Tai Chi Pushing Hands Technique and Xu

The Mountain-Earth Stripping Hexagram that Yu Fan had divined while in Jiangxia had, for some reason, spread throughout the various military camps. Sun Quan often heard it discussed while inspecting the troops, and every time he heard the phrase "the petty man strips the hut," he felt as though he were being slapped in the face. Consequently, he would deliberately seize upon other matters to silence the idle chatter.

In the eleventh month, news of the total annihilation of Lu Meng and Pan Zhang's forces was intentionally leaked to Chaisang by Su Fei. Following the instructions of Lan Tian, the message demanded that Jiangdong pay a ransom in the form of money, grain, cattle, and sheep.

(During the Three Kingdoms period, human trafficking existed. For example, Records of the Three Kingdoms: Biography of Chen Tai records: "The nobles of the capital often entrusted their valuables to Chen Tai to purchase slaves. Tai hung them all on the wall without breaking the seals, and when he was summoned to serve as a Minister, he returned them all.")

Because Jiangdong practiced a private army system, the buqu were the private property of the master's family—they could be inherited, gifted, or even traded. Lan Tian's proposal of this model was beyond reproach. He set the price for an ordinary soldier at 50,000 coins, an ordinary general at 5 million, a mid-level general at 50 million, and a high-level general at 200 million.

(For prisoner price references, see Baidu: In Biography of Ren Gu, Yang Jun and another person jointly bought a slave for 16 bolts of cloth. Later, the slave's family redeemed him for 60 bolts. At the end of the Han Dynasty, the price of cloth was 250–600 coins; taking the median value of 450 coins per bolt, the purchase price was