Huainan now has not a lot of talents, whether it is a civil servant or a military general, there is no shortage for the time being. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info even in terms of the best talents, such as Yan Keqiu, Li Shenfu and others, Yang Wu feels that their abilities are no worse than Guo Chongtao.

The reason why these people's reputation in history is not as good as Guo Chongtao's, in the final analysis, is that the influence of the Huainan Group is far inferior to that of the Hedong Group that established the Later Tang Dynasty.

Therefore, Yang Wu is not short of talents now, but top talents like Guo Chongtao are still scarce resources, and naturally the more the better.

Thinking of this, Yang Wu immediately made up his mind to win over Guo Chongtao, at least try to keep this person.

"Mr. Guo came from afar, and he is a landlord alone, so he has to be entertained!"

Yang Wu immediately ordered someone to add a seat to Guo Chongtao, and the position was placed closer to Yang Wu, second only to Zhang Xun, Zhou Ben and other generals, and the position of Kang Huaizhen was on par.

Although Guo Chongtao was the envoy on behalf of Li Keyong, the envoy sent to Huainan by Li Keyong had not received such courtesy in the past; And the envoys sent by Huainan to Hedong were treated similarly.

In fact, because the road was cut off by the Liang army, it was very inconvenient for the envoys from Hedong and Huainan to come and go, and there were often envoys who were intercepted by the Liang army.

Therefore, this kind of person who is on the mission mission is generally not an important official, otherwise if he is intercepted by the Liang army, it will be a big loss.

In this way, because the status of the envoy is not high, it is naturally difficult to be valued by the envoy.

Guo Chongtao is naturally very clear about the details, and now the Huainan Army is in wartime, so he was prepared to be left out in the cold at the beginning; However, now that he was so courteous to Yang Wu, although he felt strange, he only thought that it was because Yang Wuxin was in charge of Huainan, so he didn't feel flattered.

However, Yang Wu's attitude towards him made him a little confused, not only was he extremely kind to him, but more importantly, Yang Wu asked more about his own situation in the process of talking to him, but he was not very interested in Li Keyong, the king of Jin behind him, which was when he mentioned Li Cunxuan, Yang Wu would show great interest.

At this time, Guo Chongtao naturally understood that Yang Wu did not treat him politely because he was Li Keyong's envoy, but because of himself.

After the banquet, Yang Wu personally ordered someone to prepare a place for him to stay, and then returned to his camp.

After returning, everyone else had already left, and only a few cronies such as Zhou Ben and Wang Maozhang remained.

"Your Highness, even if this Guo Chongtao represents the King of Jin, his identity is just a small warden after all, why is His Highness so courteous to him?" Zhou Ben asked with some confusion.

"Yes, Your Highness, your subordinates saw that you were extremely polite to that Guo Chongtao at the banquet just now, even the same as Kang Huaizhen, does Your Highness plan to recruit this person? It's just that this person really deserves to be like this? Wang Maozhang asked directly.

The rest of the generals such as Zhang Xun also nodded their heads again and again, obviously agreeing with the opinions of these two people.

Of course, they didn't feel that they had been given the cold shoulder, and in their current status, they didn't need to worry about whether an outsider would affect them.

Not to mention that the real high-level leaders in Huainan are all meritorious veterans from Huainan locally, and more importantly, now that Huainan's employment system has gradually been on the right track, it is impossible for someone to be suddenly promoted, thus surpassing other meritorious generals.

In terms of civil officials, people like Pi Guangye have been with Yang Wu for a long time, but he was also transferred to the local government to serve as a county magistrate last year, without directly awarding it to senior officials.

In terms of military generals, like Zhu Siqing, he is not only Yang Wu's cronies, but also has established a lot of meritorious deeds, and there is no shortage of ability, but until now he is only a commander of the capital, and he has not been promoted to deputy governor.

And Chen Fan and Fan Sicong are also Yang Wu's cronies, but until now they are only commanders.

All this shows that although Yang Wu will cultivate his cronies, he will not arbitrarily put his cronies above these veterans; Therefore, Zhang Xun and other generals were not worried that if Yang Wu recruited Guo Chongtao, it would affect their status.

It's just that Kang Huaizhen is a famous general of the Liang Army after all, and it is normal for Yang Wu to be polite when he entertains him for the first time; But how can Guo Chongtao be treated the same as Kang Huaizhen?

