The outline of Zhuge Liang’s borrowing from the east wind

This story comes from "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and is actually quite simple. The general idea is that on the eve of the Battle of Chibi, Zhou Yu was ready to launch a fire attack to burn down Cao Cao's warships and defeat Cao Cao. But Zhou Yu made a mistake in his busy schedule. He did not realize that the fire attack had very high requirements on the wind direction. In the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the middle of winter, the wind blows mostly from the northwest and there is no southeast wind. If a fire is set against the northwest wind, Cao's army will be in the upper hand, and it will just burn itself, but not Cao's army at all. Zhou Yu couldn't think of a way and fell ill all of a sudden. Zhuge Liang was helping Zhou Yu's army make plans at the time. Knowing the cause of Zhou Yu's illness, he gave Zhou Yu a "prescription": "If you want to defeat Cao Yu's army, you must attack with fire. Everything is ready, all you need is the east wind." Zhou Yu asked Zhuge Liang Looking for a way to "borrow" the east wind, Zhuge Liang immediately agreed: "You can borrow it." So Zhou Yu had someone build a seven-star altar, and Zhuge Liang pretended to go to the altar to "borrow the east wind." On the day of the battle, the southeast wind picked up. Zhou Yu took the opportunity to launch an attack and attacked Cao's army in one fell swoop. In fact, Zhuge Liang was good at predicting the weather. He knew from the forecast that there would be a southeasterly wind that day, and it was not "borrowed" at all.