My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 283: No matter whether your advice is useful or not, Shen Pei will definitely frame Xu You's family

On the second day of October, Cao's army crossed the camp.

Compared to when he had just encountered the Dong Cheng Rebellion at the beginning of the year, Cao Cao looked much older in just over eight months.

Theoretically, in the past eight months, he had only grown from forty-five to forty-six.

Moreover, because of his long-term lust, he was in a good mood and relieved his stress very comfortably. Cao Cao, who was originally 45 years old, looked only 40 at most and was very young.

But Cao Cao, now 46 years old, has gray hair and beard, and his face is covered with wrinkles. He looks to be at least in his 50s.

Eight months of high-intensity pressure has brought people anxiety and decline, which is far beyond what ordinary people can bear. Even if they have nerves of steel, the torment of time will be reflected in their flesh.

In recent days, Yuan Shao's new offensive has once again made Cao Cao extremely nervous, and he urgently needs to find a new way to break through.

As another day of fighting came to an end, a group of counselors and several generals in charge of patrolling came to the central army tent to report today's battle results and casualties, and to ask for instructions on subsequent battle plans.

After listening to this, Cao Cao nodded and shook his head, and finally gave the order helplessly:
"Benchu has actually learned how to use the Ge Gongche, and the improved well screen that can be used to supplement archers on the battlefield through protective hanging ladders, to launch sieges, and he is using it more and more skillfully. After six months of bloody battles, brother Benchu has made a lot of progress. Is this the third or fourth time you have surprised me?

He ordered the soldiers to continue working day and night to raise the rammed earth camp wall - building the wall was not the main purpose, it was just a side job, the main purpose was to find a place to put the excavated soil.

I will widen the long trench that was used to cut off the exit of the Hebei Army's tunnel, but I won't increase its depth. This will prevent the enemy from building a trench bridge and driving across the trench when they attack! This will prevent Ge Gong's car from being pushed to the rammed earth camp wall!"

Cao Cao's order was also a helpless move. Because in the past half month, as Yuan Shao's army upgraded its offensive means, he had to break through at all costs.

If the battle at Guandu was an encirclement and siege, Cao Cao would have been in great danger when Yuan Shao's army pulled out the Ge Gongche and climbed up the rammed earth wall for the first time to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Cao's army.

But fortunately, the situation here is not a siege, but just an attack and defense of a fortress pass. There is a road behind Cao Cao for friendly forces to reinforce.

So even if Yuan's army climbed up the wall, the two sides would just change the battlefield and engage in fair hand-to-hand combat.

Cao's soldiers kept blocking the entrance and fighting, and they still held out for several days. However, they suffered casualties and lost blood very quickly every day, and they became a meat grinder.

If the situation continues like this, Cao's army will be completely defeated by Yuan Shao in less than a month.

At this moment, Cao Ren and Xiahou Yuan, who were in charge of guarding the camp, could not help but step out to remind Cao Cao after hearing his solution: "Mingsir! You can't waste the lives of your soldiers like this!
Since our army built the Thunderbolt Chariots to fight against the Yuan army's Well-Locked Chariots, although the Yuan army's Well-Locked Chariots did not dare to get too close to fire at the interior of the pass, they could still observe our army's movements by relying on their high height and retreating more than 200 steps away from the camp wall.

"Now that the stalemate has lasted for a long time, the enemy's fortifications outside the pass have become stronger, and rattan shields and battle formations have been set up within a hundred steps of the battle formation. If our soldiers leave the camp to dig wide trenches, they will definitely be discovered by the enemy, and then they will be shot with bows and crossbows. Soldiers digging wide trenches will inevitably suffer casualties! Our troops are already stretched to the limit, and digging a trench will cost lives. I'm afraid our morale will soon collapse!"

Cao Cao was upset. He knew these difficulties, but he knew the priorities. Facing Xiahou Yuan and Cao Ren's persuasion, he still rejected the opposition:

"I know this truth! But the soldiers digging trenches can carry rattan shields and chopped door panels on their backs, lie low, and the enemy will not be able to aim and shoot directly at them. With the arrows thrown down, casualties will not come quickly!

