Zhang Qiang, who was reinvigorated, decisively ordered Zhang Yan to be the main general, Guo Huai to join the army, and formed the Youzhou Raiders Army under the banner of killing Liu Yu, the pseudo-son of heaven.

In the order sent to Zhang Yan, Zhang Yan asked Zhang Yan to make full use of the current favorable situation in which Liu Yu and Gongsun Chan were both defeated, and extensively contain Liu Yu and Gongsun Zhan's stragglers, so as to build a large army that could sweep through Youzhou.

In terms of operational principles, Zhang Yan should adopt the policy of giving priority to attacking Liu Yu and winning over the remnants of Gongsun Zhan. After Liu Yu, who was not good at military affairs, was ambushed, the Youzhou army brought a great victory, defeated Gongsun Xu, Gongsun Fan and others, forced to land the rest of Gongsun Zhan, and finally unified Youzhou!

In addition, in order to cooperate with Zhang Yan's Youzhou strategy plan, Zhang Madness ordered Dong Zhao to assassinate Shi Dong Zhao in the state, and he must do a good job in the logistics support of the Youzhou army, and must ensure that the Youzhou soldiers who defected over are fully supplied, so as not to cause the dissatisfaction of the Youzhou soldiers with our army because of some small things.

At the same time, Zhang Yan ordered the Taiyuan County Guard Guo Yi to step up the cultivation and promotion of internal affairs reserve talents, so that after Zhang Yan conquered Youzhou County, he could immediately carry out effective governance of the newly acquired land, and try his best to nourish the war with war.

Previously, although Zhang Yan had always been unknown because of the lack of opportunities to fight, he was by no means an idle person. Zhang Yan's subordinates are fierce generals, Zhang Yan's force is not first-rate, but he can be ranked with the generals. Even if he is as arrogant as Guan Yu, he has to give Zhang Yan some face.

In the history of the Three Kingdoms without arrogance, Zhang Yan formed the Montenegrin Army with a weak crown youth, and the number of people reached one million when the power was at its strongest, and he also broke through Yuan Shao's old nest Yecheng. In history, in order to deal with Zhang Yan, Yuan Shao had to join forces with Cao Cao, and used Lu Bu as a general to mobilize the army, which sent Zhang Yan back to the Taihang Mountains.

Even if you encounter such a strong enemy. Zhang Yan's banner has always stood at the junction of Bingzhou and Jizhou. When Yuan Shao was defeated by Cao Cao, Zhang Yan took the initiative to surrender to Cao Cao with great discernment, becoming one of the few foreign princes who took refuge in Cao Cao.

Therefore, the reason why Zhang Yan was chosen by Zhang Yan was by no means because his force was not weak. Instead, they pay more attention to Zhang Yan's commanding ability, diplomatic ability and adaptability. Under the circumstance that the two major princes of Youzhou suffered heavy defeats, the war in Youzhou can be said to be divided into military and political in six points. Therefore, Zhang Yan is obviously more suitable than other generals to enter Youzhou to fight.

And Zhang Yan did not disappoint Zhang Yan. On the sixth day after Zhang Mad officially issued the order, there was good news from Youzhou:

——Dai County, which originally belonged to Liu Yu's side, due to the lack of troops in the county, the officials were threatened by Zhang Yan's troops and expressed their submission. Zhang Yan's soldiers have already arrived in Dai County, and they have all taken Dai County!

But. This good news only brought a moment of joy to the insolence. Soon, this little joy was drowned out by more worries. What bothers Zhang Qi so much is naturally not a trivial matter, but a big trouble that is enough to kill people.

This big trouble is:

- Plague!

Plague has always been one of the most distorted disasters in ancient times, alongside floods and droughts, and the threat of earthquakes is still on top of that. Since Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty, large-scale plagues have befallen various states and counties from time to time. At every turn, there are tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of the dead. It can be said that he has endured all the suffering.

The reason why Taiping Dao in the period of Zhang Jiao, the "great sage and good teacher", was able to develop so fast, in addition to the secret support of the party led by Yuan Shao, it was also to take advantage of the instability of the people's hearts caused by the plague everywhere. Faced with the relentless threat of the plague, people sought spiritual sustenance and support, allowing Taiping Road to take advantage of the trend.

And Taiping Dao is in the treatment of plagues. There is still a hand, not to say that it is quite effective, at least its effect is significantly higher than that of ordinary medical craftsmen. Because of this, Taiping Tao will be believed by many scholars.

Even in the Han Palace, Taiping Dao was the "Ten Permanent Servants" at that time. It's all developed. In Zhang Jiao's initial strategy of attacking Luoyang, there was a plan to rely on the ten permanent servants as internal responses and directly attack the palace. If it weren't for Tang Zhou's betrayal, Emperor Ling of Han might not have been able to successfully suppress the Yellow Turban Army.

However, having a hand in treating the plague does not mean that Taiping Dao is not afraid of the plague. In fact, in the process of treating patients, there are actually not a few Taiping Dao sacrificial wines that unfortunately died. It is true that Zhang Qiang can rely on his "Taiping True Qi" to cultivate successfully, and he is not afraid of being accidentally infected, but his family and ordinary Taoists do not have such skills.

Jizhou has always been densely populated, and epidemics are frequent. Even if a large number of people died during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and a large number of people died in the battle between Gongsun Chan and Yuan Shao, the remaining population still far exceeded that of Bingzhou and Youzhou.

