My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 671 Crossing the Han River to the Northern Expedition
When Zhuge Jin was giving Zhang Fei instructions on how to take advantage of the news that Cao Cao had proclaimed himself Duke of Wei and pretend to divert our army's strategic goals, Liu Bei was also listening.

Liu Bei did not seem to be too surprised by Zhuge Jin's plan, but this did not mean that Liu Bei did not love the Han Dynasty or did not attach importance to the rules and regulations of the court.

It was just because Liu Bei had known about this bad news half a day before. Before Zhang Fei came, Liu Bei had already "seen the court in ruins, the collapse of discipline, Cao Cao's deception of the emperor, and my heart and courage were shattered."

When Liu Bei first heard that Cao Cao had proclaimed himself Duke of Wei, he was so angry that he drew his sword and chopped a table, and even his eyes turned red. After venting his anger, he asked Zhuge Jin if there was any way to express his position immediately and take revenge on Cao.

Zhuge Jin was cautious and persuaded Liu Bei to take a long-term view to see whether the army's morale was sufficient and whether the situation was appropriate. Only then did Liu Bei endure it temporarily.

Later, Zhang Fei reported that the soldiers attacking the city were so angry that they needed a chance to vent their anger. Zhuge Jin finally agreed and hit it off.

Now that everything has been decided, there is no need to conceal the news that "Cao Cao was named Duke of Wei" among his own army.

On the contrary, what is needed now is for Liu Bei's army's propaganda machine to go into full swing, to create and guide the soldiers' hatred of Cao further, to brew up their hatred for Cao for two or three days, and then make plans.

After the meeting to request war ended, Liu Bei, according to Zhuge Jin's suggestion, first found Guan Yu, Huang Zhong and Gao Shun to inform everyone.

Now, in the Jingbei army, apart from Zhang Fei who already knows the news, these few people have the most important military power.

After everyone gathered, Liu Bei didn't even need to prepare his emotions, he sighed a few times with a look of grief and indignation on his face:
"This thief Cao is such a coward! He was so shameless that he stole the Dingsi, coveted the sacred artifact, and named himself Duke of Wei, taking the nine gifts without authorization. He is so wicked and he has to pretend to decline the title three times, forcing Your Majesty to issue edicts repeatedly to confer titles on him.

Forging an imperial edict to this extent is unheard of since Emperor Guangwu revived the Han Dynasty! From Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling to today, has anyone been as shameless as Cao Cao? Dong Zhuo, Li Jue, and Guo Si? Did they? Even Dong Zhuo didn't do such a shameless thing!

Your Majesty has been played around by Cao thieves, and is even more miserable than a clay sculpture or wooden carving! When you fell into the hands of Dong thieves, your Majesty was at least a young child, and didn't know much about honor and disgrace. Now your Majesty is almost thirty years old, and has been bullied by Cao thieves for more than ten years, and has to suffer such a great humiliation again! As a minister, aren't we ashamed! "

Guan Yu, Huang Zhong, and Gao Shun were very surprised when they heard this. They really just learned the news. Huang Zhong and Gao Shun were especially surprised because they only asked about military affairs. Liu Bei and Zhuge Jin did not talk to them about the current situation or the political situation.

Seeing their lord so sad and angry, they were all filled with righteous indignation.

Huang Zhong was a local general in Jingzhou, so his first reaction was similar to Zhang Fei's just now. He also wanted to take advantage of this opportunity of high morale and quickly attack to capture Xiangyang.

He stepped out from the crowd and asked for battle in anger: "My lord! Time is precious. Forget about the main attack and support. I am willing to join forces with General Zhang to capture Xiangyang and annihilate Yu Jin! Let us show the world that our great cause of defeating the rebels and reviving the Han Dynasty will surely succeed!"

Seeing this, Liu Bei hurriedly guided him: "Yu Jin is no longer a concern. Our army is now targeting Cao Cao! At least Cao's family. Only by striking Cao's family hard again as soon as possible can we show the world that fighting against rebellion is the righteous cause.

