Manga Discussion The Ravages of Time - Explanation of the Military tactics and Wars

Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#1
#1
JIA XU VS LU BU​


First, we have the current scenario:

After Dong Zhuo burned down the entire city of Luoyang, he moved to Chang'An, where he and his assistant Li Ru were murdered by his adopted son, Lu Bu. After Lu Bu took power, he accused Li Ru of killing Dong Zhuo, some generals remained on Lu Bu's side and others, already suspicious of his previous actions, accused him of actually killing Dong Zhuo and not Li Ru, two of those who fought against Lu Bu were:

Niu Fu, Dong Zhuo's son-in-law.


And the former military advisor of Dong Zhuo, Jia Xu, also one of the 8 Genius Military Advisors.

Niu Fu had sixty thousand soldiers: Fifty thousand divided into 8 camps outside Chang'an and ten thousand in the main camp..


Main Camp
​
Lu Bu had 3 camps, the author did not specify how many soldiers they had, but they were overwhelmingly stronger and bigger than the 8 camps of Niu Fu, Lu Bu also had troops from Ma Teng of Guang Zhou, so the rear of the main camp was quite vulnerable..
And Lu Bu had troops from Han Sui of Jincheng, so Niu Fu's 8 camps had a very vulnerable flank..

Back to the Lu Bu's 3 camps, the commander of the third camp was one of the Lu Bu's generals, Li Su.:


Using only a tenth of Niu Fu's sixty thousand soldiers, Jia Xu defeated Li Su in only 5 days and sent his head to Chang'an..


Li Su's death was very unexpected, considering that he was quite well known, so it forced Lu Bu to act sooner than he expected, and he contacted his spy, who was someone very close to Niu Fu, to kill Niu Fu and bring his head to Chang'an. Jia Xu already knew who the spy in the camp was, and promised Niu Fu that he would also defeat Lu Bu in 5 days, but he needed a catalyst, which was Niu Fu's life.
Niu Fu, as someone very loyal to his master, accepted to give his life to avenge his master (Here, Jia Xu couldn't tell Niu Fu about the spy that the plan would work perfectly, but as a sign of respect and friendship, Jia Xu decided to reveal it to Niu Fu, knowing his very loyal and pure personality that he would accept to give his life to avenge his master).



Before Niu Fu's murder, Jia Xu ordered the whole army to stand still and do nothing, but after a few days, all the high morale from Li Su's defeat was getting smaller and smaller, to the point that the generals were getting impatient with Jia Xu's strategy, which also caused the 7th and 8th to revolt against Niu Fu and switch to Lu Bu's side.
After Niu Fu's death, his army's morale went downhill, and Lu Bu ordered his entire army to attack Niu Fu's other 5 camps. To lower Niu Fu's army morale even more, Lu Bu exposed Niu Fu's head on a spike to all of Niu Fu's army, which also raised Lu Bu's army morale and made Niu Fu's army retreat very quickly. By late that night, Lu Bu had conquered all the other camps, leaving only Niu Fu's main camp.


Before talking the main part of this battle, let's see how our eyes usually react to ambient with darkness:

"The Cones detect colours very well, Rods are great for movement detection and monochromatic vision. You also have more rods in your eye.
Under normal light conditions, your eye relies mainly on the cones for your vision and the rods take a back seat (except for peripheral vision)
When you operate at night, the first thing you’ll do (say if you get dropped out of a vehicle) is spend about 30 minutes standing to, allowing your eye to adjust to the low light conditions. As you sit in the dark, your eye “turns off” the cones, and starts relying on the rods. Your vision goes very monochromatic. Any ambient light, whether it be, the stars, the moon will be picked up by your eye, allowing you to see quite well. It’s only on a completely moonless night, with heavy cloud cover obscuring stars, that you’ll struggle to see."​


Considering that our eyes are more sensitive to light under these conditions, when Lu Bu finally arrived near Niu Fu's main camp, he saw scouts with torches not only in front of the army, but also on the flanks and in the rear.

Lu Bu also noted that the area where he and his army were located was very unstable and dangerous terrain; such terrain makes it impossible to escape with horses, let alone humans.


