Zheng Yunming hurriedly got up to greet him, and said happily: "Senior Renbo, why did you suddenly come to Xiangyang?" Since you were removed from the Zhendong military post after passing the examination, it has been several years since we have been able to see each other. ”

Xu Yuanjie said with a smile: "I did a good job in the Zhendong Army, and I couldn't stand Wei Fuzi's repeated sending people to invite me, so I had to resign from my official position over there and find a staff member under you." ”

Zheng Yunming was very grateful in his heart, he knew that the people of the time despised the shogunate, but anyone who had an official position could not give up his official position to be a staff member, Xu Yuanjie was a smart person who became famous in his hometown at a young age, and he was also widely praised by the people of the time when he was under Zhendexiu. His career should be extremely bright, but he is willing to abandon his official position to be a master by his side, if it weren't for Wei Liweng's waste of many tongues, coupled with the friendship of classmates, this is something that would never have happened anyway.

"Say it," Xu Yuanjie sat down honestly and unceremoniously in front of the deputy commander: "Give me something to do." ”

Of course, Zheng Yunming knew what kind of position should be given to this senior, he was the first old man to come to defect since Zheng Yunming took office, and he was a prodigy who could recite thousands of words of scripture every day, and it was the most suitable to master the most core secrets in the army.

"If the senior can trust me," Zheng Yunming said, "the position of being in charge of Jiyi writing must be done by the senior." ”

In addition to the use of spies and intelligence collection at the front, the main task was to perform various confidential work and deal with various confidential documents and affairs. Although his status was below that of the staff officer and the senator, his importance was actually the greatest in the shogunate, and he was regarded by the world as the confidant of the commander.

Normally, this position was filled by the imperial court with someone whose loyalty was absolutely reliable, but after the Battle of Jinghu, vacancies arose everywhere. Even the supervisor in Zhao Kui's curtain was temporarily seconded by Wu Qian, the disbanded attaché of the Governor's Office. No one cares about the choice of the senior generals around them for the secret officials around them.

It is no more suitable for the old man Xu Yuanjie to hold this position.

In addition, Yuelu Academy, Dongting Academy, and Bailu Academy also received letters from Wei Liaoweng. The reputation of this literary leader is the best propaganda slogan, and immediately some people came to Xiangyang to join Zheng Yunming.

Zheng Yunming received more than 10 people, including those who were recommended by their mentors and friends and came to recruit with the heart of serving the country, as well as ambitious people who were conceited and had economic wealth in their hearts and wanted to open up a new world in Xiangyang City. Zheng Yunming was interrogated one by one and arranged separately.

But there was another person, it was the prophet Zheng Yunming who told him his name, and then arranged for him to wait for him in the position of writing before the army, and he did not come to take up his post until three months later.

It was none other than Meng Jing, the commander of the Zhongshun Army, who had returned from the Three Gorges campaign against Shui Kou.

When the Zhongshun Army, the Ezhou Navy and the Jing'e Army went upstream, attacking Zhong Guobin on a large scale, Zhong mixed the ships into the civilian boats, and the bandits all hid among the people of Xiazhou and Guizhou, and Meng Jing did not hesitate to carry out large-scale search and pursuit in the territory of the two states. Because he followed the advice of Peng Man, the commander of the Jing'e Navy, in advance, and sent spies to infiltrate Zhong Guobin's water bandits, and inquired about the hiding places and contact locations of the water bandits, so the search and suppression were unusually smooth.

On this day, they got the whereabouts of the bandit leader Zhong Guobin and sent ships to chase after him. Zhong Guobin only took two speedboats, and more than a dozen henchmen fled towards the territory of Zhijiang County downstream, and the official and military ships could not catch up, so they only pursued with dozens of water sentry horses down the river, and finally surrounded Zhong Guobin in a shoal on the water surface at the junction of Zhijiang and Xiazhou.

At that time, there were more than a dozen civilian boats moored in the shallows. Zhong Guobin jumped over the wall in a hurry, slammed the clipper into a civilian boat, and then jumped on it with the help of the gang, trying to take hostages against the officers and soldiers.

He opened the bamboo curtain on the cabin of the ship, and a young man with a long sword suddenly rushed out of the cabin and stabbed Zhong Guobin to the deck at a lightning speed.

The ships of the officers and soldiers quickly approached, and several sailors jumped up and grabbed Zhong Guobin. Meng Jing carefully inquired about the young man's origin, and only then did he ask about a strange case.

Last year, while the Mongols were attacking Jinghu, they also took the four kings Kuoduan as the main commander, supervising the elite soldiers of the Mongols, Han, Jurchen, Tubo, Dangxiang and other tribes, claiming to have 500,000 people to invade the western defense line of the Song Dynasty.

Since the Wu Xi Rebellion in the Song Dynasty, the western defense line was fragmented, and the defenders of Shukou were less than 30,000 people, and most of them were old and weak and untrained. Among them, the most effective is only Cao Youwen, the deputy commander of Lizhou, and his subordinates are loyal and righteous, with 5,000 people. And the Song Dynasty used to shield the three passes of Shukou and the five states outside the pass in the west, which had been looted and burned by the Mongol army when Tuolei Khan led the army to cut off the Jin Kingdom, and the three passes and the five states were all dilapidated and used as a western barrier. This time, the Mongols poured almost all the main forces of Qin, Feng, Ganlong into the south, and after attacking the territory of the Song Dynasty, they were like a bamboo, and went straight to Xishu Tangao.

