My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 538: Liu Bei: I don’t want your territory, I use your territory to do your business
Under the guidance of Pang Tong, Wu Yi suddenly had an idea.

What was he most afraid of before he came to see Liu Bei? He was simply worried that if he really surrendered to Liu Bei, or if his army was controlled by Liu Bei, his cousins who stayed in Chengdu would be implicated.

However, Pang Tong hinted that he could put all the blame for this expedition on the dead rebel general, which gave him a lot of room for maneuver.

On the one hand, Yang Huai and Gao Pei did have the intention to surrender to Cao, and they deserved to die. Since there is no evidence against them, let's just throw more dirty water on them and make use of the waste.

Wu Yi could say that he had not originally intended to use such an aggressive style of play, and was forced into it by Yang Huai and Gao Pei. It could even be said that these people were Pang Xi's old generals, and they pretended to obey Wu Yi and Fei Guan, but actually only listened to Pang Xi.

This led to various deviations in the execution of Liu Zhang's orders after the troops set out on the expedition, which ultimately delayed Liu Bei's important plans. It also forced Liu Bei to change his strategic deployment and prioritize rescuing Wu Yi's troops, which delayed the encirclement and annihilation of Xiahou Yuan and the capture of Yangping Pass.

Anyway, Wu Yi's troops were rescued by Liu Bei, and this major fact is set in stone. Since the major issues are correct, the details can be added at will.

Wu Yi was grateful for Liu Bei's life-saving grace, and he also felt that Liu Zhang was not a powerful leader and that it was not fair to grab credit and territory. In addition, Liu Bei treated him with respect and courtesy, so Wu Yi wanted to serve him.

As long as both sides can speak with one voice, it will not be difficult to appease Liu Zhang and make him admit the loss with some face.

Even if in fact the decision to grab credit and territory was made by Liu Zhang himself, Liu Zhang could still say, "I didn't think this way at first. I just wanted to cooperate with Brother Xuande. It was some greedy generals on the front line who advanced recklessly and made mistakes in execution. It has nothing to do with me."

Liu Zhang was so cowardly that he did not want to immediately bear Liu Bei's accusations and anger. Liu Bei and Wu Yi joined forces to give Liu Zhang a way out, and Liu Zhang had to give up. Otherwise, he would be in the wrong first, and if Liu Bei really came to settle accounts with him, Liu Zhang would not be able to bear it.

What's more, Xiahou Yuan was still there, he just hid back in Yangping Pass. The threat of this foreign enemy had not disappeared, and Liu Zhang still had to rely on Liu Bei to help him guard the gate.

After sorting out these things, Wu Yi bowed his head and said, "Thank you Mr. Shiyuan for your advice! I know what to do now! General Chariot and Cavalry saved my life, and also gave a new life to the 20,000 soldiers of our army.

Our army competed with your army for merit and caused some friction, and General Zhang and General Gan were injured in their efforts to rescue us. We are really ashamed! From now on, our army will accept the command of the general of chariots and cavalry, work together, and never fight alone again! "

Wu Yi's words basically meant that he had recognized a new master, which was nothing strange.

After all, they were people who had experienced life and death. When they were trapped on the Chencang Road and their food supply was cut off, they had no chance of returning to serve Liu Zhang. At that time, they could either surrender to Cao or surrender to Liu. In the end, Liu Bei came early and saved them, so they didn't have to overcome any psychological barriers to surrender to Liu.

However, these words still saved Liu Zhang's face. According to Wu Yi's statement, he also hoped that Liu Bei's army would not directly tear its relationship with Liu Zhang, and it would be best if they only had actual control over the 20,000 Yizhou troops, but did not insist on fighting for the title.

In other words, Wu Yi and the 20,000 soldiers could be deployed and used by Liu Bei's army in the subsequent anti-Cao campaign. But legally speaking, this was a "loan of soldiers" from Liu Zhang to Liu Bei, with a time limit and conditions for use.

This was necessary because Liu Zhang's army had previously been selfish and unable to cooperate well in serving the overall interests of the alliance.

After Wu Yi said this, Pang Tong immediately gave Liu Bei an approving look, indicating that Liu Bei should accept it.

