The Three Kingdoms: Zhaolie, the strategist, and the rise of the Han Dynasty

Chapter 124 Lao Liu: I’m not short of money, I’ll give him whatever he wants!

"Does Ming Gong hope that Bu will leave Gao Shun in Xuzhou to train new soldiers?"

Lu Bu opened his mouth and asked.

Liu Bei nodded and answered:

"He has no talent or virtue, but he occupies a large state, but he lacks people to manage it."

"I have long heard that General Gao is good at commanding troops and managing the army."

"It would be a blessing from heaven if General Gao could train the new talents of Xuzhou."

Lu Bu hesitated for a moment. He knew that Gao Shun was a capable man and very loyal to him.

But Lu Bu did not like Gao Shun, and often distanced himself from him.

The history books say, "Bu knew he was loyal, but could not use him."

This sounds contradictory.

What's Lu Bu's train of thought? He knew Gao Shun was capable but still loyal.

But you refuse to use him?
This is actually very easy to understand.
Gao Shun's noble character is like a mirror, forming a sharp contrast with Lu Bu.

Gao Shun often advised Lu Bu that those who lost their country and their families did not mean that they did not have loyal and wise men under their command.

It's just that they can't use people.

General Lu, you act rashly and are too lazy to think.

If you always say that you have made mistakes, then you have made too many mistakes.

The tone is full of preaching, and it sounds too fatherly.

As we all know, what Lu Bu hates most is people who act too much like a dad.

He has such a broad mind, how could he be happy to hear this?
You are amazing, you are arrogant!

Is it okay that I, Lu Bu, delayed you?
It's like having a teacher who always criticizes you. Although everything he says makes sense, do you want to avoid him or get close to him?
Gao Shun is actually an honest man who doesn’t understand the workplace, much like Guan Yu.

But he doesn't have the same charm as Guan Yu, and he is always pampered by bosses wherever he goes.

In contrast, Zhang Liao is much more smooth in the workplace, and Lu Bu also likes Zhang Liao more and is willing to be close to him.

As for Gao Shun, Lu Bu directly took away his troops and handed them over to Wei Xu to lead.

When the war breaks out, return it to Gao Shun.

Hand it back after the war is over.

Gao Shun never complained about this.

The history books say, "Shun also had no hatred in the end."

Ironically, Zhang Liao and Wei Xu, whom Lu Bu liked, both surrendered to Cao Cao.

Wei Xu directly kidnapped Chen Gong and Gao Shun and surrendered the entire city.

Zhang Liao was the Prime Minister of Lu at the time. Seeing that Lu Bu was doomed, he led his troops to surrender.

On the contrary, Gao Shun would rather die than surrender.

Lu Bu was sorry for Gao Shun, but Gao Shun was definitely worthy of Lu Bu.

"Do you only want to borrow Gao Shun?"

Lu Bu asked tentatively.

Although he didn't like Gao Shun, Gao Shun had 700 soldiers from the Formation of Trap.

If Liu Bei still wanted to take the Xianzhen Camp away, then the money and food he sent would be nothing at all.

"I just want to borrow General Gao, nothing else."

Liu Bei dispelled Lu Bu's doubts and had no intention of seizing the Xianzhen Camp.

Anyway, with Gao Shun here, why worry about not being able to train the Xianzhen Camp?

"it is good."

Lu Bu no longer had any worries. He turned to Gao Shun and said, "General Gao, you should stay in Xuzhou and train new soldiers for me!"

"Here."

Gao Shun accepted the order with a bow and did not think about anything else.

Liu Bei was overjoyed when he saw this, and immediately ordered Mi Zhu to deliver all the promised money and grain to Lu Bu.

He then took Gao Shun to the parade ground to review the new recruits.

What he saw along the way made Gao Shun sigh:
"I heard that General Liu is gathering food and grass in Xuzhou, training troops, and many people from far and near are joining him."

"Today I can see that what I said is true."

Liu Bei nodded and smiled:

"I was originally a simple and ignorant person, and I rose from the grass roots. Later, when the world was in turmoil, many heroes emerged."

"So we gathered like-minded people and discussed raising an army, hoping to fight the enemy and make contributions to the country."

"If I can have a stable country and a peaceful world, I will be satisfied with my life's wishes."

Good ambition...

Gao Shun secretly sighed that Liu Bei was a man of great talent, no wonder he could win the hearts of the people in Xuzhou.

"General Gao, could you possibly train this army for a while?"

Liu Bei pointed at the group of new recruits and signaled to Gao Shun.

"my pleasure."

Gao Shun took the order and went to the training ground to train the new soldiers.

After repeated instructions, the soldiers were able to carry out basic deployment and formation.

After another half an hour, the new recruits were able to follow Gao Shun's orders and form battle arrays for attack and defense.

The array is neat, well-organized and majestic.

Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhao Yun were all surprised.

They had never seen such a scene in their lives.

"Is this the power of the trap camp?"

Liu Bei took the initiative to ask the question, feeling that he was worthy of being the person recommended by the military advisor.

A group of new recruits were trained by Gao Shun into being very powerful in just half an hour.

Like a veteran who has fought for many years.

Xuzhou is a place of war, surrounded by enemies on three sides.

Except for some mountains in Langya in the north that can block the enemy, the rest of the area is flat.

Therefore, they could only rely on the flesh and blood of the soldiers to build high walls to prevent the enemy's attacks.

"The warriors of the Xianzhen Camp are good at attacking strongholds. Since we established Xuzhou, we have mostly fought defensive battles and rarely attacked cities."

Li Yi patiently explained to Liu Bei, "Having such a brave warrior will be of great help in conquering cities in the future."

The historical records record that Gao Shun's Xianzhen Camp was "the camp that was able to break through any place it attacked, and was therefore called the Xianzhen Camp."

Speaking of which, Lao Liu was defeated by Gao Shun in history.

At that time in Xiaopei, Lu Bu sent Gao Shun to attack, but Lao Liu failed to stop him.

Then Cao Cao sent Xiahou Dun to help Lao Liu, but they lost again.

It can be seen that Gao Shun is not only good at training soldiers, but also quite good at commanding operations.

Liu Bei was overjoyed, and holding Li Yi's hand, he said with emotion:

"Military Advisor has put a lot of thought into planning for Xuzhou. I am truly grateful to you!"

When I was young,

Gao Shun walked over and bowed to Liu Bei.

"Envoy, this new force can be trained."

Liu Bei was slightly startled, "So General Gao was here to test the personnel just now."

Gao Shun nodded and answered very honestly:

"War is a place of life and death. Only the brave can take on this task."

"If you want to train warriors to fight in battle, you must select brave men and have them stand out and take orders."

"But your warriors are all brave and valiant, and can serve as the vanguard."

Although Gao Shun was calm when he said this, his heart was actually in turmoil.

He secretly sighed that Liu Bei, who already had a large army in Xuzhou, was still able to recruit so many strong men.

How famous is this person in Xuzhou?

In fact, it took Liu Bei a long time to prepare this group of new soldiers.

Most of their parents and relatives died in the war and are now left alone.

These people all have hatred for their enemies and an indomitable will.

At the same time, there were also soldiers who had followed Liu Bei in his battles for many years, and some of their children were also selected.

Liu Bei invested a lot of effort in these people.

The reason why they are all so vigorous and strong is that, in addition to daily training, they also have the best food.

A daily ration of one litre is allotted per day.

And from time to time there would be rewards of fish, shrimp, meat and poultry.

The reason why he dared to do this was mainly due to the military farming policy implemented by Li Yi.

Xuzhou is not short of water. A large number of paddy fields are very suitable for growing rice, which is more conducive to the use of curved plows.

In Guangling alone, it is possible to harvest three crops a year.

It was only when Champa rice appeared in the Song Dynasty that rice could be harvested three times a year.

In fact, Champa rice is not from the Song Dynasty.

It's not even unique to the Eastern Han Dynasty.

It may have existed as early as the Western Han Dynasty.

In November 2007, a batch of ancient rice from the Western Han Dynasty was unearthed during a rescue archaeological excavation of the No. 11 Han Tomb of Xiejiaqiao in Jingzhou, which had been robbed.

After analyzing the ancient rice, it was found that the characteristics of ancient rice were different from those of wild rice, early ancient rice and japonica rice.

It is closer to indica rice and is therefore considered to belong to the cultivated ancient rice group of the indica rice type.

Even Li Shizhen, the author of Compendium of Materia Medica, believed that indica rice had existed before the Song Dynasty.

Therefore, promoting rice cultivation in Xuzhou, if nothing goes wrong, can increase grain production by three or five times.

By next spring, Xuzhou will be able to harvest a large amount of grain.

Thanks to this, Liu Bei not only purchased a large number of war horses and expanded his cavalry.

He also began to expand his army, adding a thousand men to the troops of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun and others.

Then, following Li Yi's suggestion, some brave men were selected and trained intensively.

After training, they are used to attack the enemy lines first.

As luck would have it, Lu Bu came.

He just happened to have a famous general under his command who was able to train soldiers to break into battle.

With the joint efforts of Li Yi and others, they successfully helped Gao Shun stay in Xuzhou and asked him to help train the Xianzhen Camp.

"If I want to train the warriors for you, it won't be difficult."

"But it would be difficult to train all these people into the trap camp."

Gao Shun reported truthfully to Liu Bei and said that he could not train so many people.

"Oh?"

Liu Bei raised his eyebrows, "General Gao, do you feel that you are not up to the task?" Liu Bei thought to himself that there were only three thousand new recruits. Gao Shun couldn't be so unable to train such a small number of people, right?

