He originally intended to surrender to Wei, so why did he end up restoring Han?

Chapter 119 Removing the Aristocratic Families, the Yellow Turban Army Becomes Powerful

"An uprising has broken out in Lujiang County?! At this time?!" Liu Bei was still pondering what to do in the days to come when he suddenly heard this surprising news.

Although Liu Xun was not very good at managing people's livelihood, governing the army, or the economy, he was still good at suppressing the people and had basic military skills. Surely he could have managed to control the common people.

"Yes, my lord, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Chen Deng, who was in charge of gathering intelligence, was very excited. Liu Bei's operations now seemed a bit too small. He should continue to work hard and try to acquire another prefecture or kingdom.

Another opportunity presented itself to Liu Bei. More than half a year had passed since the last large-scale operation, and the recuperation in Xuzhou had given it a foundation for war once again, allowing it to go all out.

However, at this moment, Liu Bei hesitated, which was unusual, because Jiujiang and Lujiang were not really suitable for attacking. First of all, there was the issue of legitimacy. After all, these were the territories of his sworn brother Liu Biao, and it was not in his nature to turn against them.

Using Liu Qi's name is also inappropriate; it would be like a son beating his father, which is even worse than fratricide among Han officials.

Secondly, last year's severe drought caused widespread suffering here, and even if he were to take control, he would still need to invest a large amount of resources in improving people's livelihoods.

He doesn't oppose saving people; what he opposes is that saving people might result in the death of another group of people.

Liu Bei was a good person, but not a pushover, and certainly not Louis XVI. He'd only recently escaped poverty himself, and he was already prepared to sell his life to support others?

Aside from the crucial issue of legitimacy, Liu Bei's concerns were actually quite understandable. The situation in Lujiang was currently unpredictable, and rushing in would be certain death. Moreover, Liu Bei had originally wanted to teach Sun Ce a lesson, since the kid had only won a game a few months ago through a sneak attack and was already starting to cause trouble.

First, he demanded a fee for every batch of goods sold from Xuzhou, then he claimed that Xuzhou's trade had destroyed the livelihoods of many people in Jiangdong, so Liu Bei should compensate them.

I'll pay your mother!

You were the one who signed the contract allowing us to do business, and you're the one who went back on your word. You think you can have all the good stuff?!

Liu Bei immediately realized that Sun Ce was extorting him and trying to rob him. Not only that, but several cargo ships carrying goods from Xuzhou were also robbed by river bandits who suddenly appeared before they even crossed the Yangtze River.

Jiang Dong said he would cooperate with the investigation, but no one in his department made a move. Then, through the investigation of Chen Deng's intelligence personnel, the supplies inexplicably ended up in a heavily guarded warehouse, and the owner of this warehouse happened to be a man surnamed Sun.

Liu Bei couldn't stand this insult, so he planned to drive Sun Ce's last remaining forces in Jiangbei across the river, to let that kid know that he was never someone to be trifled with.

As for the problem in Lujiang, Liu Bei still harbored some wishful thinking, believing that the chaos in Lujiang was merely a temporary accident that would soon be suppressed. Therefore, when issuing orders, he simply instructed his subordinates to patrol more closely, help any refugees they encountered, and not force anyone to come to Xuzhou.

Furthermore, Cao Cao, the instigator of this incident, was overjoyed to see the chaos in Lujiang; he had originally only intended to frighten them.

Liu Biao told him to focus all his attention on the north, but Liu Xun of Lujiang was so frightened that he immediately committed suicide.

Oh my, there's an unexpected bonus! Let me see!

How could Cao Cao sit idly by and watch such an opportunity to intervene in Lujiang slip away? He immediately ordered his spies to quickly report the latest situation in Lujiang County, preparing to make a quick buck from Liu Xun.

The intelligence from the spies came very quickly and in large quantities, so Cao Cao was very pleased to see such work efficiency and immediately decided to give each member of the local intelligence department in Lujiang a credit.

After reading it, Cao Cao was moved to tears, feeling that he had been too stingy and should have given them more credit.

The reason is simple: the sacrifices were too great.

This brings us to the characteristics of the intelligence organizations led by Chen Deng and Xiahou Dun.

Although Chen Deng's intelligence organization's primary function was intelligence gathering, due to previous mistakes, it focused heavily on internal counter-espionage and security. Externally, it primarily cooperated with the Xuzhou merchant caravan. If a region wasn't covered by Liu Bei's trade network, Chen Deng's intelligence network there would be relatively weak.

Xiahou Dun's intelligence organization, having learned a bloody lesson, invested heavily in infiltration and built a very large intelligence network, so that even if a single node was eliminated, it would not affect the overall operation.

