The next day, Liu Bei personally rode a horse to send Li Su more than 100 miles, from Nanzheng out of Yangping Pass to the waterside wharf of the Western Han Dynasty in Yang'an Pass. Li Su took hundreds of personal soldiers and a few henchmen and colonels to bid farewell to Liu Bei and prepared to board the ship and go south:

"Thousands of miles away, you have to say goodbye in the end, my brother can send it here, I will wait for the boat to go downstream, and I can arrive at the Dianjiang River in five or six days."

Liu Bei patted Li Su's hand: "Brother Xian is careful all the way. The foolish brother knows that the virtuous brother is cautious and will not be in danger, so he is not worried about the war. But you are weak and timid, and now it is about May, Jiangzhou is more than Zheng, and it is six or seven hundred miles south, so be careful of miasma fever.

Here are a few things, the virtuous brother put it away, it may be useful - this is all a while ago, the foolish brother considered that you may have to go south to supervise the war, patrol the Qianghu merchants, I heard that this ointment is called peppermint oil, which is used by the merchants of Daqin in the Western Regions to cool off when they cross the desert heat. There is also this kind of wood glue, called camphor, which is obtained by smoking, to avoid the miasma of the south. When you arrive in Dianjiang, you have the opportunity to take a bath every day, and you can also add oil to the soup to cool off. ”

As he spoke, Liu Bei took out a box of incense medicine and handed it to Li Su's servant to put it away.

Li Su was moved by this material encouragement, his IQ temporarily increased, and he reminded Liu Bei more before leaving: "Brother was blocked by Huangfu Song and Yuan Shu this time, and he was not allowed to work with the king.

But in the future, when the princes of the outer towns contact their brother and ask their brother to declare righteousness in the world. Brother Yili politely refused, but he wanted to state in reverse order, making people think that our army negotiated with Yuan Shu first and Huangfu Song later. ”

Liu Bei was slightly stunned, unprepared for this topic. Although with his IQ, he could figure out why if he thought about it for a few more minutes, but since Li Su was in front of him, Liu Bei was a little lazy, so he asked directly, disdainful of his own brain.

"Brother Xian, why is this?"

Li Su also didn't sell Guanzi: "I was moved by the general of the Che Cavalry and did not send troops, because I knew that the Han clan relatives, who were the shepherds of one side, should not send troops." was refused by Yuan Shu to allocate grain and grass and not send troops, because the conditions did not allow it, and he could not send troops. Righteousness and reasonableness should not come first, and should not come last. The wording of diplomacy is a matter of righteousness, so you must not be careful. ”

If you can't do it, it means that you still have to do it, but the objective conditions don't allow it. No, that is, don't do it from the motivation level. One thing that should not be done, the early attempt is of course that it is better to be blind than to know the law and break the law.

Liu Bei thought for two seconds, and quickly pondered this twist and turn.

The heart of diplomacy is dirty, and I play word games every day.

"Foolish brother understands, take care."

……

Six days later, on the fifth day of the fifth month of May, Li Su arrived at Dianjiang County, the temporary county of Pasir County, with reinforcements and Dian Wei and other generals.

Taishou Cai Yong, local Brazilian civilian staff, and the besieging generals on the Diaoyu City front line, all came out to greet them.

Cai Yong came a few months earlier than Li Su, and in the late spring of March, he went to Dianjiang to take up his post, and handled the civil affairs of Brazil and the people nearby.

Cai Yan and Li Su are not yet married, so in fact, she just lingered with her secret husband for a winter, and after the beginning of spring, she followed her father to take office, and was forced to temporarily separate from Li Su.

And the front-line generals of Diaoyu City, because Guan Yu was transferred to act with Yuan Shu, he has not returned for the time being, so the front-line supervisors are mainly Zhou Tai and Xu Huang under Guan Yu, as well as Gan Ning, who was officially persuaded to surrender last winter.

Gan Ning has been in prison since he was captured at the end of last summer. Liu Bei knew that as long as he stepped down in the future, grasped Liu Yan's betrayal of the imperial court, and proved that Liu Yan was only using Gan Ning and Zhang Lu, then persuasion would definitely come naturally.

So Liu Bei was not in a hurry at that time, he imprisoned Gan Ning for half a year, and did not let him work hard or torture him, so he gave him some books, let him go to prison to read and reflect, and by the way, he cleaned up with the usual means of dealing with the light warriors of the rivers and lakes.

After Cai Yong took office, Corporal Lixian personally told Gan Ning about the will of the imperial court and Liu Yan's perverse behavior.

But in order to clarify the rewards and punishments, Gan Ning's initial surrender can only start with Qu Junhou, and strive for meritorious service in order to be promoted, and he, Qu Junhou, still saw that his hundreds of water thieves were also captured and surrendered, and he was returned to let him re-command those old subordinates, and the scale could make up a few songs, so he was made Qu Junhou, which can be regarded as "bringing capital into the group".

Anyway, now Diaoyu City is still mainly besieged, with the three of them here, there is never a problem, the enemy occasionally tries to small-scale tentative reinforcements or transport grain, all by water, are repelled by Zhou Tai and Gan Ning; Those who took the land route were also repelled by Xu Huang.

Therefore, it is not much difference if Guan Yu is not there for the time being, and when he really wants to attack in a few months, Guan Yu will already rush back.

When Li Su arrived at the front line, he inevitably inspected Zhou Tai, Xu Huang, and Gan Ning, and the new official took office to mention some precautions and rectify them slightly.

At the same time, he had to spend a few days at the front line to rebuild some counterweight trebuchets according to the drawings he had made at Jianmen Pass—he didn't expect these trebuchets to be able to directly and completely attack Diaoyu City, but they would be able to break the enemy's morale and further strengthen the blockade.

