Trap the Thief Behind Closed Doors

Shut the Door to Catch the Thief For an enemy that is weak or few in number, one should contrive to encircle and annihilate it. In accordance with the principle of the Bo hexagram (Splitting Apart), it is extremely disadvantageous to let it go and leave it a way of escape; one must cut off all its routes of retreat so that it cannot slip away, and only then can the problem be thoroughly resolved. Allusion:The Battle of Maling is a classic case of “shutting the door to catch the thief.” Pang Juan, general of Wei, fell for Sun Bin’s stratagem of reducing the cooking stoves and mistakenly believed that the Qi army was fearful and deserting. He therefore left his infantry behind and led only light, elite troops in forced pursuit day and night, plunging straight into the dangerous defile of the Maling road. The Qi army had long since laid an ambush there and had stripped the bark from a large tree and written on it: “Pang Juan shall die beneath this tree.” When Pang Juan arrived at night and raised a torch to read the words, the Qi troops loosed ten thousand arrows at......