If you’re interested in strategy and tension over raw and brutal action, this might have been the best Kingdom episode of the season.  Li Mu was pretty much a lock to have something big planned – he’s played up as the smartest guy in the room no matter who else is in it, and he’s been distinctly invisible for most of the invasion.  There’s no way a guy like that is going to put the fate of an entire military campaign with his name on it in the hands of other generals’ decision-making.

“O-oona” Wa Lin even admits Li Mu is smarter than she is – and she’s the last person you’d expect to admit that about anybody.  She was correct about what it was that spoiled her own master plan (which came within a whisper of working) but honestly, Li Mu’s stratagem was an order of magnitude more ambitious.  From the beginning of the assault on Hangu Pass, he’s been siphoning soldiers off the Zhao army – a thousand at a time – and sending them through the mountains to prepare for an assault on Xianyang via the Southern route.  It’s clever on so many levels, depending on the sheer size advantage of the Coalition force to make the manoeuver unnoticeable.  And it works.

But wait – there’s more.  After the collapse of the frontal assault on Hangu Pass, Li Mu demands a thousand men from every army to join his southern front.  Does he really need those men?  Probably not – but even if they arrive late to the party, it allows him to spread the credit for the plan he assumes will succeed among all the nations rather than only his own Zhao.  Because this army has been slipping through the mountains they’ve never needed to assault the capital’s Wu Pass, which would have tipped off the city that an enemy force was coming from that direction.

The only flaw, in fact, is that this final flourish by Li Mu – about politics much more than military strategy – gives him away.  Lord Biao, the ultimate instinctive general (as he constantly reminds us), senses something is up when he spots small dust clouds rising behind the massive enemy force at Hangu Pass.  And he takes off at all speed without waiting for orders, putting his own ass on the line and trusting himself totally to his gut as he always does.  And where Biao goes, Xin is sure to follow.  Their combined force arrives at Li Mu’s rear guard just as his army is preparing to take down the final obstacles before reaching Xianyang.

This is where Li Mu the strategist gives way to Li Mu the tactician.  Some commanders are brilliant at one or the other, but only the best of the best shine at both.  His strategy has gotten him to the capital’s doorstep, now he must rely on his tactics to take down his pursuers.  For this he employs a manoeuver called the “Liudong Flow“.  I have no idea if the Liudong Flow is a real thing but it does have the ring of an actual battlefield tactic – one you’d see in the academy but almost never in practice.  The biggest challenge is obvious and noted by Diao – she can see everything happening with the Liudong Flow’s weird whirlpool effects because she’s looking down from above, but how can Li Mu control it – as he seems to be doing – from within its midst?

The most elegant part of the Liudong is the way it uses blocks of Li Mu’s men as “rocks” in the current, to cause the “leaves” to flow around them.  It splits the enemy bloodlessly and effectively, but Biao has his own tricks – he’s separated himself from his battle flags to throw Li Mu off his scent.  Biao rides his luck and instinct to a head-on meeting with Li Mu, a stroke of brilliance.  But I suspect this may be the end of the road for him, going up against the biggest possum of them all.  And truthfully, the most logical way for Xin’s trajectory to be fast-forwarded was always for him to take his mentor’s place at the head of the Biao army.  Is this the time and place where it happens?  Who knows – but it certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility.