2. This Wily Strategist Tricked the Enemy Into Supplying Him With Arrows
Kongming gathered a flotilla of riverboats, lined them up with bales of wet straw, and explained to their crews what he expected from them. He waited for a foggy night, quietly rowed them across the river and, undetected, positioned them in a line close to the enemy camp. At a signal, his crews erupted to break the night’s silence, shouting, beating drums, clanging gongs, and creating an unholy din.
Startled, the enemy camp awoke in a panic. Convinced they were facing a surprise night attack, they unleashed a storm of arrows at the boat silhouettes flitting in the murk – arrows that were embedded in the bales of straw. Then, his pin-cushioned boats groaning with the weight of more than 100,000 captured arrows, Kongming departed. His exploit became a Chinese idiom for using others’ strength against them: “borrowing arrows with thatched boats“.