The scouts began to use the torches to signal the angle of the arrows based on the location of Lu Bu's army, using the light of the torch as a reference.
And since our eyes are more sensitive under these conditions, it was quite easy to follow.
Then... this happened:




​
Since they were at night, it was almost impossible to see the arrows until they were very close to you, also because of the bad terrain, not even with the horses was it possible to avoid the arrows, not only that, but also:

Jia Xu waited for the wind to get stronger, so that the arrows would really get faster and stronger.

This was Jia Xu's checkmate.
He used Niu Fu's death to increase Lu Bu's greed, not only that, but the retreat of his entire army made it look like Niu Fu's army was collapsing, but everything was a fake, he calculated the terrain leading to the main camp, he calculated the wind, and even used the night to disrupt Lu Bu's army's sense.
A perfect strategy! A truly terrifying Maneuver of Darkness Technique that annihilated Lu Bu's army!



In 5 days, Jia Xu defeated Li Su, in more 5 Days, Jia Xu defeated Lu Bu and conquered Chang'an, all this... using only a tenth of Niu Fu's army.​
 
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Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#3
#3
So, the next one I am going to talk about is Cao Cao's campaign against Xuzhou, which is probably one of the most brutal wars in Chinese history, because of the huge amount of innocent people that were killed during this war.
It will be divided into two parts, the first will be an introduction and the siege of Tanxian, and the second part will be about the battle in the mountains.


First, Cao Cao needed a reason to attack Xuzhou, and one of the Eight Geniuses, Guo Jia, suggested that Cao Cao use his father's death as a reason, accusing Tao Qian, the governor of Xuzhou, of killing his father and stealing his wealth.


Cao Cao's campaign against Tao Qian began when his army, under the command of Guo Jia, destroyed Sishui, one of Tao Qian's cities, killing more than ten thousand civilians.

In addition to the massacre, Guo Jia burned all of Xuzhou's farmland and blocked the flow of the Si River, severely limiting the supply of food and water to the cities. Guo Jia deliberately spread the false rumor of killing more than one hundred thousand civilians and soldiers to other cities of Tao Qian, causing a very chaotic scenario of civilians from other cities fleeing to Xuzhou's capital, Pengcheng. Guo Jia, seeing the chaos, ordered Cao Cao's army to stop attacking Pengcheng and retreat for 3 months, which was a very wise move because Pengcheng would be very loaded with refugees, reducing the amount of food and water supply to nothing. And within 3 months, Guo Jia not only conquered Pengcheng, but also 10 other cities without any casualties.

"Destroy one city to scare ten into submission, a dark tactic"


One of Tao Qian's cities that was still fighting Cao Cao's army was Tan County, a very important city. It was under the command of Chen Deng, but the man who controlled the military strategy was no one else:

Zhao Yun, the leader of the Handicapped Warriors, under the orders of Sima Yi.

Even though Cao Cao was an ally of the Sima clan, the Simas had a very deep business relationship with Xuzhou, which forced them to fight against Cao Cao.


Zhao Yun's strategy was to loosen the wall's defenses a bit to lure the siege towers and the enemy general to the walls of the city, not only to kill one of their generals, but also:

To trap them, using catapults to destroy not only the siege towers, but also many soldiers attracted to the catapult's range.

Also, since there were many debris and corpses piled up in front of the walls, it would not be possible to break through Tan's walls with siege towers, considering that Tan County is surrounded by unstable terrain, so it would only be possible to enter through the front gate where the debris and corpses were piled up.

As for the next battle, we need to understand where Tan County is:

Guo Jia used a Long Snake Formation to invade Tan County at night.
For Kingdom readers, this formation is similar to Ri Haku's snake formation:


It's a formation that literally simulates a snake; if you attack the tail, the head will bite you, if you attack the head, the tail will attack you, if you attack the middle, both the tail and the head will attack you.
Ri Haku surrounded Mou Bu's army with this formation, but since Ri Haku is a very weak and brainless general, he still managed to lose to Mou Bu's usual drill brainless formation.
Anyway, back to RoT, Guo Jia's snake formation is conceptually different from Ri Haku's, as he uses it not for battle, but for high maneuverability, focusing almost entirely on getting close to the Tan County front gate walls as quickly as possible, using the darkness of the night as an advantage.


And it worked quite well, because by the time Zhao Yun realized Guo Jia's strategy of attacking at night, they were already out of range of the catapult and archer, very close to the walls, and started another battle.

