In the winter of that year, Ge lived in a bamboo hut outside Zhuangzi's residence.

It may be that he thinks it is unreasonable for Bai to live here, so Ge Shi took the initiative to ask, hoping to help cook.

Originally, Uncle Zhuang and the sons in the house refused, after all, Ge was Meng Zhong's mother, and Meng Zhong was now Zhuangzi's most valued disciple, how could Ge work so hard?

However, after eating a meal cooked by Ge's family, Zhuang Bo and the sons of Ju Nei immediately changed their minds - because after comparison, they found that the food cooked by Lejin and Huahu was too unpalatable.

As a result, Ge was in charge of the food in the house, and as for the hard work such as chopping wood, washing clothes, and cooking rice, Meng Zhong and his sons always refused to let Ge do it.

It is worth mentioning that even Zhuangzi noticed the improvement of the food in the house, which was quite surprised and surprised.

In December, frost and snow fell from the sky, and the snow closed the road, which made it inconvenient for Zhuangzi to take his disciples on a trip, so Zhuangzi and his disciples sat under the porch in front of the main house, admiring the snow in the sky while teaching their studies.

In the beginning, Zhuangzi wanted to teach his disciples the three chapters of his "Heaven", namely "Heaven and Earth", "Heavenly Dao", and "Heavenly Fortune", so that the disciples could have a general understanding of the meaning of "heaven", the meaning of "Tao", and the so-called "luck".

However, due to some reasons, Zhuangzi only taught the four treatises he used to criticize Confucianism after the "Heaven and Earth Chapter", "The Horse's Hoof", "The Horse's Chest", and "The Thief", and then taught Huizi's "Treatise on Jianbai", "Ten Things in the Calendar", and "The Theory of Contract Differences".

The so-called "Heavenly Dao" refers to the laws of natural change, which will not be changed according to people's preferences, and there is no concept of "good or evil".

And what man has to do is to conform to the way of heaven.

For example, the ancients formulated the four festivals of mid-spring, midsummer, mid-autumn and midwinter, and later added the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, winter solstice, etc., which is not only a portrayal of man's exploration of the laws of nature.

Relying on these natural laws, the world has emerged the cultivation method of "spring ploughing and autumn harvest", which has gradually become common sense.

This is relatively easy to understand.

As for the way of heaven, there is no concept of "good" or "evil", which is also easy to understand, first of all, the concept, that is, the so-called "name" of the famous masters, it is defined by giving, a person who has done good things is "good", and if he has done bad things, that is "evil", but the premise is that this is the conclusion drawn from looking at things from a human point of view.

For example, "tigers eat people, people kill tigers", from a human point of view, tigers eating people is evil, and it is a disaster that must be killed, but from the perspective of tigers, they eat people just to fill their stomachs, just like people eat grains and eat animals, which are all in line with the balance of heaven - heaven does not favor any side.

But the Heavenly Dao itself does not have the concept of "good" or "evil", just like the current snow.

In the whole world, I don't know how many people will die because of this snow, and this snow also made Meng Zhong unable to go back and forth to visit his mother, so he could only temporarily take his mother to live in Zhuangziju, and at the same time, it also caused the soldiers of the Meng clan to suffer from frost and cold on the way to Pengcheng.

Does this seem to be evil?

At the same time, however, the snow kills pests in the fields, allowing the soil to retain moisture and produce a good crop for the coming year.

This seems to be good again?

But in fact, the way of heaven has no intention of targeting or favoring people at all, it is just a law, just like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, there is no good or evil at all.

In addition to explaining the above truths, Zhuangzi inevitably habitually belittled Confucianism in the "Heavenly Dao", and used the dialogue between Lao Tzu (Lao Dan) and Confucius to expound the truth that "benevolence and righteousness are not human nature".

In the blink of an eye, in February, the snow and ice gradually melted, Ge Shi said goodbye and moved back to the countryside.

For Ge's departure, not to mention that the princes in Zhuangzi's residence felt reluctant, even Zhuangzi was a little reluctant - it was really because after eating the food cooked by Ge's, the food cooked by Huahu and the others before was simply difficult to eat.

Fortunately, when Ge lived in Zhuangziju, all the sons learned from the former, and greatly improved the level of cooking.

In the blink of an eye, at the beginning of April, it was time for spring planting, Meng Zhong rode a little donkey home to farm with his mother, and the sons of Ju Nei, after finishing the field behind Zhuangziju, ran to Meng Zhong's field to help Ge and Meng Zhong cultivate together.

During the busy farming period, the princes chatted with Meng Zhong about the matter of "Song King Yanvateng", after all, Lejin, Le Xu, Huahu, Mu Wu and other sons all had relatives involved in this battle, so they were naturally concerned about this matter.

Counting the days, at this time, the clan soldiers of various families, including Meng Zhong's brother Meng Bo, had already gathered in Pengcheng at this moment and followed Wang Shi to attack Teng State.

And for the outcome of this battle, Zhuzi is still very optimistic, after all, Teng is only a very small country, and he Song State attacked Teng this time, according to Guangshangqiu, Jingbo area dispatched nearly 10,000 soldiers of various families, plus Wang Shi and Pengcheng around the family soldiers, how can there be about 30,000 or 40,000 troops.

And Teng Guo, how many people are there in total?

The only thing worth worrying about is the factor of Teng's "land advantage", because Teng is located on the northeast side of "Surabaya" and "Nanhu (i.e., four lakes including Weishan Lake)", and today the Song State attacked Teng, or borrowed the road from Wei and Lu to bypass Nanhu from the north to attack Teng; Either they had to borrow from "Xue Di", bypass Nanhu from the south, and cross Xue Yi to attack Teng.

