Liu Bei rectified and trained under the Liao Tunnel City for about half a month, until mid-May, and finally prepared for the battle.

With the expansion of his troops to 20,000, and the training and repair of weapons day and night, the speed of money and food consumption in Liu Bei's camp is also very amazing.

At the beginning of the year, when he had just bought the captain of Wuhuan, the minister of Liaodong and the marquis, Liu Bei still had about three or four hundred million public funds in hand. And the expansion of this 10,000 new army, plus the tuntian and cash-for-work, even if there is a subsidy for selling horses, by mid-May, the surplus money has shrunk to 200 million.

200 million yuan, theoretically is about enough for a force of 5,000 cavalry and 15,000 infantry, about a year's military expenses.

In other words, if you don't take into account the taxes and tuntian income in various parts of Liaodong, by the middle of next year, Liu Bei will be so poor that he will go bankrupt because of raising soldiers.

From this point of view, it is indeed easy to recruit strong men with strong physiques and get horses in this place of Liaodong, but the population is too small and the property is too poor. If we do not feed the war with war, and divide the land to defend ourselves, the economic cycle will soon collapse.

This is an account that is very easy to calculate, 300,000 people, converted into 150,000 full taxpayers, 4 stone per person per year, only 600,000 stone of military rations. Even if 100,000 of them are tuntian, the exploitation rate is a little higher, and the total annual income of the government is more than 1 million stone of grain.

It is definitely very hard to raise 20,000 full-time standing troops.

Unless all the soldiers are sent to reclaim the military cantonments, most of the energy is spent on farming and self-sufficiency, but then the professionalism and combat effectiveness of the troops will be reduced, and it will not be the line of elite soldiers.

Liu Bei also knew that with the current financial situation, it was not a way to prepare further. And Zhang Chun must not be allowed to delay until the autumn harvest of the Liaohe Plain this autumn, otherwise it will be too passive.

Therefore, the decisive battle must begin on May 5, and we must strive to completely end the fighting before August, and do not delay the autumn harvest and tax collection.

……

On May 12, the three-fork area of the Liao River under the Liao Tunnel City.

Liu Bei personally led more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, and set up a formation in the river, and challenged Zhang Chun's rebels first.

However, this was just a show, because Zhang Chunjun refused to fight at all - they had begun to dig a long trench outside the Liao Tunnel City, along the north bank of the Liao River, and piled up the soil dug out of the trench to form an earthen wall behind the trench a few months earlier, about before the defeat of the Nanqiao King and the reconquest of Changli County by the Han army.

A simple earthen wall was built for more than ten miles.

has put on this posture, of course, he refuses to fight Liu Bei head-on.

In fact, this hand is similar to that of Gongsun Yuan when he defended Sima Yi decades later, but it is not exactly the same. The core idea is to fight the idea of "cutting off the attacking side's waterways and grain routes."

"What are these trenches and earthen walls for more than ten miles? This kind of earthen wall is built outside the city, so you can bypass it by taking a detour, right? Liu Bei didn't want to risk the lives of his troops, so he didn't directly attack tentatively, but first asked the strategists who accompanied the army, hoping to roughly guess the deployment of the enemy army without paying the price.

Lu Su, who accompanied the army, was well versed in the way of logistics and supply, and after observing for a while, he took the lead in suggesting:

"The water level in the middle reaches of the Liao River has been shallow, and after the bifurcation here, the water level of each tributary has become several percent shallower at once. Mijun Cheng's dual-purpose sand boats on the river and sea could not navigate in the bifurcated tributaries above the Liao Tunnel. Therefore, the military rations brought by sea are now transported to the camp and hoarded.

In the future, when attacking Liao Tunnel and Xiangping, it will be transferred to the front line by small boats. The small boats collected on the spot in the counties of Liaodong are far less sturdy than the Mijia ships, and there are no ship buildings and board cabins to cover the arrows. The enemy's construction of a long trench on the north bank, and the ambush of crossbowmen behind the earthen wall, were enough to suppress the river, so that we could not take a detour to transport grain around here and directly attack the counties deep in the Liaohe Plain. ”

If you take a detour and steal your home directly, the troops will be able to get by, but the grain and grass will not be able to get by.

The transportation of grain in ancient times was not like that in many costume dramas, relying on ox carts and donkey carts - ox carts and donkey carts were equivalent to the "last kilometer" of ancient logistics, and only the distance from the dock to the camp relied on ox carts.

If ox carts are used for hundreds of miles, it is tantamount to a waste of modern express companies giving up high-speed trucks and directly using the courier brother's small electric donkey to drive hundreds of miles to deliver express delivery.

Otherwise, the previous battles between Cao and Sun would no longer be entangled in the strategic points of Shouchun, Mixukou, and Hefei. It is precisely because these points control the confluence of rivers from the Huai River to the Yangtze River system, that it is impossible to transport grain by water and continue to march troops without fighting.

Liu Bei pondered for a moment the problem Lu Su saw, turned to Li Su and asked, "Zijing is worried, does Boya have a solution?" ”

Li Su didn't dare to hold it up, and thought about it seriously: "I have some ideas, but I don't guarantee that they will work, I can only say that it is a try, if the enemy army does not hit, we will have no loss." ”

Liu Bei: "Let's hear it." ”

Li Su: "The best strategy is to let Zilong lead thousands of cavalry, bring enough dry food with the army for seven or eight days, and go up dozens of miles to the tributary east of Liaoshui, pretending to cut off the connection between the enemy army in Liaozhou and the enemy army in Xiangping."

