The Stratagem of Sowing Discord

A dozen fine horses galloped fiercely into the night, charging toward Gao Jie's military camp located five miles away. The riders were all dressed in plain civilian attire; they were the fifteen elite assassins secretly dispatched by Wang Lanping. The success of this mission would determine whether Gao Jie and his force of thirty thousand troops could be smoothly neutralized.

The horses quickly reached the outskirts of Gao Jie's camp, where they were surrounded by a group of guards a hundred paces before the perimeter.

Dozens of long spears were leveled at them. "Military camp ahead! Trespassers will be shown no mercy!"

The fifteen men showed no sign of panic. Their leader calmly reached into his tunic, retrieved an iron token, and handed it over while saying, "We have urgent business with General Gao. Report this immediately!"

One of the night patrol soldiers recognized the token—it was Xu Dingguo's official seal. Realizing they belonged to General Xu, the soldiers' attitudes immediately softened. Coming in the dead of night must mean something of great consequence, and no one dared to delay. A patrolman looked the dozen-odd men up and down, then tossed them a single phrase before turning away: "Wait here."

This token was the very one Wang Lanping had deftly stolen while Xu Dingguo lay drunk at the banquet.

Gao Jie was jerked awake from his dreams and began cursing furiously.

The moment he heard that people had been sent by Xu Dingguo, all sleep vanished from him. He casually threw on a robe and ordered the visitors to be brought in.

"Wait!" Gao Jie changed his mind in the blink of an eye. Xu Dingguo had already sent men at noon; why were they coming again, and in the dead of night? Such a time had never been chosen for messengers before. Deep suspicion filled Gao Jie's mind.

Having survived years of brutal warfare, Gao Jie could smell the faint scent of danger in this obvious anomaly. Sending fifteen secret envoys at once, and riding at a gallop with such fanfare—did Xu Dingguo take Wang Lanping and the others for fools, or was he playing some new trick?

After a moment of reflection, Gao Jie asked, "Where are the men?"

"Outside the camp."

Gao Jie instructed, "Have them wait in place. I will be right there."

"Understood!"

Shortly thereafter, Gao Jie arrived outside the camp accompanied by dozens of guards, and dozens of torches were instantly lit. The fifteen men waiting outside had grown somewhat anxious and tense. Upon seeing a figure who looked like a military officer emerge, they peered closely and confirmed it was indeed Gao Jie, whose appearance they had clearly memorized from the city walls a few days prior.

"Greetings, Lord Regional Commander," the fifteen men chorused, dropping to their knees in a simultaneous salute.

Gao Jie stopped a dozen paces away from them. By the flickering torchlight, he scrutinized the men holding Xu Dingguo's token. Their faces were entirely unfamiliar; he did not recognize a single one. The longer he looked, the more suspicious he became. It was impossible for Xu Dingguo to send complete strangers.

"Are you all Xu Dingguo's soldiers?" Gao Jie demanded.

"Yes, your humble servants are all soldiers of the Mountain Division under General Xu's command."

Gao Jie pressed, "How is it that I have never seen you before?" In truth, even if they genuinely were Xu Dingguo's men, Gao Jie wouldn't have recognized them—with tens of thousands of troops in the entire army, where would he find the time to know them all?

"Our status is lowly, so how could the General possibly recognize us?"

***

Gao Jie remained half-doubting and unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. However, Xu Dingguo's token was genuine beyond a doubt; such an important item would certainly not be shown lightly.

Gao Jie nodded slightly. "What brings you here on Xu Dingguo's orders?"

"To deliver a message."

"A message? Yangzhou City is merely five miles away from here. Was it really necessary to make such a fuss? Sending fifteen men just to deliver a message—aren't you afraid of leaking the secret?"

"We do not know. This was General Xu's arrangement."

"And where is the letter?" Gao Jie asked.

"It is a verbal message."

Gao Jie paused, glancing sideways at a few of his guards. Understanding the cue, the guards walked up to the man claiming to have a verbal message and conducted a thorough body search, confirming he carried no weapons.

"Step forward," Gao Jie nodded to him, his hands instinctively shifting into a defensive posture.

The man walked slowly forward, approaching Gao Jie, leaned in close to his ear, and whispered, "General Xu asked me to tell you not to stand in the way of his rise to power and fortune. He... he has endured you for a long time." With that, he lunged forward, seized Gao Jie in a tight bear hug, dragged him backward, and roared at the top of his lungs, "Brothers, what are you waiting for?!"