The Song Dynasty knew that Gao Jia and the prefecture he managed were blocking the Mongols' way to Shukou. The city wall of Chuzhou had been demolished by the Mongol army when the mine invasion, and there was no protection to rely on in the whole state, so Zhao Yanna, the Sichuan Xuanfu envoy of the Song Dynasty, sent someone to inform Gao Jia to withdraw to the Da'an army in the rear. Gao Jia refused, saying that Chuzhou was in a dangerous location, and if the Mongols attacked Sichuan, it would be almost the only place to contain them. If they lost Chuzhou, the Mongols would no longer have any scruples about attacking Shu. Zhao Yanna first agreed, but then feared the prestige of the Mongol army and left first.

Gao Jia defended the city alone, and fought street battles with the Mongol army that invaded the city with only a few soldiers, and was finally defeated and killed.

Later, fortunately, Cao Youwen, the general of the Song Dynasty guarding the Qifang Pass, led his troops to advance at night and repelled the Mongol army at Qingye Plain, so as to prevent the Mongols from taking advantage of the victory to break into Sichuan. And Gao Jia, who was martyred, was also promoted to the rank of Longtu Pavilion by the Song Dynasty.

Gao Jia's son, who was working in Chengdu at this time to inspect the history of the school, heard the news of his father's martyrdom, and immediately took his servants north to the front line. At this time, the Mongolian army occupied Chuzhou, and was fighting with the Song army on the front line, he and the servants infiltrated into Chuzhou under the control of the Mongolian army in disguise, found the place where his father was lost, and brought his father's remains back to Chengdu.

This young low-level official, because of his father's death, was no longer in the mood to do anything in Chengdu, so he took his father's bones down the river, preparing to return to his hometown for burial, but he didn't want to encounter the officers and soldiers in Xiazhou to arrest the bandits. When Zhong Guobin rushed to the boat, he was only worried that the bandits would damage his father's bones, so he fought Zhong Guobin desperately and injured him.

"It's really a loyal and filial son, a glory." Meng Jing said to Zheng Yunming: "Seeing that child's desperate appearance at that time, I decided that this son could not be used by me Jinghu." ”

Zheng Yunming also agrees that after the martyr, he can have such a strong behavior, this young man is indeed a material that can be made.

"What's his name? I'll go and recruit when I write a letter myself. ”

Meng Jing shook his head and said: "Then Gauss has to lose his father, and according to the etiquette system, he should serve filial piety for three years, and he will write a letter to recruit at this time." He wouldn't have come out anyway. ”

"Now is the time when the country is in crisis," Zheng Yunming said, "how can loyalty and filial piety be able to achieve both?" I should use Liu Qianfu as a letter to explain the reason to him and persuade him to come out and apply. ”

Meng Jing also said: "I also wrote to him, I also talked to him for a long time on the Yangtze River before, this young man has both national hatred and family hatred, I want to explain the truth to him well, he should not stick to the etiquette system." ”

Gaussde was not a pedantic man who followed the rules, or he would not have had the audacity to go behind enemy lines to find his father's body. This time, the emerging famous general of Jinghu personally wrote a book and invited him to work in his shogunate, and he was also very excited. Later, he agreed with Zheng Yunming that after burying his father and keeping filial piety in his hometown for a year, he would come to Xiangyang to take office.

Naturally, if Xiangyang was still in the hands of the Great Song Dynasty at that time.

In this way, there were two senators of the shogunate in Jinghu, one assistant in military affairs, one person in charge of writing and writing, six in charge of office work, twenty-four envoys and preparations for sending generals (preparation will be a system used by the Song Dynasty to supplement the shortage of military generals, once the main general is vacant due to promotion, dismissal or death in battle, that is, the preparation of the general will be on top) eight members are roughly prepared.

Only the post of staff officer remains, and the staff officer is the leader of the shogunate, which is almost equal to the role of the chief of staff of later generations to the military chief. The difference is that the role of today's staff officers is not as detailed as that of later generations, so this chief of staff is almost the mastermind next to the general, regardless of military affairs, political strategy, governing the people, and governing the army.

Isn't such a character something that an idler can do? At that time, Han Shizhong's staff officer Chen Juan and Yue Fei's staff officer Xue Yi were both officials to pacify envoys and high-ranking positions at the state and county level, and they were really the first-class think-tank figures in the Southern Dynasty.

In view of this, the last thing Wei Liaoweng did before leaving for Beijing was to apply to the imperial court and change the former Senator of the Governor's Mansion Ma Guangzu to the post of staff officer of the Jing'e Deputy Metropolitan Division. This is quite an exceptional move, although the deputy capital of Jing and Hubei led 10,000 troops, and stationed in the place to rush, after all, it is only a local military attaché, Ma Guangzu is more than 30 years old, young and strong, and has experienced practical work training in the local area, and is currently serving as the chief of the imperial court ordnance superintendent, and is known as a famous young talent in the court, and is the first-rate talent of the imperial court prepared for the Feng Pavilion in the future, and now he is delegated to a military general shogunate as a senator, no wonder there is a lot of discussion in the court, thinking that Ma Guangzu has offended Wei Liaoweng by following the governor's house on patrol this time, This is a derogatory move.

Only Ma Guangzu, who was in front of Xiangyang, understood the weight of his staff officer, Zheng Yunming was a newcomer who had risen rapidly in Jinghu, and he had been promoted to the high position of deputy commander after only a year of war training. What's more, the 10,000 soldiers and horses of the Jing'e Deputy Commander, with his multi-day investigation, is actually the most loyal and reliable army in Xiangyang Mansion with complete combat strength, and his status is not lower than that of Wu Qian, who is the staff officer of the control envoy, within the jurisdiction of the Jinghu control envoy. In fact, every time the envoy convened for discussion, Wu Qian was summoned with him.