But if we let Yuan's Ge Gongche lean against the camp wall again, hundreds of them would rush up to fight hand-to-hand, and I'm afraid our army would suffer most casualties in less than half a month!"

Cao Ren: "But if we defend on the camp wall, at least both sides will suffer casualties. Our army will be on the defensive and suffer fewer casualties than Yuan Shao. The soldiers who went out to dig wide trenches and pits were consumed by Yuan Shao's projectiles. Even if the casualties were slower, it would be too damaging to their morale to be beaten without being able to fight back."

Cao Cao: "Then think of other ways to boost morale! The key now is not that morale can't hold up, but to save more lives and delay until things change! I once doubted whether our army could hold up, but Wen Ruo sent a letter from Xudu yesterday, encouraging me:
Yuan Shao has many civil and military factions under his command, and the internal struggle is fierce. As long as he fails to conquer the city after a long period of siege, people will inevitably shirk responsibility and take credit for the achievements. This may be our only chance! It is impossible to win a war of attrition. What we want is to delay for a longer time and wait for a turning point! "

After hearing what Cao Cao said and relaying the opinions in Xun Yu's letter, the generals stopped objecting. They also realized that the situation on the battle was indeed like this.

Even if you delay until the end, you may not survive, but exhaustion will definitely lead to death. In this case, why bother to actively seek death?

At this moment, Cao Cao also realized that tactics and technical means are ever-changing, and it is impossible to predict what moves the two sides will make in the future.

The only things that remained consistent were the interests, the enemy-friend relationship, and the internal conflicts between the two sides. Cao Cao was well aware of the factions and intrigues within Yuan Shao.

Even if Zhuge Jin were in Cao Cao's position today, he would have to admit that interests are eternal, and conflicts caused by conflicts of interest are also eternal. What strategies Xu You would offer to Yuan Shao and whether Yuan Shao would use them are all likely to change because of the butterfly effect brought about by Zhuge Jin, the time traveler.

But there is one thing that Zhuge Jin, who is thousands of miles away, also knows, that is, Shen Pei and Xu You will fight among themselves, and the Hebei faction and the outside faction under Yuan Shao will fight among themselves, and this will be eternal.

No matter how many new technologies and tactics emerge, this contradiction is irreconcilable.

……

Cao Cao issued the latest delaying tactical instructions, and Cao Ren and Xiahou Yuan continued to execute them. After a day or two, the casualties of Cao's army really dropped, but at the cost of Yuan Shao's casualties. Because the trenches were widened, Ge Gongche could not get close to them, and they could not launch a hand-to-hand fight, so they simply retreated behind the rattan shield array fortifications and shot cold arrows. The arrows and supplies of Yuan Shao's army were consumed at a much faster rate, but no soldiers died. Instead, they could shoot and kill hundreds of Cao's soldiers digging in the trenches every day.

This was when most of Cao's soldiers were carrying door panels on their backs, so Cao Cao soon realized that this job should not be done by combat soldiers, or even auxiliary soldiers.

They should have captured civilians in Chenliu and Chenjun to do the work. It was just digging, and anyone could do it. Cao Cao could afford to have hundreds of civilians shot dead by Yuan Shao every day, and his collapse could be delayed from half a month to two months - of course, the premise was that there was enough food, which was another shortcoming.

Two days after adopting the new tactics, Cao Cao finally saw his first turning point.

On this day, Xun Yu of Xudu sent a few messengers and craftsmen to escort them from the rear. Xun Yu specifically endorsed these people, saying that they were sent by Zhou Yu of Wujun.

Their suggestions are very important, and Xun Yu has already verified them urgently in Xudu. Please take them seriously and meet with them immediately.

Of course, Cao Cao absolutely trusted Xun Yu, so he immediately met with the envoy - of course, he still had to search them thoroughly before the meeting, and asked them to talk twenty steps away, and Xu Chu would always stand by Cao Cao's side.

After Zhou Yu's envoy met with Cao Cao, he immediately demonstrated a bunch of drawings to Cao Cao, as well as some application experience notes written by Zhou Yu.

Cao Cao was surprised to see Chen Deng's tactics against Ge Gongche in the battle to defend Guangling, as well as the application, feature descriptions and appearance drawings of some other new equipment in the water battles between Sun and Liu.

