When news arrived of the rebellion's failure in Jiangdong, Cao Mao was not the least bit surprised.
Their approach had been simple and crude, but however mad Sun Hao might be, he would certainly have left trusted aides to hold Jianye.
There was no reason to think a madman had no trusted aides.
His maternal uncles, his father's former subordinates, those he had promoted and rewarded, and those he valued enough to form marriage ties with.
These were all his trusted aides.
The great clans hoped to win these people over, but that would hardly be easy.
And Cao Mao knew that similar incidents would happen frequently in the Wu Kingdom in the days ahead. There was Ding Gu, the general who held Jianye for Sun Hao.
Before long, he too would want to launch a rebellion, conspiring with Shi Ji and others to replace the emperor.
In the end, they abandoned the idea because someone among them opposed it.
From Sun Hao's accession until his capture, rebellions and struggles had never ceased within the Wu Kingdom, most of them directed against this mad emperor.
In the end, these people were slaughtered. Even Wan Yu, who had helped Sun Hao take the throne, died at his hands.
Looking at the document in his hands, Cao Mao merely shook his head and set it aside.
He still had to act and achieve unification before Sun Hao began tormenting the common people. Sun Hao's tormenting of the people was different from Puyang Xing's. Puyang Xing had put them through hardship for irrigation, land reclamation, and such projects; Sun Hao did it purely for his own pleasure.
The south's population was already small. How could it withstand such torment from Sun Hao?
The difficulty Cao Mao now faced was the Wu Kingdom's turtle-shell