Later Qi: The Chess Player of the Isolated City

In the fourth year of Chengping, Yun Jin City had been under siege for three years. Just as its supplies ran out, a hundred thousand Tatar troops beneath its walls turned into a cloud of white smoke and vanished into thin air.

Then a black arrow pierced the commander-in-chief's chest. The young lord who was called upon to take command in the crisis was Lu Chengyan, born into a family of sea merchants.

The imperial court thought he was an easy mark. Corrupt generals thought he was a greenhorn who had never seen blood. The gentry thought they could cheat him without consequence.

But he inspected the great granaries and executed the traitorous generals, swallowing moldy military rations himself. He poisoned the enemy's warhorses with tainted fodder, forcing their commander to withdraw and sue for peace. Then he hosted a lavish Hongmen Banquet and wrested a hundred thousand shi of grain from the gentry, who were tighter-fisted than iron roosters.

The Great Qi's rules could not save a besieged city, so he would make his own.

Others relied on blades to survive troubled times. He relied on an abacus. If the world was a great game of chess, then this time, it was Lu Chengyan's turn to move the pieces.