During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao led the powerful Wei army, while Sun Quan and Liu Bei united to fight against Cao Cao. Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei's military strategist, was an extremely intelligent man.
Zhou Yu was the Grand Marshal of the Eastern Wu. He was very jealous of Zhuge Liang's talent and wanted to find an opportunity to get rid of him. One day, Zhou Yu deliberately made things difficult for Zhuge Liang and asked him to produce 100,000 arrows within ten days. Zhuge Liang, however, smiled slightly and said, "Marshal, three days will be enough." Zhou Yu was secretly delighted in his heart. He thought that it was impossible for Zhuge Liang to produce so many arrows within three days, so he made a military pledge with Zhuge Liang.
After returning, Zhuge Liang was not in a hurry to make arrows. He borrowed twenty boats from Lu Su. Each boat was arranged with thirty soldiers, and both sides of the boats were filled with straw men. Although Lu Su was very puzzled, he still did as Zhuge Liang required.
On the third night, the fog was thick and the visibility on the river was extremely low. Zhuge Liang took Lu Su with him and ordered the soldiers to connect the twenty boats with ropes and sail towards Cao Cao's water fortress.
When the boats approached Cao Cao's water fortress, Zhuge Liang ordered the soldiers to beat the drums and shout. Cao Cao heard the noise on the river and thought that the troops of the Eastern Wu were coming to launch a surprise attack. However, because of the thick fog, he did not dare to send out troops easily and only ordered the soldiers to shoot arrows towards the river. For a while, arrows shot towards Zhuge Liang's straw boats like raindrops.
Soon, one side of the straw boats was full of arrows. Zhuge Liang then ordered the soldiers to turn the boats around so that the other side could also be hit by arrows. When the straw men on both sides were full of arrows, Zhuge Liang ordered the soldiers to sail the boats back to the camp.
In this way, Zhuge Liang, relying on his wisdom, effortlessly "borrowed" more than 100,000 arrows from Cao Cao's army. After Zhou Yu knew this, he had to admire Zhuge Liang's wonderful foresight.