"These things are the experiences Sun Ce gained from fighting Guan Yu and Zhuge Jin in April and May, at the cost of 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and horses. Zhou Yu summarized them in July, so why did he send them to us only now? And why did Zhou Yu ignore them and send unknown people like you to deliver them?" Cao Cao was very unwilling and questioned the messenger quickly.

He thought it would be great if this thing had been delivered a month or two earlier! He could have saved thousands of elite soldiers! If injuries were counted, that would have saved more than 10,000 manpower! Yuan Shao's consumption of minced meat these days was too horrible!

The envoy Zhou Yu replied in a slightly depressed but forced calm voice: "General Zhou has already sent several groups of people to deliver the troops, and the previous groups were probably intercepted and killed by Guan Yu. How can we let people whose lives are precious do such a life-threatening task?"

Cao Cao was slightly moved and imagined the dangers along the way.

It turns out that using Sun Ce's remote location to block the news is effective, but the prerequisite is that the news must be "timely".

If it is an irrefutable truth, eternally valid and without time limit, then blocking it can only delay it but cannot stop it.

No matter how powerful Zhuge Jin was, he could only kill all the messengers sent by Zhou Yu in the previous one or two months, and some of them would definitely slip through in the end.

Cao Cao realized that the visitor had made great contributions, so he asked politely: "May I ask your name? What is your position?"

Zhou Yu's messenger bowed and replied: "I am Zhou Shan, the last general in the army. I am only a garrison commander, but I was a member of the personal guard of General Sun Taoni."

Cao Cao immediately issued an order: "I will appoint you as the military commander to honor your merits in escaping death. If we only look at your merits, it may not be worth such a reward, but considering the envoys who died before you, they can no longer be promoted, and you can only take over. However, if I find that they still have family members alive in Wuhui in the future, I will reward them with a lot of money."

After Cao Cao finished speaking, he threw a few blueprints to several major advisers who were accompanying the army, asking them to find experienced officials and craftsmen in the army who were good at craftsmanship to quickly verify and build them. They should also take a look at Xun Yu's verification results to avoid taking detours.

The construction potential during wartime is always endless. Under the pressure of life-and-death crisis, Cao's army pushed forward all work at a rapid pace. They also concentrated all the crossbows in the army and the rear, and imitated the tactical equipment and deployment that Chen Deng used to break Zhou Yu's Ge Gongche overnight.

The technical content of Cao's army's equipment was not as good as Liu Bei's army, but Cao Cao was forced by the actual situation to learn from it and came up with some compensatory measures. For example, he noticed that outside the wall of his Guandu Dazhai, there was a long trench to defend against Yuan Shao's tunnel tactics, and it had been widened recently.

So Cao Cao had an idea and ordered his soldiers to give up widening the road and instead allow Yuan's army to fill in the space where the carts were to be pushed when they attacked.

However, Cao Cao slightly leveled the soil near the trench and deliberately built a barely noticeable gentle slope.

This would make it more difficult to push the Ge bus uphill, and the body of the bus would tilt slightly backward, making the center of gravity even more unstable.

In short, in order to survive, Cao Cao racked his brains to come up with every possible strategy.

Compared with the same period in history, Cao's army had a greater advantage, that is, Jia Xu, the old shady guy, was forced to fight to the death by Cao Cao because of Cao Cao's propaganda during the Dong Cheng Rebellion.

In history, Jia Xu only persuaded Zhang Xiu to surrender to Cao Cao. Then he felt that his achievements were enough to save his life, and then he started to play badly. At least he did not help Cao Cao come up with any specific tactical strategies during the Battle of Guandu.

But now Jia Xu has become "the main culprit who put down Emperor Xian of Han's second attempt to punish the rebels and rule the country himself." Jia Xu knows that as long as Cao Cao does not protect him, he will be torn into pieces by anyone else, so he has to give his all.

With one more Jia Xu who tried his best compared to the same period in history, Cao Cao had enough to make up for the losses of Cao Chun, Wang Bi, Hou Cheng and Liu Yan.

With everyone working together and doing their best, the means to resist Yuan Shao's new technological offensive finally took shape.

(End of this chapter)