My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 710: Liu Bei: The younger generals in Cao Ying, except Sun Quan, are not worth worrying about.

"Your Majesty has finally moved to Luoyang. Cao Cao has left 200,000 troops in the three passes south of Luoyang and in Yingchuan to defend them. It seems there will be no more loopholes. Shouldn't our army withdraw as well?"

When Liu Xie returned to Luoyang, the relevant news had already spread throughout the world.

Of course, Liu Bei, who was still in Wancheng, heard about it first.

He was drinking at the time, and when he heard this, he felt a sense of relief, as if "the last shoe has finally dropped on the ground." Then he put down his wine cup and asked Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang, who were sitting beside him, the same question.

According to the plan made before the war, this military operation should have come to an end. The next step is to rest and accumulate strength until you have enough strength to give Cao the thief a decisive and fatal blow, and strive to achieve success in one battle.

The Zhuge brothers would certainly not arbitrarily change the plan that had already been made, and they unanimously supported their lord in calling for a ceasefire.

Liu Bei hesitated for a while, but finally nodded and made the decision:
"Then gather your troops. The next time we come, it will be a life-and-death duel with Cao. It's a pity that we were unable to take advantage of the opportunity of His Majesty's return to the throne to do more."

Zhuge Jin knew that Liu Bei was unwilling to accept this, so he also helped to enlighten him: "My lord, why do you say this? Although we let Cao Cao escape successfully in this battle, we have the upper hand in terms of reputation, and there is no need to elaborate on this point.

In addition, I estimate that Cao's rough and hasty style must have caused more dissatisfaction among his people and buried countless hidden dangers. We cannot see these hidden dangers for the time being, but they will most likely erupt when we come to the Northern Expedition next time.

Moreover, when our army finally retreats, we might be able to find some excuses to plot against Cao Cao, causing discord among his generals and prompting them to fight against each other."

Zhuge Jin used his knowledge of history to speak eloquently about several potential hidden gains of this trip. Although he did not mention any specific names, it made Liu Bei feel much more comfortable.

According to the intelligence gathered from Xudu, due to the public opinion offensive and reputation pressure from Liu Bei's camp, as well as the stimulation of the Yu Jin incident,

This forced Cao Cao to use more violent and brutal means in the process of forcibly relocating the emperor, and even caused the early death of his father-in-law Fu Wan, which offended more people.

Zhuge Jin can think of several hidden dangers within Cao Cao after a brief thought:
First of all, it is Empress Fu's family. Historically, Empress Fu Shou and Cao Cao did not completely break off their relationship until around 215 AD. But now the Empress's father was also killed by Cao Cao inexplicably, so it is normal for the hatred between Fu Shou and Cao Cao to erupt three or five years earlier.

Although Fu Wan was not going to survive this year due to his health condition, strictly speaking, Cao Cao did not "murder" him, but simply used strong and powerful drugs to treat him, which accelerated the deterioration of his condition.

This situation is roughly the same as when Liu Biao was seriously ill and dying last year, and Cai Mao was afraid that Liu Biao would last until Liu Qi came back, so he accelerated the process.

But no matter what, the feud is definitely settled.

Meanwhile, Zhuge Jin, through intelligence brought back by his spies, discovered that Cao Cao had re-employed former confidants like Wei Huang and Geng Ji during this capital relocation. These individuals also aided Cao Cao in his dirty work, causing him to suffer greatly from both internal and external pressures. After these setbacks, these ministers, who had historically rebelled against Cao, likely saw Cao Cao's true colors more quickly.

When Liu Bei launches the Northern Expedition in the future, these people may also be able to grow into supporters within the court.

However, Zhuge Jin could not reveal the source of his knowledge, so he could not name them for the time being. Moreover, he believed that with Cao Cao's increasingly cruel and perverse behavior in this life, the number of courtiers who would actually respond to Liu Bei in the future would definitely be more than in the original history, not less. Therefore, there was no point in remembering specific names.

After Zhuge Jin roughly sorted out these gains and losses with his lord, Liu Bei's mood really improved a lot. If you don't take stock of some things, you really don't know how much you have gained.

