My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 68: Transfer to Chaisang
The Zhuge brothers made a plan and that night ordered their soldiers to be rewarded and given a good rest.

They took out the wine and meat left by the enemy army and provided them with a treat.

Zhuge Jin also did not forget to immediately reward those soldiers who had turned from darkness to light, so he rewarded the surrendered brothers Li Yi and Li Wu, Marquis of Qujun, with several ingots of horseshoe gold.

He also promoted Li Yi to the position of military commander on the spot, and put him in charge of leading all 1,200 surrendered soldiers in Pengze County, without breaking up their old troops or trying to control them.

This is not the correct military strategy. Normally, the control of surrendered troops should be handled more cautiously.

After hearing about his elder brother's decision, Zhuge Liang also complained privately and reminded him, "We must soon let these surrendered troops launch a new attack. If they are not separated, I am afraid that their fighting spirit will not be firm in times of crisis." However, he did not force it and just said so.

Because Zhuge Liang also knew that once the reward order was issued and then taken back, it would definitely arouse greater backlash and distrust.

He just expressed in a tactful way that he hoped his elder brother would be more comprehensive in terms of rewards and punishments in the future.

Zhuge Jin also took the attitude of "I can't adopt it this time, but I still encourage you to propose it" to his brother's proposal, and patiently explained:

“It’s not that I don’t know the art of war, but you, my second brother, have only been in contact with our army for a short time and don’t understand the composition of our army. Although Lord Xuande only gave us 4,000 reinforcements, and half of them are with Yunchang, these are elite soldiers, and they are the Danyang soldiers who have been slowly accumulated since Tao Qian took charge of Xuzhou many years ago.

Most of the Danyang soldiers were Shanyue people, while those county soldiers who were coerced by Zuo Rong were mostly local Han farmers in Guangling and Danyang. If the county soldiers who were farmers were dispersed into the Danyang soldiers, it would inevitably cause more trouble due to incompatible customs. It would be better to show trust and allow Li Yi to continue to lead his old troops.

Moreover, it's not that I didn't pay attention to winning over and controlling him. I've already learned from indirect sources that Li Yi seemed to have family members in Guangling County. Although I don't know whether they are still alive, he definitely has some clan members.

I just temporarily adjusted and promoted several surrendered officers, all of whom have ties to Guangling. Guangling is now under the rule of Lord Xuande, and the customs are solemn.

In the past two days, I have arranged for some Danyang soldiers who have lived in Guangling for a long time and are familiar with the local situation to make friends with these officers who are from Guangling and have concerns about the local area. Introducing more about Guangling’s current situation will surely be able to subtly win over the hearts of the soldiers. "

After listening to this, Zhuge Liang nodded in admiration.

It turned out that it was not that the eldest brother did not know the art of war, but that the eldest brother understood the actual situation of the army better than him and was able to target his troops more effectively.

Of course Zhuge Liang is not bad either. The reason he didn't think of this is not because of his ability. He just saw his eldest brother's army today and didn't have time to understand the inside story.

However, this also planted another experience, or "caution" in Zhuge Liang's mind:
When leading troops in the future, one must try to grasp the various aspects of the army in detail, such as the soldiers' hometowns, backgrounds, and other factors, so that one can manage the army in a targeted manner.

Zhuge Liang, who had just made his debut in actual combat for one day, grew rapidly and learned many valuable battlefield experiences, which he combined with the military strategies he had learned from paper.

If it weren’t for his biological brother teaching him and taking him to fight.

If you want to learn by suffering losses yourself, or by watching others suffer losses, each of these experiences will take several months or even a year and a half to gain by commanding the troops.

……

After a night of nourishment and adequate rest for the soldiers, the army was mobilized again early the next morning.

Although there were more than 1,200 surrendered troops, it was impossible for Zhuge Jin to take them all away.

So he left 600 Danyang soldiers to guard the city, and another 500 people led by Chen Dao to protect him, and stayed in Pengze County for a few days to develop some means of conquering the hearts and minds of the people.

The remaining 3,500 people, led by Gan Ning, first took a boat to cross the Pengli Lake to the west, preparing to besiege Chaisang and set up a siege camp first.

Judging from the time, when the troops arrived, the Chaisang defenders should have known the news of Pengze's fall, but they might not have had time to react.

Gan Ning had 3,500 men, so he was absolutely not afraid of the 6,000 men in the city rushing out to fight back in the field, nor was he afraid of the defenders opening the sluice gates and taking boats out to fight on the water.

If that happened, Zhuge Jin would wake up laughing in his dreams.

The rebel soldiers under Zuo Rong dared to engage in a naval battle with Gan Ning, who was a Jinfan bandit. Even though they had several times the advantage in military strength, they were courting death.