Yang Wu smiled: "Yes, Lone does plan to recruit this person." Guo Chongtao's ability is extraordinary, as for the specifics, maybe you will have a chance to see it in the future! ”

He didn't explain much, and he couldn't explain it now, he couldn't say that he was so courteous because he knew this person's reputation in history, right?

Seeing that Yang Wu didn't say much, Zhou Ben and the others didn't ask any more, but instead asked about the next battle.

In another tent, Guo Chongtao had some difficulty sleeping.

The words that Yang Wu said to him before he said goodbye and left had been deeply engraved in his mind.

"With Mr. Guo's talent, he only served as a small warden under the command of King Jin, which is really too condescending!"

The meaning of this sentence is naturally very clear with Guo Chongtao's resourcefulness, and he is also very tempted.

He is forty years old this year, and many people have already achieved fame at his age in this era.

And what about him? Although Li Keyong introduced him as a cronie, he did not attach importance to his ability, and he could not participate in all kinds of important matters in ordinary times, and it was impossible to get ahead in the short term.

If Yang Wu is willing to reuse him, it would be good to stay in Huainan, at least Huainan is also a powerful force, and he can even defeat Zhu Quanzhong independently, which is not much better than Hedong.

In addition, with a Ming lord like Yang Wu, staying in Huainan is also promising.

Of course, such an important decision could not have been made so quickly, it was not the work of a resourceful person like him, and he finally decided to observe for a while before speaking, anyway, he was not in a hurry to return to Hedong.

Early the next morning, the Huainan army continued to advance westward, and finally arrived at Shouzhou at noon and joined Li Chengsi.

Shouzhou was nearly eighty miles away from Huoqiu County, and the distance from the place where the Liang army was preparing to cross the river was also almost eighty miles, but at this time the distance between them and the Liang army was more than forty miles, so if they wanted to catch up with the Liang army, it would definitely not be possible until tomorrow.

However, at the current rate, the Liang army should have arrived at the ferry that night, and the Huainan army would have arrived early tomorrow morning if they had hurried overnight despite their exhaustion.

This point in time seems to be very unfavorable for the Huainan army, because although the Liang army has more than 100,000 troops, they have quite a few boats, and I heard that they have also found three places where they can directly wade across the river.

With these three locations, Zhu Quanzhong was almost enough to cross the river in one night.

In addition, the Huainan army has been on the road for several days in a row, and the soldiers are very tired, plus the Liang army and the Long Xiang army are broken, so for the sake of safety, it is impossible for the Huainan army to rush overnight.

In this way, it will be difficult to seize the time to give the Liang army a half-crossing attack, unless the Huainan army is willing to risk being raided by the Liang army's cavalry.

But now that the Huainan army had won a big enough victory to shake the world, Yang Wu didn't want to risk turning the victory into a big defeat.

So when it was almost dark, the Huainan army stopped and began to camp, while Zhu Quanzhong's army had just arrived at the ferry.

When the Liang army crossed the river to the south, because there were guides to lead the way, the Liang army successfully found three places where he could directly wade across the river, and left stone statues as markers.

At this time, after returning to the ferry again, Zhu Quanzhong breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the stone statue left at the beginning was still there, and the water only submerged the chest of the stone statue.

These three stone statues were built according to the height of ordinary people, and now that the water surface is only up to their chests, it means that it is no problem for ordinary soldiers to wade directly across the river.

At this moment when the Huainan army could arrive at any time, there were three more roads that could wade across the river, which would greatly speed up the speed of the army crossing the river, thereby reducing the danger of being attacked by the Huainan army.

Therefore, without the slightest hesitation, Zhu Quanzhong ordered the army to start crossing the river overnight.

……

The next day, Yang Wu continued to lead the army to the ferry, but when he arrived at noon, he was surprised to find that the place where the Liang army crossed the river last night was full of corpses left by the Liang army; What shocked him even more was that there were more corpses of Liang Jun floating in the river, densely packed, and it was roughly estimated that there were no more than 10,000 corpses!

This is only the floating corpses on the water, if you count the corpses that were washed away by the current, the losses of the Liang army will only be more staggering.

"This ......," Yang Wu said in disbelief, "What happened last night?" Could it be that someone in Zhu Quanzhong's army rebelled, causing the Liang army to fight each other for a night? ”