Xu Ziyuan is not a particularly outstanding person in Wuwei Academy, he can only be regarded as average in reading and learning, and his advantages are that his eloquence is particularly outstanding, and he belongs to the kind of person who can make three points of reason without reason, and it is precisely because of him that Zhang Hui recommended Xu Ziyuan to envoy Hedong in front of Li Ze.

However, what Zhang Hui and Li Ze didn't expect was that this person had a tenacity hidden in his bones, and after receiving the order, the path he chose was something that neither Zhang Hui nor Li Ze expected.

He actually entered Ulzhou from Yizhou, and then set off from Ulzhou to Yunzhou.

What is Ulju?

It is the area that Gao Biao repeatedly fought for with Lu Longjun when he was alive, and the big battles were fought one after another, and the Dingkou here has long been uninhabited, and it is not a legend here, but a fact.

The two sides had been here for a long time, and then Zhang Zhongwu broke through, and led his troops to Daizhou and captured Yanmen Pass, but this year, Gao Biao's counterattack before his death, while recapturing Yanmen Pass, he drove Lu Longjun back.

Next, Lu Longjun retreated, relinquishing his rule over the area.

In Gao Biao's last order, the Hedong Army also gave up the management of this place, Li Cunzhong's Yunzhong Garrison Army was stationed at Yanmen Pass, and Han Qi guarded Taiyuan.

It's not that you don't want this place, but if there's nothing left in this land, what's the point of you coming? Even the people who survived either fled to Yanmen Pass, or were captured by Lu Long's army and taken to Yanzhou.

In this desolate land, there is no official government, and there is only one kind of person who still exists, thieves.

The evil consequences of the warlord chaos that Li Ze had worried about had actually happened in Ulzhou.

Xu Ziyuan only brought twenty guards and entered Ulzhou.

It would have taken them only ten days to travel, but they walked for almost a month. And in the past month, Xu Ziyuan, a native of Chang'an, has been greatly shaken in his heart.

Whether it is those thieves who seem to be extremely vicious, or those people who are lucky enough to survive, in Xu Ziyuan's view, they are just a living walking corpse.

When he first ran into a small group of bandits, what they were doing made Xu Ziyuan angry because they were eating people.

There were about forty or fifty bandits in this group, and when they saw that Xu Ziyuan and his party were only more than ten people, but carrying twenty war horses, they did not hesitate to attack them, and at that moment, Xu Ziyuan felt that in their eyes, he was not a living person, but a pile of delicious food.

He didn't run away, even if they could completely rely on the speed of the war horse to avoid those people, Xu Ziyuan drew the horizontal knife on his horse and gave the order to attack.

The twenty guards were all from Li Ze's personal guards, well-equipped and well-trained, and within a cup of tea, these vicious gangsters in Xu Ziyuan's eyes were all ambushed in the wilderness.

Xu Ziyuan let out a bad breath.

But for the rest of the day, he couldn't laugh anymore.

Because the same scene appeared in front of his eyes one after another.

This place is already a ghost domain in the world.

Xu Ziyuan was far from being able to help these people, and the supplies he carried with him were only enough for their group. Along the way, they constantly defeated the bandits who tried to ransack them, and sometimes encountered bandits who were too powerful, and they even had to take a detour, and had to go out day and night.

When he finally saw the outpost set up by the Heavenly Soldiers, he finally couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, reached out to his waist, felt out the water bladder, and craned his neck to take a sip, but found that there was no trickle inside.

Yunzhou, where the Heavenly Soldiers now live.

Now here, it's not a good place, that is, it's a little better than Ulzhou.

Li Ze admires Gao Biao himself very much, but he has great resentment towards Gao Biao's final arrangement.

Regarding this matter, in Wuwei Academy, Xu Ziyuan and many people also had a heated discussion. From a purely military point of view, Gao Yu's last move, although it severely defeated Lu Longjun, was actually a failed operation. Because after this battle, the once powerful Hedong Army was disintegrated. The Kelan Army, the Heavenly Soldier Army, and the Xinzhou Army were hit hard, but Han Qi and Li Cunzhong, who had retained their strength, could only hold on and were no longer able to attack. If Gao Biao had justifiably handed over the military power to Li Ze before he died, such a thing could have been avoided.

The discussion went on and on, and everyone finally came to an astonishing conclusion.

That is, Gao Biao did not trust Li Ze, the general of the Northland march and the general of Qianniuwei.

Of course, this distrust is not that he does not believe that Li Ze can destroy Zhang Zhongwu, in fact, on the contrary, Gao Biao believes that Li Ze will inevitably defeat Zhang Zhongwu, what he does not trust is Li Ze's loyalty to the Tang royal family. Once Hedong as a whole falls into the hands of Li Ze, Li Ze's power will be great and there will be no control over it.

Now it seems that Hedong is powerless, which makes Li Ze's crusade against Zhang Zhongwu add a lot of difficulties, but under this arrangement, he has set up many obstacles for Li Ze in the future, Han Qi and Li Cunzhong are the two supporting forces left by Gao Biao for the Tang Dynasty.

From the perspective of Gao Biao, a loyal minister who has fought for Datang all his life, this seems beyond reproach.

