Jiang Wei’s Northern invasion meets the same fate as Zhuge Liang’s, while Sima Shi borrows a few pages from Cao Cao’s playbook for how to deal with imperial puppets who don’t know their place.

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Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is episode 140.

Last time, Jiang Wei had launched another invasion of the North, and Sima Zhao was sent to stop him. Sima Zhao did a pretty bad job of it, losing his top general and getting himself trapped on Iron Cage Mountain, a tight spot with just one road down from the top, and that was being blocked by Jiang Wei. At the top of the mountain, Sima Zhao and his 6,000 men were relying a small spring for water, but that spring could only sustain about 100 people.

Seeing his men suffering from thirst and his only escape route blocked, Sima Zhao looked up to the heavens and sighed, “I am going to die here!”

One of his staffers now said, “Long ago, Geng (3) Gong (1), a great general of the Eastern Han, was trapped, but he prayed to a well, and a sweet spring flowed from it. Why not try that?”

Well, it’s not like Sima Zhao had any other ideas, so prayer it was. He went to the small spring at the top of the mountain and prayed:

“I came on imperial decree to repel the Shu forces. If it is destined that I should die, then let this spring dry up, and I will slit my own throat and allow my men to surrender. But if my allotted time is not yet up, then I pray that heaven will soon bless me with a sweet spring so that we can save all my men!”

As soon as he finished this prayer, water started spouting out from the spring nonstop. So, I guess heaven has other plans for Sima Zhao.

Meanwhile, at the foot of the mountain, Jiang Wei figured he had Sima Zhao right where he wanted. He told his officers, “One of my great regrets in life is that the late prime minister was not able to capture Sima Yi when he had him trapped at Shangfang (4,1) Gorge. But today, I am going to capture Sima Zhao for sure.”

But remember that Sima Zhao was not the only Wei contingent in the area. The general Guo Huai was also around, and when he got word that Sima Zhao had been trapped, he wanted to lead a relief force to Iron Cage Mountain. But his second-in-command, the general Chen Tai (4), said, “Jiang Wei formed an alliance with the Qiang tribes with an eye toward taking the city of Nan’an (2,1) first. The Qiang have arrived. If you redeploy your troops now, the Qiang would no doubt attack us from the rear. You should first send someone to pretend to defect to the Qiang and defeat them from within. Once that’s done, then we can go lift the siege at Iron Cage Mountain.”

Guo Huai agreed and sent Chen Tai at the head of 5,000 men to go carry out his own plan. So Chen Tai went to see the king of the Qiang people, whereupon he took off his armor, entered the king’s tent, and wept, saying, “Guo Huai is too full of himself and has often wanted to kill me, so I have come to surrender to you. I know everything about Guo Huai’s army. I am willing to lead a raid on his camp tonight. Success is guaranteed. When you and your army arrive at the Wei camp, I will be there to help you from the inside.”

The king of the Qiang was delighted and ordered his top commander to go with Chen Tai on this night ...