Ma Su's words immediately won the agreement of the young officers gathered around him.
"Sun Quan burned the Cao army at Red Cliffs, and his military strength stands at its peak. How could a hundred thousand of his troops be broken by barely eight hundred?"
"General Zhang, military deductions cannot be guided by personal grudges!"
"Is General Zhang deliberately making things difficult for us?"
Zhang Fei's face flushed crimson, but he found himself unable to respond.
'Damn this Sun-Shiwan-Quan. Everyone with half a normal brain would never believe his battlefield record is trash. Now, now, how do I explain this to these brats? Ahhh, this... damn.
In the end, Guan Yu intervened to suppress the argument.
"Let us assume that Sun Quan has already suffered a major defeat and no longer possesses the strength to advance."
Since General Guan had spoken, the others could only accept the premise.
They marked the assumption on the sand table and returned their attention to the simulation.
Ma Su was once again the first to speak.
"Since Sun Quan has troops stationed at Lukou, we could have the Jiangling garrison join forces with them and march north. They could seize Xiangyang, hold the city, and then lay siege to Fancheng. What do you think?"
"The Lukou garrison cannot be moved," Guan Yu replied in an enigmatic tone. Even he struggled to justify such a restriction.
'Oh boy. This is not permitted either!' A wave of frustration rose within Ma Su, but he drew a slow breath to steady himself and tried again.
"Then let the Hanzhong garrison launch a feint through the Baoxie Road. They can threaten Chang'an and pin down Cao Cao's forces. Would that suffice?"
Guan Yu stroked his beard and said nothing.
Huang Zhong was forced to answer, though he sounded reluctant.
"The Hanzhong garrison has already returned to Chengdu. There will be no offensive from Hanzhong."
Even Xiahou Lan let out a heavy sigh.
Gao Xiang and Chen Shi studied the map carefully before reaching the same conclusion.
"If that is the case, the Hanzhong forces cannot coordinate with us, while Sun Quan in the east is likewise unable to assist. Even the allied troops at Lukou cannot be mobilized."
"This amounts to throwing thirty thousand men against the famous Xiangyang-Fancheng defensive line!"
"And with Cao Cao free to focus on a single front, he can commit his full strength to reinforce Xiangyang and Fancheng. How can thirty thousand men prevail against cities defended by one hundred thousand?"
"Pfft! Hahaha!"
Zhang Fei burst into laughter at the mention of a hundred thousand troops.
The others stared at him in bewilderment.
"Sorry, sorry," Zhang Fei said awkwardly. "I just remembered something funny. And this is only a simulation anyway, right? Let us try pushing it forward!"
But how could the simulation proceed?
There were no allies to coordinate with, no reinforcements to follow, and not even a way to delay the enemy's relief forces.
"Not only must we take Xiangyang and Fancheng," Zhang Fei shouted. "We must also destroy Cao Cao's reinforcements!"
Ma Su stared at him.
"General Zhang, perhaps you should find someone else for this assignment."
Guan Yu crushed the objection without mercy.
"Enough. No more excuses. Everyone, think harder."
The officers could only rack their brains, their expressions growing increasingly bitter as they struggled to find a way to capture Xiangyang and Fancheng.
The more perceptive among them had already begun to wonder. 'My lord has recently allied by marriage with the Marquis of Wu, so how the hell has the relationship deteriorated so swiftly? What exactly happened there?'
Meanwhile, in a blacksmith's shop by the Hudu River, Ma Liang stood barefoot among piles of coal, sorting through them alongside an old smith.
"Found it!" Old Xie's eyes lit up as he pulled a piece from the pile and called out to Ma Liang.
"Young master, this piece is top-quality coal."
Ma Liang studied the coal in the old man's hand with curiosity and pointed to the other pieces on the ground. "How can you call it top-quality? How do you select it, elder?"
Old Xie chuckled and snapped the piece in two with force. The two fragments struck each other with a crisp, ringing sound.
"This kind of shiny coal is hard! It catches fire easily, burns hot and fast, and produces iron of much better quality!"
Ma Liang carefully recorded the details and tried it himself. The piece in the old man's hand was indeed as hard as stone, while the duller pieces on the ground crumbled underfoot without any effort.
"These coals are still decent!" Old Xie said, his thoughts drifting to the past. "I am from Hedong. When I was young, we could pick up coal nearby. Back then there was also a kind of thing like loose soil. Once dried, it was excellent for cooking!"
"And there is also a folk remedy!" The old man's eyes flickered with a hint of mischief, prompting a helpless sigh from Ma Liang.
"I thank you, elder. We have an agreement. You will share all you know, and we will reward you according to the usefulness of your knowledge. You must trust in Liu Huangshu."
"Oh, yes, yes. Force of habit, hehe." Old Xie laughed awkwardly, wiping his hands on the hem of his clothes to hide his embarrassment.