Or in Gao Yu's view, Zhang Zhongwu is just a clown who will eventually fail, and people like Li Ze are the dangerous people who will really threaten the Tang Dynasty.

The students of Wuwei Academy, who came to this conclusion, were speechless for a while.

Among them, except for Ding Jian, who is noncommittal about this, the rest of the people, even if they have been officials, their positions are not high, and it is difficult to understand Gao Biao's thinking for a while.

It was impossible for Li Ze to ignore Hedong's role in restraining Lu Long, but now it was obvious that even as the commander of the Northland March, Li Ze could not command Li Cunzhong and Han Qi, and Li Ze could only stretch out his hand to the only one he could use, the Heavenly Soldiers stationed in Yunzhou.

This is also Li Ze's official hand to Hedong, the Heavenly Soldier Army now seems to be the weakest among the forces in Hedong, but it is precisely because of this that Li Ze is given a chance.

Others, such as the Kelan Army and the Xinzhou Army, were sandwiched between Li Cunzhong and Han Qi, and they had not yet reached the point where they could not go on, so they naturally would not take the risk of obeying Li Ze's command, and once they did so, they would most likely be suppressed by Li Cunzhong and Han Qi.

All these made Li Ze choose to support the Heavenly Soldiers to become his spokesman in Hedong.

When Xu Ziyuan saw Yunzhou City, where the base camp of the Heavenly Soldiers Army was located, he was speechless again. I'm afraid that taking out any small county town from Wuwei will be much brighter than Yunzhou City.

The rammed walls were overgrown with weeds, and there were long cracks in many places, and even collapsed in some places, and many soldiers in ragged clothes went in and out of the collapsed places, and the city gates were almost useless. Under the scorching sun, the banners of the heavenly soldiers on the dilapidated city gate tower hung listlessly, but it was very similar to their current situation.

After Zhang Jia, the commander of the Heavenly Army, had nowhere to go and came to Yunzhou, there were only less than 10,000 soldiers and horses left, and he worked hard to collect all the Dingkou in Yunzhou, and moved them all in one go to the periphery of Yunzhou City to gather people to live, barely making this dilapidated city have some vitality.

"How did it get to this point?" Sitting in Zhang Jia's dilapidated command yamen, looking at the meal that Zhang Jia prepared for him in front of him, Xu Ziyuan couldn't help but sigh.

Zhang Jia was both surprised and delighted by the arrival of Xu Ziyuan, the special envoy of Li Ze, the governor of the Northland, who was about to be cornered. Xu Ziyuan's arrival gave him a glimmer of life.

"Gao Shuai doesn't trust me." Zhang Jia, who is in his forties, looks a little aggrieved, "I have been fighting with Gao Shuai for many years, but I can't imagine that in the end, I can't even resist Li Cunzhong, a Hu man." ”

Xu Ziyuan sighed in his heart, and said in his heart that in the days when Gao Yu was seriously ill, your actions were indeed not worthy of his trust in you. Li Cunzhong is indeed a Hu person, and the Yunzhong Guarding Army is also dominated by miscellaneous Hu, but the Heavenly Soldiers Army is actually similar, the main body is the nine Turkic surnames in the past, but after many years, now Hu and Han have long been mixed together, and it is difficult to distinguish.

"Gao Shuai has gone, the dead are the greatest, we will no longer discuss his gains and losses." For Gao Yu, Xu Ziyuan still has respect for him, and is unwilling to complain to him with Zhang Jia. "What are General Zhang's plans for the future?"

"Peng Fang sent someone to find me, hoping that I could join them." Zhang Jia looked at Xu Ziyuan, and his words were a little flickering. "I'm thinking about it. Li Cunzhong and Han Qi can't tolerate me, I'm about to lose my life now, if Peng Fang can give me help, I can only join Yiwu. ”

Xu Ziyuan couldn't help laughing, and at this time, Zhang Jia was still thinking about bargaining with him. Peng Fang is afraid that it is not Zhang Jia, but the about 3,000 elite cavalry he still has in his hands, these cavalry are basically composed of Turks, and their combat effectiveness is still very considerable. Zhang Jia is really going to vote for Yiwu, and it is difficult to say whether he can die well in the future, and I think Zhang Jia also understands this, so until now, he is still holding on. It's just that it's hard to say how long it can last, he wants to hold on, but his subordinates don't necessarily think so.

"General Zhang, I came here on the order of my marshal, the meaning is very clear if you want to come, we won't bend around, you are like this, it won't take long to delay just because the army's heart will collapse. I'll ask you first if you're willing to accept the orders of my marshal, and if so, we can talk about other things. Xu Ziyuan went straight in.

For such a conversation, Xu Ziyuan has a lot of experience, and what method to use with whom, so as to hit the bull's-eye with one blow.

Sure enough, under Xu Ziyuan's seemingly aggressive posture, although Zhang Jia was a little hesitant, in the end, he still nodded: "Li Shuai is the general manager of the northland march, and I am naturally willing to obey the order." ”

Xu Ziyuan smiled.

"That's it, General Zhang, and then I'll talk about the arrangements that the marshal has made for you."