Art of War

Art of War

孙子有云： 知己知彼，百战百胜
Which means, to win a hundred battles you would need to know yourself and your enemy well.

Using that logic, Joan shall formulate a set of warring theories that would enable her to either win her battles or give up on all hopes fighting the battles. Why give up the fight? Cos 识时务为俊杰，不该打没把握的仗. Which means that Joan understands that it would be futile to wage a war against something she has no confidence about. As a cautious person, Joan would rather waste that 70% chance and give up that battle instead of risking it. As such, Joan will only wage a battle if she has 95% chance of winning it. The opportunity cost of risking is too high for the vulnerable heart of this poor girl.

子萍章： 按兵不动之道
Joan's theory of warfare: The Art of Withholding an Army

萍曰： 一，敌不动 我不动
Joan says: 1. When the enemy doesn't make the first move, one shan't move too

This is because when the enemy doesn't move, you wouldn't know what the enemy is thinking and you will be in the lower position of the battle as the enemy is able to grasp all your moves while you on the other hand have no idea on how the enemy is going to move. In any battle, never let the enemy know your next move, always be in a superior postition than him.

萍曰： 二，敌动 我就动
Joan says: 2. When the enemy has made his first move, one should quickly follow suit and mobilise.

Of course, you shouldn't rashly mobilise. After the enemy has made the first move, always make sure you know what is the motive behind that move and should always formulate your next move in accordance to your enemy. Never let your enemy easily get what he wants. Always keep the upper hand against your enemy. This would be the best outcome over any battle as you are able to know what your enemy is doing while on the other hand keep a firm check on your enemy.

萍曰： 三，敌没有动 我怎么办？
Joan says: 3. What should one do when the enemy fails to moves first?

When the enemy fails to move, it means that you would not know what the enemy is thinking and you are in a precarious position. You cannot make any move as that would put you in front of the enemy for analysis and your next moves might be forestalled by the enemy. There is also nothing much you can do as at this position you do not know much about the enemy and you would put yourself at risk if you jumped into a battle without considering the outcomes. As Joan said before, she would rather risk the 30% chance of losing the battle rather than the 70% chance of winning it.

萍曰： 四，我动 敌也动 无疑是桩好事
Joan says: 4. When one makes the first move and the enemy follows suit almost immediately, that unquestionably would also be a good thing.

This scenario is the second best scenario Joan would prefer. Of course, in a stalemate, both parties would fail to immediately launch and attack as both would prefer for the other party to make the first move, but as time is money, you cannot wait indiscriminately for your enemy to make the first move. In this case, you should launch an attack. If the result of this is an almost immediate counter-attack by your enemy, then you are in luck as now you know how your enemy fights a battle and you can plan your next moves in accordance to how your enemy reacted. That way, you can still maintain the upper hand against your enemy, and that is the most important thing in a battle.

萍曰： 五，我动 敌不动 那我想还是放弃吧
Joan says: 5. When one makes the first move and the enemy doesn't move in retrospect, then one should just give up all hope and forget about the battle.

This would be the saddest and most heartbreaking of all scenarios. Of course one would wish that the enemy would at least have some reaction, so when the enemy really, indeed, have none, then you should just forget about waging this battle. Ultimately, if the enemy just refuses to make any move against you, you would just be wasting your precious time and resources on something inactive. So, if that happens, it would be wiser if you just put that battle down and proceed to wage another battle on another enemy. That might eventually reap better rewards rather than wasting your time and energy.

Before you think that life is always that sad, Joan would like to end off her Art with the old saying of 留有希望在人间 or keep at least some faith in humanity.

Winning a war is definitely not something easy and this girl herself has yet to win any war she waged as most of her battles were abandoned on the clause of her point number 5 while the others are still hanging on point number 3. Or maybe the failure is due to that Joan is attempting to wage several battles at the same that that she is unable to single-mindedly focus on a single battle and win it. Or maybe, on a better thought, it is that fate has it yet that Joan should win a battle. Just hope that when joan finally wins a battle that would be the most glorifying and spectacular battle ever, the 世纪之战 War of the Century.

After all, a Great War beats all other small battles added together.

Postscript:
I guess some people might wonder why the sudden influx of Chinese characters in this entry. Yes, I'm Chinese and I'm proud of it. Even though when you guys hear me speak you might not realise that my Chinese isn't really that bad, my Chinese is in fact pretty good. And the art of warfare goes way back in Chinese history, so it is only befitting if the key points in this entry are in Chinese. I think you'd need to change the encoding to unicode to view them, but if you happen not to be able to understand Chinese, you didn't really miss much so please don't freak out. After each set of Chinese characters is the English translation of it.