100 Historical Stories That Unlock Teenage Wisdom

Chapter 16 Five Zhangs

Chapter 25 The grass patrolman borrows arrows
——Always keep a keen eye. A kind of thing will attract our attention when it appears for the first time, but when the number of times increases, we don't care much or even turn a blind eye.This tends to make us make the same mistakes many times, so we expect ourselves to have a pair of keen eyes and not to stumble twice on the same stone.

In the last years of Emperor Xuanzong's Tianbao period, the Jiedu envoy An Lushan launched a rebellion.The rebels were in full swing along the way, and soon hit the city.The county magistrate Zhang Xun led the army and civilians in Yongqiu to actively resist.The defense battle lasted for more than 40 days, and all the arrows in the city were used up.Zhang Xun asked the soldiers to tie up more than 1000 straw figures, put them in black clothes, and tie them with ropes. At night, he asked the soldiers to hold the ropes and slowly lower the straw figures from the city wall.The rebels who besieged the city thought it was the Tang army who came out of the city to attack them, and shot them with random arrows.When the straw man was full of arrows, the soldiers pulled the man up to the city and counted them roughly. After doing this several times, they got 10,000+ arrows, so there would be no shortage of arrows in the city for the time being.The secret was leaked out, and the rebels knew that Zhang Xun had used the straw man's trick of borrowing arrows.

Another night, I saw many "straw people" hanged from the city.The rebel soldiers all laughed, mocking Zhang Xun for being stupid.A general said: "Zhang Xun still wants to use the grass man to deceive our arrows. Brothers, don't be fooled! Let's ignore it and let them wait for themselves!"

After a while, someone reported that the "straw man" on the city wall had disappeared.The general said: "We don't shoot arrows. Zhang Xun must have been impatient and took the straw figures back. It's okay, everyone go to bed." In the dead of night, suddenly these "straw figures" appeared again, but None of the rebels cared.Unexpectedly, this is the real Tang army, and he came straight to the rebel barracks.The Tang army in the city also beat drums and shouted, as if they were going to fight out of the city.The rebel soldiers were not prepared at all, and immediately fell into chaos when they were attacked suddenly.The general of the rebel army woke up from his sleep, thinking that the reinforcements from the Tang Dynasty had come to kill him, so he dared not resist, so he hurriedly ordered to set fire to burn down all the fortifications and barriers, and then fled.It turned out that this was Zhang Xun's trick again.This time it was not the grass man who was hanged from the city, but the death squad of the Tang army.After the death squads went down to the city, they launched a sudden attack in the middle of the night, and the city echoed and cheered, as if reinforcements had descended from the sky.In fact, there are only 500 people in the Death Squad.When the rebels fled in panic, the Death Squadron and the Tang Army in the city took advantage of the victory to pursue and kill them for more than ten li. After a big victory, they withdrew their troops and returned to the city.

Wisdom Interpretation:

The first strategy of "36 Strategies" is called "Crossing the Sea with Concealment", which contains an important meaning that it is commonplace.Repeatedly using the same thing to stimulate the other party, at first he can pay more attention to it, but after too many times, he will be negligent and easily fall into the trap.In this story, Zhang Xun successfully used this trick.

In our daily life, is our power of observation getting exhausted?If you want to have a pair of "wisdom eyes", keep vigilance and sensitivity to life!
(End of this chapter)