And Xue Di, to be exact, Xue Yi, it is the fiefdom of "Meng Weijun Tianwen" - Meng Yanjun Tianwen was born in Qi, but because there were rumors that he wanted to usurp the throne and rebel, he was suspicious of Qi Jun, so Tian Wen fled to Wei. After he left the Qi State, the Qi State retained his fiefdom "Xue Yi". [PS: Another person who actively instigated other countries to fight his mother country after serving as the minister of state in another country, and I will talk about it in the Wei chapter later. 】

And if they don't borrow the road, then the army of the Song State can only cross the South Lake and storm the Teng State.

Don't look at Teng Guoxiao, but it is next to Lu and Qi, if Lu and Qi don't want Song Wangyan's hand to reach north of Nanhu, then it is inevitable that they will secretly help Teng.

Previously, Meng Zhong didn't understand the intention of King Song to fight Teng Guo - after all, if he only got a few cities after conquering Teng State, he would be greatly infamy, but after seeing the geographical location of Teng State, Meng Zhong had vaguely understood.

As long as the Song State defeated the Teng State, it could form a great threat to the Lu State, and at the same time, it could also pose a great threat to the Xue Yi of the Qi State.

From this, Meng Zhong secretly speculated that Song Wangyan's attack on Teng might be only the first step in his series of war steps, and his ultimate goal was to put pressure on the Qi State in the east of the Central Plains.

It's just, why did Song Wangyan do this?

You must know that as far as Meng Zhong knows, there are two major patterns of the Central Plains countries today, namely the "Qin State" and the "Qi State".

At first, the state of Chu should be added to this pattern, that is, it means that the "Qin state" is against the "Qi-Chu alliance", and in private, the state of Chu is sitting and watching the confrontation between the Qin state and the Qi state.

However, due to Zhang Yi's trickery of "six hundred miles of land", he deceived King Chu Huai and broke off diplomatic relations with Qi, and the state of Chu weakened - after discovering the deception, King Chu Huai was furious and tried his best to attack Qin, but was defeated by Qin, and Qi hated King Chu Huai for unilaterally reneging on the alliance and did not send troops to help from beginning to end.

In the end, the state of Chu could not hold on, and in desperation, King Huai of Chu went to the state of Qin in person and begged for a truce, but he did not expect to be detained by King Huiwen of Qin and coerced King Huai of Chu to cede the land again.

In order to preserve the country, King Chu Huai sternly refused, was detained by the king of Qin for three years, and finally died in the state of Qin.

Later, the state of Qin sent the coffin of King Huai of Chu back to the state of Chu, and the people of Chu were all grieved, so the two countries of Qin and Chu became enemies, and the state of Chu fell to the state of Qi again.

What's even worse is that soon after, King Huiwen of Qin passed away and was succeeded by King Wu of Qin - well, it was the Qin Jun who ran to Zhou Tianzi to compete with the strong man "Meng Shuo" when he was idle, but Da Ding broke his tibia and died that night. [PS: In fact, King Qin Wu can be called a Ming monarch who is both civil and military, but he likes to show off his strength too much, and he died at the age of twenty-three. If he hadn't died, his younger brother Qin Zhaoxiang (Yingji), who was a proton in Yan State at the time, and the latter's mother Mi Bazi and uncle Wei Ran would have no chance to return to Qin to take power. 】

King Wu of Qin hated Zhang Yi, so the first thing he did after ascending the throne was to expel Zhang Yi, Zhang Yi fled back to his homeland of Wei, and died after a year as the prime minister of Wei.

[PS: Zhang Yi during this period is simply a rat crossing the street, and everyone shouts and beats. It is a pity that this columnist who played with the princes and countries on the applause, but fell into such a fate for a while, which is really a pity. 】

All in all, because Zhang Yi was expelled by Qin and eventually died in Wei, the Central Plains states abandoned the strategy of "Lian Heng pro-Qin" and once again adopted the "joint anti-Qin" policy, and at this time, Qi was the only country that was considered to be able to fight against Qin.

As far as the geographical location of the Song State is concerned, it is closer to the two countries of Qi and Chu, and it should have been drawn into the camp of the Qi State to fight against the Qin State together, but the Song State tried to pose a threat to the Qi State and threaten a strong country with a medium-sized country, which is obviously unreasonable.

"Could it be that Song Wangyan is actually from the camp of the Qin State?"

Meng Zhong secretly guessed.

Thinking about it carefully, he felt that this speculation was very reasonable, after all, he Song was a medium-sized country, but he had provoked the three powerful countries of Qi, Chu, and Wei, so there must be some kind of struggle - it is worth mentioning that the three countries of Qi, Chu and Wei were in the same camp at that time.

However, after thinking about it carefully, Meng Zhong felt that this guess was a bit omission, after all, there were three Jin Dynasty between Qin State and Song State, if Qi State was determined to get rid of Song State first, Qin State would not be able to help Song State at all.

Song Wangyan should also be clear about this.

However, Song Wangyan still decided to attack Teng and prepared to occupy Teng to exert pressure on Qi, which shows that there is probably some interest transaction between Qin and Song.

And that could mean......

"It means that among the three Jin Dynasty, there is one country that acts as a bridge between the Qin State and the Song State to form a secret alliance."

Meng Zhong raised his head and glanced at the north.

He suddenly remembered that among the three Jin Dynasty, it seemed that only Zhao Guo had never had a conflict with Song State in the past twenty years......

"Could it be Zhao Guo?!"

Meng Zhong was slightly shocked.

If his guess is accurate, then the current pattern of the Central Plains is the "Qi, Chu, Wei, Han" Quadruple Alliance against the "Qin, Zhao, Song" Triple Alliance. [PS: The author knows more than that, but please don't say spoilers in this chapter, it will really affect the reading experience of other book friends and the results of this book, thank you very much.] 】