After sorting out the pros and cons, Liu Bei was quite interested in Zhuge Jin's last point and asked a few more questions:

"Ziyu, you just said that we could use the opportunity of the final withdrawal and truce to sow discord among the Cao bandits' generals. How would we proceed?"

Zhuge Jin didn't even need to think about it, and he could answer immediately: "This is also simple - now our army can basically easily break contact with Cao's army in other routes. After all, there are dangerous geographical barriers such as Funiushan Mountain and Tongbai Mountain. If one side stops, the other side will not be able to switch from defense to offense and pursue.

The most difficult battlefield to disengage was the one at the border between Runan and Yingchuan. Yide had been laying high walls and digging deep trenches to besiege Shangcai County and harass Yancheng behind Shangcai.

It is impossible for our army to stop fighting directly while maintaining the siege, and it is not worthwhile to spend a lot of effort to capture Shangcai, which Cao's army has already focused on reinforcing. So it is better to stabilize the defense line in the rear and let Yide retreat to Ancheng to station.

At the same time, we must maintain control of Langling and Yichun counties, slightly south of Ancheng. This will allow our army to establish a new frontier of confrontation along the lines of Ancheng, Yichun, Langling, Wuyin, and Bowang, thus preventing a single salient from penetrating too deeply and being suddenly surrounded by the enemy during a truce or stalemate.

Zhuge Jin explained while gesturing on the map. Liu Bei looked at the map and listened, and it was easy for him to understand.

It turned out that Shangcai County, which Zhang Fei was now besieging, had formed a relatively deep bulge, as seen on the map, which protruded nearly a hundred miles further north than the other left and right wings.

Even though Guan Yu had already captured Bowang County, Wuyin County and other counties on the southern foot of Tongbai Mountain in the Nanyang battlefield, the Shangcai County battlefield in Runan was still further north than Bowang and Wuyin.

If the front line in Runan is slightly retracted to Ancheng, this bulge will completely disappear. During the subsequent stalemate phase of farming and accumulating strength, the cost of border garrison can be greatly reduced.

Considering that according to the original plan, this stalemate period may last for two years. In these two years, it will definitely be beneficial to accumulate national strength if there are fewer tens of thousands of combat-ready troops stationed on the front line and these soldiers can be used to reclaim wasteland and produce food.

Moreover, Shangcai was not a big city at the county level after all, and Ancheng was at least the new county seat of the Huaibei part of Runan County. Therefore, Ancheng's defensive fortifications and geographical advantages were more suitable for long-term stalemate. This small step of retreat was not a loss for Liu Bei's army.

(Note: When Cao Cao's camp occupied the entire Runan County, the county seat was not located in Ancheng. However, after Liu Bei's army seized the Huainan part of Runan County a few years ago, the two sides divided the Huai River and Cao Cao established a new county seat in the Huaibei part of Runan.)
But given Zhuge Jin's personality, every opportunity to retreat cannot be wasted.

He will definitely take advantage of everything and try to maximize the profits.

Seeing that Liu Bei had fully understood the previous preparations, Zhuge Jin then laid out his final supplementary thoughts:

"Since it is in our army's plan to let Yide retreat a little, we can certainly take the opportunity to provoke the enemy again. For example, Yide has defeated Cao Zhen and Xu Huang before, but he has never defeated Sun Quan who refused to fight to the death.

We will let Yide deliberately spread the rumor when he finally retreated that "he had actually attacked Shangcai many times, but because Sun Quan was strict in military discipline and cautious in using troops, and the veteran general Cheng Pu had tightly controlled the waterway of Ru River, our army could not sneak across and completely surround Shangcai." Therefore, Yide suffered heavy losses in the end and had to retreat.

If Sun Quan had not been good at defending, according to the original plan of the lord, he would have definitely taken Shangcai, or even Yancheng, before stopping. "

When Liu Bei heard this, he couldn't help but raise his eyebrows.

Does Tzuyu want to add more fuel to the fire?
When Liu Bei asked Zhang Fei to postpone the attack, he had more or less used the excuse that "Sun Quan is defending stubbornly and is difficult to defeat", but he had not boasted to such an explicit degree.