"No."

Gao Shun shook his head.

"If we just train these people to be the first to charge into the enemy's formation, it won't be difficult."

"But it is difficult to make them unleash the true power of the trap camp."

"It's not that I can't do my best, but I'm afraid you'll be powerless."

Is it related to me?

Liu Bei became even more confused and thought to himself, what does this have to do with me?
Li Yi stepped forward to help Liu Bei resolve his doubts and said:

"I think what General Gao is referring to is the equipment of the Xianzhen Camp."

"exactly."

Gao Shun nodded.

Since the Xianzhen Camp was invincible, why did Gao Shun only have 700 men under his command?
Lu Bu knew that the Xianzhen Camp was strong, so why didn't he expand it?
Because the original words in the history book say that the Xianzhen Camp is "all armor and fighting equipment are refined and neat."

This is a 100% armor coverage rate, which was the top configuration at the time.

During the chaos among the princes at the end of the Han Dynasty, the rate of soldiers wearing armor was very low.

Not to mention iron armor, many soldiers couldn't even put on leather armor.

The reason why Lu Bu was able to arm an army of over a thousand soldiers was because he had previously served as a general in the imperial court.

Since he is an officer, it is not difficult for him to get a thousand pieces of equipment from the armory.

After he left the capital, if he wanted to get a full set of armor, he would have nowhere to get it.

Therefore, the Xianzhen Camp under his command was always just “a thousand men”.

"Hahaha……"

Hearing the difficulties expressed by Gao Shun, Liu Bei smiled calmly.

"I wondered what the matter was, and it turned out to be a lack of armor and fighting equipment."

"This is an easy thing to do."

Liu Bei turned to ask Mi Zhu, the deputy driver beside him,

"Zi Zhong, how many pounds of iron can your family's iron camp produce?"

Mi Zhu was very clear about his family's property. He only hesitated for a moment before answering:
"There is an iron camp in my hometown, Qu County. As long as we provide enough raw materials, we can produce 500 kilograms of iron a day, and 200,000 kilograms a year."

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, a total of 34 iron official camps were set up across the country.

Among them, Xuzhou is a major iron producer.

In addition to Mi Zhu's hometown of Qu County, there were government-run blacksmith shops in Pengcheng, Xia Pi, Guangling and other places.

Of course, due to the loss of imperial power at the end of the Han Dynasty, these official iron camps were basically annexed by local powerful families.

Mi Zhu's family monopolized the state-run salt and iron businesses in Xuzhou, and they were undoubtedly powerful.

Now that Liu Bei has unified the five counties, he controls seven iron camps.

There is even less shortage of raw materials, in addition to local production in Xuzhou.

The neighboring states of Lu and Pei in Yuzhou are also major iron producing countries.

Liu Bei had already remotely controlled these two places, and the iron ore produced locally was transported directly to Xia Pi via the Si Shui waterway.

In addition, there are also six official iron camps in Qingzhou in the north.

However, Liu Bei had already reached a reconciliation with Yuan Tan and started trading with him.

By selling refined salt, we exchange it for pig iron from Qingzhou.

You can get ready-made iron directly without even having to process it.

With sufficient iron materials, the blacksmith shops in Xuzhou were working at full capacity.

In addition to making weapons and armor.

Liu Bei allocated 30,000 kilograms of iron and ordered people to make 10,000 hoes for the purpose of farming.

Another 20,000 kilograms of iron were allocated to build 2,000 curved plows to assist in rice farming.

Thanks to the joint efforts of Li Yi and others, Xuzhou now has steel military industrial enterprises.

This is why Li Yi strongly recommended that Liu Bei start farming, recuperate, and not start a war.

Because food, equipment and population are all growing rapidly, it would be a waste not to develop the land.

Once these numbers accumulate, we can really launch a strong attack against the outside world.

Beat whoever you see, one punch at a time.

"Zi Zhong, order the blacksmith to make 3,000 sets of armor and fighting tools according to General Gao's requirements."

"Whatever iron and gold are needed can be paid from the government treasury."

Liu Bei waved his hand and ordered Mi Zhu to strictly make the equipment and armor needed for the Xianzhen Camp according to Gao Shun's standards.

Gao Shun secretly sighed that Liu Xuzhou was not only tyrannical, but also decisive and capable of accomplishing great things.

He advised Lu Bu several times that he could expand the Xianzhen Camp to increase the strength of the entire army.

But they were all rejected by Lu Bu on the grounds that the cost was too high.

Alas, comparing yourself to others can really make you angry.

"Liu Xuande is a dragon among men, and he has never touched water in his life."

"Now that we have captured Xuzhou, it is like a trapped dragon entering the sea. The future is immeasurable."

Gao Shun thought so.

