"What? How dare anyone attack the idea of my merchant fleet? I don't know if I, Lu Ren, am easy to mess with? ”

Lu Ren smiled dumbly here, but Shi Tao hurriedly persuaded: "Brother Lu can't be trusted!" Thinking that Brother Lu is famous, but this group of thieves dares to be unfavorable to Brother Lu, they must be some extremely fierce outlaws. If Brother Lu doesn't take it lightly, I'm afraid that there will be a big loss! Yuan Zhi's intention was to ask Brother Lu to postpone the departure date for ten days to avoid his front for a while, and it was not too late to set off when he was tired. ”

Lu Ren frowned, and after pacing back and forth on the bow deck a few laps with his hands behind his back, he said: "Having said that, but the weather in Jingxiang Land is changeable, and Mi Zhen and I chose to set off on these days because there is little rain in early autumn and the wind direction is favorable. If you postpone the last 10 days and half a month, you will miss the trip if there is a change in the day...... Fierce river thief? ”

When he said this, Lu Ren's mind flashed, and he secretly said in his heart: "Mi Zhen has been running for two years, although there are not many times, but according to Mi Zhen, even the official fleet of the Sun clan that inspects ships and collects taxes on the Jiangdong side is polite when they see us, let alone Jingxiang's side, it can be seen that both sides of the river should know that my Lu Ren's fleet is not so easy to mess with." The people who dare to attack the idea of our fleet under such circumstances are either unscrupulous people who don't know the height of the sky, or people who really have very strong strength at hand. Based on the information I have gathered in the Jingxiang area for more than half a year, there is only one person with this strength, and that is Gan Ning, who has not abandoned the thief Congliang and defected to Liu Biao at this time......

"Could it be Gan Ning? If it was Gan Ning, it would be lively, and I kept sending people out to find him, but instead he came to attack the idea of my fleet. But it's not quite right, although Gan Ning is a well-known 'Jinfan thief', he has always robbed the rich and helped the poor, and the people he robbed were all rich and unkind. And I'm clearly not in that category. Besides, Gan Ning's last robbery was more than a year ago, and there has been no news since then, obviously preparing for the abandonment of thieves to surrender to the official, if he robs me, it will not be of any benefit to him to surrender to the official, especially to prepare to defect to Liu Biao......"

Thinking of this, Lu Ren raised his eyes and looked at Shi Tao, and asked tentatively: "There are people who have the courage and strength to plot against our fleet on the left side of the river. As far as I can tell, there seems to be only one. Guangyuan, do you know the name of this gang of river thieves? Isn't it the brocade thief Gan Ning Gan Xingba? ”

"Gan Xingba?" As soon as Shi Tao heard this name, he shook his head desperately: "No, no, no, this gang of river thieves will never be the Jinfan thief Gan Xingba." ”

Lu Renqi said: "Why does Guangyuan assert that it is not Gan Xingba? ”

Shi Tao looked around vigilantly for a while, and then he leaned into Lu Ren's ear and whispered: "It's not a secret, the person who came to find Yuanzhi a few days ago and drank with someone to catch up with is Gan Xingba!" And Gan Xingba has long had the heart to abandon the thief and follow his conscience, although there are quite a few people under his command, but he has long ceased to plunder as a business. ”

"Wouldn't it!?"

As soon as Lu Ren heard this, he almost vomited blood on the spot, and shouted in his heart: "Is there a mistake? Xu Shu actually knew Gan Ning? Still drinking, still drinking together? It looks like a lot of friendship! You are dead Xu Shu, why didn't you tell me that you and Gan Ning were friends? It's so hard for me to find it! ”

But who can be blamed for this? First of all, Lu Ren himself never mentioned this matter to Xu Shu. Let's talk about what role Gan Ning is. Who is Xu Shu? Since Gan Ning is reluctant to show up, Xu Shu will not mention it to others from the perspective of righteousness, even if he mentions it, he may not know where Gan Ning is fooling around, right?

Shaking his head for a long time with a smile and laughter, Lu Ren smiled at Shi Tao dryly: "Since it's not Gan Xingba, then I'll settle down, and I, Lu Ren, don't care about other ordinary river thieves." And seriously, I really want to find some river thieves to fight, and now that so many people have sent them to the door, I can't ask for them. ”

Shi Taoleng paused for a long time before he asked uncertainly, "Brother Lu, Brother Lu is serious?" ”

Lu Ren first glanced at the large wooden boxes fixed on both sides of the ship's side on the "Seahorse" with a length, width and height of about one meter. Leaned over and looked at the side wall of the ship, and sneered softly: "Be prepared for danger in times of peace...... I, Lu Ren, dare to let Mi Zhen, a weak female stream, lead these many ships to and from Jingxiang and overseas merchants to sell goods. Naturally, many things that may happen have been prepared for a long time. And in the past two years, nothing has happened smoothly, and it seems that it is too comfortable, and I am really afraid that these children and boatmen under my command will be tired of being too comfortable. It's not bad to do something appropriate, and it's a wake-up call for them. Again, the more you fight with these fierce river thieves, the more you beat them to the point where they are powerless. From then on, there will be no thieves who dare to provoke my Lu fleet, and it will only be good and not bad for my fleet to travel in the future. ”

Shi Tao came back to his senses after a long time this time, shook his head and sighed lightly: "It seems that Brother Lu's intention to set off on time has been decided...... Alas, my bet with Yuanzhi and Xingba was lost by me. It's just Brother Lu, do you really not take those river thieves seriously? ”

Lu Ren said: "Unless they have three thousand people." And there are more than ten excellent warships, otherwise...... Hum! ”

This is not empty words, Lu Ren is very clear about how much combat power Mi Zhen's fleet has. The so-called 3,000 people and more than 10 sophisticated warships were actually a regular sailor at that time, and the river thieves in the Yangtze River area could not reach it at all. Just like Lu Ren himself said just now, he dared to let Mi Zhen lead the team to run the boat, and he must have already made corresponding preparations.

