Cao Cao hurriedly returned to Yanzhou, and it took half a year to finally drive Ji Ling back to Nanyang. Immediately, a major purge was carried out inside Yanzhou, and only then did it gradually stabilize its foothold.

However, after this battle, Yanzhou, which had just recovered a little, became depressed and dilapidated again, and its vitality was greatly damaged.

Although Cao Cao still coveted Xuzhou at this time, and hoped to avenge Cao Song, there was not enough grain and grass, so he could only press it for the time being. Therefore, the Yingchuan person Zao was only the captain of Tuntian, responsible for the Tuntian plan, hoping to restore the vitality of the people's livelihood.

However, it is said that Yuan Shu went south to Huainan and occupied Shouchun, and Yuan Shao hijacked Liu Xuan, the assassin of Yangzhou appointed by Liu Xie, to go south to Yangzhou to take office, and because Shouchun was occupied by Yuan Shu, he moved to Qu'a, Wu County.

Sun Jian's son Sun Ce, after three years of filial piety, was attached to Yuan Shu, appointed by Yuan Shu, as the captain of Huaiyi, and led the army to attack Lujiang.

After the Lujiang River was down, Liu Miao was afraid that Yuan Shu would continue his southern expedition, so he expelled Wu Jing, the county guard appointed by Yuan Shu, and Sun Ben, the county governor, and occupied Danyang, with Fan Neng, Yu Mi, Zhang Ying and others guarding the main road to guard against Yuan Shu.

Wu Jing is Sun Ce's uncle and Sun Jian's brother-in-law. Sun Ben is Sun Jian's nephew and Sun Ce's cousin.

Seeing that his uncle and cousin had been expelled, Sun Ce sent a message asking Yuan Shu to send troops to help. Yuan Shu only ordered Wu Jing and Sun Ben to counterattack, but did not send additional troops and horses, so Wu Jing and the two were repeatedly invincible.

Sun Ce then went to Shouchun to meet Yuan Shu, wanting to recover Sun Jian's old troops and attack Liu Xuan.

Yuan Shu naturally didn't do it, but Sun Ce presented the jade seal of the country!

Yuan Shu was overjoyed and thought that he had won the mandate of heaven, so he appointed Sun Ce as the captain of Zhichong, and ordered him to lead Sun Jian's old troops to attack Liu Xuan.

At this point, Sun Ce finally began to break away from Yuan Shu's control and gradually embarked on the road of princes.

In the second half of the first year of Xingping, Jingzhou Liu Biao moved. However, he sent an envoy to contact Cao Cao and prepared to use troops against Ji Ling's troops entrenched in Nanyang.

Nanyang is the northern gateway of Jingzhou, which has always been controlled by Yuan Shu, although Liu Biao had the intention to take it back, but he was unable to resist. In the first year of Xingping, Liu Biao finally straightened out the internal military and political affairs of Jingzhou, supported more than 100,000 troops, and officially dominated the troubled times.

When Yuan Shu's main force went to Huainan, Nanyang only had a Ji Ling to guard, and his strength was weak, so he thought about it.

Liu Biao wanted to form an alliance to attack Nanyang, but Cao Cao was powerless, Yanzhou had just been pacified, and there was no capital to support him to continue to send troops.

Liu Biao was helpless, but he did not cancel the plan, so he sent the general Wen Ping to lead the army to conquer, but he stopped under Wancheng, which was no different from the original Cao army.

Ji Ling just guarded the gate, but did not fight, there was a large amount of grain and grass resources hoarded in Wancheng, but he sat at the head of the city, as stable as Mount Tai.

Wenpin fought repeatedly, but lost a lot of men and horses, so he had to retreat to Xinye and hold Wancheng.

When the situation in the Central Plains was unpredictable, in the north, a powerful nation that had been suppressing the Han Empire for thousands of years was finally destroyed!

The Xiongnu, the Hu tribe who had repeatedly bullied the land of Shenzhou in the pre-Qin period, and the siege of Baideng forced Liu Bang to temporarily calm the war by means of harmony.

In the experience of the Xiaowu Emperor's conquest, it was divided into two, and then it was attached, entrenched in the Hetao. In the past few years of Li Zheng's rise, it has declined rapidly. First, it lost the million population of the entire right Huns, and then was repeatedly persecuted by the white wolf, compressing its living space, until the end of the first year of Xingping, and finally lost the last piece of soil for survival!