"What is the General thinking?"

Seeing Gao Shun in a trance, Liu Bei stepped forward and asked with concern.

Well.

Gao Shun quickly came back to his senses and bowed:

"I have heard that when Cao Cao attacked Xuzhou for the second time, he left no one behind, not even the sound of chickens or dogs could be heard."

"However, since you arrived in Xuzhou, smoke from cooking fires has appeared again in Baitu, and the bandits have already surrendered."

"These are all the achievements of the governor in civil and military affairs, which make the people obedient and envious."

Upon hearing this, Liu Bei held Gao Shun's hand and said:
"General, there is no need to be envious. A man of honor in this world will have opportunities to make achievements and establish his career."

"If there is an opportunity in the future, I will go to the battlefield with the general and create immortal merits together."

Fought side by side, and returned home wrapped in horsehide.

This is a man's romance.

Gao Shun's nose felt slightly sour, and he bowed again:
"Good! It would be a great honor to fight alongside you, my Lord."

Maxima often has it, but Bole does not often have it.

Gao Shun followed Lu Bu in a long period of displacement and never had any chance to achieve anything.

Now living in Xuzhou, I have come to a bigger stage.

Perhaps there will be more opportunities to show yourself and prove your worth.

It can be considered as fulfilling one of my wishes.

Afterwards, Liu Bei handed over this group of new recruits to Gao Shun for training.

He returned to the provincial capital with everyone, and someone reported that another envoy had come from Jingzhou.

It turned out that after Liu Xian returned to Jingzhou and reported Liu Bei's intention to Liu Biao, Liu Biao was overjoyed.

He hurriedly sent another envoy to Xuzhou to discuss the specific details of trade between Jing and Xu.

Liu Bei was not good at haggling over every penny, so he entrusted Mi Zhu to talk to the envoy from Jingzhou.

Finally, the result was negotiated.

Jingzhou sold grain to Xuzhou.

Corn, wheat, and rice, two hundred coins per stone.

Soybeans and millet cost three hundred coins per dan.

High-quality millet like Liangmi was sold for three hundred and fifty coins per stone.

As for Xuzhou, it doesn’t matter if the cash cannot be produced for the time being.

Can be exchanged for an equivalent amount of salt.

Xuzhou sold refined salt to Jingzhou at two thousand coins per stone.

Jingzhou is willing to transport at least one million shi of grain to Xuzhou within one year.

As for Xuzhou, it must ensure that it pays Jingzhou at least 300 million coins.

Liu Biao also specifically requested that at least one-third of the money must be exchanged for real gold and silver.

This price is quite fair.

Xuzhou will definitely benefit from it.

After all, in troubled times, food is sometimes even more valuable than gold.

Liu Bei once sent someone to inquire about the current price of grain in Yanzhou, the neighboring state of Cao.

The price of each dan of grain was a terrifying 10,000 coins.

The cheapest grain that Liu Biao sold to Liu Bei was only two hundred coins per stone.

So Liu Bei gladly accepted this result.

This is all thanks to Li Yi's policy of befriending Liu Biao in Jingzhou.

Liu Biao's blood transfusion-style transaction was in the hope of being able to participate in the issue of Yangzhou in the future.

And it was divided into Lujiang and Yuzhang to serve as a barrier for Jingzhou.

However, Liu Bei would turn a blind eye to this and tacitly allow Liu Biao to annex the two places.

Looking at the agreed terms of the agreement, Liu Bei couldn't help but admire Li Yi's foresight.

If he had not fully advocated for friendship with Liu Biao at that time, how could Liu Bei's Xuzhou have obtained so much food so easily?

As long as Jingzhou does not unilaterally tear up the agreement, it will have its blood transfusion.

Xuzhou can not only engage in military farming, expand the army and raise horses with peace of mind.

Even on the Guangling River, the manpower scale can be increased to speed up the construction and improve the transportation efficiency within Xuzhou.

The current situation in Xuzhou is truly full of vitality, with everything flourishing.

Now Liu Bei was looking at the good situation in Xuzhou and his mood was also very good.

Then he went to find Li Yi to enjoy the snow outside the city.

This is a rare moment of leisure for the two of them.

"Military Advisor, you talked with Zhang Wenyuan for a long time last night. I wonder what you talked about?"

On the way, Liu Bei, riding on horseback, asked Li Yi.

Li Yi smiled and said:

"It's nothing serious. I just told him some details about Yuzhou's affairs."

"I hope he can minimize the losses when confronting Cao Cao."

Liu Bei nodded, fixed his eyes and asked:
"Although Wenyuan is brave, he only has 5,000 county soldiers."

"Although Guo Gong has more than 10,000 people, it is still unknown whether they can cooperate with Wen Yuan."

"I wonder if these two can defeat Cao Cao by joining forces."

……

(End of this chapter)