Liu Bei understood what he meant and said generously, "Ziyuan, don't worry. I have no other intentions. I just want to ensure that the subsequent anti-Cao campaign can have a unified command and avoid suspicion and consumption. Only when everyone is united can we become stronger.

I think Brother Ji Yu had good intentions, but he believed in slander and was too weak to control his subordinates. When it came to execution, he was taken advantage of by the traitorous generals with ulterior motives. I am helping him clean up his mess!"

(Note: Ziyuan is Wu Yi's courtesy name, which is the same as Xu You's)
Liu Bei's words were both passionate and heartwarming.

Since Liu Zhang was weak and couldn't manage his subordinates, he, as a capable elder brother, would of course help his younger brother manage those unruly subordinates!
In the original history, Liu Bei was considered good at borrowing things from others.

In this life, he had no chance to ask Sun Quan to borrow Jiangling, nor did he have the chance to ask Liu Zhang to borrow troops.

Wu Yi was finally rescued, which was a change of perspective and allowed Liu Bei to bring out his previously hidden talents.

Seeing that he spoke so skillfully and seemingly from the bottom of his heart, Wu Yi did not think any more about it and reluctantly joined Liu Bei.

……

If Wu Yi was willing to cooperate sincerely and join him, it would be much easier to deal with the 20,000 Yizhou soldiers under him.

Although some of these people had families in Zitong and Guanghan in the rear, and some officers were loyal to Liu Zhang, Wu Yi's words, "In order to form an alliance against Cao Cao, everyone should obey the command of the General of Chariots and Cavalry," were acceptable to everyone.

On the other hand, Liu Bei was also very concerned about gathering this army.

In the next seven or eight days, he personally inspected the camp every day, met with all the officers above the rank of Duwei and Jun Sima in Wu Yi's 20,000 Yizhou troops, invited them to drink, and did not put on airs at all. After inviting the Duwei and Jun Sima, he summoned the Quchang and even the Tunchang, and everyone had a feast and drank, and he comforted each one one by one. There is no need to go into details.

With Liu Bei's sincerity in treating the wise and humble with respect, in just a few days, he basically conquered the backbone of the 20,000-strong army.

As for ordinary soldiers, Liu Bei certainly couldn't comfort and encourage them one by one, so he could only rely on rewarding them to win their hearts. However, he also had to consider that he already had a lot of troops under his command, so he had to treat them equally and not give rewards without reason.

Liu Zhang has sent over 20,000 men, and Liu Bei now has more than 50,000 men on the front line. If he only gives bonuses to the 20,000 men and leaves the 50,000 men alone, wouldn't that mean "employing men is like piling up firewood, and the latecomers will be on top"?
If all of them were distributed, if the per capita reward was too little it would be useless, and if it was too much the logistical support would not be able to keep up and it would not be able to be distributed all at once.

With Liu Bei's high emotional intelligence, he would never make such a low-level mistake. So he told his concerns to his military advisor Pang Tong, asking Pang Tong to come up with a plan on the premise of keeping things fair.

What kind of person is Pang Tong? Of course, he thought about it for a moment and immediately came up with a countermeasure.

"How difficult is this? My lord, you can announce that in order to welcome Cao's invasion, we will build a new pass at the location where our army previously camped to block Cao's army's southward advance and prevent Cao's army from wreaking havoc along the Jinniu Road.

My lord, please look at the map. After Cao's army passed the main road in front of Yangping Pass and turned into Jinniu Road, they could follow the Jialing River all the way to the outside of Jiameng Pass.

However, Jiameng Pass is located on the opposite bank of the Jialing River in the southwest, so there was no way to prevent Cao's army from passing through the pass without entering and going directly down the river to the east. This led to Xiahou Yuan plundering various counties in Baxi, breaking Langzhong, occupying Dangqu, and reaching Diaoyucheng.

And suppose we set up a forward checkpoint directly at the northern end of Jinniu Road, so that the enemy army could not reach the bank of Jialing River at all and could not take the water route and 'pass the gate of Jiameng Pass without entering', wouldn't it save us a lot of subsequent problems?