Xiahou Dun's spies in Lujiang disguised themselves as ordinary people and sent back intelligence reports to Cao Cao.

In order to gather this intelligence, Cao Cao's spies also died.

The internal turmoil in Lujiang County has escalated to a considerable level, and it is virtually impossible to stop without external intervention. The fighting must continue until everyone is satisfied.

This is not simply a matter of mutual slaughter, but a culmination of a series of problems such as conflicts between people and land, and conflicts between arcade machines. Under these circumstances, everyone becomes somewhat irrational.

In addition, this place is a crossroads, and Lü Bu, Sun Ce, Liu Bei, Liu Biao, and Cao Cao have all exerted their influence here, so the level of chaos here is almost comparable to that of the Middle East.

The chaos in Lujiang is also the result of the combined influence of multiple forces.

Do you remember Lü Bu who stirred up trouble in Runan before? Taking advantage of the fact that there was no major power in Runan, he quickly defeated the remnants of the Yellow Turbans and forced them to submit to Lü Bu.

The reason he was able to do this was because Gao Shun, one of Lü Bu's subordinates, was exceptionally skilled at training troops. Unless there was a congenital physical defect, he could train even the most helpless men into courageous and fierce soldiers. Furthermore, by utilizing Chen Gong's strategic acumen, Lü Bu's army achieved a near-total defeat against the remnants of the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the bandits.

The most important factor was Lü Bu's role. After experiencing several ups and downs, his personality had become much more composed than before. Although he couldn't personally charge into battle as usual due to health reasons, his combat experience was undeniable.

However, not everyone was willing to serve under Lü Bu, so many Yellow Turban soldiers fled Runan. A small number of them fled to the territories of Cao Cao and Liu Bei, but most of them headed towards Lujiang.

Because Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Liu Biao were all powerful warlords, they adopted a strategy of dispersing and reorganizing the Yellow Turban rebels to absorb them, which led to conflict with the Yellow Turban leaders.

The original Yellow Turban leaders were unwilling to relinquish their command. In their view, it was better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix. If they could always be the boss, who would want to be someone else's subordinate?

As soon as the Yellow Turban Army arrived, they quickly came into contact with the local rebel forces, and the two sides immediately hit it off. It was truly a case of dry wood meeting a raging fire, or a long-awaited rain after a drought. The local rebels were quickly incorporated into the army and also put on yellow turbans, indicating that they were also members of the Yellow Turban Army.

The rebel army, which initially lacked combat experience, improved dramatically after joining forces with the Yellow Turban Army. Although they were still somewhat outmatched in terms of military strength, their superior numbers allowed them to hold their own against Liu Xun's army.

Now Liu Xun was completely humiliated. He couldn't even defeat the Yellow Turban Army, which was at the very bottom of the military hierarchy in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. No one in Liu Xun's army could afford to lose to him anymore; he had no shame left.

However, there were things the Yellow Turban Army couldn't do either: they couldn't solve the problems of food shortages and financial collapse within the rebel army. Rather than saying these people were incompetent, it's more accurate to say that if they could solve these problems, they wouldn't need to be Yellow Turbans in the first place.

These Yellow Turban rebels devised a clever plan: to set up numerous checkpoints along the main roads, requiring anyone passing through to pay a toll to replenish their depleted coffers. Simultaneously, they intensified their raids on powerful families and wealthy clans, forcing them to relinquish everything they had seized.

The current Wubao, a powerful clan, is much more advanced than when it first appeared, but it still cannot compare to the later ones.

The kind of small fortresses from the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Yellow Turban Army also had extensive experience in raiding homes, and they were adept at carrying out purges of high-income populations.

In a short time, many powerful and influential families were raided and their entire clans were exterminated.

Seeing Liu Xun's miserable state after being beaten by the Yellow Turban Army, the aristocratic families all shook their heads and decided to withdraw their investment.

The reason I supported Liu Xun before was because although his eccentricities were a bit abstract, at least he could maintain stability in one area, allowing the aristocratic families to continue to live a peaceful and secure life as superior people.

This good-for-nothing can't even do this little thing right, so why should we support him?

These powerful families, having dismissed Liu Xun, immediately began expanding their private armies. Even the most stingy families were now using their last savings to bolster their forces.

If we don't spend money now, the Yellow Turban Army will come and help us spend it.

In order to distinguish their own army from the Yellow Turban Army, the aristocratic families made their private soldiers wear red ribbons to differentiate them.