Zhao Yun couldn't stay in Tan County for too long because he had received the news that Xiaopei was sending rations to Tan County through the mountain route, and considering how important the rations were, Zhao Yun and the 2nd Regiment of the Tan County Army left Tan County through the East Gate to secure the rations route from Guo Jia's army.

However, Guo Jia already knew this route and used a false messenger to trick the Xiaopei army into thinking that Zhao Yun and the 2nd Regiment were the enemies attacking the rations, causing them to attack their own allies.

As for Guo Jia's checkmate, he surrounded all the other 3 gates of Tan County with fire, not only the fire, but Guo Jia calculated in which time the wind would blow more strongly towards Tan County, making the smoke from the fire envelop the entire Tan County, forcing them to choose either to die of suffocation or try to escape, but the only way to escape was through the front gate where Guo Jia's army was attacking, so it's either die or die.


As for the 2nd part, we will finally have Lu Bu making a move, moving to attack Cao Cao's territory, taking advantage of this moment of fragility where Cao Cao's main forces were in Xuzhou, and also Liu Bei finally making a move as well, supplying Xuzhou against Cao Cao's army.
The key point of this war will be the mountains behind Tan County, as it's a perfect strategic location to camp, supply with ration and even deploy an army, so whoever takes this mountain will be with the most advantage to either attack or defend Tan County.
The 2nd part is the most complex and confusing part of this war, so it'll take a while to explain everything.
 
Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#5
#5

Sima Yi knew that Cao Cao's attack on Xuzhou was just a decoy to lure Lu Bu out of hiding to attack Cao Cao's main city, considering that Cao Cao would intentionally leave it very vulnerable to later ambush Lu Bu there and kill him.
Sima Yi couldn't let Cao Cao destroy Xuzhou, especially Tan County, but they also couldn't kill Cao Cao, because of their close relationship, once it was the Sima Clan that recommended him for his current position, so Sima Yi had a pretty hard task to stop Cao Cao without actually hitting him directly.
But as the image above shows, he had the perfect chess piece: Zhuge Liang, the Crouching Dragon, the best of the 8 Water Mirror Geniuses.
Zhuge Liang hated the way Cao Cao was massacring the cities of Xuzhou, killing children, women, everything, so he was more than happy to help Sima Yi.


Both Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang noted the strange lack of ash from the burning of the Xuzhou farmlands ordered by Cao Cao, which should not be the case, EXCEPT if Cao Cao's army harvested the food before burning it, so for some reason Cao Cao harvested it before burning it, which does not make much sense overall.

Sima Yi ordered Zhuge Liang to go to the mountains of Tan County, where Zhao Yun is and Guo Jia, Cao Cao, and most of his commanders are.

Later, on the mountains near Tan County, Sima Yi disguised himself as the ancient God of Rain. Sima Yi predicted that the wind would change direction and bring the rainy clouds to the south side of Xuzhou where Tan County is located, since the south side is full of forests, the huge fire would be a great tool to seed the clouds, the high temperature would also produce a weather with many lightnings, and by using metal to guide those lightnings, it would be pretty easy to create scenarios where he actually looks like a god.
Ancient China was a very religious country, just look at what Zhang Jiao did with the yellow turbans, so this god thing would be great to lower Cao Cao's army morale and also, most importantly, to attract Guo Jia's attention.
After meeting the "Ancient God", Guo Jia thought that it was actually Zhuge Liang disguised as this creature, but just after hearing its voice, he knew that it was not his brother, but a brat he met at the PingYang Pass, Sima Yi!
Both Sima Yi and Guo Jia knew that in order to lure Lu Bu, Guo Jia would have to create a very, very good bait, and Lu Bu never attacked his opponents before knowing how much rations they had, so Guo Jia brought only a small amount of rations to further lure Lu Bu's desire to attack Cao Cao's capital. But in fact, Cao Cao had a very large amount of rations that his army had harvested from the Xuzhou area, so Guo Jia made it look like they had burned it all.

So the most important question remains: Where are Cao Cao's rations?
First, Guo Jia used Xuzhou's western route to transport the rations, which was the most obvious and safest route.

But...

