To Chief Minister Zhuge Shuang — the second諸葛爽相公 第二
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 138 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 8 — Enclosures A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
I hear that since Huang Chao fled from the Shang range he has long pressed upon the fields of Xu, that the troops of Cai are joined with him, and that his mad blade burns hot still. Here in my own garrison the roads are blocked and far, and it is hard to know where he moves and where he halts. I have had no chance to use the skill of seizing the deer by the leg, and I only nurse the courage that cuts down the water dragon. I learn that the Chief Minister directs the eight formations in person and works the six strategies deeply, that he will sweep away that crowd of villains in quiet, and that he has already driven his keen troops forward in line. Since he has shown that he puts on armor through the three months of winter, he will bring rare merit to pass at once. Now I know that crossing the Lu in the fifth month is truly an easy thing. The circuits may indeed lay their heads high, and the sage lord may turn his carriage back. Yet no one can measure where the whale will run, and a beast that strikes out must still be guarded against. Whoever holds a military command ought to look closely into the workings of war. So I send a man of my own to spy out the state of the bandits from afar. I ask that he let me know what he learns, and I hope that it will help in putting them down. I beg him to look upon this and judge. Respectfully submitted.