Holding the two weighty sets of bamboo slips, Zi Shou was so moved that tears nearly filled his eyes.
Look at this! Just look!
Only reliable people can get things done reliably!
From this day on, Li Bing and Shen Gongbao are my brothers!
Zi Shou felt he had finally mastered the proper way to earn Foolishness Value. Tasks like flood control and suppressing rebellions could not be finished overnight. No matter how things turned around, they still took time!
By then, the settlement period would be long over!
If I control more floods and crush more rebellions, why worry about not ascending on the spot and punching straight through the Heavenly Dao?
Zi Shou opened Shen Gongbao's report first.
Excellent. The Marquis of the East's eight thousand troops were blocked on their way into Pingling, intercepted by over ten thousand members of the foreign tribes whom King Pingling had duped into swallowing his nonsense.
He read on. With a speech before the two armies, Shen Gongbao had brought the foreign tribes over to surrender.
Zi Shou frowned. Were these foreign tribes really so easy to fool?
He kept reassuring himself. Eight thousand men plus the foreign tribes only came to twenty thousand. Twenty thousand could not take Pingling, especially since most of the tribesmen were cavalry, and cavalry could not storm a city.
Shen Gongbao had ridden alone into Bird Yi territory and borrowed three thousand Yi archers.
Twenty-three thousand. They can't even get through the gates. What, are three thousand archers going to shoot the gates to pieces?
He read on.
Indeed, those few men had not stormed the city. They had not needed to. They had never even approached its gates before the people inside handed it over.
Shen Gongbao had arrayed his troops beneath the city