Xiao Baoyue gave a cold laugh. "What an arrogant claim! You're merely a scholar, poring over books and exhausting the classics, hunting through texts and playing with words, yet you dare boast so shamelessly that Marquis Wu's strategy fell short! Very well, then. Tell me this strategy for pacifying the Southern Man that Marquis Wu failed to reach! Let me hear the brilliant insights of our gifted scholar!"
Seeing that Wang Yang seemed to know something of history, Xiao Baoyue had begun to think somewhat better of him. Now that he had actually criticized Marquis Wu's strategy for pacifying the Southern Man as having "fallen short," she immediately felt that scholars were indeed frivolous. Reading a few lines of history did nothing to change their flippant nature. Thus, she placed an especially sarcastic emphasis on "gifted scholar."
"Gladly." With a bowl of iced dessert in his stomach, Wang Yang had regained some energy. He snapped his folding fan shut and said slowly, "To pacify the Southern Man, one must combine the Kingly Way with the Hegemonic Way."
Xiao Baoyue shook her head with a light laugh. "Grand words with nothing behind them."
Wang Yang was not offended. He smiled and asked, "Do you know the greatest problem successive dynasties have faced in governing the Southern Man?"
Xiao Baoyue found this tedious. Taking small sips of pear soup, she answered languidly, "What is it?"
"Force cannot make them submit; virtue cannot bring them peace."
Xiao Baoyue mulled over those words, her brows drawing together slightly.
Without waiting for her to think it through, Wang Yang asked, "If all Southern Qi's troops were mustered against the Southern Man and given five years, could they wipe them out?"
Xiao Baoyue pondered without answering.
Wang Yang asked again, "Given ten years, could they exterminate