As expected by Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang, this route was a bait that one of Lu Bu's commanders, Zhang Liao, took quite well, which also confirms that Lu Bu KNEW about 2nd Cao Cao's food supply, but Guo Jia's bait here killed Lu Bu's chances of getting Cao Cao's food supply on his hands.
The one who predicted the right route was nobody but ZHUGE LIANG.
As the wind changed direction, the fire would follow it, and many routes were destroyed by the fire, except for the Makeng Valley, which was Zhuge Liang's guess, and he got it right.
With Cao Cao's food in Zhuge Liang's hands, Guo Jia couldn't help but retreat from Xuzhou.

Due to his illness, Guo Jia collapsed shortly after being outsmarted and defeated by Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang.
 
Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#7
#7
Bisoromi Bear said:
Is this some kind of bootleg Kingdom?
Click to expand...
No. Ravages of Time came out like... 10 years or so before Kingdom.
They are both very different, Kingdom is made for the younger people, so it has a lot of action packed arcs, some very childish silly concepts like instinctual type vs. strategic type stuff.
This one is a bit more "boring", not so much action but a lot of good battlefield strategies, philosophy, overall it's more realistic than Kingdom, but it's hella hard to read because of the god awful translations and the author introducing many new places and characters.
 
Bisoromi Bear

Bisoromi Bear

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#9
#9
Hako Sama said:
No. Ravages of Time came out like... 10 years or so before Kingdom.
They are both very different, Kingdom is made for the younger people, so it has a lot of action packed arcs, some very childish silly concepts like instinctual type vs. strategic type stuff.
This one is a bit more "boring", not so much action but a lot of good battlefield strategies, philosophy, overall it's more realistic than Kingdom, but it's hella hard to read because of the god awful translations and the author introducing many new places and characters.
Click to expand...
TheKnightOfTheSea said:
No they're more different than OP and any other manga that's ever been in the shonen jump
Click to expand...
I see, so Kingdom is the ripoff
 
Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#13
#13
Let's start with the Yan Province arc, which is a pretty good one, but I have a few notes first:
The light blue area is the Yan's area, which is where this arc will mainly take place, but there's a very important city here that they call "West City", but no one knows where that city is, so I'm going to assume that the West City that they're referring to is the red dot on the map, and I'm going to refer to West City as XICHENG.
And as a reference:

Lu Bu and his army are hiding in Puyang.
Cao Cao is in Xicheng with his army.






The arc begins with the supposed head of Cao Cao sent by one of Lu Bu's spies in Cao Cao's camp, Xu Chu
Of course, neither Lu Bu nor his military advisor Chen Gong really believed that Cao Cao had died, because they didn't really trust Xu Chu.

Cao Cao's fake death was a ploy to lure Lu Bu and even the other lords into attacking Xicheng, giving him more reasons to fight against them. Of course, he wouldn't believe that such a cheap trick would lure Lu Bu into attacking Xicheng, so he had another hidden card against Lu Bu: The Lu Jin Faction.
The Lu Jin faction was a group of Lu Bu's spies who served as Cao Cao's personal guards, and somehow Cao Cao knew that they were spies.
So when the Lu Jin faction attacked Cao Cao and tried to kill him, Cao Cao already had Dian Wei, one of his commanders, to defend him and kill the members of the Lu Jin faction.
He told Dian Wei to spread the news that the Lu Jin faction had killed him, even to those who already knew that his first death was fake, and this would cause great chaos in Xicheng, since almost all of his commanders would assume that he's dead, and this chaotic situation would lure Lu Bu even more to attack Xicheng.

And as expected, Lu Bu ordered his army to attack Xicheng.

Cao Cao's plan was to lure Lu Bu into Xicheng, but actually ambush him there, and with his army trapped there, he would take Puyang, where Lu Bu was hiding.

Using the map, the red arrow is Cao Cao's army marching from Xicheng to Puyang, and the blue arrow is Lu Bu's army marching from Puyang to Cao Cao's trap.​
Cao Cao's army quickly destroyed and entered Puoyang, and of all the gates, only the North Gate was still holding, but the whole city was already in Cao Cao's hands.

As Cao Cao and his commanders entered the city, one of his commanders noticed that most of the civilians were missing, including one of Cao Cao's spies, Mr. Tian.
Cao Cao's army discovers that a huge army is ambushing Puyang, which is... Lu Bu's army.

