In the novel Zhou Yu orders Zhuge Liang to produce a hundred thousand arrows in ten days, meaning to ruin him. Zhuge Liang asks for three. On the third day, in heavy fog, he drums straw figures toward Cao Cao’s camp. Cao Cao, fearing an ambush, lets the archers shoot. By the time the fog lifts, the boats bristle with arrows. Zhuge Liang returns them, and Zhou Yu is ashamed.
Chen Shou does not tell this. Pei Songzhi quotes the Weilüe for a different incident. Sun Quan took a large boat out to observe Cao Cao’s army. Arrows struck one side and the boat listed. He had it turned so the other side would take arrows, the weight evened, and he returned. The arrows are real, the boat is real, and the man is Sun Quan. There is no Zhou Yu trying to destroy an ally with a quota of arrows.
The stratagem is marked as romance. It rewrites a reconnaissance that may belong to Sun Quan into a contest that serves the novel’s narrow-hearted Zhou Yu. The fire attack at Red Cliffs does not depend on those hundred thousand arrows.