And Yuan Shao fought against Gongsun Zhan, as well as arrogantly attacked Yuan Shao, and the number of dead people was also counted in millions. When people die too much, and the bodies are not properly disposed of and buried, they can easily become the source of the plague.

On the one hand, the population is sparse, and on the other hand, some basic hygiene habits in later generations are also vigorously promoted, such as "water should be boiled and drunk", "hands should be washed before and after meals", "no open defecation" and so on, which effectively inhibited the occurrence of some diseases, and the prevention effect of plague was even more obvious.

With such achievements, the fear of the plague was far lower than that of the other princes. Therefore, when entering Jizhou, the Bingzhou army accidentally neglected the work of sanitation and epidemic prevention because they had not suffered from large-scale plagues.

After entering Jizhou, due to the military pressure brought by Yuan Shao, the state army failed to invest much energy in the area of people's livelihood. In the case of a protracted war, the local powerful clan forces that did not deal with the state army much have not been effectively cleaned up, and they are still intertwined.

In this way, the orders of the state army in Jizhou were actually not issued in the country pavilion. In addition to paying grain and taxes according to the requirements of the state army, the actual ruling power of most of the countryside was still firmly grasped by the gentry.

So, in May and June of this year, there were small outbreaks of plague in some villages. However, these news were quietly covered up by the powerful clans who grasped the place, and they were not known to the arrogant. When the time went by August and September, the scale of the plague spread on a considerable scale due to the ineffective handling of local powers, and the relevant news reached the ears of the arrogant.

Surprised, Zhang Mad learned about the general development of the epidemic, but he was so angry that he poured tea on Wei Xiao, who came to report, and scolded him for "incompetent!" "Waste! ”

However, in all fairness, the scale of this plague is not too large, and the momentum is not very ferocious. Even if the treatment is not so timely, seven or eight out of ten people will survive, which is considered a relatively mild disease. As long as the state army is properly handled, this epidemic may not be able to deal with the state army.

However, when Zhang Qiang talked about this matter with Guo Jia, who was a military advisor, Guo Jia raised a possibility of trouble with a sense of crisis:

"Yuan Shao has a lot of strategists, and there is no shortage of pervasive people. In Jiazhi's opinion, since our army has this trouble, this generation must have tricks. In order to prevent accidents, please Ming Gong mobilize elite soldiers from other places to help, so as to make an emergency! ”

After listening to Guo Jia's advice, he weighed it for a while and felt that there was some truth. In order to guard against the possible tricks of Yuan Shao's side taking advantage of the plague, Jizhou did need an additional reinforcement. It's just that now the arrogant territory is bigger, the battle line is longer, and there are many important places that need to be guarded. For a while, it was difficult for Zhang Madness to consider which military horse was suitable for being drawn out.

Among the generals under his command, more than a dozen generals such as Yu Ban, Zang Ba, and Zhou Cang have already followed Zhang Qiang to fight in Jizhou, needless to say. Zhang Yan went out of Youzhou, it was the time to make contributions, and it was not good to give up halfway. Lejin guards the Hetao, if it goes south, most of the Xianbei people will take advantage of the void to enter. Xie Xun was in Hanoi, and on the one hand, he supported Zang Ba in Yecheng, and on the other hand, he had to be careful of Zhu Jun in the south. Xu Sheng guarded the Yellow River with a sailor, monitored Han Sui, and could not move.

After calculating it, Zhang Mad found that he was about the same as He Yi and Liao Hua, who were able to mobilize and were still training recruits in Bingzhou. And these recruits, who have not experienced battles, needless to say, are quite suspicious in terms of combat effectiveness.

"Fu Jun doesn't have to worry, isn't there a ready-made elite army available in front of you?"

Seeing that Zhang was preoccupied, Mrs. Zhao Yu asked and immediately woke up her husband. With the two words that Zhao Yu whispered in Zhang Ma's ear, Zhang Mad immediately came to his senses, happily picked up his wife, and kissed her on the face.

Just because you have reinforcements doesn't mean it's settled. In fact, facing an outbreak of plague is an extremely troublesome thing even in a high-tech society two thousand years later.

Fortunately, Taiping Road is familiar with dealing with the plague. After Zhang Mad entrusted Master Tai with full responsibility for epidemic prevention and treatment, and authorized Master Tai to temporarily mobilize the state army to engage in disaster relief tasks, it was a matter of time before the plague was effectively controlled.

Besides, when the weather gets colder again, even if you don't care about these things, the cold wind in nature will still help humans kill the source of the plague.

However, Yuan Shao in the south really had no intention of making Zhang Qiang feel better. When Zhang Mad began to use his subordinates' troops to relieve the disaster with all his might, Yuan Shao's army unexpectedly began to make a big move. Even if Zhang Qi expected it, Yuan Shao's dispatch of troops still really hit Zhang Qi unexpectedly.

On the 27th of September, a fast horse that was about to lose its strength, with an anxious look of the military messenger, broke into the Thorn Shi Mansion temporarily placed in Julu, and sent an urgent military report to Zhang Qiang.

There is only one sentence in the news in the military newspaper, and that is:

"On the twenty-sixth day, Chun Yu Qiong's army attacked the people." (To be continued......)