Chen Gong burns down the whole of Puyang, blocks all the gates with fire and... traps Cao Cao and his entire army there, checkmate...

Lu Bu never really intended to attack Xicheng, he probably knew everything Cao Cao was planning since he probably already had Mr. Tian on his hands, and he sent his army just to alert Cao Cao's scouts and lure Cao Cao into attacking Puyang, once Lu Bu would be very vulnerable there without his army, but in fact the whole of Puyang was just a bait for Lu Bu's army to trap Cao Cao.
Without Guo Jia, Cao Cao easily fell for the same scheme he had armed Lu Bu with.



Meanwhile, at the Xicheng walls... :ihaha:



Lu Bu is also inside of the city of Puyang, mainly to kill Cao Cao with his own hands, so we see this epic panel of him alone with one of Cao Cao's strongest commanders, Xu Chu.


​
The goat here is obviously not Lu Bu, but his military advisor Chen Gong, who managed to create this entire plan to trap Cao Cao, knowing very well his habits and the spies he had in Puyang City, showing some schemes comparable to the 8 Geniuses.
Would he also be at the level of the Eights? We will find out in the future.



Not sure if I'll do a post on the 2nd part of this arc once it's hella action packed, but maybe I'll do a quick recap and then move on to the next battle.
 
Hako Sama

Hako Sama

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#15
#15
So the Battle of Puyang continues...
Xun Yu, one of the Eight Geniuses, another who served Cao Cao, arrived at the Xicheng Walls, and knowing Chen Gong's plans, he ordered half of Cao Cao's army to rescue Cao Cao who was trapped in Puyanag City, and the other half to attack Chenliu, another huge city in Yan Province.

This is a very popular strategy known as "Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao", which was used when Zhao's capital was besieged by Wei, then Zhao asked their neighboring state, Qi, to help them, but the Qi state instead of attacking the Wei army at Zhao, they attacked Wei's capital, which was very vulnerable as their main army was attacking Zhao. Qi's actions forced Wei to retreat from the siege and finally liberate Zhao.
The current situation is a bit different, so Chen Gong just moved half of Lu Bu's army to attack Xun Yu's army that was going to Chenliu.

Chen Gong and his army quickly reached Cao Cao's army that was heading to Chenliu, but instead of attacking them directly, Chen Gong thought it would be too risky, so he simply moved his army ahead of Cao Cao's army and surrounded a valley where Cao Cao's army was heading.


When Xun Yu saw Chen Gong's army heading towards the valley, he ordered his army to stop in the forest of the valley when they reached there.

The reason for Chen Gong's actions is that if they attack Xun Yu's army hiding in the forest, his army will be vulnerable to Xun Yu's archers.


So, instead of attacking, Chen Gong not only surrounded the valley with his army, but also ordered his army to burn the forest in the valley, forcing Xun Yu's army to retreat and even blocking their way to Chenliu.


But just when Chen Gong thought that he had defeated Xun Yu, the man appeared: SIMA YI.

Chen Gong shoots an arrow as a kind of advice, but it's blocked by Sima Yi's servant.

One interesting thing about this servant is that he's using a very long and sharp sword, most commonly known as the "Qin Jian", a sword from the state of Qin, which had its own style in the Qin army.

The Qin sword is such an interesting and different sword. Back then, most of the swords were like 65 centimeters, but the Qin sword was so huge, it was like 94.5 centimeters and was so sharp and thin, very very strange sword.
I stopped playing Kingdom a long time ago, so I'm not sure if Hara made a Qin character to use this sword and style, but it looks pretty cool.
I would guess that Hara didn't use it because of his sick sexual love for boring stuff like glaives.


Sima Yi began to talk to Chen Gong as Xun Yu's representative and asked him to surrender to Xun Yu.​

Chen Gong's army laughed at Sima Yi, thinking how ridiculous this request was, considering that Chen Gong had the upper hand due to the current situation.

After talking to Cheng Gong and seeing that he had no intention of surrendering, Sima Yi just left, but before leaving, he gave a flag to Chen Gong, who thought it was a surrender flag, but Sima Yi replied that it was a gift.​

As Chen Gong was about to see what that flag was all about, all of a sudden... a rain of arrows trampled his army from behind.