At the end of the year, Yuan Shao sent his nephew Gao Gan to lead troops from Hanoi to Shangdang, hoping to take advantage of the absence of a major war with Gongsun Zhan to free up his hands to unite the remnants of the Xiongnu and take the lead in destroying the Black Mountain bandits.

However, the thief Zhang Yan, the black mountain thief, secretly contacted a soldier and horse of the Liangzhou Northern Army stationed in Taiyuan County. The commander of this army and horse is Shuzhong Lingbao.

Ling Bao got Zhang Yan to contact him, knowing that it was a good opportunity, but he didn't dare to act arbitrarily, so he hurriedly reported to the regiment commander White Wolf who was sitting in Shuofang County.

The white wolf reported to Li Zheng again, and after receiving affirmation, he hurriedly dispatched 20,000 troops and secretly went to Taiyuan.

When the remnants of the Xiongnu responded to Yuan Shao's plan and sent troops to attack Taihang Mountain, Ling Bao and Zhang Yanli joined forces and broke the last force of the Xiongnu in a battle!

At the same time, the 20,000 troops hidden in the shadows attacked brazenly, abruptly surrounded Zhang Yan's department, and forced it to surrender. Immediately, Ling Bao dispatched troops to capture the head of the Shangdang Ruling Force, and pursued the remnants of the senior cadres, and then occupied Huguan and Tianjing Pass, and completely included the entire Shangdang County, from north to south, coercing Hanoi!

Hanoi Taishou Zhang Yang hurriedly asked Yuan Shao for help, Yuan Shao knew that it was urgent, and hurriedly dispatched the general Yan Liang to lead 30,000 soldiers and horses into Hanoi, resisting the east of the river in the west and resisting the party in the north.

In this battle, Yuan Shao stole chickens and rice, and did not get what he wanted, but lost a lot of soldiers and horses. The Xiongnu, on the other hand, completely withdrew from the stage of history. Huchuquan, the left sage king of the Huns, Liu Bao, the right sage king, and Yu Fuluo, who led the remnants back when the Huns were in decline, were either killed or captured, and completely disappeared.

After Li Zheng occupied Shangdang, he made some adjustments to the Northern Army. Ling Bao was promoted to a partial general with his military exploits, was knighted as a third-class hairpin, and commanded a number of soldiers and horses, stationed in the east of Bingzhou, guarded Taihang Bashan, and confronted Yuan Shao in Jizhou

The first year of Xingping passed quickly, and Li Zheng spent most of his time in this year busy with currency reform and diligent internal affairs.

In terms of military affairs, there are only two major achievements.

One of them was that the Lingbao Division under the command of the Northern Army defeated the Xiongnu and captured Shangdang.

The second is the Southern Army Pang De's Division, which pacified several Southwest Yi entrenched in Yongchang County, Yizhou.

Li Zheng initially settled in Yizhou, implemented the ethnic policy of Liangzhou, issued an edict, and strongly demanded that all tribes of Yi change their Han nationality and Han name, and move out of the mountains to change to farming.

Some small tribes did not dare to resist and obediently obeyed the arrangement, but there were large forces in the border area of Yongchang County, such as Xuyue, Minpu, and Jiu, but they did not respect the order and raised troops to resist, thinking that they could resist the Liangzhou army by relying on the high mountains and dense forests.

However, the five thousand mountain wolf riders that Pang De's subordinates had not yet dispatched back to Liangzhou had become a nightmare for the Southwest Yi tribes!

The mountain wolf cavalry was Li Zheng's trump card army for mountain warfare, and after seizing Yizhou and Guanzhong in the previous round, he did not transfer this wolf cavalry back to Lingzhou, and its intention was to lie in the southwest Zhuyi. The wolf rode in the mountains and forests like walking on the ground, and because of the wolf war, he was not afraid of losing his way, but he was killing all the barbarians crying and calling his mother.

In the end, after nearly a year of entanglement, at the end of the first year of Xingping, Pang De's army successively broke through these barbarians, captured their leaders, and sent them to Lingzhou to wait for Li Zheng's fate.

As for the population owned by the southwestern Yi of the provinces, all of them moved out of the mountains and forests, became slaves, and handed over to Yizhou Mu Xunyou for resettlement.

According to the strategic plan discussed by Li Zheng and Xi Zhicai and others, Bai Yu, the deputy of Pang De of the Southern Army, led an army of 30,000 troops from Qiqi County to Jiaozhou, and fought steadily, striving to occupy the entire Jiaozhou and even the Indochina Peninsula as much as possible, and coerced Jingzhou and Yangzhou from south to north.

