763: VI. Fiction and Reality

Sun Tzu said: Those who are on the battlefield first and treat the enemy will be discouraged, and those who will be on the battlefield and tend to fight will work. Therefore, those who are good at fighting will cause others but not others. He who can make the enemy self-defeating, also benefit; Whoever can make the enemy have to come, it will also harm. Therefore, the enemy can work, be hungry, and be safe.

Going out of the way, tending to what it doesn't expect. Those who travel thousands of miles without working will also walk in a land where no one is man; Whoever attacks and wins, attacks and defends his place; Those who defend and must be solid, defend what they do not attack. Therefore, those who are good at attacking, the enemy does not know what they are defending; Those who defend well, the enemy does not know what they are attacking. Few, as far as invisible; Divine and silent. Therefore, he can be the commander of the enemy.

And then the uncontrollable, rush its emptiness, retreat and can't chase, speed and can't reach. Therefore I want to fight, although the enemy is high and deep, and he who has to fight with me will be saved by attacking him; I don't want to fight, I draw the ground and defend it, and the enemy can't fight with me, and he will do what he wants.

Therefore, if I am invisible and I am invisible, then I am exclusive and enemy; The enemy is divided into ten, and if one of them is attacked by ten, then we are outnumbered and outnumbered; Those who can defeat the outnumbered with the multitude, then I will make an appointment with the fighters. If the place where we are fighting is unknowable and unknowable, then there are many enemies and many enemies, and there are few people we are fighting with. Therefore, the first is the last widow, and the last is the first widow; If you are on the left, you are on the right, and if you are on the right, you are on the left; If you are prepared, you will be all-encompassing. The widow is also the one who prepares people; He who prepares others for himself.

Therefore, if you know the place of war, you can know the day of war, you can fight for thousands of miles, if you don't know the battlefield, you don't know the day of war, then the left can't save the right, the right can't save the left, the front can't save the back, the back can't save the front, and the far ones are tens of miles, and the near ones are several miles? With my degree, although there are many soldiers of the Yue people, it is also beneficial to victory or defeat? Therefore, it is said: victory can also be done. Although the enemy is numerous, there can be no fight.

Therefore, the strategy knows the gains and losses, the reason for the movement and stillness, the form and the place of death and life, and the angle and knows the shortcomings. Therefore, the extreme of the form, as for the invisible, the invisible, the deep can not peep, and the wise cannot plan. Because of the form, the mistake is better than the many, the crowd can't know the person, everyone knows the form of my victory, and I don't know the form of my victory. Therefore its victory is no longer over, but should be in infinity.

The image of the soldier is water, the shape of water, avoiding the high and tending down; The shape of the soldier, avoiding the real and attacking the false. The water is controlled by the land, and the soldiers are defeated by the enemy. Therefore, the army is impermanent, the water is impermanent, and those who can win due to the change of the enemy are called gods. Therefore, the five elements are impermanent, the four times are impermanent, the days are long, and the months are dead and alive.

Cao Gong said: You can be virtual and real. (It is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the reality of the situation on both sides of the enemy.) ）

Cao Gong said: There is more than enough.

Cao Gong said: Tempt it to benefit. (Use small profits to lure the enemy.) ）

Cao Gong said: If you go out of what you want, you will be saved if you attack it.

Cao Gong said: Annoyance with things. (Interfere with the enemy by various means.) ）

Cao Gong said: The way to starve is hunger. (Cut off the enemy's food routes and cause him to famine.) ）

(Ann can move.) Cao Gong said: If you attack what you will love, and you will go out of what you want, then the enemy will have to save you.

Cao Gong said: The enemy has to go back to save him.

Cao Gong said: Go out of the air to attack the void, avoid its guard, and hit it unexpectedly. (Attack the enemy's weak points, avoid the enemy's heavily fortified areas, and attack places the enemy does not expect.) ）

Cao Gong said: I don't let my love out.

Cao Gong said: The pawn is slack in attacking, and it is sick when it retreats.

Cao Gong said: Cut off its grain route, guard its way back, and attack its monarch.

Cao Gong said: The army does not want to be annoyed.

Cao Gong said: Good behave, yes. Showing his interests and making the enemy suspicious. I have not built a fortification, and the enemy will not dare to attack me if he does not use the strength of the situation.

Cao Gong said: If the enemy is suspicious, then separate its people and prepare me, and it is easy to attack with few words.

Cao Gong said: The so-called hidden enemy is suspicious, so separate the crowd in case of me.

Cao Gong said: Measure the emptiness and the day of the battle.

Cao Gong said: The more people get together, they are ignorant. Or say, Wu Yue is also hateful to the country.

Cao Gong said: Angle, quantity also.

Cao Gong said: Win because of the enemy's shape. (Strategies for victory should be developed according to the enemy's situation.) ）

Cao Gong said: Don't win all forms with one form. Or say, I don't know. The winner, everyone knows that I win, but I don't know that I win because of the enemy.

Cao Gong said: Don't repeat, move and respond.

Cao Gong said: The prosperity will decline, and the shape will be defeated, so it can win like a god because of the change of the enemy.

