Chen Tai

Does two jobs in this chapter, and the second one wins the campaign. First he rides with Xu Yun as Sima Yi's envoy to Cao Shuang and helps take the seal. Then, sent by Guo Huai with fifty thousand men against the Shu ramparts at Qushan, he besieges them, cuts the Hanzhong road, anticipates Jiang Wei's relief march ('he will tell Jiang Wei of the danger and Jiang Wei will conclude that our efforts are concentrated on the ramparts and will endeavor to attack our rear'), holds the Ox Head Hills against him, and pursues the retreat in five divisions along five roads.

The rescue of Sima Zhao is entirely his design and he executes it himself. Tells Guo Huai that the Qiangs must be dealt with before the mountain can be relieved, then rides into King Mi Dang's camp with five thousand men, throws off his armour and comes in weeping that Guo Huai means to kill him: 'Therefore I have come to offer my services to you. I know all the secrets of the Wei army, and, if you will, this very night I can lead you to their camp.' Leads the Qiangs into the pits dug for them, turns on their rear while Guo Huai takes the flank, and rides back to seize their own camp and their king.

Commander of Yongzhou and General Who Conquers the West, already setting out to avenge Wang Jing's defeat when Deng Ai arrives by imperial edict. Asks for his plan, endorses it - 'That is well said!' - and marches the forty thousand with him while the twenty fifty-man cohorts do the real work with flags and night fires.

In the west throughout, at Didao and then Qishan with Deng Ai, and his own work is decisive twice: he destroys Bao Su's covering force at the Qishan Mountains Valley and kills Bao Su, then comes out of the hills onto the retreating Jiang Wei and surrounds him. He also memorialises the throne twice on Deng Ai's services, and gives the chapter its measure of him: 'I have been here over twenty years and have never known so much of the military possibilities of the place. You are very wonderful.'

Refuses to be managed. He is the one officer who does not come when Sima Zhao summons the court, comes only when his own uncle Xun Yi is sent to fetch him — 'Gossips often class me and my uncle together. Yet today is my uncle less virtuous than I' — arrives in coarse white mourning cloth, prostrates himself at the bier, and answers Sima Zhao's 'How can this day's work be judged?' with 'If only Jia Chong be put to death, that will only be a slight atonement to satisfy the empire.' Pressed for something less severe, he will not move: 'That is only the beginning. I know not other punishments less severe.'