With their extensive networks, the aristocratic families could hire far more skilled military instructors than the Yellow Turbans, who had to figure things out on their own. Almost all of these instructors were veterans who had retired from the battlefield. As a result, the fighting strength of the aristocratic families' private armies increased dramatically.

Soon, the two sides engaged in several battles in the countryside of Lujiang. Although the level of these battle tactics was extremely mediocre, to the point that Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Yuan Shao would not even glance at them, as doing so might ruin their own skills.

After a period of interaction, both sides suffered losses to varying degrees. They tacitly agreed to retreat and lick their wounds, preparing for the next battle. Once their strength had recovered sufficiently, they would find a suitable location to clash again.

Some members of the aristocratic families were quite shrewd. Seeing that direct confrontation was disadvantageous, they immediately began trying to infiltrate the Yellow Turban Army. By planting spies within their ranks, the aristocratic families could monitor every move of the Yellow Turbans. Over time, it wouldn't be impossible for them to completely annihilate the army.

These actions quickly began to take effect, and the Yellow Turban Army began to retreat in defeat. The Yellow Turban Army, which had originally been poised to sweep through Lujiang, suffered a major setback and had to retreat back to Shiting, where they had initially established their power.

The Yellow Turban Army here weren't fools either. They knew they were being ambushed everywhere they went, so they immediately realized there was a traitor within their ranks. What followed was an internal investigation, with everyone passing the test, determined to remove the infiltrator.

To prevent this from happening again, a high-ranking general of the Yellow Turban Army came up with a despicable method to verify the claim: answering questions about agricultural knowledge.

For example, after a checkpoint stops someone, the guards will hold up a stalk of grain and ask the passerby what it is. If the passerby can't answer or answers incorrectly, they will immediately cut it down. Of course, if the person can pay a large toll, they might be merciful and let him go.

This would naturally result in many accidental killings, but the Yellow Turban Army, already blinded by rage, didn't care. The continuous defeats forced the Yellow Turban Army to resort to extreme measures to eliminate suspicious individuals, otherwise they would not be able to continue to exist and would be wiped out by the private armies of powerful families.

The Yellow Turban Army also wanted to try to infiltrate the armies of the aristocratic families using this plan, but the aristocratic families had already made the corresponding preparations. They always figured out a solution before taking any underhanded tricks.

The private soldiers of aristocratic families were mostly selected from their own tenant farmers. To prevent refugees from infiltrating the ranks, the families would tattoo characters on the tenant farmers' arms to indicate which family they belonged to.

Those individuals of unknown origin will be eliminated immediately to prevent them from suddenly retaliating against the powerful families.

However, in terms of sheer misery, the refugees and tenant farmers were not the worst off. The worst off were the local town residents, a large portion of whom were ignorant of or lacked agricultural knowledge and could not afford to pay the toll, making them easy prey for the Yellow Turban rebels.

Because they had no connections and weren't branded by their masters like the tenant farmers, they were also destined to be killed by the Red Turban Army.

But because of the war, supplies couldn't be brought in from the outside, so the people inside had to go out to find food; if they wanted to escape, they had to go outside.

These people were caught in the middle, suffering from both sides. Eventually, under this double oppression, the citizens of the city could no longer stand it and rose up in rebellion. To distinguish themselves from the other two sides, the armed forces spontaneously formed by these citizens wore black cloth strips.

These people mostly resided in towns and relied on city defenses, but their organizational structure was looser than that of the aristocratic families and the Yellow Turban Army. Basically, each town had its own group of people, forming a very loose city-state alliance.

The Black Turban Army in these towns would only leave the city to fight when they clearly perceived a threat, unless absolutely necessary.

Thus, Lujiang was divided into three parts, each hostile to the other. The pressing food crisis further strained their relationship.

More tense and deadly.

So what was Liu Xun, the original supreme commander of Lujiang, doing at this time?

It's running in the background.

He and the peasant uprising, which he had initially thought was just a minor ailment, had already spread throughout all the rural areas and cities under his control. By the time he wanted to ask for help, his orders could no longer leave Shuxian County.

They were slaughtering each other everywhere, and they didn't care who you were. If you weren't on their side, you would die.

In this way, Liu Xun's orders could not even leave the city. The messengers who sent the messages would be robbed of everything before they got very far, and if they were to accidentally offend someone, they would not even be able to save their own lives.

The current Liu Xun is just a slightly uglier, weaker, more wicked, and dumber version of Constantine XI. He can only stay in Shuxian and muddle through life; if he were to venture out rashly, he might even die here.

Even a ruthless man like Cao Cao sighed after reading the intelligence: "There isn't a single good person among them."

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