My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 511: Killing Two Birds with One Stone, Winning Over Yan Yan
Because Gan Ning's two warships ran aground in the shallow water of Qujiang River when they turned to avoid him, he had to withdraw his troops quickly and leave the battlefield where the geographical conditions were extremely unfavorable to him.

Feng Kai then rushed in and won beautifully - although he did not kill many soldiers under Gan Ning, at least he got his aura back.

Since the war with Liu Bei, Cao's army has never won a naval battle. This time, Feng Kai can be regarded as "shattering the myth of Gan Ning's naval invincibility", which is of great significance.

And no matter what the gains were, those stranded and abandoned large ships were actually captured by Feng Kai.

Feng Kai frantically ordered his small boats to surround the two fighting ships and quickly captured them.

When Gan Ning's sailors abandoned their ship, they set two fires themselves. Unfortunately, because they were on the river, there was plenty of water, and the fire was set too hastily, Cao's army quickly put out the fire after boarding the ship, and also shot and stabbed to death several of Gan Ning's sailors who jumped into the river to escape.

The two fighting warships were basically 70% to 80% intact and were seized by Feng Kai.

Feng Kaizhi was so satisfied with the outcome of the battle that he personally boarded the battleship to inspect his spoils.

There were also a lot of arrows and wooden barrels in the bottom cabin, which contained supplies for naval warfare, and they were also captured by Cao's army. Although the things were not valuable, the subordinates still eagerly carried the spoils up barrel by barrel for Feng Kai to review and report their achievements.

Feng Kai was very happy when he looked at the captured spoils.

After a while, dozens of shirtless but lean and capable men were seen in the bottom cabin. They were escorted to the deck by Cao's soldiers with only their hands unarmed and brought to Feng Kai.

Feng Kai was a little surprised when he saw these shirtless prisoners.

He didn't expect that Gan Ning was so strict in managing the navy that there were still so many captives who didn't have time to jump into the river to escape.

Secondly, in Feng Kai's impression, Gan Ning's sailors were all well-equipped, so how could they be so shabby with their shirts bare?
Driven by curiosity, Feng Kai humbled himself and personally interrogated the captives.

Unexpectedly, these captives knelt down in front of him and begged for mercy in a plaintive tone: "General, spare our lives! We are not Gan Ning's soldiers. We are prisoners from Jiangzhou City. Yan Yan gave us to Liu Bei to row the boat. We never killed a single one of yours from beginning to end!"

Feng Kai was a little confused at first, so he stopped beating them and let them talk slowly. It took him a while to figure it out.

It turned out that these were prisoners in Jiangzhou City who had been committing crimes for many years. They were usually used by the defending general Yan Yan as city guards, which meant they had to do hard labor to repair the city walls all year round.

Liu Bei was going to attack Xiahou Yuan this time, and he assembled a lot of troops. It is said that he also tried to persuade Yan Yan, who was under Liu Zhang's command, to join him in the attack. Yan Yan was restricted by the lack of orders from his lord, so he dared not act rashly, and only assigned some prisoners to Liu Bei as auxiliary soldiers.

Gan Ning's navy also needed some auxiliary troops. In order to increase the combat effectiveness of the combat soldiers, the original rowers in the army were replaced with combat soldiers, and then the convicts were used to row the boats - it is said that this trick was taught to Liu Bei by military advisor Zhuge Liang.

In fact, this was indeed Zhuge Liang's suggestion. But outsiders could not know that Zhuge Liang came up with this idea because he was inspired by chatting with his elder brother Zhuge Jin many years ago.

Over the years, whenever Zhuge Jin had time to chat with his second brother, he would not miss the opportunity to help him broaden his horizons. Zhuge Jin knew so much about history, geography, and military knowledge that he dared not say some things that were too advanced, but he would not hide anything about what happened in the West in the same era or in ancient times.

Anyway, as long as you can find an excuse for the source of your knowledge, it will be fine. Zhuge Liang also wondered why his elder brother knew so many stories about "Ancient Greece", "Qin and Rome", "Ancient Carthage", and the outlines of the thoughts of so many ancient philosophers in the West.

But since his elder brother told him not to ask questions that he shouldn't, Zhuge Liang didn't bother about it. After all, his elder brother wouldn't harm him. Moreover, after deducing, Zhuge Liang felt that the principles and things his elder brother said were self-consistent and useful, so he just learned from them.

Zhuge Liang's advice to Gan Ning was based on what Zhuge Jin had said to him in his early years: "The ancient Greek, Qin, and Carthaginian navies in the Mediterranean all used slave rowers to maximize the manpower of their own soldiers." Zhuge Liang suddenly realized that this trick was useful, so he used it directly.

At this moment, Feng Kai captured these prisoners and after asking about their origins, he believed it without a doubt.

Indeed, Gan Ning's total force was insufficient, so he should have used slaves or prisoners to row the boats. If the prime minister could also learn this method and recruit more prisoners to serve as auxiliary soldiers to row the boats, the mobilization capacity of the navy should also be strengthened.

Then, Feng Kai asked these prisoners for more information about Gan Ning's army. After listening to it, Feng Kai did not dare to be arrogant and immediately reported it to Xiahou Yuan and Jia Xu.

……

"Gan Ning's reckless advance was to defeat our army before the Prime Minister sent reinforcements to Sichuan, so as to stagger the time to defeat them one by one? Liu Bei also just found out that the Prime Minister was promoted to Prime Minister, so he wanted to be aggressive and fight?"

