A statement reporting that Cheng Linggui, a bandit general under Huang Chao, was lured into surrender奏誘降黃巢下賊將成令瓌狀

Cheng Linggui, bandit general of a detached column under the rebel Huang Chao, with forty thousand followers and seven thousand cavalry.

The band of bandits named above at first took their orders from Huang Chao and held Tong Pass. Before long they broke off as a separate column and fled, burning and plundering wherever they went, and of all places the region of Qizhou and Huangzhou was the worst wounded. Your servant humbly considers that to keep a true king's army in order one must look for no battle at all, and that to honor and follow the virtue of a sagely ruler one may pardon those who have a flaw. So I slackened the attack for a time, and first sent word to admonish them. Not long ago your servant sent the staff officer Ding Wei on a special mission, bearing a detailed letter, to go deep among them and call them over. They did indeed wish to come and submit, and asked besides to be entrusted with a commandery's tally, that they might show forth their loyalty. As for Cheng Linggui, your servant at the time filled him into the post of staff officer at the front, and gave him as well a certificate of merit as Acting Chancellor of the Directorate of Education and concurrently Vice Censor in Chief, and made him acting administrator of the military and civil affairs of Chuzhou in Huai. On the twenty-third day of this month he led the soldiers under his hand to Chuzhou and turned his spears around. Chuzhou and Xuzhou face one another across the banks of Lianshui. This spring the bandits came suddenly and attacked and plundered it, and though they were driven off again and again, they were not all cut down or taken. How much more so when the bandits of Lianshui have long stored up crooked designs, going about in secret to spy, always drawing up their warships and looking down upon the lone city with contempt, meaning to rush upon it again, so that in the end they would become a calamity. It is for this that your servant gave this commandery over to Linggui for the time being. Having come over and pledged his good faith, he will surely be able to break the den of those stubborn and vile men. Your servant has long been at the work of arms and has always studied military planning. I hold that to show kindness first and to cut down afterward is what the strategists prize, and that when the far are drawn near and the near are glad, the Emperor's Way is just then rising. Looking up, I glimpsed your grace that harbors disgrace; looking down, I searched out their will that longs for the smell of mutton. Without troubling an inch of blade, I borrowed only a foot of writing, and Cheng Linggui at last changed his wild heart and could follow the will of Heaven. Forty thousand rebels have all become common people on the registers, delighting in their callings, and seven thousand picked horsemen have all become stout fellows who offer up their loyalty. Since their guilt was pardoned, their gratitude for your grace is seen twice over. The small bandits that flew like bees have melted away at once, and the arch-villain who gathered them like hedgehog quills can be destroyed. This is because Your Majesty prayed away three sides of the net and made the dance shine upon the two stairs, so that your good faith has soaked even into pigs and fish, and your teaching can change owls and jing beasts. One who commands well does not draw up his lines, and so I dare not boast of the power to stop the killing; the highest Way has nothing private in it, and so I only look up to your virtue that loves life. As for the number of Cheng Linggui's men who wish to stay at the gate of the army, and of those who have been released, I ask leave to draw it up and report it hereafter. With respect I set this down and report it. Respectfully submitted.