This time, they wanted to use Zhang Fei's retreat to further "blacken themselves" and describe Zhang Fei's retreat as being repelled by Sun Quan, or at least as "completely unable to gain any advantage from Sun Quan's iron wall and had to retreat."

This really makes Sun Quan proud.

But if you think about it carefully, this can indeed create a rift between the direct descendants of Cao Cao's camp and the surrendered generals from outside the camp.

How many surrendered generals from other camps had Cao Cao betrayed before?
Did Zhang Xiu have a good ending after he surrendered to Cao Cao? No, he was sold as cannon fodder in Diaoyucheng, Ba County, and died at the hands of Zhang Fei.

Pang De was also a representative of the Xiliang generals who surrendered. He was also betrayed by Cao Cao in the Battle of Chencang Road in Hanzhong County and died at the hands of Zhang Fei. Therefore, from the perspective of these "historical fatalism", Zhang Fei is very suitable to play the role of "professional killer of surrendered generals who surrendered to Cao."

Now, Zhang Fei encounters the third wave of enemies with similar personalities in his military history.

Sun Quan's status was definitely higher than Zhang Xiu and Pang De. If Cao Cao still sold out Sun Quan, then there would be no more surrendered generals from other garrisons who would sincerely serve Cao Cao.

Therefore, even if Zhuge Jin's flattery had flaws, as long as Cao Cao did not have substantial evidence to prove that Sun Quan and Zhang Fei were playing a double game, Cao Cao could only hold his nose and reuse Sun Quan, and reward him with a high position and generous salary based on his "merit in repelling Zhang Fei."

As for whether other factions in Cao’s camp would be dissatisfied, these were minor issues. Cao Cao would certainly not be able to take care of them as he was focusing on the big ones and letting go of the small ones.

Moreover, Zhuge Jin concluded that there must be many villains around Cao Cao who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to form cliques and factions, stand on the side of the prime minister's favorite person, and take advantage of the wind. This would make the factions within Cao Cao more and more chaotic.

This would certainly be of great benefit in finally dealing a fatal blow to Cao Cao and launching a full-scale Northern Expedition two years later.

This is an idle move, and it can be said that it is neither white nor white.

After Liu Bei figured out the causes and effects, he finally felt enlightened. He quickly told the Zhuge brothers to do it on their own without asking for permission.

I didn't expect that Zhang Fei could disgust the enemy one last time before withdrawing his troops. It was really comfortable.

……

After the plan was finalized, Liu Bei's camp quickly turned the above discussion into concrete actions.

Within just a few days, in response to Cao Cao's move of the capital, all units of Liu Bei's army adjusted their military deployments accordingly.

On the side of Guan Yu in Nanyang County, the offensive posture towards Liang County and Ye County was quickly restrained. Guan Yu's army withdrew to Luyang and Bowang, built high fortifications and deep trenches, and began to engage in a defensive stalemate.

On the other hand, Zhang Fei of Runan, after a few days of showy siege on the city with much ado about nothing, also made a feint and decisively withdrew his troops.

In order to ensure better acting skills, Zhuge Jin even sent a messenger to inform Zhang Fei in advance that any siege weapons that could not be brought back, had no technical content and were worthless, or had high maintenance costs could be discarded and burned on the spot.

Of course, if it is possible to dismantle it at a low cost and bring back the valuable parts for reuse next time, then it should be dismantled.

After all, there will be a two-year truce and farming period in the future. If many siege weapons are maintained all the time, it may be more expensive than rebuilding them in the future. Just dismantle the valuable parts and it will be fine.

It is like after the end of World War I in later generations, the Yin people maintained a backward large fleet for more than 20 years. The money invested in fleet maintenance was enough to rebuild a batch of new warships.

It would have been better to treat the old warships as compensation or dismantle them for recycling after the war, and then rebuild new ones when the war was about to start - of course, these statements are all hindsight, after all, when World War I just ended, no one knew that this was a twenty-year truce.

Zhuge Jin only provided an idea, and the relevant technical and financial subordinates would figure out how to do it in the most cost-effective way.

