Taiping Inn

Many young people who have just entered the arena always have an idea that as long as they are smart enough, find a way and a path, there is nothing they can't do. For them, a smart brain is an omnipotent weapon that can do everything. All the big names who have achieved success are smart people, and those who drown in the arena are stupid people. If two smart people fight, the winner must be smarter.

However, the old arena people have realized a completely different answer between life and death. To survive in the arena, in addition to being smart, you also need wisdom.

Intelligence can make people follow the trend, weigh the pros and cons, think hard, and use all means to exclude dissidents, and finally succeed. However, a single person is actually very small. In the face of the general trend, a person's cleverness is useless, just like when the tide comes, throwing a few stones, what splash can it make? Looking at the past and present, emperors, generals, heroes, who is not a smart person? But in the end, they still have to fall.

Wisdom is different from cleverness. It is said that small cleverness and great wisdom are obvious at a glance. Wisdom is not a means, but a kind of perception after experiencing the world, and a grasp of the fate and the impermanence of heaven.

When a person reads history books, he can take a general view of the situation from the perspective of an observer and an outsider. It is like looking at the sea from the east of Jieshi. No matter how big the tide is, you can see it clearly standing on the cliff. Even the dumbest person can point out the mountains and rivers and know where the general trend comes from and where it goes. But if you change to the world you are in, it is like being caught in the rolling tide. When you are in the water, there are turbid sea water and rolling mud and sand. You don’t know up, down, left, and right. Occasionally, you can stick your head out of the water, but you can only see huge waves around you. How can you distinguish the east, south, west, and north? Not to mention distinguishing the general trend, you can only go with the flow.

There are only two kinds of people who can recognize the true face of the mountain while in the mountain. One is the tide-rider on the crest of the wave, who stands high and sees far, and the other is a hero with great wisdom.

There are many people with small cleverness, but few people with great wisdom.

Li Xuandu did not dare to say that he was very wise, but he had experienced a lot and had some insights.

Although he successfully became the leader of Taiping Sect, he did not have the power of Taiping Sect.

Power seems to come from the head, but in fact it comes from the feet.

Whether it is the emperor or the leader, it is just a false title. It is not that only the emperor can be the emperor, but only the emperor can be the emperor. The false title of the emperor alone cannot control such a big world. Haven't you heard the words of the powerful minister Gao in the past, "Your Majesty, do you want to rebel?"

The same is true for the leader.

In addition to the title of "leader", Li Xuandu now needs the power under his feet if he really wants to hold the power of life and death. Under his feet are the Seven Elders of Taiping and many disciples of Taiping Sect. Only when the Seven Elders of Taiping and the disciples support, recognize, and obey the leader and are willing to obey the leader's orders, can the leader master the power of the sect. If the leader cannot get the support of the people below, then he is a puppet who is framed and has only a title.

The two powers above and below complement each other. The reason why the emperor was hollowed out and became a puppet was because he lacked power from below. The powerful ministers held great power but did not dare to usurp the throne because they lacked power from above, that is, the orthodox status.

Now Li Xuandu has occupied the orthodox status, but he suffers from the lack of support from below and sits on the position of the leader. If the Seven Elders of Taiping ignore his orders, he is just a puppet. If he wants to completely control the Taiping Sect, to put it bluntly, he must obtain the support of the vast majority of people. The means are nothing more than convincing people with virtue, killing people to establish prestige, winning over people's hearts, and holding handles.

Li Xuandu chose the first one. There are two types of convincing people with virtue. One is one's own virtue and prestige for many years, and the other is martial virtue. People often say that with the power of a great victory, prestige is also virtue. To say something heartbreaking, it is safer to make people fear than to make people admire.

This is also a common method used by many emperors. When internal conflicts are difficult to reconcile, they will launch a war against the outside world. On the one hand, it is to divert attention, and on the other hand, it can use the power of a great victory to suppress internal opposition. However, this is also a gamble. If you win, everything will be fine. Once you lose, the conflicts that could have been delayed for a while will immediately erupt, and the emperor who started the war will be the first to suffer the backlash.

In other words, this expedition to Beimang Mountain is also a gamble for Li Xuandu. If he wins, regardless of whether he rescues Mr. Shen, he will gain a firm foothold in Taiping Sect with this battle, but if he loses, he is afraid that he will leave Taiping Sect in disgrace.