Now that Cao Ren is in Fancheng on the other side of the river, why are you still holding on to Yu Jin? I order you to publicize Cao's latest rebellion in the army in the next few days. At the same time, speed up the progress and completely block all the gates of Xiangyang with long trenches and earth walls. Make sure that even if the enemy lowers the drawbridge over the moat, they cannot rush out of the city.

Then, we will use the navy to approach the north water gate of Xiangyang, and place iron spikes and large rocks in the channel to serve as reefs, blocking the channel for the navy in Xiangyang to leave the city. After completing all this, we will ensure that Yu Jin will never be able to break out and will never be able to reinforce Cao Ren in the subsequent battles. Then our army can focus on crossing the Han River and directly capture Cao Ren! "

The generals agreed that their lord's words made sense. At this critical juncture, a violent attack on Xiangyang was possible, but it would be slow to produce results.

Xiangyang's solidity, population, and food supply are far superior to Fancheng.

It would be better to block Xiangyang completely so that Yu Jin cannot do any harm, and then catch Cao Ren and beat him up as soon as possible.

The generals quickly agreed to the order, and then went back to their camps to deploy propaganda work, so that the soldiers would further hate Cao Cao and publicize his evil deeds, while speeding up the work.

……

For the next three to five days, Cao Cao's misdeeds were repeatedly publicized in all camps of Liu Bei's army.

In a very short time, all the soldiers knew that Cao Cao had held the emperor hostage, shamelessly proclaimed himself Duke of Wei, and forced the emperor to grant him the Nine Gifts.

In his final reply to accepting the title of Duke of Wei, Cao Cao declined three of the Nine Gifts for himself and only accepted the other six for his ancestors. But Liu Bei's camp did not need to mention this in their propaganda, and it was not considered a discredit to Cao Cao.

Cao Cao's last fig leaf, that bit of affectation, of course, could only be spread within Cao Cao's own sphere of influence or occupied area, so that his own military and civilians could believe it as much as possible.

As for the occupied areas of the enemy camp, they will definitely not cooperate with Cao Cao's propaganda.

Moreover, when Liu Bei’s army was promoting the event, they also added some details that aroused reasonable suspicion.

For example, Zhuge Jin wrote some materials specifically and even had people compile them into something similar to jokes, which were sung in the army, filling in a lot of details about Cao Cao's self-proclaimed Duke of Wei.

Cao Cao did indeed put on a show by "resigning three times", but how did he resign? After resigning, did Emperor Liu Xie really and immediately issue an edict to beg Cao Cao to accept it? Outsiders cannot know the details, and no one knows.

This gave Zhuge Jin room to exercise reasonable suspicion and make deductive reasoning.

In the stories that Zhuge Jin detailed, he described many scenes of the fake minister Xi Lu, various threats against the emperor, and even using people around the emperor to blackmail the emperor. He described them vividly, as if he had seen and heard them with his own eyes.

The actions of Zhong Yao, who was responsible for conveying imperial edicts, and some members of the Xun family who stayed in Xu Du were also within the scope of Zhuge Jin's reasonable deduction.

The purpose of these deductions and descriptions is naturally to expose the hypocrisy of Cao Cao's three refusals and declines as much as possible.

Cao Cao's efforts to "stop slander in the world" were as ineffective as possible. At least in the territory controlled by Liu Bei, it had no deception effect at all.

If there were no dramatic art forms in this era, Zhuge Jin would have wanted to write a few scripts to exaggerate Cao Cao's every move in this series of evil deeds. But now, he can only write some jokes and folk songs that are easy for ordinary people to pass on by word of mouth, that's all.

While the propaganda work was in full swing, Liu Bei's army's siege and blockade of Xiangyang City also reached a new height.

In the second half of mid-September, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu and Huang Zhong's troops worked together to speed up the work.