The "Heaven is dead" is probably a reference for the Yellow Turbans slogan:
"The Blue Sky is dead, the yellow sky shall rise"
​

The army at the back of the formation was the Yellow Turban Runan army, which was part of Lu Bu's army and a very valuable ally, but all this time their master was not Lu Bu, but Cao Cao, they were under the command of one of the eight geniuses, XUN YU THE SECOND!

Chen Gong's army was brutally massacred by the arrows and he suffered a brutal loss to Xun Yu.

​
Back to Puyang:
As I said, action is not my focus, so I'll just skip all the fighting stuff:
When Lu Bu was about to kill Cao Cao, the Sima clan's handcapped warriors managed to not only protect Cao Cao, but also hurt Lu Bu badly.
The cities in ancient China had a lot of secret passageways under their walls, and the clan that built those passageways was the Sima clan, and not just passageways, the Sima clan was a very rich clan because they could build anything, even walls.

Cao Cao eventually fled Puyang, scouted out by one of his generals, while the handcapped warriors distracted Lu Bu and the rest of his army.

Looking at this conclusion, you might think that Cao Cao is just a chess piece, someone who is constantly being rescued by the two geniuses below him, but... That's not true.

It's the opposite, he planned everything, the Xuzhou Massacre, he also planned for Lu Bu's army to surround him, he even planned with the Sima Clan, through Xun Yu, for the handicapped warriors to save him when Lu Bu confronts him... The Tian Clan, who were supposedly under Lu Bu's hands, were actually under Cao Cao's hands all the time, but they acted as Lu Bu's allies, making Lu Bu give them the South Gate of Puyang, but it was just to make a safer escape for Cao Cao, but... But why? Why would you pressure your own army? Why would you make your own army kill thousands of innocent lives? Why would you almost kill your generals? Let Guo Jia explain it himself:








Cao Cao cannot build his empire with weak-minded talented generals, with false allies from rich clans who would turn against him in times of crisis, and finally... Cao Cao cannot build his empire without... chaos.

This is what a truly evil emperor looks like, this is Cao Cao.
Now that he has wealth and refined talents, who can stop Cao Cao?​
 
Hako Sama

Hako Sama

‎
#17
#17
So the next thing we're going to talk about is SUN CE, specifically his rise in the Yang Province as the leader of the Sun Clan.

But first, we need to explain the context and the characters, so it'll be very easy to understand what's happening in this arc.


Back when Dong Zhou burned down all of Luoyang, there was one army that remained near Luoyang, and that was Sun Jian's army, under the orders of the Yuan clan.
Sun Jian was very sad to see the capital reduced to ashes, so both Sun Jian and his army extinguished the fire.
In the process, one of Suan Jian's soldiers found a soldier alive but dying, he was using the imperial costume, but it was revealed that he was one of Yuan Shu's spies, he told Sun Jian that he left "this item" in the well, and died lamenting that he wouldn't see his master become emperor. When Sun Jian found the well, the item was revealed to be the Imperial Seal, and whoever possessed it would clear the way to become emperor.

Sun Jian was a loyalist, he would never give the seal to the Yuan Clan or Cao Cao, so he hid it from the others, which was a crime. After some time, the fact that he was hiding the seal somehow leaked out, so many warlords started to investigate and even confront Sun Jian and his clan, which he always denied that he had the imperial seal, not to mention hiding it.

Yuan Shu, one of the leaders of the Yuan clan, never really forced the issue, and Sun Jian remained loyal to him, following all his orders until he died in the battle against Liu Biao, shot by an arrow in a trap.

​
With Sun Jian's death, the Sun Clan and its allies not only lost their leader, but also many of their forces, so Yuan Shu finally found an opening for him to get the Imperial Seal.

He couldn't just take the Imperial Seal by brute force and claim that he was the emperor now, as the seal would lose its value and no one would recognize him, in fact, he couldn't do anything against the Sun Clan directly, even more so because he wanted to maintain his image as a benevolent ruler.

Yuan Shu​

Yuan Shu took Sun Jian's son, Sun Ce, and his allies in Shouchun close to him, being a very supportive figure to them, but in fact he would very slowly break them down until they had nothing left but the Imperial Seal, forcing them to give it to Yuan Shu in order to survive.