Pang De led the rest of his troops and horses, stationed in the area of Hanzhong and Ba County in the east of Yizhou, and threatened Jingzhou from west to east

Time flies, but for Li Zheng, it is also very fulfilling.

During this year, the new currency system was implemented smoothly and was accepted and affirmed by all walks of life. In this year, Yizhou and Guanzhong were rapidly rejuvenated, and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment, gradually moving towards prosperity. In this year, the scale of the war cavalry of each department was further increased. From nearly 20,000 before, it has rapidly expanded to more than 30,000. Among them, the mountain wolves have the largest number of horses, with 15,000 heads. There are 8,000 Qingjia war horses, 3,000 Destroying Blade war horses, 2,500 Golden Wing Tiger horses, and 2,500 pig Po dragon horses. There are also three second-order main battle horses, and the number of water demon dragon horses has increased to twenty. The Silver Horseman, the Golden Horseman, and the Hetu Horseman each increased to nearly fifty.

At the same time, second-order edible war horses such as jade pigs and rainbow birds, as well as second-order crops such as purple artifera, cloud valley, and home-cooked trees, as well as several new first-order crops, have made great progress.

In particular, several crops suitable for the southern climate and environment, such as ginseng rice, have cultivated a large number of seeds this year, and will begin to spread in the second year of Xingping

In the spring of the second year of Xingping.

Puyang, the seat of the Eastern County Administration, is also the political center of Cao Cao.

Dongjun straddles both sides of the river, part of the north bank is in the hands of Yuan Shao, and this part of the south bank is in the hands of Cao Cao. Puyang is on the south bank of the Great River, bordering the Great River. Not far to the west, it is Baimajin, and then dozens of miles to the west, there is Yanjin, and dozens of miles to the east, there is Cangtingjin. These three major ferries, connecting the north and south of the river, are the most important ferries in the middle and lower reaches of the river.

Cao Cao's political center is now in such a place.

Under his nose, there is Yuan Shao's territory and the Yin Luoyang area of Henan.

If Yuan Shao sends troops, it will not take an hour to reach Puyang. The Luoyang area is under Li Zheng's control.

For Cao Cao, it can be said that he is on his back, no, he should be attacked by the enemy in his back and abdomen.

But Cao Cao didn't plan to move for the time being.

First, he is not strong now, and he cannot arouse Yuan Shao's suspicion. If he was in Puyang, under Yuan Shao's nose, Yuan Shao would naturally be more at ease.

The two also have a bit of a meaning of 'the Son of Heaven guards the country'.

Through Cao Cao's vigorous development, Puyang has gradually prospered, and people's livelihood and commerce have made great progress.

Most of the merchants who come and go in the Central Plains trade their goods here. After all, Puyang is located in the Central Plains, with convenient transportation, regardless of land and water, it is very convenient.

Cao Mansion, Cao Cao was holding an incomparably delicate gold coin, squinting slightly, and looking at it carefully.

On the side, there are Guo Jia, Xun Yu, and Cheng Yu.

Guo Jia pinched a wine gourd and sat on the couch with a drunken look. Whether it was Xun Yu or Cheng Yu, they couldn't help frowning slightly.

But Guo Jia has such a temperament, Cao Cao doesn't care, and they don't want to say anything in front of them.

"This is the gold coin of Liangzhou?"

Cao Cao twisted his beard and said slowly.

Xun Yu bowed slightly: "It's the Liangzhou gold coin." This kind of gold coin is a new currency issued by Liangzhou last year, and under Li Chongxiao's rule, it completely replaced the old monetary system of five baht coins and gold and silk, and has been completely recognized by the people. There are three kinds of Liangzhou currency, divided into gold, silver and copper, and a kind of gold ticket, but we have no sample at present. ”

"The currency of Liangzhou is sufficient, exquisitely made, and cannot be imitated, and is very popular with the people and merchants, and is jokingly called the currency that dominates the world and the four seas. The three currencies of Gaine are engraved with the patterns of the sun, moon and stars, the unification of the four seas, and agricultural cultivation. ”

"Now this kind of currency has begun to circulate under Li Chongxiao, which has had a certain impact on Yanzhou's economy. His Majesty thought that there should be some reaction to this, otherwise the consequences would be extremely severe. ”

"Hmm"

Cao Cao squinted slightly, pinching the gold coin, his face full of contemplation.

After a long time, he said: "Then what is Wen Ruo's construction?" (To be continued.) )