During the Taiping Mountain meeting, the leaders only set the tone and many details of the attack on Beimang Mountain, and did not demand too much strategy, because such a big move by the righteous path must not be hidden from the eyes and ears of the evil path, so there is no possibility of surprise attack. The leaders of both the righteous and evil sides are equally matched, and there is no possibility of failure if there are more plans.

It was such a simple matter that the sixteen palace maids from the female sect joined forces to murder Emperor Shizong. In the end, one of them turned against them at the last minute, causing the plan to fail. A big conspiracy, assuming that there are a total of five links, there is no such thing as a 100% sure thing in the world. Assuming that each link is 90% sure, the probability of success in all five links is only about 60%. If there are more links, the probability of success will become smaller and smaller.

Therefore, in the rivers and lakes, few people design a big conspiracy with many twists and turns. Most of the time, it is already very difficult to make one link flawless. If you want to link them together, it is just talk.

What is paper war? When planning and laying out, everything is planned out, but when it comes to executing the plan, everything goes wrong. The real power struggle is to implement it to everyone who does the work in the end. No matter how powerful the geomancer is, he cannot guarantee that every disciple of the Yin-Yang Sect will be like him, so there will definitely be various accidents in the end.

The big guys make plans like playing chess, but the ones who execute the plans are living people, not dead chess pieces. They do not have the indomitable will of the big guys, nor the heroic spirit of sacrificing their lives, they do not understand profound strategies, and they do not know what it means to take the overall situation into consideration. They each have their own little calculations. Even ants try to survive, and the chess pieces on the chessboard can be abandoned at will. How difficult is it to make a living person willing to die? Therefore, no matter how good the plan is, it is a blessing to be able to successfully execute about 60% of it.

For example, in the battles of "every tree and grass is an enemy" and "the wind is blowing", a mere order to retreat could eventually lead to the defeat of the entire army. In this case, it would be a foolish dream to want to use any tricks. So on the battlefield, everyone knows the tricks of pretending to be defeated and pulling the knife, but not everyone can use them. If you are not careful, pretending to be defeated will lead to defeat, which will backfire.

The real political schemes are all open schemes. In front of the opponent, right under his nose, he planted willows unintentionally and made a forest of willows, and he took every step carefully. It's like a spider weaving a web. When the web is completed, you look back and there is no magic trick, no spider silk is fatal, but after the spider silk is formed into a web, it can take people's lives. The spider just does what it should do day after day, and when everything is ready, there is no need for any strategy, just push forward all the way. This is not mysterious, nor is it amazing, but it is really useful.

The Earth Master and the Great Heavenly Master are both well versed in this. The Earth Master's sneak attack on Yunjin Mountain is to gather elite forces, attack by surprise, and go deep into the enemy's territory alone. After hitting the target, he immediately fled thousands of miles away before the Zhengyi Sect counterattacked. Just like when two people fight, the Earth Master took advantage of the Great Heavenly Master's back to him and hit him with a stick from behind, and then took advantage of the Great Heavenly Master's black eyes to slip away. It is not much better than the fighting in the rivers and lakes. It is not amazing, nor is it a deliberate plan for many years. It is just a one-time opportunity. Seeing Zhang Jingxiu's negligence, he temporarily changed his strategy.

The Great Heavenly Master mobilized eleven righteous sects this time, which is completely different from the Earth Master's use of elite forces to sneak attack Yunjin Mountain. The disciples of the eleven sects are scattered all over the place. It is not an easy task to gather them together, and it is even more difficult to integrate and dispatch them. It is impossible to launch a surprise attack, so the Great Heavenly Master also understands that this time he will have to fight a head-on decisive battle and crush them directly with superior forces. It's like two people playing chess. If you have eight chariots, it's useless no matter how strong the opponent is.

In the eyes of many people, the big men are always plotting and planning the big chess, but in fact, it's all the emperor's fantasy that he has a golden shoulder pole. It's true that the big men work hard and plan, but most of the time they just repeat what they should do boringly and improvise.

The dispute between the Great Heavenly Master and the Earthly Master started with the Xijing Incident, and then the two of them took action separately. There was no long-term planning, no move planning, just seeing the move and improvising.

On August 20, Li Xuandu and Shen Yuanzhong led more than 300 disciples of the Taiping Sect to leave Taiping Mountain and head to Longmen Prefecture in Zhongzhou. Qin Su also led more than 100 disciples of the Butian Sect and more than 100 disciples of the Wangqing Sect to accompany them.