First, he wanted to break them up by splitting them up, ordering most of Sun Ce's generals to attack and take Wan County, and Sun Ce himself to attack and take Lujiang with his other army. Considering how strong Wan County and Lujiang were, they would have to suffer a lot to win, and they might even lose, which again, Yuan Shu didn't care; if they won, it would be good for Yuan Shun once he occupied those cities with his generals, if they lost, it would break the Sun Clan even more.

But...
Sun Ce easily took Lujiang in 5 days, and later Wan County was also easily taken by Sun Ce's generals, which showed that Yuan Shun had greatly underestimated their strength, so his plan failed rather brutally.

But he had a second plan to take the Imperial Seal, which was to kill Sun Ce, but he couldn't kill him by himself, he had to have a reason to kill Sun Ce.

Sun Ce secretly escaped from Shouchun with the help of the Sima Clan and went to Wan County, which they planned to be the new military base of the Sun Clan, and of course, Sun Ce would take the Imperial Seal with him. Near the Wan's territory, Sun Ce stopped at a lounge to celebrate and rest with his allies, but there they were captured by Yuan Shu's general, Ji Ling, and easily defeated, with Ji Ling escaping with the Imperial Seal. Sun Ce was still alive and tried to pursue them, but the horses were all gone and... a huge army surrounded him, and it was the army of the former lord of Wan County, who was killed by Sun Ce's generals. In order to take over Wan County, Sun Ce's generals lured away Wan's army and attacked them while they were weak, so all Yuan Shu had to do was leak Sun Ce's location to them so that they would furiously pursue Sun Ce to take revenge for their lord's.
And it was a success, with no chance of escape...
Sun Ce "died".

Now that Sun Ce was dead, Yuan Shu would send his general Liao Lan to avenge Sun Ce's death by killing the rest of the Wan remnants who killed Sun Ce, but in their hands they would find the Imperial Seal that Ji Ling had secretly given to Liao Lan and expose the Sun clan's crime of hiding the Imperial Seal.
But when Liao Lan arrived in Wan County with Sun Ce's army, he was surprised by a boy who killed all his men and left him badly injured, and the name of that boy was Sun Ce!

Sun Ce had planned to fake his own death from the beginning, as soon as his father's death would put a lot of pressure on him from the other lords and Yuan Shun, so in order to remove that pressure, he had to die. His death would not only remove that pressure, but it would also make Yuan Shu lower his guard against the Sun Clan, making it easier for all the Sun Clan generals to reunite in Wan County, which would greatly increase the Sun Clan's strength, making them strong enough to try to take back the eastern lands for the Sun Clan!

So the one who died in the ambush at the saloon was Ling Cao, a very loyal general of Sun Ce, who was been posing as Sun Ce all this time.

After some time, Sun Ce sent a letter to Yuan Shu under the name of the deceased General Liao Lan, reporting that Sun Ce was still alive.
Yuan Shu couldn't let Sun Ce live, so he adopted another strategy, which is to use his own army to attack the eastern lands under Sun Ce's banner, but now he would kill innocent people, many lives to bring the hatred of the people against Sun Ce, so he could kill Sun Ce himself without losing his image as a benevolent emperor, after killing Sun Ce, he would reveal that he found the Imperial Sel at the hands of Sun's clan.

Liu Xun was one of the Yuan Shu generals who was ordered to go to the eastern lands.

And, surprisingly, he had one of the eight geniuses, Zhou Yu, on his back to give advises to him.
​
Zhou Yu suggested to Liu Xun to attack Liu Yao's Jingkou, there they would fake a loss and ask for help from Dongan, which is a city strategically perfect for Sun Ce, once it was a very strong city, perfect to defend, but also to exchange resources from Wan County, so with Dongan sending troops to Jingkou, the city would be very vulnerable, which would make Sun Ce attack it, but there would be an ambush there, ready to take Sun Ce's army. And while Sun Ce was attacking Dongan, the troops from Dongan, originally sent to "help" Liu Xun in Jingkou, would instead attack Wan County, Sun Ce's military base.

Of course, Zhou Yu's suggestion made Liu Xun very happy, because if he killed Sun Ce himself, he would be given the position of General-in-Chief, so he followed Zhou Yu's instructions.


