As Kongming advances north, Zhao Yun, seventy years old, takes on the four sons of the Xiliang general Han De alone at Mount Fengming and beats them. The grand commander Xiahou Mao loses and is driven into the city of Nan’an, and Kongming surrounds it. Cui Liang, governor of Anding, is fooled by a man of Shu posing as one of Xiahou Mao’s officers, and loses his city.
To Ma Zun, governor of Tianshui, there also comes a man calling himself Pei Xu, one of Xiahou Mao’s officers. Nan’an is in danger, he says, so bring all the troops of Tianshui to its rescue. As the governor is about to send out his army, a young man stands in the way. He is Jiang Wei of Ji in Tianshui, styled Boyue. Since boyhood he has studied books, strategy and arms, and he serves his mother so devotedly that the people of the district respect him.
Jiang Wei speaks. Nan’an is surrounded so tightly that not a drop of water can leak out, so how could anyone have broken through the rings of the siege? Pei Xu is a name I have never heard, and he carries no dispatch. This is a Shu officer posing as an officer of Wei. They mean to lure you out of the city and then strike the empty city.