The Empty City Stratagem

The Empty City Stratagem When one’s forces are already empty, deliberately display to the enemy an even greater emptiness and absence of defense, so that the enemy, amid doubt upon doubt, finds it hard to judge whether the appearance is true or false. At the critical moment when the enemy is strong and we are weak, employing this technique of interwoven hardness and softness makes the extraordinary appear doubly extraordinary. Allusion:As the name of a stratagem, the most widely known version of the “Empty City Stratagem” comes from Chapter 95 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. After Ma Su lost Jieting, Sima Yi led a great army straight toward Xicheng, and Zhuge Liang had only a handful of soldiers. He ordered the city gates thrown wide open, had old soldiers sweep the streets, and, donning a crane-feather cloak and a silk headdress, took his qin and climbed the city wall, where he burned incense and played the instrument. Seeing this, Sima Yi suspected an ambush inside the city, dared not attack, and withdrew his troops. Its earlier source can be traced to the third......