Yu Jin, who was standing on the city wall of Xiangyang, initially discovered that Liu Bei's army's offensive had finally slowed down a little.

At that time, he quickly summoned all the generals to analyze and discuss, and finally came to the conclusion:

Liu Bei's army must have been frightened by the casualties of the continuous fierce attacks in the past few days and did not want to spend such a huge price to attack again. Therefore, our army's strategic idea of defending Xiangyang for a long time and waiting for changes is very promising.

After Yu Jin made this analysis, the morale of the defenders did improve slightly in the first two or three days. Many people really thought that Liu Bei slowed down the attack because he was afraid and did not want to pay too high a price.

However, this optimism lasted less than three days.

As Liu Bei's army's construction progressed rapidly, anyone with a discerning eye could see that something was wrong.

Originally, Liu Bei's army did not completely block all the gates of Xiangyang City.

They simply set up camp outside each gate, and then placed rattan shields to destroy the antlers and fill the moat near the gates that they planned to attack in the future.

But recently, Liu Bei's army began to block all the city gates indiscriminately, even those gates that were not originally intended to be attacked.

As long as there was a gate in Xiangyang City that could lower the drawbridge and the defenders had the possibility to leave the city through the drawbridge, Liu Bei's army would build an arc-shaped earth wall with a radius of 150 steps on the other side of the drawbridge.

The earth wall could extend all the way to the edge of the moat. Whenever it was built close to the river bank, because it had entered the shooting range of the archers on the city wall, Yu Jin would order the defenders to shoot arrows to suppress the enemy and delay their construction.

However, Zhang Fei, Huang Zhong and others were not willing to be outdone. Every time the construction reached a dangerous area, they would gather more archers and catapults to shoot at each other from the top of the city walls.

The soldiers who were responsible for transporting soil and building the wall also carried large shields and did a good job of protecting themselves from arrows.

In this exchange of fire, Yu Jin did not gain any advantage at all, and many archers were killed or injured, which further lowered the morale of the troops.

Yu Jin watched as all the exits outside the city gate drawbridges were gradually and completely blocked, and an inexplicable worry arose in his heart.

The generals under his command also discovered the problem and went to Yu Jin for advice:
"General Yu! Liu Bei gave up the attack and decided to surround us tightly. What's the reason? Is he really trying to block our way out, or is he just bluffing to find an excuse for not attacking again?"

Those who were willing to ask this question were actually relatively stupid and stubborn. Those who were more flexible would have simply assumed that Liu Bei's army wanted to stop them and would not even consider the second option.

Of course, Yu Jin knew what his subordinates were thinking, so he could only play ostrich. He clearly felt that the second scenario was unlikely, but in order to comfort his subordinates, he could only repeatedly emphasize that Liu Bei was just bluffing.

On September 19th, Liu Bei's army finally unveiled a new tactic in its blocking measures. When Yu Jin and others saw this scene, they became even more shocked and confused.

It turned out that in the early morning of that day, Yu Jin discovered that Liu Bei’s naval warships had come to the North Water Gate of Xiangyang in the dark of night, and then dropped large rocks and caltrop-like four-pronged iron spikes into the entrance of the waterway.

This operation lasted for more than half an hour, until dawn when the enemy ships withdrew from the attack range of the crossbows and catapults on the city wall.

After hearing the news, Yu Jin immediately rushed to the north gate of Xiangyang City and looked out in person. As a result, he saw that when the enemy ships withdrew, a flag with the word "Lu" and a battle flag with the word "Han" were flying on the top of the largest keel battleship.

"Han? Could it be Han Dang, the surrendered general from Jiangdong? Lu? Who is this Lu? Why not Gao, Chen, or Tian?"

When Yu Jin saw the flag, he was slightly stunned. He had been fighting against Guan Yu's army for about a month, and he also knew which main generals led the Xu and Yang reinforcements brought by Guan Yu, but he had never seen a flag with the word "Lu" before.