In the end, Zhang Fei threw away a batch of old-fashioned ladders that were damaged and had no value for repair, some broken pillars and broken plates of broken Ge Gong vehicles, and some cheap trench bridge vehicles that could be made from local materials. He set fire to them all when he withdrew his troops.

He also vaguely said: Sun Quan's iron wall defense is the only one Zhang Fei has ever seen. Even when he beat Cao Ren, Yu Jin and Xu Huang before, he didn't have such a strong feeling.

With Sun Quan around, Liu Bei's army no longer wanted to attack Cao from the north along Runan River, so they decided to take another route next time.

Of course, such "good news" reached Luoyang within just a few days.

Cao Cao himself had just recently accompanied the emperor back to Luoyang. He still needed some time to clean up and control the court again and deal with a group of opponents, so he had no time to stay on the Yingchuan front to supervise the army.

After hearing the news, Cao Cao naturally didn't believe it.

Even Cao Cao's nephew Cao Zhen privately reported to his uncle, emphasizing that this might be a strategy of the enemy army to make the soldiers arrogant and should not be trusted.

After reading it, Cao Cao smiled calmly and privately replied to Cao Zhen, telling him not to worry. He definitely trusted Cao's nephews more than his son-in-law. He knew that this was Liu Bei's instigation.

In addition to Cao Zhen's secret report, there were many other court officials who discussed this matter.

For example, Xun Yu, who had just arrived in Luoyang with Cao Cao, was known for his ability to identify and appoint talented people to the right positions. He also held the position of Shangshu Ling, so it was his responsibility to remind Cao Cao.

Xun Yu found an opportunity and privately told Cao Cao with some concern:
"Prime Minister, Zhang Fei has withdrawn his troops recently, but it is widely rumored that Sun Quan is good at defending. This is probably a counter-espionage strategy that imitates Fan Ju. It is really clumsy! Back then, Fan Ju concealed Bai Qi and said that the Qin army despised Lian Po and was only afraid of Zhao Kuo. What happened later is known to the world.

Although the imperial army has suffered a minor setback and lost some counties, the veteran generals are still there. We must not discourage the veteran generals by promoting young and strong men."

If it were Cao Cao a few years ago, after listening to Xun Yu's advice, he would naturally try his best to consider it.

But in the past one or two years, Xun Yu had been inconsistent with him on more and more issues, and Cao Cao's patience with him had gradually worn away.

Facing Xun Yu's audience, Cao Cao simply responded with an attitude of "Although you understand, your perspective on the issue is not high enough," and replied calmly:

"How could I not know these principles? But if meritorious service is not rewarded, how can the court ever gain the support of its people? Regardless of whether Zhang Fei's retreat was a deception or not, at least he truly did withdraw! And for the time being, it seems he won't do it again.

Gongming and Zidan had spent so much manpower and suffered heavy casualties in several battles before they failed to make Zhang Fei retreat. Now he was retreating because he could not bite off the hard bone of Zhongmou. If there was no grand reward, how would the world know that the battle of Xincai was won by the court and Liu Bei lost?
Wen Ruo, you need to have a big picture view when looking at things, and not just judge right and wrong. The court really needs some victories to publicize and boost morale. "

After Cao Cao finished speaking, he felt a little lonely inside. He suddenly thought, how come Wen Ruo was not as good as the young Zhongda in seeing the overall situation?
Zhongda was a very good person. He had just come to him the day before and asked the Prime Minister in a tactful and suggestive way to reward the generals who had made great contributions in repelling Zhang Fei in the Battle of Shangcai as soon as possible.

This is how one should share the worries of his lord, instead of just thinking about cherishing the reputation of being fair and just wanting to be a good person.

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PS: Tomorrow we will enter a period of truce and farming. This period will be faster, interspersed with the conquest of the Southern Barbarians, and then the Northern Expedition in the last volume.

As for the extra chapters on governance and institutional reforms after the unification of the world, I would like to discuss whether to write about them in detail or just briefly touch upon them and see your feedback when the time comes.

Thank you all for supporting this book to reach 3 million words.

(End of this chapter)