After returning to the temporary palace, Yang Wu immediately summoned the generals to discuss the next arrangements.

At this time, the war in the north basically came to an end, and the next thing was mainly to attack Lingnan, so after discussing the military situation, Yang Wu immediately issued an edict, ordering Liu Yan from Lingnan to come to Jinling to meet.

This edict is naturally looking for trouble, and everyone understands Yang Wu's purpose, so they don't say anything.

However, in addition to Liu Yan, there are some small forces in Lingnan that also maintain a relatively independent status.

These small forces, if they were in the original history, should have been wiped out by Liu Yan a long time ago; However, in this life, he may be desperate for the situation in the south, so Liu Yan is more focused on how to enjoy himself, and he has no interest in eliminating those small separatist forces.

So until now, those small forces still exist.

Of course, the people of these small forces are not stupid, and they can naturally see the current situation, so they began to send people to contact Wu Guo more than two years ago to try to obtain Wu Guo's recognition.

For these requests, Yang Wu naturally will not agree, now that the war in the north is basically over, his eyes are back on Lingnan, and the first thing he targets is naturally these small forces.

Soon, a second edict on Lingnan appeared, in which Yang ordered Li Chengding, who was stationed in Liangzhejiang, and Lü Shi, who was stationed in Hunan, to lead troops into Lingnan from the north and east respectively, to destroy those small forces, and at the same time to put pressure on Liu Yan to surrender.

Of course, if Liu Yan refused to surrender, Yang Wu would not mind letting Li Chengding and the others directly use troops to eliminate them.

……

Yang Wu stayed in Jinling for five days, and then he was ready to leave for Jinling.

However, before he left Xuzhou, an envoy from Liang suddenly came, saying that he was asking for peace.

"What? Peace? Yang Wu was a little surprised, but immediately reacted, with the current situation of Liang Guo, what can be done if peace is not negotiated?

Therefore, Yang Wu should not be surprised, but should wonder why Liang Guo did not remember to negotiate peace until now.

"It seems that Zhu Youzhen finally recognized the situation after the first battle in Xuzhou!"

Yes, a few days ago, when Yang Wu began to arrange the attack on Lingnan non-stop, in Kaifeng City, the ministers of Liang State were also discussing peace with Wu State.

When Niu Cunjie's army was raided by the Wu army and finally defeated the news came back to Kaifeng, it immediately caused an uproar in the court.

The army of Niu Cunjie is very important for today's Liang State, and now the main force of Liang State is concentrated in three regions, one is the Hezhong region, one is the Hebei region, and the rest is the army of Niu Cunjie.

Although the Liang army in Hebei is the main force, it is also the largest and strongest part of the troops, but this part of the army is actually in the hands of Yang Shihou, and it cannot be regarded as the strength of the Liang lineage.

The strength of the Liang army on the other side of the river was limited, and it was also pinned down by the Jin army, making it difficult to take on the heavy responsibility.

Only the army in the hands of Niu Cunjie was the elite that the Liang army could really fully control, but it was defeated by the 1,000 cavalry of the Wu army.

When the news first came, many people in the DPRK and China were even shouting the slogan of "killing cattle and saving the festival to thank the world", but fortunately, Zhu Youzhen and others did not faint, so they were stopped.

However, the plight of the enemy on both sides of the north and south became more and more prominent with the outcome of this war, and more and more people of insight realized that if this continued, the Liang State would surely perish.

Therefore, after the end of this war, many civil and military ministers such as Jing Xiang, Li Zhen, Niu Cunjie, and Liu Yan wrote letters one after another, asking for peace talks with Wu State.

In the face of this storm of peace talks, although Zhu Youzhen was reluctant, she could only reluctantly agree.

The key to negotiating peace with Wu is not the ministers of the DPRK and China, but Zhu Youzhen himself.

Although when Zhu Youzhen succeeded to the throne, the current situation of the Liang State was already declining and was not as good as before, but in any case, the Liang State still ruled the Central Plains and still had an orthodox name.

Therefore, in Zhu Youzhen's heart, he still regarded the Jin State in the north and the Wu State in the south as "thieves and rebels" in the territory, and naturally disdained peace talks with them.

Not only that, after all, Zhu Youzhen is young and vigorous, and he can't see the situation clearly, and when he first came to power, he had the idea of looking down on the world, and he also thought that he could defeat the Wu army and restore the hegemony of Liang.

So when Xuzhou fell into the hands of Wu, even though many people wrote to persuade Zhu Youzhen to withdraw his troops and come back, he still insisted that Niu Cunjie lead the army to attack, intending to recapture Xuzhou.

When the Jin army re-headed south after destroying the Yan State, he began to panic and hurriedly ordered Niu Cunjie to withdraw his troops, but at this time the withdrawal was obviously a little late.

After the final results of the Battle of Xuzhou came out, no matter how arrogant Zhu Youzhen was, he was woken up by the results of this battle.

He finally realized that the north and south were under attack, which was the dilemma that Liang was facing now; With the strength of the Liang State, it is impossible to withstand the flanking attacks of the Wu State and the Jin State at the same time.

Making peace with one and then concentrating on the other is the only viable strategy.

Judging from the situation faced by Liang State, it is obvious that only by negotiating peace with Wu State first is the most realistic.