None of Yu Jin's generals knew who the character "Lu" represented. Finally, a general from Jingzhou who had surrendered and was left in Xiangyang by Cai Mao seemed to remember something and explained to Yu Jin:

"General Yu, could it be Lu Yi, who was once appointed as the governor of Nanhai County and the general of Henghai by Liu Bei? If this is him, I'm afraid his ability in naval warfare is even better than Chen Dao and Tian Yu."

"I heard that this man has been in charge of the South China Sea for many years, and has made great achievements in chasing Shi Xie and the Jiaozhi bandits. Later, when Zhang Fei mobilized the generals from Jingnan and Jiaozhou to come to Sichuan to reinforce Liu Bei, Lu Yi also served as a military officer. Now he must have brought Zhang Fei's rear guard with him."

These surrendered generals from Jingzhou who were speaking obviously knew more about the naval commanders in Liu Bei's camp than Yu Jin, and their guesses were quite accurate.

Zhang Fei did bring Han Dang and Lu Yi with him when he led the Pingshu army to aid Jingzhou. However, Lu Yi played the role of a military officer in the previous Pingshu campaign, so he had not led an army in person for quite some time. Zhang Fei's troops did not have so many naval battles to fight before, and there was no need for Lu Yi to go out in person.

Now Gan Ning, Zhou Tai and Jiang Qin are all staying in Shuzhong, and the generals Guan Yu brought with him before are not very strong in naval battles.

So after Zhang Fei arrived, his subordinates who were good at navy took over the task of blocking the Han River and controlling the river after just a few days of adjustment and adaptation to the hydrology.

After Yu Jin learned about the situation of the enemy's naval commander, he lost his temper completely.

He already knew that the enemy had the strength to completely blockade him in the city of Xiangyang.

Just when Yu Jin was feeling sad, the enemy fleet suddenly gathered thousands of sailors and shouted in unison at the top of the city wall after their flagship withdrew beyond the range of the crossbows on the city wall.

"My dear Yu Jin! Yesterday I heard that Cao the traitor proclaimed himself Duke of Wei, and the whole world was outraged! I will go north to capture Fancheng and take Cao Ren's head as a sacrifice, so that I can comfort the emperor for the humiliation he has suffered!
You incompetent people, who have been defeated repeatedly in battles and trapped in an isolated city, are just a minor problem. My lord has no time to bother with you for the time being! So, I will completely block you off first, freeing up the troops for other purposes! When my army crosses the Han River to the north and captures Fan and Wan, I will come to take your life!
Cao Cao's situation in Hanbei will soon become critical! If you insist on seeking death and leaving the city to reinforce Cao Ren, then go ahead and try! I will also teach you how our army can block the Han River!

After Lu Yi made his harsh remarks, he did not stay for long and floated away downstream.

The Cao army didn't dare to open the water gates and send warships in pursuit. Moreover, Lu Yi had just built a number of artificial reefs in the waterway. If they rashly attacked and ran aground on the reefs, their morale would be even lower.

Yu Jin could only watch the other party pretend to be powerful and then run away.

The generals around him were also panicked, and there were many different opinions:
"General Yu, do you think what Lu Yi said is true or false? Did Liu Bei really ignore everything and directly cross the Han River to the north to find the main force of the court for a decisive battle just because the prime minister proclaimed himself Duke of Wei?"

"They are blocking Xiangyang like this. It seems that our army really cannot break out. In times of emergency, it will be difficult for us to support General Cao Zixiao."

"It's already this late, and you're still thinking about supporting General Cao Zixiao? If I were to ask you, I'd say we can each defend our city to the death. That would be a real honor for the court! What else do you care about?"

Yu Jin repeatedly scolded them, trying to stop their nonsense, but he knew in his heart that the army's morale was completely broken.

No one thought that Liu Bei did not dare to attack by force anymore. Everyone believed that Liu Bei was a man of temperament and went straight to cause trouble for Cao Cao in anger.

