📚 Jianghu Baiju Mipu — one hundred selected street (jianghu) positions, Qing dynasty
This position defies instinct: Red has far more pieces — an advisor, an elephant, a knight, a chariot and two cannons — against Black's chariot, cannon and three pawns. Red moves first, yet Giang Hồ Bách Cục Bí Phổ (game 32) concludes only: draw. The reason sits in the name itself: 'At Ease, Awaiting the Exhausted Enemy'. Black's three pawns are deep in Red's half, each Black piece posted ready; the more impatient Red's big army grows, the more it exposes itself. The name recalls the stratagem's classic exemplar: old general Wang Jian marched 600,000 men to the Chu border, then… dug in, ate well and slept for a year, waiting for the Chu army to exhaust itself. That story, and its lesson in patience, is told below. On the board: holding the bigger army, can you breach Black's 'fortress' — or will impatience cost you the draw?
600,000 troops march to the border — then eat, drink and hold stone-throwing contests for a year
Six hundred thousand troops marched to the enemy's border, built ramparts, hung out the no-battle sign — then ate meat, drank wine, and competed at stone-throwing and long jump for nearly a year. That was how the old general Wang Jian destroyed Chu, and it is the model tale of the stratagem…
Stories around this position — storytelling, not part of the engine-verified content.
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