Xiping Pass is a strategically important gateway in the novel’s campaigns against Shu: it appears first as the target of an army intended to open a northern front against Kong Ming, and later as a border crossing used by the Shu vanguard during its own northern expedition. The available account establishes its military role through these plans and movements, rather than describing the pass itself.

A target in the five-army plan

After Xuande’s death, Sima Yi proposes that Cao Pi attack Shu simultaneously from several directions, stretching Kong Ming’s ability to respond. The first force is to be recruited from the East Liao region: gifts of gold and silk are to persuade its king to send one hundred thousand tribesmen to seize Xiping Pass. The pass thus forms the objective of a frontier army within a broader coordinated invasion, not an isolated operation. Cao Pi approves the proposal, and messengers are sent to set the plan in motion. The account presents the pass as one point in a multi-front strategy that also assigns forces to the Man people, Sun Quan, Meng Da, and Cao Zhen’s regular army. The invasion’s design depends on threats arriving from widely separated directions, with the pressure on Xiping Pass meant to contribute to that larger encirclement.

A crossing on the northern expedition

The pass later appears in the opening of Kong Ming’s northern campaign. Consulting astrological charts, Kong Ming selects an auspicious day in spring AD 227 for the attack on Wei. Zhao Zilong, an aging general, insists on joining the expedition despite Kong Ming’s efforts to dissuade him; he wins a place in the vanguard, with Deng Zhi appointed to assist him. The vanguard crosses the border, placing Xiping Pass within the reported route of Shu’s advance. The two appearances give the pass a recurring function in the campaign’s geography. In Sima Yi’s proposal it is a place to be seized by an allied frontier force; in the later report of the Shu expedition, it lies on the route crossed by the opposing army. The account does not narrate a battle at the pass or specify who controls it after either movement. Its significance rests instead on its position as a named frontier objective and passage in the contest between Wei and Shu.