Cao Gong said: The army is impermanent, and the surplus shrinks with the enemy. (There is no fixed strategy for combat, and it must change according to the change of the enemy's situation.) ）

"A typical example of the battle of the Void Chapter is the battle of Qi Wei, Guiling, and Maling. These two wars, which occurred in the middle of the Warring States Period, were the wars between Qi and Wei for hegemony in the Central Plains, because Sun Bin, a military strategist of Qi State, creatively used Sun Tzu's military strategic ideas of "avoiding the real and attacking the false", "attacking what is necessary to save it", and "causing people but not others", thus defeating the powerful Wei army in one fell swoop, so that the strength of Wei gradually weakened, and finally lost its hegemonic status.

Sun Bin was originally a descendant of Sun Wu, the author of "The Art of War" and a famous military strategist in the Spring and Autumn Period. When he was young, he studied the art of war with Guiguzi with Pang Juan, a native of Wei, and later Pang Juan became a general in Wei, and he knew that his ability was not as good as Sun Bin, so he invited Sun Bin to Wei with bad intentions. King Wei Hui's appreciation of Sun Bin aggravated his jealousy of Sun Bin. Pang Juan fabricated the charges, cut off Sun's feet with criminal law, and tattooed ink on his face in a vain attempt to make him never show his face. Sun Bin endured the humiliation when he was in Wei Duo, until one day he heard that the envoy of Qi had come to Wei, and he was able to secretly meet the envoy as a prisoner. The envoy of Qi learned that Sun Bin was a great talent, so he secretly hid him in the car and brought him back to Qi. Soon, Sun Bin was appreciated by the Qi generals Tian Ji and the King of Qi Wei.

In 353 BC, Wei conquered the Zhao capital of Handan. By this time, King Qi Wei thought that the time was ripe to send troops to rescue Zhao, so he ordered Tian Ji to be the main general and Sun Bin to be the military advisor to lead the army to rescue Zhao. Tian Ji planned to go straight to Handan and engage the main force of the Wei army to relieve the siege of Handan. Sun Bin did not approve of his style of play, and put forward the correct strategy of 'criticizing the hypocrisy' and 'taking the lead'. He said: 'To untie the threads that are in a mess, you must not pull them with your hands; And if you want to solve other people's fights (driving), you can't help to fight. The same is true for sending troops to relieve the siege; we should not use the hard to deal with the hard, but should avoid attacking the weak with the real and attacking the weak, make use of the strong and avoid the weak, and rush at the key points, so that the enemy will feel that it is difficult to move and have worries about the future, and the siege will naturally be lifted. Now that Wei and Zhao are attacking each other, they have been holding each other for more than a year, and the elite troops of the Wei army are all in Zhao State, and those who remain in their own country are some old and weak soldiers. I think you should lead the army and quickly march to Daliang, the capital of Wei. In this way, the Wei army will inevitably return to save itself, and we can relieve the siege of Zhao in one fell swoop, and at the same time make the Wei army exhausted, so that we can defeat it. ’

Tian Ji adopted Sun Bin's advice and led the main force of the Qi army to march to Daliang, the capital of Wei. Daliang was the political and economic center of the Wei state. Pang Juan was shocked when he heard the news that Daliang was in danger. The Wei army was not allowed to control Handan, which had just been captured after hardship, with a small number of troops, and hurried back to rescue Daliang with the main force.

At this time, the Qi army had taken the dangerous terrain of Guiling as a predetermined battle area to meet the Wei army on the way home. Due to the long-term attack on Zhao, the Wei army consumed a lot of troops; The long journey made the soldiers even more exhausted, and the Qi army took advantage of the opportunity, waiting for work at ease, and the morale was strong. Therefore, in the face of the resistance of the Qi army, the Wei army completely fell into a situation of passive beating, and finally returned with a heavy defeat.

However, although Wei was defeated at the Battle of Guiling, Wei still had some strength. What really weakened Wei was the Battle of Maling, which took place ten years later. In 342 BC, the Wei state attacked Korea. South Korea asked Qi for help. Just when the two countries of Han and Wei were exhausted from the war, Sun Bin once again used the killer weapon of 'encircling Wei to save Zhao', and approached the Liang of Wei. In the process of the Wei general leading his troops to chase the Qi army, Sun Bin used the 'reduction strategy' to paralyze the enemy army, making Pang Juan mistakenly think that more than half of the Qi army had fled, so he decided to leave the infantry behind, and only lead a part of the lightly armed elite troops to quickly pursue the Qi army. As a result, Sun Bin set up an ambush in Malingdao and defeated the Wei army, forcing Pang Juan to commit suicide in anger.

This war caused Wei to suffer an unprecedented defeat. Looking at the Battle of Guiling of Wei and the Battle of Maling, Sun Bin successfully applied the operational principles of 'avoiding the real and attacking the virtual' and 'attacking the void' put forward in the "Art of War: Fiction and Reality", and defeated the powerful Wei army repeatedly. In the specific implementation of these principles, the Qi army was good at choosing a favorable opportunity when Wei, Zhao, Wei and Han were exhausted to attack Daliang, forcing the Wei army to return to the division for help and enter the battlefield predicted by the Qi state in advance, so that the Wei army completely fell into a passive position. The Qi army waited for work because of 'knowing the place of war, knowing the day of war' and won in one fell swoop. From the battles of Guiling and Maling, we can see that Sun Tzu's military theories such as 'avoiding the real and attacking the false', 'attacking what is necessary to save', 'first being on the battlefield and waiting for the enemy', and 'causing people but not to others' were creatively used by Sun Bin, and their rationality and scientificity have withstood the test of time and the confirmation of history and war. ”