Liu Bei gritted his teeth with hatred, but hatred is hatred, even he knows that at the moment, his own strength is a problem to barely protect himself, let alone avenge the third brother.

Soon after paying homage to Zhang Fei, Liu Bei redeployed the forces he had at hand.

In the first battle of Yewang, there were 50,000 soldiers, and most of them were veterans who had been in battle for a long time, and after Liu Bei joined the three states, he could barely piece together a regular army of 70,000 or 80,000.

In terms of merging states, Liu Bei ordered Wu Yi and Ma Dai to garrison troops in Taiyuan County and Hedong County respectively, with less than 20,000 troops, trying to rely on the danger of merging states to barely keep the state.

In Yongliang, Liu Bei ordered Li Yan and Li Hui to lead 5,000 troops respectively and garrison them in Chencang and Qishan to guard against the enemy in Hanzhong.

In Tongguan, Liu Bei ordered Zhao Yun to lead an army of 10,000 to garrison it as a barrier to the east of Chang'an.

Under such distribution, the mobile forces left in Chang'an were less than 30,000.

In order to make up for the lack of troops, Liu Bei had to order a vigorous recruitment of troops in Yongliang and Sanzhou, and at the same time promised heavy benefits to the Qiang Hu in Xiliang and borrowed the brave Hu cavalry from him.

When Liu Bei was struggling to recover his troops, Liu Feng was not idle.

Due to the victory in the Battle of Hanoi and the submission of Sima Yi, the whole of Hebei was almost completely unopposed.

Under such circumstances, Liu Feng ordered Ling Tong, Pan Zhang and other generals, each with their own army, about 40,000 soldiers and horses, to march to Hebei in separate ways.

Liu Feng's Northern Expedition was a great success, and the territory was unprecedentedly expanded, although his territory was large, but the soldiers were tired from a hundred battles, and the hearts of the new states were not appeased, and they could not raise troops on a large scale in a short time.

So, while Liu Feng assigned the generals to pacify the states, he returned to Luoyang with 100,000 soldiers and horses, and officially assisted the government as the Great Sima.

Liu Feng has a set of wars, but governing government is not his forte, and he also has the name of autonomy for this.

Therefore, soon after returning to Luoyang, Liu Feng took the fate of the Han Emperor and worshiped Pang Tong as the Shangshu Order, so that he had full authority to handle all kinds of government affairs on his behalf.

At the same time, Liu Ba, Kuai Liang, Gu Yong and other civil ministers, or Yuan Cong's meritorious ministers, or famous and powerful new ministers who surrendered, Liu Feng did not hesitate to reward, making them rank among the nine kings and make the best use of their talents.

As for the generals, Liu Feng also rewarded them lavishly, Wei Yan, Huang Zhong, Gan Ning, Ma Jian and other generals, respectively, before and after the left and right generals, and the rest of Chen Dao, Xu Shu, Wen Ping, Meng Da, Pan Zhang, Ling Tong and other new and old generals also have their own rewards.

In March after the Han Emperor returned to the capital, Qingzhou Zang Ba and other forces such as half-secession and half-reading power, seeing that Liu Feng had sat firmly in the Central Plains and the general trend had been decided, they did not dare to hesitate anymore, and sent their families to Luoyang as hostages, and Zang Ba himself also asked to resign from the post of Qingzhou Assassin and enter the court as an official.

Liu Feng took the opportunity to approve Zang Ba's request, named him the general of Zhenbei, transferred him to the court as an official, and reappointed Jiang Wan as the assassin of Qingzhou, so that he could take over the post of Zang Ba.

As soon as the matter in Qingzhou is resolved, the East is worry-free, the wounds of the Central Plains war are slowly healing, the hearts of the people are gradually attached, and everything is developing for the better.

In the spring of that year, some people began to get restless.

The first restless person was Ma Yan, who openly went to the imperial court, praised the exploits of the great Sima Liu Feng, and asked the Han Emperor to confer Liu Feng as the prince of the country to show his merits.