It even created a posture of 'the main force of our army abandoning the waterway to transport grain, and was willing to bear the loss of transporting grain by land for 200 miles by ox cart, and went straight to Xiangping to attack the city', forcing the enemy army in the defense system of the Liao Tunnel and Trench Wall to pursue us, thus forcing the enemy to fight in the field. The advantage of this strategy is that you can try it at any time, and if it doesn't work, it will just let Zilong run for nothing, and there will be no other loss. ”

As soon as Liu Bei heard this, he immediately made a decision: "Good plan, although the enemy army may not be successful, but it doesn't cost much, let Zilong prepare immediately, and make a roundabout feint today." ”

Regardless of whether the enemy believes that Zhao Yun wants to steal his home, he will act first.

This is also the easiest thing to think of when dealing with the enemy's division of troops and hoarding in two places. Encircle the point to send reinforcements, pretend to threaten the important stronghold with weak troops, and lure the strong troops to rescue.

Li Su's best policy was actually a direct copy of Sima Yi's method when he killed Gongsun Yuan. If Zhang Chun's intelligence value is higher than Gongsun Yuan's, then most likely he didn't have a head.

"Let's talk about the middle way." After giving the order, Liu Bei turned around and continued to ask Li Su.

Li Su: "If the enemy is indifferent after the performance of the last strategy, then he has no choice but to plan and really divide his troops to make a detour to Xiangping, or even tentatively attack the city." The intensity of the siege is not important, the key is to ensure that the internal and external information between Xiangping and the Liao Tunnel is cut off, so that the enemy army in the Liao Tunnel knows that we are attacking Xiangping, but they do not know how fierce we are attacking and how many people we have invested.

In this way, in time, the enemy troops on this side of the Liao Tunnel will definitely be unable to hold their breath. Even if they don't dare to directly abandon the Liao Tunnel and return to Xiangping to save Xiangping, they will at least wait for the opportunity to cross the river to the south bank and cut off the grain route for us to transport grain to the front line of the siege of Xiangping by land.

At this time, it will be necessary to test the ability of our army to deceive and deploy, as long as they can mistakenly think that the reserve troops and food teams we left on this side of the Liao Tunnel are insufficient, they will boldly come out to steal the grain.

Compared with the previous policy, the success rate of this strategy is higher, and the disadvantage is that if it fails, for example, if the performance is too high, the strength of the rescue and grain transportation team cannot defeat the enemy's grain robbery team, then our army will inevitably suffer losses, and a large number of grain and grass will be burned or even robbed. ”

The best strategy is to have a low success rate, but there is no loss if it fails, which is equal to a short bet.

The middle strategy is that the success rate is high, and there are losses if it fails.

The probability that the enemy will come to rob the grain is still relatively large - because Xiangping is equal to the Liaoyang urban area in later generations, so the road from the Liao Tunnel to Xiangping to transport grain by land is actually not much roundabout, and it is basically more than ten miles away from the Liao River.

Because further southwest, it is the Anshan mountain area of later generations, and the ox carts of this era traveled through the mountains and swamps to transport grain, almost looking for death. The Han army could only travel along the plains of the Liaohe River valley by land, and the whole route was very narrow and long.

Liu Bei touched his beard: "What about the next step?" ”

Li Su spread his hands: "Make a decision...... They could only divide their troops to cross the river in a roundabout way, and then go around and besiege the Liao tunnel wall fortifications from the front and rear. In any case, this is also a higher chance of victory than just crossing the river from the south bank and then attacking the trench wall, so it can barely be considered a strategy. After completely annihilating the enemy army in Liaojiao, he will steadily attack Xiangping, the thief's nest. ”

After listening, Liu Bei sighed: "Boya's upper, middle and lower strategies are good, they don't conflict with each other, you can try them one by one, the more you go, the more you earn, and if you don't succeed, it's a big deal to retreat." ”

For this compliment, Li Su smiled and said nothing.

Maybe this is also his habit of thinking beyond this era. He never made a strategy like other Han Dynasty strategists, but followed the line of "starting with the strategy of first deceiving and then the highest return", and then retreated step by step like a modern staff department makes a battle plan.

"If the conditions are not met, what is the next step".

In this way, it seems to be much more organized than other Han Dynasty strategists, and they always think about defeat before they win.

Unlike the upper, middle and lower ones that other strategists came up with, they all chose one of them, and the other two were invalid and could not be used one after another.

This is like Pang Tong and Guo Jia's strategy, which is to let the lord "You choose, there are three beauties here, one is more beautiful than the other, and one is more difficult to chase, you choose which one to chase".

And Li Su is "Children make choices first, adults are the lords, you chase the most beautiful first, I have a way to keep it secret and not let the two who are relatively ugly know that you have chased the most beautiful one." In this way, if you can't catch the most beautiful one, you can still chase the second ugly one, so that the second ugly one will not be jealous and turn his face directly."

has enjoyed the service of a scumbag like Li Su, who can chase after all shotguns, who is still impatient to be a child's choice?

……

Now that Liu Bei has decided to try it one by one, Zhao Yun has no choice but to work hard.

On the second day of the military meeting, the main force of the army waved its flag and shouted in front of the fortifications of the Liao Tunnel as usual, pretending to attack and firing arrows at each other. And Zhao Yun had already brought 3,000 of the 5,000 cavalry, pretending to take a detour to steal his home, and intercepted and killed several envoys of the enemy army along the way to inquire about the army.

Zhao Yun diligently acted according to Li Su's plan for a few days, however, it seemed that Zhang Chun's intelligence value seemed to be higher than that of Gongsun Yuan in later generations, and they didn't believe that this kind of light soldier could steal home at all, so they were unmoved, and the two strongholds were not able to hold out, and they were not worried that the other place would be stolen by Zhao Yun.

Liu Bei is not discouraged, the best policy is originally a useless lottery ticket, and there is nothing to regret if he doesn't win the lottery, so he continues to win the strategy.