Gao Jie had crawled his way out of piles of corpses on the battlefield. The moment the other's body moved, he knew treachery was afoot. Instantly, hands and feet flew into action. Even as he was being grabbed, Gao Jie shoved forward hard with both hands and launched a flying kick into the man's lower abdomen. But the assailant's grip was iron-tight; agile though Gao Jie was, he could not break free in a split second, as the man's hands maintained a death-grip on his collar.

The remaining fourteen men, standing two丈 away, saw their companion launch the sudden attack and surged forward as one, pulling daggers from their sleeves and lunging at Gao Jie with flashing cold steel. Gao Jie's dozens of guards reacted swiftly as well, though because the attackers were too close to General Gao, they dared not act rashly. Instead, they could only shout frantically from the sidelines, "Assassins! Assassins! Surround them! Surround them!"

These fifteen men were Shi Kefa's most loyal elite assassins. They had never intended to return from this mission. To assassinate an opposing commander within a military camp meant certain death, success or failure notwithstanding.

Fourteen daggers wove a web of flashing blades closing in on Gao Jie. Despite his formidable combat skills, Gao Jie was forced to dodge left and right while dragging the man who clung desperately to his clothes, yet he miraculously sustained not a single wound. With a thunderous roar, Gao Jie seized the iron-like grip of his attacker and threw them both into a rolling tumble directly toward the feet of his own guards.

Once the assassins missed their initial opening, they lost their only golden opportunity. Gao Jie's guards had already swarmed forward, and dozens of long spears pinned five or six assassins to the ground in the blink of an eye. The assassin grappling with Gao Jie had his arm snapped during the tumble and passed out, only to be hacked beyond recognition by a flurry of blades from Gao Jie's guards a moment later.

Gao Jie scrambled up from the ground, retreating behind a wall of soldiers, and cursed furiously, "Courting death! Take them alive—I'll carve the flesh from your bones with my own hands!"

At that very moment, a roll of battle drums echoed from the direction of Yangzhou City, instantly followed by raging fires and the thunderous, roaring sound of hooves charging toward Gao Jie's camp, accompanied by earth-shattering battle cries.

"Kill! Capture Gao Jie alive! General Xu has given the order—a bounty of a thousand silver pieces to whoever captures the traitor Gao Jie! Charge!"

Amidst the night, it seemed as though thousands of troops were thundering toward Gao Jie's encampment. Panicked for a moment, Gao Jie looked around frantically, unable to gauge the number of approaching enemies and abandoning any thought of the surviving assassins. He waved an arm and shouted, "Repel the enemy! Damn it, has Xu Dingguo lost his mind?!"

In the span of a breath, Gao Jie's camp plunged into complete chaos. Shouts echoed continuously from all directions, and torches flared wildly outside the camp as panicked soldiers scrambled in every direction.

As it turned out, this had all been meticulously pre-arranged by Wang Lanping. Taking advantage of Xu Dingguo's drunkenness, Wang had transferred the three thousand cavalry previously assigned to monitor Xu. Once Gao Jie had met the assassins, Wang ordered his entire force to beat drums and stage a feigned attack, adding more fuel to the fire between Gao Jie and Xu Dingguo. He had replaced every banner in his force with Xu Dingguo's grand flags. As they shouted, illuminated by the torches, the grand banners bearing the character "Xu" fluttered robustly in the night wind, ensuring Gao Jie would recognize them at a single glance.

***

Wang Lanping's three thousand cavalry galloped back and forth outside Gao Jie's camp, occasionally loosing volleys of random arrows.

Gao Jie didn't even have time to don his armor. Dragged down by the assassin just moments before, he looked utterly disheveled as his hair fell loose around his shoulders while his troops escorted him into the central tent for protection. Unaware of the enemy's numbers and seeing only Xu Dingguo's banners endlessly circling outside the camp, he ground his teeth in pure hatred and repeated over and over, "Xu Dingguo, I treated you well, yet you dare betray me! I will kill you! I must kill you..."

Wang Lanping dared not let his cavalry charge too close; after all, Fengyang troops differed from Liu Zeqing's Huai'an army. Such a sudden raid could only throw Gao Jie's camp into temporary disarray, and a defensive formation was quickly organized within the camp. Gao Jie was not an easy opponent to deal with. After staging the feigned assault for a while, Wang ordered his entire force to rapidly vanish back into the night.