Gan Ning appeared outside Chaisang City and surrounded the south side of the city and blocked the east side facing the lake with warships.

The commander of the Chaisang bandit army became agitated, but he did not go into battle.

Gan Ning was quite satisfied with the result, so he maintained the siege pressure while building heavy siege equipment on the spot.

He had learned from the surrendered generals that the commander of Chaisang was Zuo Rong's cousin Zuo Yuan, and that there was another deputy commander, Chen Heng, who was the military commander under the command of Xue Li, the former governor of Danyang. These people were not ambitious.

Chen Heng had participated in the Battle of Danyang with Xue Li and Zuo Rong at the beginning of last year, but was defeated by Sun Ce. Afterwards, Zuo Rong murdered his master, and Chen Heng was dragged into it.

In terms of military ability, Chen Heng is definitely stronger, but he is definitely not as trusted as his own family members.

And that Zuo Yuan is not actually his real name, but a Buddhist name. After pretending to believe in Buddhism, the Zuo Rong clan changed their names, using words like "Yuan Rong Tong Da" to make it seem like they were very knowledgeable in Buddhism.

I guess if you just put two characters from the names of the Zuo family together, they can be used as the brand of an express company in the future.

Gan Ning proceeded steadily as he surrounded and built the city, and soon several days had passed in the blink of an eye.

The troops in the city were completely motionless, but the enemies from Haihun County in the south sent some reinforcements from the lake through the Pengli Lake waterway, wanting to know the latest situation in Chaisang.

So the two armies fought a battle on the lake, and the outcome was naturally unpredictable. The Zuo family army lost hundreds of lives in vain, and also captured more than 20 small boats and 300 to 400 prisoners.

There were even more defeated soldiers who, after being boarded by Gan Ning's army, chose to jump directly into the lake to escape when they were clearly crushed in hand-to-hand combat. There were hundreds of them in total.

The casualties of Gan Ning's troops totaled only a few dozen people, which shows that Zuo Rong's naval warfare strength was far inferior to Gan Ning's.

With such a small price to pay, we eliminated another one or two thousand men of the Zuo family army. It must be said that it was quite cost-effective.

Moreover, the situation of Haihunlai's water reinforcements being severely beaten on the lake was seen by the lookouts of the bandits in Chaisang City, which was also a big blow to the morale of the bandit troops defending the city.

Since ancient times, there has been no more depressing situation in a city defense battle than seeing the reinforcements being destroyed.

The accumulated instability bit by bit continued to push the psychological defense line of the Chaisang defenders to gradually collapse.

……

Gan Ning was steadily tightening the siege pressure on the front line, and Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang in the rear certainly would not waste time.

In the past few days, they have each followed their own ideas and urgently deployed some tricks to undermine the enemy's morale.

Zhuge Liang took the lead in thoroughly investigating the property of all captured rebel officials in the city, looking for those evil thieves who were usually known for their piety but were finally found to have a large amount of savings.

Then they make various propaganda with irrefutable evidence to show that they embezzled money from Buddhist activities.

When Zhuge Jin helped his brother do this, he also gave it a little push.

Those rebel officers originally had cut hair, so when the city was captured, they were pursued by Gan Ning's army with force, and most of them were injured.

Those who were more seriously injured would have died anyway. Even if they didn't die, they would have certainly been beheaded for their crimes. It was a legal punishment and they deserved to die.

Therefore, Zhuge Jin would not feel bad if they died in a more miserable way.

He knew very well that those believers who were deceived by the teachings of the Buddha believed that as long as they were pious, they would be able to achieve bliss after death. He also believed that the death of the pious would be more peaceful, just like they could achieve nirvana by sitting in meditation, which made them seem indifferent to life and death.

In this case, Zhuge Jin used some of his knowledge of infectious medicine to make these people die in a state of chronic ulceration, filthiness, and screaming, which would undermine the faith of believers. No one would believe that someone who died so ugly would ascend to heaven.

In addition to arresting these monks for their double-faced crimes, Zhuge Liang also did one thing in the past few days. Under the inspiration and guidance of his elder brother, he finally made a "Kongming Lantern" using paper or waxed gauze and bamboo strips.
The heat generated by the small candle inside the lamp can be used to float the lamp into the air. Although the direction cannot be controlled, it can only float randomly, and it will go out and fall after a stick of incense at most, so it is difficult to have practical value. However, this kind of thing is very useful in "creating miracles" and striking a blow to the psychology of fanatical superstitious people, and it can be regarded as a professional counterpart.

Zhuge Jin also wanted to help his younger brother achieve the results he deserved as soon as possible to avoid being overwhelmed by his own butterfly effect.

It’s a pity that Zhuge Liang had not yet taken the name “Kongming”, so it cannot be named Kongming Lantern, and can only be called “Zhuge Lantern”. But anyway, Zhuge Jin did not grab this title and told others that it was made by his second brother, and that was enough.

