In chapter 95 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Yi’s army reaches a town where Zhuge Liang sits on the tower and plays the qin. Sima Yi suspects an ambush and withdraws without a fight. The ruse is known as 空城计, the Empty Fort Stratagem. Peking opera stages it together with the loss of Jieting and the execution of Ma Su.
The story is not in the historical Records of the Three Kingdoms. Pei Songzhi, who wrote the commentary to that history, quoted an earlier account of it and judged that “all of it is doubtful” (实皆可疑).