Xiahou Yuan and Jia Xu were slightly surprised after hearing the first piece of information Feng Kai obtained from the captives of Gan Ning's army, but they quickly regained their composure.

"This is not too surprising. Liu Bei found out about it eventually. He couldn't avoid it. Liu Bei did react very strongly to this kind of thing. It seems like something he would do." Jia Xu commented pertinently.

Zhuge Liang lowered Jia Xu's psychological defenses a lot simply by asking his side to deliberately release prisoners of war captured by the enemy and tell a few words of truth.

Because what these captives said was indeed true, Gan Ning deliberately leaked these truths to the soldiers under him in order to boost morale. After accepting the first few questions, Jia Xu and Xiahou Yuan soon began to involve deeper enemy military strategies.

Feng Kai also combined the confessions he had obtained with his own understanding and deduction, and paraphrased: "Gan Ning's goal in this battle is to burn down our army's water forts at the mouth of the Sanjiang River and destroy our army's ships as much as possible.

Then separate the garrisons on the south bank from those on the north bank, and separate the garrisons west of Qujiang River from those east of Qujiang River. In this way, Zhang Fei will lead the main land force to launch a counterattack. It is only because the river is shallow and narrow that Gan Ning's large ships are unusable and many of them hit reefs, which is why they were defeated by our army. "

Of course, the captives could not say these words based on their knowledge and experience. So this is Feng Kai's statement based on the clues he collected from all aspects and pieced it together.

But I have to say that Feng Kai's summary is really good.

This article summarizes the basic points of the words that Zhuge Liang hoped to convey to Xiahou Yuan and Jia Xu.

After hearing this, Xiahou Yuan and Jia Xu's faces became very solemn.

After a long while, Xiahou Yuan sighed, "Wenhe... It seems that the plan needs to be adjusted. We need to delay for a little longer until the Prime Minister's reinforcements arrive in Sichuan, and then we can have a decisive battle with Liu Bei.

But now it seems that the enemy will not wait for us. Liu Bei is a man who is prone to act out of loyalty, and I have always known this. When he heard that the prime minister had become the prime minister, he was furious and wanted to take revenge immediately, which he would definitely do.

If we wait until April to move the camp, by then, as you said, it will be the flood season, and the water levels of the three rivers will surge. Gan Ning's large ships will be able to come and go freely, and our troops stationed across the river may be divided by Gan Ning.

It would be better to gather our forces in one place while the river is still shallow and Captain Feng can still hold off Gan Ning. This way we can avoid being defeated one by one."

Jia Xu did not dare to object, but calmly reminded: "But if so, considering that the enemy is in the south and we are in the north, to facilitate the withdrawal of troops, we can only move our camp to the north of the river first.

But this winter, we mainly focused on the camp at the base of Yugou Mountain Peninsula in Jiangnan, which blocked Wei Yan's way out. Once we gather in Jiangbei, those defensive facilities will be wasted. "

When Xiahou Yuan thought of this, he closed his eyes in pain. Indeed, the camp where he had invested the most energy and built ten layers of antlers was on the peninsula on the south bank of the Jialing River. That place was very useful when besieging Wei Yan, but it was directly useless after he wanted to retreat to the north bank.

Moreover, as soon as he withdrew, Wei Yan could directly leave the city and occupy the old camp that he had worked so hard to build. If he left some people to continue to defend, it would be easy for Gan Ning to intercept the river and divide and eat them.

It's really a loss, but he has no choice.

"There is no other way. We can only gradually gather our forces and try to resist and retreat step by step until May. As long as we don't lose too many troops, we will have a chance when the Prime Minister arrives."

Xiahou Yuan finally made up his mind and began to move the camp.

……

Zhuge Liang used Gan Ning to stop the attack and threatened Xiahou Yuan to move his camp.

Liu Bei was also not idle in the new city of Jiangbei in Jiangzhou.

In recent days, Liu Bei himself has been entertaining Yan Yan, the defender of Jiangzhou, in an effort to build relationships with him and persuade him to join forces with him to counterattack Xiahou Yuan and reverse the passive defensive situation in Ba County in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, Yan Yan knew that his position was sensitive. He was sent by Liu Zhang, who repeatedly warned him to beware of Liu Bei and not let Liu Bei infiltrate south of the Jialing River. Now that he did not have Liu Zhang's order, how could he dare to send troops to cooperate with Liu Bei?

Therefore, Yan Yan could only assign some prisoners to Liu Bei within his authority to serve as rowers. This way, at least Liu Zhang's regular soldiers would not be used, which was less sensitive. At the same time, he also took into account Liu Bei's goodwill and expressed his attitude.

However, Liu Bei's ability to respect wise men, win people's hearts and make big promises to them was truly extraordinary.

Under his repeated emotional and logical attacks, Yan Yan felt a little ashamed. He felt that as the governor of Ba County, he could not fight back against the enemies who attacked his county, which really made him a shame to his fellow countrymen.

In the end, Yan Yan sent an express messenger who could travel hundreds of miles a day to Chengdu to ask Liu Zhang for permission to lead his troops to fight Xiahou Yuan.

The letter arrived in Chengdu within three or four days. After reading it, Liu Zhang was also in a dilemma and consulted Huang Quan, Wang Lei and Fa Zheng.

Liu Zhang asked straight to the point: "Brother Xuande is finally going to counterattack Xiahou Yuan. This time it should be a general attack, with Zhang Fei as the vanguard. However, Brother Xuande always says that he does not have enough troops, and wants General Yan to join forces with him to counterattack. How should this be handled?"

(End of this chapter)