……

Zhuge Liang's measures and tactics were all being carried out in an orderly manner, and Zhuge Jin was certainly not to be outdone. He naturally thought of a way to "show miracles and combat the fanatics' beliefs", which was to slightly remake the Heroic steam ball that the Ptolemaic Empire used to open the temple door more than a hundred years ago.

It was obviously a pipe dream for Zhuge Jin to build a steam engine in the Han Dynasty. Even the Newcomen steam engine, which was more primitive than the Watt steam engine, was impossible.

However, it is not difficult to make a copper steam ball that uses a pipe to spray steam. Just forge and fuse two copper pots that are almost hemispherical together, make them as airtight as possible, and then drill holes and fuse a few copper pipes to them.

The reason why Zhuge Jin thought of making such a "toy" was obviously because he knew:
Historically, steam balls were first used by the temple priests of the Ptolemaic Empire, who were willing to use this expensive, flashy, energy-inefficient and uneconomical thing to perform miracles.

The temple has a copper ball filled with water and an air pipe at each end. The steam sprayed from these two air pipes is in opposite directions, so the torque can be used to drive the copper ball to rotate.

The axis of the copper ball is connected to the axis of the temple gate, which can drive the temple gate to open and close automatically without anyone pushing it.

To put it bluntly, using this steam ball to open the door consumes at least a hundred times more energy than manually pushing the door, and the energy efficiency is shockingly low.

But the economic benefits of performing miracles are never considered. What the priests want is the shocking effect of "the power of the gods can automatically drive the temple door to open and close without people pushing it" in exchange for a hundred times more piety and offerings from believers.

Just as when Gutenberg's printing press was first invented, the first batch of customers were for printing indulgences, the second batch of customers were for printing playing cards, and the third batch of customers were for printing colored indescribable things.

Superstition and gambling, plus another primitive demand, are often the earliest investors and users of a new technology in its most inefficient and least economical embryonic stage, because these industries are profitable enough to bear the huge cost of inefficient new technology.

Zhuge Jin knew the general laws of the evolution of human technology, so it was normal for him to make such a choice.

……

Zhuge Jin's steam ball project, Zhuge Liang's Kongming lantern project, and the investigation into the evidence of Buddhist monks' corruption were all completed almost simultaneously, and it only took three days.

The twenty-second day of the twelfth lunar month was the fourth day after the fall of Pengze County.

More than one hundred lightly wounded monks who were about to be released were taken to the newly built monastery in the city a year ago.

These monk soldiers were all terrified, thinking they would be treated harshly.

When they entered the main hall, they saw that the statue, which was made of thousands of kilograms of copper, was hidden by two paper doors. They were all shocked, thinking that the copper statue had been melted down by the government troops and used to make coins.

But this worry soon dissipated, because just as they were worried, there was a copper ball under each of the two paper doors, which made a humming sound and then started to spin.

As it rotates, auspicious clouds linger and a fairy air fills the air.

Although there were huge eternal lamps burning under the two copper balls, and the flames were particularly large, no one associated it with steam. People of that era really lacked common sense in science.

In particular, the gas-conducting copper tubes on these two copper balls are completely different from those of the Hero steam balls of the Ptolemaic Empire - the Hero steam balls only have two copper tubes that spray air in opposite directions, but these balls have four, distributed in a "swastika" shape, which just seems to match the beliefs of those monk soldiers.

The air coming out from the ends of the four strokes of the character "卍" will make the ball rotate clockwise.

After the auspicious clouds lingered for a while, the paper door in front of the bronze statue was twisted open by the rotating bronze ball. The bronze statue was still shining brightly and still in the same place, but it was covered with a layer of mist and clouds, which made the monks and soldiers kneel down and kowtow.

At this moment, some ethereal sounds suddenly floated from somewhere in the Buddhist hall - of course, the people in the hall didn't know that Zhuge Jin had used the principle of echo to make some slight changes to the structure and display of the house in the past few days.

Zhuge Jin didn't know much about the design of the echo effect, but he at least knew the idea that "changing the furnishings and distance in the room can change the echo effect." The rest was just trial and error, and achieving whatever level he could.

Today, the echo design of this room is still not good enough, but it is barely enough to meet the requirement of "hiding the original voice position of the speaker". Equipped with a wooden tube speaker as a "voice changer", and speaking in a pinched voice as much as possible, it will definitely mislead those monk soldiers.

Then, the disembodied voice enumerated the crimes of those monks who had amassed wealth, and said that the gods and Buddhas were omniscient and had long known about their greed and their use of the names of gods and Buddhas to amass wealth. These people would surely go to hell and would be even more miserable than those who did not believe.

