"Your name is Kong Xian, and you are a relative of the royal family?"

"I am a relative of His Majesty's Fifth Blessing today, and I am the same generation as His Majesty in terms of generation."

Tang Yuan looked at Kong Xian carefully, with a shrewd look on his face, he had a fight with Nalan Xin, Tang Yuan waved his hand and said, "The emperor, please take a seat." ”

"Oh, in front of the general, how dare you make a mistake."

"Not really." Tang Yuan said: "At the end of the Han Dynasty, the princes of the Eighteenth Route crusaded against Dong Zhuo, Liu Xuande also had a seat among the princes, and he was farther away from the emperor's relatives at that time, but he was still like this, not to mention that you and Your Majesty are still relatives of Wufu." ”

"Uncle Liu Huang is a royal family with the same surname, and Kong Xian is just a relative, how dare he compare them." Although polite, he sat down anyway.

Yulan came over to deliver tea.

Seeing that Youlan looked beautiful and dressed decently, he knew that he was not a maid, and he even stood up and thanked him.

I don't know if he was trying to please Tang Yuan, or if he was naturally humble, Tang Yuan ignored this, but said, "You can come to me, it can be regarded as courageous." In fact, with Zhao Guangxun's identity, he should commit suicide to become a benevolent. That will also preserve you. And you can actually kill him and take his head to me, as a sign of your heart to break with the Queen Mother. Why didn't you do that? ”

Hearing this, Kong Xian's face became ugly, and he choked slightly, and said: "I, Kong Xian, am not an elm pimple, on the battlefield, the arrangement of troops has always been easy, but in this human world, I obey the five words of 'benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom and faith', people live, not for these five words, they are like livestock." ”

Tang Yuan doesn't like people who are full of benevolence and morality, he thinks that the more people talk about morality, the more despicable their personality will be.

Seeing Tang Yuan's face change slightly, Kong Xian immediately stood up and said, "If there is anything offensive to the general, please also ask the general Haihan." I was born in a wealthy family, and I had many problems with arrogance and unruliness, and I would always forget to remind myself inadvertently, and it was inevitable that I would be rude. ”

Tang Yuan ignored this sentence, and instead asked, "Just now you said that you can arrange your troops with ease, how can you say this?" ”

"If the general is interested, we can deduce a battle on the sand table." Kong Xian's face was full of challenge.

"Have you ever actually commanded a battle?" Tang Yuan looked at him with a scrutinizing gaze.

"It's a shame that I haven't commanded." Kong Xian said ashamedly.

"If it's just a sand table deduction, it doesn't really mean anything." Tang Yuan stood up: "But you are young, you can become Zhao Guangxun's strategist, you must have something extraordinary." Since you're challenging me, let's do a little bit and see how well you can do it. ”

The sand table deduction is not simply about how many soldiers I have, how to beat you, and so on. This involves the types of troops, the size of the troops, the strategic terrain, and the arrangement of odd troops, and some words cannot be said directly, and they need to be written on a note in advance. When two soldiers meet together, according to the actual situation, take out a note and show it to the other party, indicating that I have considered in advance that these soldiers of yours have been ambushed by me, so your battle flag will be confiscated by me.

In the end, it is a victory to see who can destroy whom, or who has more battle flags in their hands.

It's a bit like playing chess.

However, this kind of play is also a test for the mastery of the army's common sense in combat.

In the sand table exercise, it is basically possible to determine whether a general has the ability to command operations, how much he knows about the battlefield, how much he knows about the army, and whether it is just talk on paper, and whether a general with combat experience can almost do it at a glance.

You need to build a sand table, which can be arranged casually.

It can be an offensive battle, or an attack and a defense, Tang Yuan decided to have a confrontation with him in order to test Kong Xian, and let Kong Xian choose a battle flag by himself, a general flag, representing a division.

Why use the division directly?

Because Kong Xian is Zhao Guangxun's strategist, then when he thinks about the problem, he must look at it from Zhao Guangxun's eyes, and the commander of the Tiger Ben Army, of course, is directly a division-level unit.

"Let's take the 150,000 Tiger Army as an example, you command the 150,000 Tiger Army, and I command the 100,000 Flying Tiger Army. I'll hit you first. Tang Yuan handed over the fifteen division flags to Kong Xie, and then handed him the forty-five brigade flags.

A whole bunch.

Kong Xian raised his eyes and looked at Tang Yuan and said, "I only need eighty thousand." ”

"Oh?" Tang Yuan smiled and said, "Okay, let's give it a try." ”

"Wait," Kong Xian stopped: "I am afraid that I will not be able to give full play to my advantages if I only command the brigade, I hope to directly command the regiment, and the battalion flag should also be prepared." ”

In large-scale operations, the supreme commander commands the troops down to the regiment, which is probably a bit excessive, and how many small flags must be prepared in his hand cannot be held with two hands.

Since he proposed it, Tang Yuan couldn't show weakness, so he agreed.

According to the 100,000 Flying Tiger Army, Tang Yuan had 10 general flags, 30 brigade flags, 90 regimental flags in the small box in front of him, and also prepared a few battalion flags sporadically.

Kong also had a small box in front of him, and prepared a "unit" corresponding to eight divisions.

Tang Yuan asked Kong to set up a defensive terrain sand table in the Huainan region, Tang Yuan led the troops to fight, and the two sides quickly focused their attack and defense on the plain area, and Tang Yuan's Flying Tiger Army drove straight in.

Kong carried it without fighting, but scattered his soldiers in all directions, and finally formed a large funnel.

It's about dividing the encirclement.

Tang Yuan divided his troops to fight, intending to break through his funnel formation, but at this time, Kong Xian handed over several small notes in a row, saying that there was an ambush there, sorry, your soldiers are gone. Stretched out his hand and snatched away several of Tang Yuan's brigade flags.

Those were all Tang Yuan's vanguard elite troops, and if they were really killed like this, their morale would be seriously frustrated. If we continue to fight like this, I am afraid that there will be more evil and less luck.

Tang Yuan was very dissatisfied, and said, "In the plain area here, how can you fight my ambush?" Do you know how far my scouts can get out? When I led my troops to fight, I relied on the scout troops the most, and my scouts ranked first among all the armies in the country. ”

Kong Xian arched his hand and said: "General Tang is famous for fighting and being good at using scouts, and no one can surpass you in terms of information." But in the Huainan area, no one is more familiar than me, when I followed my uncle in the Tiger Ben Army, I studied every road, every mountain, every waterway in detail, I drew these on a map, I fled this time, and brought this map. This map of mine is incomparable to any map. I marked all the paths, how long and wide, what the road conditions were, whether I could launch surprise troops, whether I could ambush them, whether I could pass through the baggage troops, and even if I could, and at what speed, I had all considered. There are many roads, which I discovered, and are more detailed than the map of the county. With this map, attacking the Huainan region will get twice the result with half the effort. On the contrary, if I were to defend, I would be able to defeat one. ”

In other words, in this exercise, people want to use 80,000 people, but also to save some face for General Tang.

The actual array, the hole is really 50,000 people.

"General Tang, I know what you need, so as long as you promise to say a few kind words for a few of us in front of the emperor, this map is yours."

"You want to bribe me?" Tang Yuan threw the various small flags in his hand onto the sand table: "Very good, I accept this bribe from you." But ......"