After Zhu Youzhen nodded and agreed to the peace negotiation, the action of the peace negotiation naturally proceeded very quickly, after all, everyone was also worried that Wu Guo would immediately send troops to the Northern Expedition, so it was better to quickly settle the peace negotiation.

In this way, in just a few days, the peace envoy of the Liang State, Liu Xian, the imperial historian, arrived in Xuzhou.

When Yang Wu learned the news, he had already arranged all the affairs of staying in Xuzhou and was preparing to return to Jinling by boat.

"Well, the people of Liang are so anxious to make peace with Lone, it seems that they are worried about Lone's immediate Northern Expedition!" Thinking of this, Yang Wu couldn't help laughing.

He originally did not plan to negotiate peace with Liang Guo, after all, the relationship between the two families has reached the current point, and it doesn't matter much whether there is peace or not, but it may restrain Wu Guo's actions.

However, since Liang Guodu had already sent an envoy here, Yang Wu didn't mind sending someone to talk to him.

Of course, this condition will naturally be raised, and it is inevitable that the lion will open his mouth widely, and as for whether an agreement can be reached in the end, or how much benefit can be obtained, it depends on the final evolution of the situation.

Moreover, in order to cooperate with the peace talks, Yang Wu also decided to let Wang Juan and Kang Huaizhen send troops to launch an attack on Yizhou, which was controlled by the Liang State, at an appropriate time, so as to strengthen the momentum and threaten the Liang State.

Yang Wu had made up his mind in his heart, and immediately smiled and said to Feng Dao beside him: "The matter of peace negotiation will be in charge of Pi Guangye, the waiter of the Ministry of Rites. But before that, you should draw up a peace clause for Gu to see. ”

"Yes." Feng Dao hurriedly replied, and at the same time asked, "Then do you want to see the Liang envoy before that?" ”

"What's there to see? Ignore him for the time being, tell him, just say that Gu has returned to Jinling, let him go to Jinling if he wants to negotiate peace! Yang Wu refused.

He had already arranged his itinerary, and even the fleet back to Jinling was ready, although he was a monarch and could change his itinerary at any time, how could he change his itinerary for the sake of a Liang envoy.

Besides, leaving the envoys of Liang State to dry for a few more days can also show the attitude of Wu State and make him more anxious, so that he will not dare to put forward more conditions in the future peace talks.

After the plan was agreed, Yang Wu still went south to Jinling according to the original plan.

At the same time, Feng Dao and the others also quickly drafted a peace document and presented it to Yang Wu for review.

"Huh? Is this what you're working on? On the imperial boat back to Jinling, Yang Wu looked at the documents handed over by Feng Dao and others with some dissatisfaction.

"The two countries are divided in the area under their current control and keep peace with each other, and Liang buys at least 500,000 guan of salt, tea and other materials from Wu every year at a price 3......0% higher than the market price."

Looking at this copy, which was almost a copy of the article when Huainan first negotiated peace with Zhu Wen, Yang Wu couldn't help but shake his head.

"These scholars are really not the material for negotiation, if they know how to fight on the basis of reason and how to ensure their own interests when they are weak; But once the momentum is strong, I don't know how to put forward conditions. ”

At that time, Yang Wu led the first northern expedition of the Huainan Army and achieved brilliant results, while Zhu Wen was in urgent need of troops to pacify because of the erosion of the war situation in the north, especially the rebellion in the Weibo states, so Zhu Wen sent people to negotiate peace with Yang Wu.

At that time, the war on the Huainan side had been going on for a long time, and there was not enough strength to continue the Northern Expedition; Second, Yang Xingmi happened to be seriously ill at that time, so Yang Wu finally reached a peace agreement with Zhu Wen.

At that time, according to the peace treaty, although Zhu Wen needed to pay a sum of money and grain to Huainan and needed to buy salt from Huainan at a higher price, when the news of Yang Xingmi's death reached the north, Zhu Wen immediately turned his face and refused to implement the peace agreement.

Now Feng Dao found out the peace agreement for some reason, and submitted it after a slight modification, which made Yang Wu feel very disappointed.

"The king, the minister thinks that whether to negotiate peace or not at this time will not be of much effect to our country, but the peace treaty can appease the Liang State to a certain extent, so that the Liang State can rest assured to go to war with the Jin State, so as to achieve the effect of defeating both of them."

"Therefore, the ministers thought that the terms of the peace treaty should not have to be too harsh, in order to reach the peace treaty as much as possible." Feng Dao obviously sensed Yang Wu's disappointment as well, so he immediately explained.

"Is that what you think?" Yang Wu's face was a little better, and at the same time, he also had a preliminary understanding of Feng Dao's ability.

Indeed, peace talks are of little use to Wu, after all, in the current situation, only Wu's army attacks Liang, not the other way around.

However, the peace talks are of great significance to the Liang State, not to mention anything else, let's just say that after the Battle of Xuzhou a few days ago, after the news of the defeat of the Liang army reached the states of the Central Plains, it immediately caused great panic, and the soldiers and civilians of the states close to the Wu State even showed signs of fleeing in a big way.

If peace negotiations cannot be reached with Wu, Liang not only needs to guard against the Jin army, but also needs to guard against the Northern Expedition of the Wu army at all times, how long can it hold out in this situation? The goal of letting them lose both the Jin State and the Jin Kingdom obviously could not be achieved.