The moment Wang Lanping's cavalry withdrew, Gao Jie took a headcount of his camp. Out of more than twenty thousand men, two to three thousand were nowhere to be found. Enraged, he reorganized his troops, donned his armor, mounted his horse, and wanted to lead a direct assault on Yangzhou. Fortunately, other commanders dissuaded him: attacking the city now offered not a shred of winning odds. After such an uproar, the soldiers had lost their fighting spirit and morale had plummeted to rock bottom. Many troops huddled together, staring blankly into the pitch-black void outside the camp, terrified that someone else might suddenly burst out from the darkness. Soldiers gripped by such terror could barely defend their own encampment, let alone dream of attacking a heavily fortified Yangzhou with its towering walls and deep moats.

With no other choice left to him, Gao Jie had no choice but to issue orders for the entire army to retreat fifty miles under the cover of night, seek out high ground, and wait until dawn before pitching camp and setting up defenses. Only then would they rest, rebuild their strength, and settle the score with Shi Kefa and Xu Dingguo.

Once they were settled once more, the calm Gao Jie couldn't help but feel a lingering sense of strangeness. Why would Xu Dingguo betray him? As fellow Ming dynasty generals, even if Xu Dingguo had defected to Shi Kefa, they were still colleagues; such a betrayal held no logical benefit for Xu Dingguo whatsoever. What advantage could he possibly gain by offending Gao Jie? Could this be a stratagem of alienation orchestrated by Wang Lanping and Shi Kefa? Yet the token of the assassins from the previous night was still in his own possession—that item could not be faked. Furthermore, the image of Xu Dingguo's banners was still flashing through Gao Jie's mind.

Gao Jie retained a shred of doubt regarding Xu Dingguo's betrayal. He was almost willing to believe this was entirely a trick concocted by Wang Lanping and Shi Kefa, simply intended to seize the bit of military power he held in his hands. To uncover Xu Dingguo's true intentions, on one hand, he dispatched men three hundred miles away to Xu Dingguo's hometown to arrest his entire family; on the other hand, he sent agents to find a way to sneak into Yangzhou City and feel out the situation.

By this time, Yangzhou was under a full citywide lockdown, its gates tightly shut as if facing a mortal threat.

When Xu Dingguo awoke early that morning, his subordinates reported that roaring fires and rolling drums had erupted around Gao Jie's camp outside the city the previous night, suggesting a battle had taken place. Furthermore, the city had been placed under lockdown since dawn, and no one was permitted to leave.

Xu Dingguo was greatly alarmed by the news, realizing that a major event must have occurred within General Gao's camp last night. He attempted to leave the city several times, only to be turned back. Enraged, Xu Dingguo sought out Shi Kefa and Wang Lanping, but both offered excuses to avoid him, leaving Xu Dingguo to face closed doors repeatedly.

Filled with anxiety and unaware of the situation outside the city, yet not daring to mobilize his troops without authorization, Xu Dingguo could only drown his sorrows in wine at his quarters.

It was not until noon that Wang Lanping suddenly appeared before him, explaining that for reasons unknown, Gao Jie's camp had erupted in fire and chaos last night. Citing unclear circumstances, Viceroy Shi had ordered a lockdown of the entire city and decreed that matters would be decided only after the situation was clarified. Early that morning, Shi Kefa had personally visited Gao Jie's camp to investigate, only to find that Gao Jie's army had vanished without a trace.

Hearing this, Xu Dingguo found it hard to believe. How could such a thing be possible? There had been no reports of rebel bandits or Manchu Tartars operating in this region—how could the camp fall into such chaos? There were a few bands of outlaws, but how would they dare confront the imperial army? Could it be a mutiny within the ranks?

Wang Lanping then claimed that due to insufficient military preparations within the city and the unclear enemy situation, just to be on the safe side—and since Viceroy Shi had already conferred upon Xu Dingguo the responsibility of defending Yangzhou's perimeter—Xu Dingguo was requested to move his five thousand troops onto the Yangzhou city walls for the sake of the city's safety, thereby alleviating the shortage of internal garrison forces. A few days later, men would be sent out to scout for Gao Jie's army.

Unable to refuse, Xu Dingguo had to swallow his frustration and temporarily agree. On one hand, he would guard the city; on the other hand, he would look for an opportunity to send men out of the city in secret to investigate the previous night's events outside the walls.

Under the setting sun, Xu Dingguo's banners fluttered atop the walls of Yangzhou. Wang Lanping stood beside Xu Dingguo on the battlements, chatting amiably and pointing out toward the site of the previous night's fires.

Every bit of this scene was observed by the scouts Gao Jie had left behind in ambush outside the city, who promptly turned around to report back to Gao Jie.