Since the Han Dynasty, Wang Mang was the only one who called the Duke of the Kingdom, and everyone in the world knew that the title of the Duke of the Kingdom was the first step towards usurping the throne.

At the time of Cao Ying, there was also a wave of public opinion in the court that supported Cao Ying's claim to be the Duke of Wei, and Cao Ying adopted a tacit attitude at that time.

Originally, Emperor Han had been forced to be helpless and planned to crown Cao Ying as the Duke of Wei, but later he was defeated in successive battles, which made Cao Ying have no intention of thinking about it again.

At present, Liu Feng's environment is one in the sky and one underground compared to Cao Ying, and while his strength has increased dramatically, Liu Feng certainly hopes that he can get a correspondingly higher position.

So, with the acquiescence of Liu Feng, after Ma Tan, Pang Tong, Kuai Liang, Liu Ba and other important ministers submitted their reports to the Han Emperor, and then the local officials of various states and counties also followed suit.

The snowflakes flew to the imperial court, and the Han Emperor Liu Xie had no reason and did not dare to refuse, so in desperation, he had to issue an edict and seal Liu Feng as the Duke of Song.

Liu Feng naturally learned from Cao Ying's appearance back then, and he was humble and declined the reward of the Han Emperor.

Emperor Han also knew that Liu Feng was going through the motions, so he had to issue an edict again.

After the three concessions, Liu Feng no longer shirked, and then appreciated and accepted the reward of the Han Emperor and officially called the Duke of Song.

Under Liu Feng's hint, Liu Xie not only named Liu Feng as the Duke of Song, but also gave him the Jiuxi thing that symbolized the throne, and divided the county, Liang country, Pei country, Chen county, Shanyang county, Jiyin county, Runan county, Chen Liuguo, Pengcheng country, a total of nine counties, as the fief of Liu Feng Song State.

After Liu Feng called the Duke of Song, Chen Liu was the capital of the Principality of the Song Dynasty, and his son Liu Yu was the son, and at the same time, the ministers of civil and military affairs of the imperial court were awarded more official positions of the Principality of Song, and the military and political disposal institutions of the imperial court were gradually transferred to their own principality system.

Liu Feng sits on the land of eleven states such as Jingyi Jiaoyang, and there are two out of three parts of the world, and it is also a logical thing to say that the founding of the country is a natural thing, and there are naturally people who oppose it, but they are also some grasshoppers who shake the tree, and they cannot reverse the general trend at all.

However, Liu Feng's claim to the founding of the country made Liu Bei in the west unable to sit still.

Less than three months after Liu Feng was promoted to Duke of Song, Liu Bei sent an envoy to Luoyang to proclaim himself as the king of Guanzhong to the Han Emperor.

Liu Feng was the first to be called the prince, and Liu Bei went directly to the king, this taste is really big enough.

But it's no wonder that no matter how much Liu Bei hated Liu Feng before, the two of them had the same anti-Cao stance.

Moreover, Liu Bei is the emperor's uncle personally recognized by the Han Emperor, and has the title of General Zuo awarded by the imperial court, at least in terms of name, he is much higher than Liu Feng, the "wild warlord".

But now, Liu Feng has seized the Han Emperor, not only from the legal qualification to hold the power of the military state, but also turned out to be a prince of the country, such a status, not only threw Liu Bei out of a few streets at once.

How could Liu Bei swallow this breath, in order to overshadow Liu Feng's head, and in order to be able to find a reason to knight his subordinates and win people's hearts, after weighing it again and again, Liu Bei decided to be king.

After Liu Bei's performance arrived in Luoyang, Liu Xie naturally couldn't see it, but directly sent it to Liu Feng's hands.

Seeing Liu Bei's performance, Liu Feng smiled.

Since claiming to be the Duke of Song, Liu Feng has been thinking about the plan of conquering Liu Bei in the west and unifying the Central Plains, and now, Liu Bei's title to the king just gave him a full excuse.

Three days later, the Han Emperor issued an edict to strip Liu Bei's imperial status and denounce him as a rebel.