Yu Jin couldn't help but have an idea in his mind: Liu Bei is so straightforward, focusing on fighting the "rebel". If the Prime Minister's main force really suffers at the hands of Liu Bei, then when that day comes, what is there for me to defend?

Of course, this idea is still buried deep in my subconscious.

Yu Jin himself didn't dare to think about it often. Even when it came up, he would be scared by himself and quickly divert his attention.

But as long as the external incentives are right, this idea that has been planted will sooner or later sprout and grow wildly.

……

Liu Bei's army was well prepared to completely block Yu Jin's death, eliminating the possibility of Yu Jin reinforcing Cao Ren and causing trouble.

Then, Zhuge Jin also asked Liu Bei to leave behind 20,000 Jingzhou soldiers and Huang Zhong to monitor the blockade line to be on the safe side.

After all, the blockade is static. A defensive line without troops is definitely not enough to effectively block the enemy. The purpose of the defensive line is simply to significantly reduce the number of troops required for the blockade.

Originally, Liu Bei's army might have spent 70,000 to 80,000 people to besiege Xiangyang. After the defense line was completed, only 20,000 people would be left.

The number of soldiers can be nearly half that of the defenders in the city, and there is no need to occupy elite troops.

Saving so much manpower is a big gain. The 50,000 or 60,000 men freed up, as well as the troops that had not yet been put into battle, can all cross the Han River in batches to seek a decisive battle with Cao's army.

The troops of Liu Bei's army that crossed the Han River to the north mainly included the 50,000 troops brought by Guan Yu, as well as the 50,000 land forces and 20,000 naval forces brought by Zhang Fei.

Liu Bei had also filled the gaps left by the casualties of previous battles with his own troops, so the total number of troops crossing the Han River to the north reached a staggering 120,000.

The remaining troops directly under Liu Bei can continue to stay in Hannan to maintain the front line and ensure rear supplies and support points, which is also a precautionary measure.

If Cao's army does not come to reinforce, let Guan Yu and Zhang Fei besiege Fancheng guarded by Cao Ren.

Anyway, Cao Ren's surname is Cao. If Cao Ren could be surrounded and killed, even if Cao Cao himself was a coward, it would be enough to slap the Cao family in the face. At that time, Cao Cao's move of "taking advantage of the victory to confer the title of Duke" would become a laughing stock. The increase in prestige brought by the act of conferring the title of Duke would also be completely eliminated.

It would naturally take several days for tens of thousands of people to cross the Han River and transport food and supplies to the north bank - because the warships at Guan Yu and Zhang Fei's disposal could only carry 30,000 to 40,000 people at a time.

To transport tens of thousands of people, one has to make three or four trips just to transport them. If one also has to transport supplies and tents needed for camping, it would be normal to make a total of seven or eight trips or even more than ten times.

So the crossing of the river took three days in total, and then we set up a stable camp on the north bank.

When Liu Bei's army was crossing the river, Cao Ren was also quite surprised, because he did not expect that Liu Bei would cross the river and attack Fancheng before taking Xiangyang.

Therefore, Cao Ren also tried to ask Cai Mao to go out and lead the Cai family's navy to try to intercept on the surface of the Han River.

Cai Mao was forced into a desperate situation and had to go into battle.

As a result, they collided with the escort warships led by Lu Yi and Han Dang, and the two sides fought fiercely on the Han River.

The process is really indescribable.

Because Cai Mao was absolutely crushed by Lu Yi and Han Dang in five major aspects: warships, equipment, technical and tactical level, morale, and military talent.

In this situation, what awaited Cai Mao was only a complete and utter defeat.

Most of the troops sent by Cai Mao to participate in the naval battle and interception were killed, with more than 4,000 casualties or captured. More than 100 warships were sunk or damaged, and they completely retreated to Fancheng and became turtles.

Fancheng was also under the enemy's attack, and the emergency documents flew like snowflakes to Wancheng and Xudu, and soon arrived at Cao Cao's desk.

(End of this chapter)