she could make mistakes?
Building up another's ambition while deflating our own!
Xun Ding nearly laughed aloud when he heard this.
By that reasoning, Longwu Commandery's rear defenses were secure, and the twenty thousand elite troops on the front lines weren't padded with fakes. But those two conclusions contradicted each other.
Where had the extra ten thousand or so elite troops come from?
Fallen from the sky, or conjured out of thin air?
Or had she borrowed them from someone?
He had barely finished thinking when Miao Shu said, "The two claims can't both be true. One of them must be false, meant to confuse us..."
The Registrar seemed well-mannered. Even when Miao Shu snapped at him in front of everyone, he didn't get angry. His tone remained as even as before, without the slightest fluctuation. "Why couldn't Shen Thief have borrowed troops from someone?