Now, we should learn from our mistakes and build a new pass here. Building a pass requires a lot of manpower, and our own elite soldiers have to prepare for war and cannot do such heavy work.

We can let the newly surrendered Yizhou soldiers do the work, and give them a salary far exceeding the normal labor, and even give them extra cloth and silk, or ensure that the soldiers have enough dried fish. This work does not require how fast it is done or how much work is done, it is just to find a reason to reward them, and not to make them too tired to cause accidents. "

As Pang Tong spoke, he took out the map and pointed at it. Liu Bei quickly understood.

In fact, the Yangping Pass at that time could only be called "Ancient Yangping Pass" in later generations. You can see this by looking at the Baidu map of later generations.

"Guyangping Pass" blocked the entrance and exit of Hanzhong, and did not guard against the army from the north bypassing Hanzhong and attacking Jiameng directly.

Historically, after Liu Bei and Cao Cao fought the Battle of Hanzhong, Liu Bei realized this problem and built the "New Yangping Pass", also known as the "Yang'an Pass", at the Jinniu Pass, 40 miles southwest of the ancient Yangping Pass. This completely blocked the way for the army from the north to bypass Hanzhong and attack Zitong directly.

Now, the Battle of Hanzhong broke out eleven years earlier, but when Liu Bei arrived here, the geographical advantages and the enemy situation he faced were not much different from those in history. With Pang Tong's intelligence, of course, he easily saw the necessity of building a new pass on the spot.

It just so happened that Liu Bei needed an excuse to reward the newly joined troops, so they hit it off. Under the pretext of repairing a new pass, he let the newly joined troops do some work and at the same time rewarded them heavily to rally their morale.

After Liu Bei figured out the causes and consequences, he felt that the plan was quite feasible and immediately said that he would do it the next day.

Pang Tong continued to think along this line of thought, and drew inferences from one example: "If the lord wants to repair Yang'an Pass, he can also use this as an excuse to send military orders to Liu Zhang's army generals in Zitong and Jiameng Pass, asking them to cooperate in the action and provide food and grass guarantee for the army to station forward.

After all, Wu Yi originally drew troops from Jiameng Pass and Zitong to the north, and now that he has surrendered, many of the families of the soldiers in the army are still in the vicinity of Zitong. This time Wu Yi took the credit, and it was Liu Zhang who was wrong first.

Since we have said that all this was caused by Yang Huai and Gao Pei's arbitrary distortion of the Lord's orders, then it is reasonable to take advantage of the situation to settle accounts with Pang Xi behind Yang Huai and Gao Pei, right? We don't have to say that we want to seize Liu Zhang's territory. We just need to say that we need the logistics support foundation of the front-line garrison in Zitong, and we can also hold it in our hands. As long as Liu Zhang doesn't want to make things worse, he should not dare to object.

Moreover, at the beginning of the year, our army selected three counties in Yizhou, with half of each county area to promote the planting of Linyi double-season rice. In Shu County, the county selected was Pi County near Chengdu; in Ba County, the county selected was Jiangzhou; and in Zitong, we selected Zitong County.

Therefore, in Zitong, the lord has a popular base, and half of the county's people have planted the rice seeds sent by the lord. Now it is May, and the early rice is about to be harvested. At this critical juncture when the summer grain is about to be stored, it is the time when the people are most grateful for the lord's kindness.

The lord has a righteous cause, Wu Yi has come to his side, 20,000 Yizhou troops have come to his side, and the people of half of Zitong County are waiting impatiently. We take advantage of the situation to control Zitong and Jiameng Pass, which are still nominally Liu Zhang's territory. We only need military management rights, isn't that too much?

In this way, we can coordinate the defense of Zitong, Jiameng Pass and the new Yang'an Pass. Otherwise, we only have a newly built pass, but no granary to provide food for the garrison at the corresponding pass. Isn't this inappropriate?"

Zitong was originally the granary behind Jiameng Pass. After Liu Bei built Yang'an Pass, Zitong should naturally become the granary of Yang'an Pass.

Liu Bei came here to build a new pass to help Liu Zhang block the gate. It is only natural for him to have his own granary in his own hands.

(End of this chapter)