The serpent man stared blankly at Chen Junnan for a long moment before tentatively asking,
“Have the entire mountain’s forces act as messengers together…? Is that your answer…?”
Chen Junnan: “Could it be?”
“I’m not sure,” the serpent man said. “Because what you said sounds more like a question than an answer. If you’re really choosing to respond this way… you’ll need to elaborate.”
Chen Junnan initially wanted to explain further, but then he realized the serpent man had no idea what the actual answer was. The best approach now was to bluff as convincingly as possible, making the other believe his words.
So instead of “elaborating,” he needed to “talk nonsense.”
“I think it goes like this…” Chen Junnan said. “In your question, theoretically, a messenger could risk their life to reach the second mountain, meaning the probability of death and survival is roughly equal—fifty-fifty. So if the entire mountain’s forces scatter instantly, treating everyone as a messenger and taking all sorts of routes to other mountains, you’d guarantee saving half the troops with a hundred percent certainty.”
“Wait… hold on.” The serpent man was baffled. “Is that how the math works? That’s way too idealistic, isn’t it?”
“What?” Chen Junnan blinked. “My scenario is idealistic? Oh, so your two mountains can’t see signal fires or make phone calls, and they’re surrounded by enemies—that’s not idealistic?”
“Uh…”
“Ninety-nine people think everything’s fine, but one person thinks the food’s too salty—that’s not idealistic?”
“Fine… okay, go on,” the serpent man relented.
“Exactly. This is all a hypothetical under ideal conditions,” Chen Junnan nodded. “So I think, if we treat the forces of each mountain as ‘1,’ a single ‘1’ can’t break through. But now, if one mountain has ‘1.5,’ a solo breakthrough might actually work. It’s like unsheathing a blade.”
The serpent man hadn’t interacted with Chen Junnan for long, but he already found him strange—this guy’s thought process was utterly unconventional. Listening to him talk gave the serpent man a vague, almost convincing feeling.
“But that’s not right, is it?” the serpent man countered. “The question is how to coordinate both mountains to break through simultaneously. You’re turning it into a solo breakthrough for one mountain.”
“That’s finding a way out in the face of certain death,” Chen Junnan said. “I don’t know what you think, but if things keep dragging on, both mountains will be wiped out. Instead of waiting to die, why not pull off a wild move? That’s my idea, and it’s the way I always operate. Who knows? If the entire mountain scatters, the enemy might be so confused they won’t know where to intercept. In the end, a hundred percent of the troops might escape to the second mountain. Either way, there’s always a way out.”
“But splitting up to break through means—”
“Don’t forget,” Chen Junnan cut in. “The general of Mountain A also has a chance to disguise himself as a messenger and reach Mountain B. Once the two generals meet, they can communicate directly, skipping all the middle steps. Then they could even count down together—three, two, one—and lead their forces to break through from the front and rear simultaneously, perfectly timed with no deception.”
The serpent man felt that if Chen Junnan had been born in ancient times, he might’ve truly been a brilliant strategist. But unfortunately, this was all theoretical—his answer was unlikely to be the standard solution under these conditions.
It was like how, as a child, wildly imaginative answers could sometimes be correct from certain angles but still get torn apart by the “official” answer key.
Then again, if you could really make an entire mountain’s forces scatter and act as messengers, why not just order them to scatter and flee outright?
“I still need to think about it,” the serpent man said. “This tactic of yours feels like it only works if one of the generals is you. For anyone else, it’d never hold up.”
“Tch.” Chen Junnan waved it off. “Believe what you want. Even if you come up with eight hundred tactics, mine’s still the one with the highest success rate.”
The serpent man turned to Jin Yuanxun, who had been silent for a while. “What do you think?”
“I…” Jin Yuanxun lowered his head in thought before saying, “I feel like… the problem isn’t with the messengers, you know?”
“Oh?”
“The problem is that the two generals don’t trust each other. So even if the messengers relay the order countless times, it won’t work, yeah?”
The serpent man nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. So how do you think they could learn to trust each other?”
Jin Yuanxun raised a finger and tapped the left side of the table. “This is General A.”
“Yeah,” Chen Junnan and the serpent man nodded in unison.
He then pointed to the right side. “This is General B.”
“Yep.”
Jin Yuanxun clenched one hand into a fist and placed it in the center of the table, right between the two generals. “Ah, they’re too far apart—they’ll never trust each other. So what they need in the middle is a ‘Heaven’s Gate.’”
Chen Junnan froze. “Kid, are you slipping in an ad?”
“No, no,” Jin Yuanxun shook his head. “Ah, hyung, this is what ‘Heaven’s Gate’ has always done. It acts as a bridge between two distrustful forces—‘Zodiacs’ and ‘Participants’—passing messages to both sides.”
Seeing their confusion, he clarified, “It means secretly communicating with both sides.”
“Alright, alright…” Chen Junnan waved his hand. “The way you phrase things is just… something else. You’re gonna run your little Chu ragged, huh?”
Jin Yuanxun didn’t quite get what Chen Junnan meant but simply shook his head. “This is what a ‘mediator’ has to do, you see.”
The serpent man didn’t dwell on Jin Yuanxun’s wording and instead asked thoughtfully, “So in this scenario, how would you establish a ‘Heaven’s Gate’?”
“I think… we could find someone both generals trust, dress them in enemy uniforms, and set up a temporary middle point,” Jin Yuanxun said. “All messages go to the middle point first, then get relayed outward. Both sides trust this middle point, and the messengers only need to cover half the distance, yeah?”
Though Jin Yuanxun’s Chinese was halting and his grammar a bit jumbled, Chen Junnan and the serpent man understood him immediately.
“Sss…”
The two of them made the sound simultaneously, then exchanged glances.
“I’ll stop ‘sss’-ing,” Chen Junnan chuckled awkwardly. “You’re the snake—you do the ‘sss’-ing.”
The serpent man felt Jin Yuanxun’s reasoning was sound again. This so-called “middle point in enemy uniforms” would only be known to their own side, making it secure in every aspect.
But this, too, was theoretical—it sounded plausible, but what about in practice?
Fortunately, this time, there was a real-world example to test it against.
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