As they expected, Sun Ce's army arrived at Dongan


But when Sun Ce's army was about to be ambushed, strangely, his army retreated
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In addition, the troop that was going to attack Wan spotted two Sun Ce generals, Han Dang and Cheng Pu, going to the north of Wan. Under Chen Xing's orders, the troops began to pursue Han Dong and Cheng Pu.


The strange retreat of Sun Ce was obviously because the ambush was somehow leaked to Sun Ce, and the person behind the leak was none other than: General Ji Ling.
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The position of General-in-Chief was coveted by many generals, and Ji Ling knew that if he let Liu Xun kill Sun Ce, he would lose the position, so he leaked it to Sun Ce, but at night, he also set up an ambush in the north of Wan, the route Sun Ce would use to enter Wan County, and since Sun Ce was trying to attack Yuan Shu's Dongan, it would be a perfect reason to kill Sun Ce.
But...

A moment later, a huge army appeared out of nowhere, and in front of them was Han Dang, shouting some words against Ji Ling. Ji Ling obviously reacted as it was some kind of ambush from Sun Ce, so he ordered the archers to shoot down the army and prepare the other units for war.

But surprisingly, the other army also had a full troop of archers, which was not expected from Sun Ce's army.


When the scouts from both armies climbed the mountains to see the battlefied, they both recgonized themselves, once... they were from the same side, both armies were from Yuan Shu's forces.
And, in fact, they were both tricked by Han Dang to attack each other, since it was night and they couldn't recognize enemy from ally...

By the time they realized that they were fighting for nothing, it was already too late, as the casualties had exceeded half... Also, Sun Ce's army attacked them from behind.
Checkmate!


What happened here is that Han Dang and Chen Pu served as bait to lure Chen Xing's army to the north of Wan, where Ji Ling's army was, since it was night, both armies couldn't see much, so when Ji Ling first saw Han Dang shouting at them, he immediately thought that it was an ambush, the same thing we can say for Chen Xing, he also thought that it was an ambush, once Han Dang lured them there, so both of the armies started killing each other.
Meanwhile, Sun Ce's army would set up an ambush to attack the remnants from behind, making it a perfect victory for Sun Ce's army, even with a large number of troops at a disadvantage.

Back to Dongan:

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Liu Ye, a member of the Han imperial family and an important figure in Dongan, also an important ally of Yuan Shu, appeared in Dongan and saw through the Sun Ce's plans, so he ordered two things:
One army would go to the north of Wan to rescue Ji Ling.
The other army would attack Qichun to keep Liu Biao in check. Both Liu Biao and Yuan Shu were rivals, and once Liu Biao saw Dongan vulnerable, he would probably shift an attack from Qichun to Dongan, so it would be better to send an army to Qinchun and force Liu Biao to retreat.


Suddenly, the Dongan official was attacked from behind by someone who was... Sun Ce!!


Without an army to defend Dongan, the city was easily taken by Sun Ce.
​
In fact, Liu Ye was on Sun Ce's side, and he was the one who leaked part of Liu Xun's ambush to Ji Ling, and he also invited Liu Biao to take Lujiang. Liu Ye was a member of the Han Imperial Clan, so he would never really agree with someone like Yuan Shu to be the emperor, it would ruin the name of the Imperial Clan.
Not only him, but also Zhou Yu, one of the eight geniuses, wasn't Liu Xun's advisor, but Sun Ce's advisor, and he only manipulated Liu Xun according to their plans.

With Yuan Shu losing Lujiang to Liu Biao, who was invited by Liu Ye, we have this scenario:
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  • Both Yuan Shu and Liu Biao are in check, once they were fighting very close to each other.
  • Ji Ling's army was reduced to almost nothing.
  • Dongan was conquered by Sun Ce, who lost one of their best cities, including the Dongan army, which was ambushed at Qichun.
  • Liu Yao was also held back by Liu Xun's army, which attacked Jingkou.
So, all the main forces from the eastern regions are weakened, either because they have lost many resources and soldiers like Yuan Shu, which will take a long time to recover, or because they are busy fighting, which is the case of Liu Biao and Liu Yao, making it the perfect scenario for someone like Sun Ce to take the entire eastern region for himself, even though he has a smaller army than the other lords, a perfect plan!



And this was only possible because Sun Ce had one of the Eight Ginuses, Zhou Yu, on his side as a military advisor.​
 
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