"My family has a handed-down remedy. If someone accidentally swallows gold or silver coins, take a piece of coal half the size of a thumb and a piece of sulfur the size of a full thumb. Grind them together and wash it down with wine, and it will pass right through the body!"
A wave of nausea rose in Ma Liang's chest.
'How is such a thing even to be verified? And is this not medicine? What does it have to do with iron smelting?'
Maintaining a composed expression, he recorded it nonetheless, though he resolved in his heart to leave the task of verification to someone else. He absolutely would not do it himself!
"Oh, and one more remedy." Ma Liang had no wish to keep writing, but the old man was already continuing smoothly.
"I heard this from my mother. If a woman's monthly water does not come, boil a little coal into a broth. Drink it together with the dregs of three croton beans, and it is guaranteed to work!"
Ma Liang dutifully wrote it down, privately calculating that these two so-called remedies should be handed over to Physician Zhang Zhongjing. As for how to verify them, he was utterly at a loss.
After bidding farewell to Old Xie, Ma Liang returned to the county office and handed his records to Jiang Wan.
Within the Observation Bureau, Ma Liang was for the time being the only actual worker, largely because his work was exceptionally reliable.
For instance, the records he submitted had already been organized into three sections. One detailed Old Xie's knowledge of coal, another analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of using coal for smelting, and the last contained the old man's so-called secret formulas.
Jiang Wan skimmed through them and, sure enough, let out an inward sigh. He set aside the folk remedies. "Make a copy of this and send it to Physician Zhang Zhongjing."
He then brought the two technical reports on coal to Zhuge Liang's desk, where several other accounts of conversations with blacksmiths were already laid out.
At the end, Jiang Wan had appended his own assessment:
Summarizing the artisans' accounts, wood charcoal and coal each have their merits. However, coal is difficult to mine and produces inconsistent iron quality. This may be due to differences in the type and category of coal. If these differences can be identified and the correct approach applied, coal may prove superior to wood charcoal.
Yet even as he wrote it, Jiang Wan shook his head. Identifying the correct approach is far easier said than done!
"Gongyan, your efficiency is remarkable!" Jiang Wan turned to see Zhuge Liang, his face full of fatigue.
The hem of his robe still bore specks of mud, as though he had freshly returned from the fields.
"Is that Tiangong Kaiwu truly so useful?"
At the mention of the book, Zhuge Liang's fatigue vanished at once, replaced by bright enthusiasm, his brows dancing as he spoke. "Useful? It is nothing less than a complete compendium!"
"From only two short chapters, I have gained insights into rice cultivation that far surpass even the most experienced farmers! I truly cannot imagine what heavenly secrets the remaining chapters of the Tiangong Kaiwu might contain!"
"That such a treasure, filled with rare heavenly secrets, is sold so cheaply by later generations! I cannot begin to comprehend what kind of flourishing age the future must be!"
The future. Whenever the subject arose, Jiang Wan could not help but think of the light screen and its miraculous ability to turn speech into text, and he too felt a deep sense of longing.
"I truly wish to see what kind of splendor that aircraft carrier of the future possesses! I imagine it as a drifting territory, self-sufficient, bearing an elite army that comes and goes like spirits!"
Zhuge Liang shook his head slightly. 'Gongyan, your vision is still too limited.'
His thoughts had already gone much further. On the light screen, the prices of the Han sword, the Eight-Ox Ballista, and the Tiangong Kaiwu were all roughly the same, and they were displayed side by side. This indicated that, to the people of the future, these three items held comparable value.
But what was the Tiangong Kaiwu? The chapter on rice cultivation alone could increase Jingzhou's grain yield by thirty percent! How many lives could that additional harvest sustain? It was a work that could be called a pillar of the state, yet in the future it cost only forty-nine yuan! About five coins.
A treasure capable of saving countless lives was worth five coins.
The production method for a forbidden military weapon capable of aiding a western expedition and establishing an illustrious reputation cost only thirty coins.
And a Han sword, which could neither feed the hungry nor quench thirst, and was less practical on the battlefield than a long spear, cost only twenty coins.
He then thought of the stirrups he had glimpsed on the light screen, which Zhao Yun had praised highly, yet which cost nothing at all.
To later generations, such things were discarded like worn-out shoes, while their greatest praise was reserved for the aircraft carrier. The might of the future was beyond measure.
The morning mushroom knows nothing of the passage between day and night.
The summer cicada knows nothing of spring and autumn.
Who among them was the morning mushroom, and who the summer cicada?
---
Fun Fact:
Zhuge Liang is not only impressed, he is shaken. Imagine realizing that something capable of feeding an entire region is priced like a trivial everyday item in the future. That is not only a technological gap, it is a complete shift in what a civilization values.
The Mushroom and Cicada metaphor is a classic deep cut from the Zhuangzi. It is a reminder that people are always trapped within the limits of their own era.
To Zhuge Liang, the aircraft carrier is not only a weapon, it represents a world where survival itself is no longer the central struggle. And that realization is far more overwhelming than any battlefield.