Finally, a group of guards sent by Zhuge Liang took the seized hidden property of the monks and carried it in to show the monk soldiers who were about to be released.

Then, several people with festering bodies, dying and screaming in repentance were carried in. They no longer had their usual dignity and just cried and begged for a quick death to end their suffering.

These lightly injured monks were greatly shocked, and their entire faith collapsed.

Then Zhuge Jin sent people to observe secretly, picked out those that were obviously collapsed particularly thoroughly, and had his own soldiers monitor and detain the prisoners in several warships, ready to announce the release of the prisoners when they arrived outside Chaisang City.

Those who didn't collapse completely enough were kept in prison and awaiting reform, while the fanatics who were stubborn and refused to collapse were executed.

……

"For those who deceive others into fanaticism, it is not enough to just destroy their bodies. They will also be remembered as martyrs.

Therefore, they must be disgraced before their death and die in a filthy manner, so that their souls will be completely destroyed and there will be no recovery.

From now on, this trick can be used against those fanatical people among the remnants of the Yellow Turbans, as well as cunning monks and officials, and rice thieves and chief priests.

These bronze vessels are so poorly made, so inefficient, and so useless that they can only be used to play tricks and defeat sorcery with magic."

After completing all this psychological warfare, Zhuge Jin shared his experience with his brother in the final "project closing summary".

This was not Zhuge Jin's unilateral teaching, but more like the two brothers brainstorming and inspiring each other, and each of them matured a little.

After all, the means were still a bit cruel and ruthless, and Zhuge Liang's young mind was not suitable for experiencing too much extreme psychological warfare.

Zhuge Jin took on most of the psychological pressure by himself, and did not let Zhuge Liang participate too much in the process. He just summarized a few sentences for Zhuge Liang to hear.

After doing all this, the Zhuge brothers took 500 guards and the lightly injured prisoners who were about to be released and whose minds had been reformed, crossed the Pengli Lake and came to the siege camp outside Chaisang County to meet Gan Ning.

"Xingba, the siege was not dangerous these days, right? I heard that you even repelled the enemy reinforcements from Haihun County?"

When Zhuge Jin met Gan Ning, he asked about the battle situation. He had dark circles under his eyes, and it was obvious that he was too busy in recent days with various deployments in Pengze County.

Zhuge Liang actually had some dark circles under his eyes, and Zhuge Jin also knew that young people should not work too hard, as they were still growing. However, this opportunity for his debut battle should be seized and he should quickly gain experience.

After getting through these few days, we will arrange some time for Aliang to rest and adjust, combining work and rest.

When Gan Ning saw the tired looks of the Zhuge brothers, he knew that they must have been planning a big event. Although he didn't know the details yet, Gan Ning's confidence had been boosted.

The trick that made the Zhuge brothers spend so much brains and energy, when it is really used, won’t it make the enemy so trapped that they won’t even be able to find their pants?
Just this idea in his mind gave Gan Ning more confidence.

"Don't worry, Captain. The Chaisang defenders have lost their nerve and are now determined to defend to the death." He assured, patting his chest.

Zhuge Jin nodded and said, "Then let's carry out the plan. Go and have someone tell the guards that we want to release the prisoners, and they are monk soldiers."

Gan Ning was stunned, not understanding why those who refused to repent should be released, but since Captain Zhuge had spoken, it must make sense, so he carried out the order anyway.

When Chen Heng, who was on the top of Chaisang City, heard the news, he couldn't believe it for a moment. He asked his personal soldiers to inform and ask for instructions from Zuo Yuan. The other party went to the city to check in person and confirmed that the people pushed up by the government troops were indeed the captured monks of Pengze. He also felt uneasy in his heart.

However, not accepting the released prisoners in public would be a very demoralizing act, especially since these monk soldiers were from the direct lineage.

In the end, Zuo Yuan brought all the people back without figuring out the enemy's intentions.

Little did they know that nothing happened on the first day. On the second day, some gossip began to spread, but it had not yet reached the ears of the top management.

On the third day, when Zuo Yuan heard the rumor that something was wrong, it was too late and he could not keep silent at all.

"What's going on? Aren't these people fanatically believing that my brother is a bodhisattva? How could they betray us? This is impossible! What kind of magic did those despicable people of the Zhuge family use!"

After severely torturing a traitor who spread rumors, Zuo Yuan was so angry that his eyes went dark and he couldn't understand what was going on.

As for the Zhuge army outside the city, after several days of psychological warfare and siege, they had apparently prepared siege equipment and at least had built several ladders, ready to launch a strong attack on Chaisang.

Haihun County also sent no more reinforcements. It was not known whether they were frightened by the killing, or had no reinforcements to send, or were entangled by Guan Yu.

(End of this chapter)