This work will be handed over to Zhou Tai first, after all, Zhou Tai has been with him for the longest time and has the oldest qualifications.

After explaining what happened, Li Sucai slowly collected feedback from the front-line generals to see if they had any suggestions and actions for the recent siege:

"When General Guan was in charge, how did you besiege the city and consume food? Did you find a way to further accelerate the enemy's food consumption, or did you just wait? Did you take the initiative to lure the enemy army out of the city to harass, or lure the enemy army in Jiangzhou to reinforce or send reinforcements by the way? ”

Zhou Tai had the highest position, and he reported sincerely: "I have also tried, but the army in the city can't lure it out at all, and we occasionally clamore for siege, bow and crossbow shooting, and retreat after harassment." If it is played like again, the casualties are too great. The enemy army in Jiangzhou was not worried about this at all, and did not come to help for the time being. ”

Li Su asked carefully, and their tricks to lure the enemy were also relatively blunt, and there was nothing new.

Li Su asked: "Does the enemy know the news that General Guan left the front line?" General Guan went to discuss Dong with Yuan Shu, did this reason be revealed? ”

Zhou Tai was shocked when he heard this, and thought that Li Su was testing the secrecy work in their army, so he hurriedly denied it: "These are all confidential things that are not allowed to be discussed, General Guan has already set up a false banner in the Dianjiang army after leaving, how dare he leak it?" ”

When Li Su heard this, he felt that they were too honest: "How can you be afraid of leaking, this is a good opportunity to lure the enemy army to underestimate the enemy." It's not necessarily useful, but if it can be leaked, it will leak out - by the way, I can't leak this point. ”

Li Su explained at the end, and hurriedly added a word of care. His arrival was even more terrifying than Guan Yu's temporary transfer, and he might have frightened the enemy.

Zhou Tai thought about it, but he was still a little uneasy, and confirmed: "When General Guan left, he said, 'You can't let the generals of Liu Yanjun know that there are already princes outside to fight for Dong', because we haven't even let the enemy know the news of the deposation of the young emperor who originally sent General Zhengxi to ask for Liu Yan's will."

General Guan said that this incident would cause the morale of Liu Yan's army to rise, and give Liu Yan, Liu Mao's father and son an excuse to attack the will as a disorderly life - this has to be considered. ”

Li Su immediately said: "What Yun Chang said, of course, is not unreasonable, but you can embellish and process the information to be leaked, so that the enemy soldiers mistakenly think that there is a long time between 'Dong Zhuo's abolition of the emperor and the young emperor, He Jin's will to beg Liu Yan', isn't it that the young emperor was abolished not long after the will was issued, so isn't it?" Forget it, I'll teach you how to spread rumors......"

Li Su didn't bother to let his subordinates, who were not good at gossip and rumors, think of words, and directly played the old skills of negotiators, and made up the leaked scenes, leaked lines, why the Han army stepped up its attack, why "if you don't transport grain into the city now, you won't be able to transport it in the future, and now is the time when your relative defense is the most lax" and so on.

"Okay, according to what I said, go and spread rumors, in the past few days, we have also organized several sieges from the Water Gate, so that a few dead soldiers accidentally fell into the water, were injured and drifted to the Jishui Beach outside the north wall of Diaoyu City, and were captured by the enemy.

If this is not possible, we will also launch a few more attacks by land, such as deliberately harassing the northeastern section of the city wall with our army's new catapults, but do not storm them. After a few days, under the pretense that the enemy did not dare to go out of the city, the main force of our army was slack, and only a small number of soldiers were sent to protect the catapults, and the main thing was to rest the army. At that time, the enemy army will definitely lose its breath, see that the catapult position is too few defenders, and there is no ambush around, and go out of the city to counterattack. When the time comes, wouldn't it be nice to let them capture one or two artillery captives. ”

For Li Su, there are too many channels for spreading fake news, and they are everywhere you think of it.

"Yes, my subordinates will arrange it." Zhou Tai took the order and left.

……

In the following days, the Han army changed its previous posture of swallowing water and weakness, and adopted several waves of rapid and fierce offensives.

The northern section of the eastern wall of Diaoyu City was originally the only defense area of Diaoyu City that could be attacked from land. After the Han army built a catapult with a range far exceeding the defensive weapons of the defenders, the attack on this section of the wall was indeed effective.

Xu Huang took thousands of Hedong soldiers and some of the original Zhang Lu and Ban Yuman's prisoners, under the cover of more than a dozen catapults, took turns to charge, attacking several gaps in the rammed earth city wall, killing and wounding hundreds of enemy soldiers.

Li Su's catapult did not stick to the use of single-headed bullets that smashed the wall all the time, but appropriately matched some gravel bags to form a shotgun effect, specifically killing and injuring the living force at the head of the wall.

Because of the surprise of the new weapon, the northeast outer wall was indeed breached.

But this progress is not yet a decisive breakthrough for the complete takeover of Diaoyu City. It was nothing more than Liu Mao giving up the peripheral positions and shrinking the first-line defense line to the area around the main peak of Diaoyu Mountain.

Originally, Diaoyu City was twelve miles deep from east to west, and after breaking through one, there was still a depth of ten miles, giving up the outermost two miles of lowland.

And once it retreats to the first line of Diaoyu Mountain, because of the height advantage of the mountain range itself, the catapult will not be able to smash the city wall two or three hundred steps away, unless the catapult is pulled to a very close distance, then it will be impossible to "use the range to attack the enemy without injury" - the main peak of Diaoyu Mountain is 300 meters above the Jialing River, and the stone will never be thrown up.

Li Su let Xu Huang take a risk once or twice, and approached the catapult to harass, and after many times, when the catapult position was insufficient, it really attracted the counterattack of the defenders, and as a result, some artillery men were captured and tortured into the city.