The ministers of the government and the opposition soon smelled the smell of gunpowder, and the ministers came to the table one after another, reprimanding Liu Bei for being a traitor, establishing himself as king, and asking the Han Emperor to send an edict to rebel.

Emperor Han himself could not be the master, after he sent someone to consult the meaning of Liu Feng, the Duke of Song, he determined that Liu Feng was ready to attack Liu Bei, so he dared to issue an edict and ordered Liu Feng to command the army of the whole country in the name of Da Sima and pacify Liu Bei's rebels.

The order to transfer troops was soon issued by the Song Duke's mansion, and the troops from all over the country quickly began to assemble, and within a month, the armies were assembled one after another, and Liu Feng then ordered the westward expedition in the name of begging for thieves.

After the destruction of Cao, after more than a year of operation, Liu Feng had nearly 400,000 regular troops in his hands, and this time in order to destroy Liu Bei in one fell swoop, in addition to guarding Luoyang, the capital division, and all the key places, Liu Feng mobilized a total of as many as 350,000 soldiers and horses.

As for Liu Feng's strategy of attacking and destroying Liu Bei, it was the "plan to destroy Liu" left by Sima Yi before his death.

On the Hebei side, Liu Feng's former general Wei Yan was the commander of the Northern Route Army, and ordered him to command 100,000 troops and three routes, which were launched by the three counties of Yanmen, Changshan and Hanoi to attack Bingzhou.

On the southern route, Liu Feng appointed Huang Zhong as the commander, and together with Ma Jian and Meng Da, 50,000 generals, attacked Guanlong from Chencang and Qishan respectively.

In the middle of the road, Liu Feng commanded an army of 200,000 troops, including 50,000 troops under the command of Wenpin, launched an attack on Wuguan from Nanyang, and threatened Chang'an from the southeast.

Liu Feng rode 100,000 feet from Luoyang, attacked Tongguan head-on through the Hongnong army, and led 50,000 water troops with Gan Ning to march westward along the Yellow River, and Liu Feng's 100,000 foot cavalry advanced by land and water.

The 350,000-strong army marched mightily and launched a semicircular attack on the three states ruled by Liu Bei from the northern, central and southern aspects.

Liu Bei seems to have expected that his ascension to the throne would incur Liu Feng's military attack, so while his vassals were in full swing, they were also intensively deploying the defense of all roads.

After more than a year of recovery, Liu Bei has reluctantly expanded his forces to 100,000, Liu Bei's plan is to rely on the fortification of the four fortresses in Guanzhong, the danger of mountains and rivers, and guard against the attack, and force Liu Feng's attack back with a protracted war.

As for the annexation of the state, if you can keep it, if you can't keep it, you will give up, and the soldiers will retreat to Guanzhong and gather all their strength to surrender Yongliang and Liangzhou.

As Liu Feng predicted in advance, since the start of the war, the Wei Yan army on the North Road has fought successive victories, successively capturing Changshan, Leping, Yanmen, Xinxing and other counties, and the troops have directly led Taiyuan County of the Prefecture Assassin History Department.

Liu Bei saw that the situation in Bingzhou was unfavorable, so he moved 50,000 households into Guanzhong, and 30,000 soldiers and horses withdrew into Guanzhong, stationed in the first line of Pubanjin, in order to prevent Liu Bei's army from crossing the Yellow River westward from this place.

After the enemy abandoned the annexation of the state, the minister of Wei Yansuo drove straight in, swept away the annexation within half a month, except for leaving some soldiers and horses to garrison, 80,000 elites entered Hedong County in the south, and put on an attitude of preparing to cross the Yellow River to the west.

Except for the Wei Yan army on the northern route, the other two routes were hindered.

Not to mention Huang Zhong's Hanzhong Army, relying on the Qinling Mountains, Liu Bei blocked Huang Zhong's northward advance with only 10,000 soldiers and horses.

As for the middle road, Liu Bei personally led 50,000 elite soldiers to sit in Tongguan, and Liu Feng's main army, an army of 150,000 on land and water, attacked for half a month without any progress.

In the late summer and early autumn, the two sides reached a stalemate on the Tongguan front.

(To be continued)