After sending Zhang Youren away and ordering Fang Xiang, Fang Bi, and Chao Lei to muster the troops for departure, Zi Shou spent a long time thinking in his tent.
Though he knew nothing about warfare, he knew a famous line from Sun Tzu's Art of War: engage with the regular force, win with the unexpected.
The character for "unexpected" in that phrase was pronounced ji, and was also called "the remainder," meaning the portion left over.
To win a battle, the basic strategy was to hold firm at the front, keep the battle line steady, then send a surprise force to break through from any direction other than the front and secure so-called victory.
Cao Cao had annotated this strategy, and Li Shimin had mentioned it, even expounding on it at length in Tang Li Questions and Answers. Both were monarchs who ruled from horseback, and their ability to command armies was beyond question.
Ever since preparing for the campaign, Zi Shou had looked into how people of this era fought their wars. They, too, could not escape the principle of engaging with the regular force and winning with the unexpected.
That was because this strategic concept had actually originated in Emperor Xuanyuan's Woqi Classic, the book that served as the foundation of military strategy for nearly every general of the age.
That was why, from the moment he set out, he had endlessly slowed the march, never dividing his forces, only adding more troops. Not only had he given E Shun room to catch his breath and caused his own surprise attack to fail, but by constantly adding troops, he had also prevented Wen Zhong, Lu Xiong, and the others at court from losing patience and leading an army off to do the job themselves. There would be