Take the current fleet as an example, each ship was a specially modified business and war dual-purpose ship during Lu Ren's stay in Yizhou, and each ship was equipped with elite children from the Lu and Mi clans, like the children of the Lu clan who often took Lu Ren to escort and experienced actual combat when he was in Cao Ying, and now there are many people mixed in the fleet. In other words, if Mi Zhen's fleet is not running goods and doing business, it is actually a well-equipped fleet of sailors with high combat effectiveness on the water.

But how did Shi Tao know about these things? After hesitating for a long time, he looked at Lu Ren's calm smile, and vaguely felt that Lu Ren had a little bit of a desire to try, and after pondering for a moment, he bowed his hand to Lu Ren and said, "Since Brother Lu's intention to set off has been decided, it is inconvenient for Tao to stay for a long time." It's not that Tao doesn't want to stay by Brother Lu's side to help Brother Lu, but when he comes, Yuan Zhi will explain to Yu, if Brother Lu insists on doing it, Tao should report back to Yuan Zhi as soon as possible, and Yuan Zhi can make another plan. ”

Lu Ren was stunned: "What?" What does Yuan Nao want to do? ”

Shi Tao shook his head and said, "I don't know." However, since Yuan Zhi has made a plan, Brother Lu can also rest assured. Oh, this is what Gan Xingbatuo gave to Brother Lu. ”

A brocade bag was handed to Lu Ren, and Shi Tao also bowed away. Lu Ren hesitated and opened the brocade bag, which contained a map of the Yangtze River waterway. Lu Ren has been mixed up for so many years, and he has been dealing with maps a lot, so he understood the meaning of the map after just looking at it carefully, and took this map into his arms with a faint smile......

――――――――――――――――――――

A few days later, the Yangtze River water transport hub will be rushed, Sanjiangkou.

When Lu Ren moved from Wu County to Xiangyang by waterway in the late autumn of the seventh year of Jian'an, he passed through the mouth of the Sanjiang River. Thinking about the sentence "Zhou Yu set fire to the Sanjiangkou", Lu Ren will naturally pay more attention to this piece of land that will achieve the reputation of "American wolf" in the history of the Three Kingdoms in a few years, and at the same time create a classic example in the history of ancient Chinese warfare.

At that time, Lu Ren stayed in the Sanjiangkou area for several days and conducted tourist-style field surveys, and found that in terms of geographical environment alone, the waters of Sanjiangkou in the late Han Dynasty were much wider than those in later generations. Of course, this kind of thing doesn't have much to do with Lu Ren, what Lu Ren cares about is that Sanjiangkou at that time can be said to be a "golden triangle of three things" where the three forces are intertwined.

Sanjiangkou continues to follow the main stream of the Yangtze River to the east, the north of the river is the Lujiang River and Shouchun under the command of Cao Cao, the river is the Chaisang and Jiujiang under the command of Sun Quan, and the west is the Jiangxia and Xiakou under the command of Liu Biao. At that time, Cao Cao was concentrating on the Hebei dispute with the Yuan clan, and most of the troops in his subordinate territory were mobilized to the Hebei battlefield, leaving fewer soldiers and horses in Jiangbei, and they could only defend themselves, neither powerless nor timeless. Therefore, on the border issue, in principle, if you can not cause trouble, you will not cause trouble, so as not to add chaos to Cao Cao's great cause of pacifying the north.

On the Eastern Wu side, Sun Ce's accidental assassination death more than two years ago suddenly left the Sun family leaderless, which made the Eastern Wu almost chaotic. Although Sun Quan succeeded to the throne and took power, due to the policy of "killing soldiers if they can't use them for their own use" adopted by Sun Ce when he pacified Jiangdong, the Sun clan actually made many enemies in Jiangdong, and after Sun Ce's death, there were many local wealthy families who did not accept Sun's rule and were ready to move.

In the past two years or so, if Sun Quan had not had the support of Jiangdong Erzhang and other old ministers, and Zhou Yu's timely command of heavy troops to support Sun Quan and suppress the power of the wealthy clans everywhere, the situation in Eastern Wu would probably have been chaotic long ago, and by the time period of the seventh or eighth year of the founding of Lu Ren, the situation in Eastern Wu could only be regarded as a little peaceful.

Although it is actively preparing for outward expansion in the military aspect, it is only a preparation, and its internal situation and strength do not allow Soochow to make any big moves for the time being. And a little later, that is, in history, Sun Quan had attacked Jiangxia in the eighth year of Jian'an, but it was only a small-scale tentative attack, and he did not dare to really provoke Liu Biao, which triggered Liu Biao's all-out military retaliation against Sun.

In addition to wanting the fleet to experience a real battle with the river thieves, he also wanted to let the fleet pass through the Sanjiangkou key points before Sun Quan launched this tentative attack on Jiangxia, so as to avoid the battle between Liu Biao and Sun Quan, so as not to suffer unnecessary losses in the war.

Finally, there is Jingxiang Liu Biao...... Liu Biao was originally a good and evil talker, and Liu Biao was very old at this time, and the mentality of not wanting to cause trouble and only seeking a corner of peace may be heavier than anyone else. A person with this mentality, if he can do anything, he will already think about duck rice tofu, and expect him to do anything to come out, which is simply not to even think about it. (To be continued.) )