Strategist Guo Tu said: "Guan Yu demanded money and grain from us in the name of the imperial court, if we are not decided, we will use this as an excuse to fight each other!" ”

"The revenge of Bishui Pass last time has not been avenged, and this time I actually asked for money and food, I don't know who to ask for! This is hard to accept! Yuan Shao immediately said.

The strategist Feng Ji admonished: "The lord doesn't have to be angry, don't be in a hurry to wait in advance, let's see the situation, but if we fight with Guan Yu, this is definitely not a wise move, but don't lose money because of this, don't rush to a conclusion about this matter, the best way is to support, wait and see what happens, and see Guan Yu's next move!" ”

Tian Feng said after hearing this: "I heard that Guan Yu is going to carry out reforms under his rule, and at this time he levied money and grain from us, he is afraid that we will take advantage of his reform and send troops to disrupt his layout, the lord must not take the matter of expropriation to heart, and prepare to raise troops to attack Luoyang, Guan Yu is busy with reform, even if we can't take Luoyang, it will make his square inch chaotic, so that his reform will be abandoned halfway!" As long as his reform is abolished, Guan Yu's strength will definitely be greatly consumed, if he wants to wait until Guan Yu's reform is successful, it is tantamount to the tiger cultivating strength, and when the lord does not attack Luoyang, I am afraid that Guan Yu will also eat the lord! ”

"After fighting for so many years, how can the soldiers be tired and fight again, it is better to rest and recuperate, and wait for the opportunity!" The strategist Xu Yu came out of the ranks.

Several strategists argued again, the public said that the public was reasonable, and the mother said that the mother was reasonable and argued endlessly at the bottom of the steps, Yuan Shao kept pacing on the steps and didn't know where to go, he pondered for a while and said: "Let this be put in advance, I can't give money and food, and then discuss the matter of sending troops!" First of all, strengthen the defense and vigilance of the border! ”

But he said that Gongsun Zhan couldn't help laughing when he got the text: "This matter is really a joke, the court asked me to go in to collect money and grain, and I will have a good show to watch!" ”

General Tian Kai asked puzzledly: "How can the lord explain this matter?" ”

"This is a plan of the imperial court, as a prince to pay tribute to the imperial court, this is a matter of course, if you do not pay the imperial court, you can send troops to attack it, it has become a natural thing. This time, the court levied money and grain from the princes, and of course the princes did not comply, so naturally there were unlucky ones! Gongsun Chan then analyzed.

Tian Kai then asked: "Then the matter of the imperial court's collection of money and grain, does the lord give it or not?" ”

"Of course not!" Gongsun Chan said firmly.

Tian Kai asked in surprise: "According to the will of the lord, if you don't pay money and grain by edict, won't the imperial court send troops to fight?" ”

"You are wrong, we are not adjacent to the imperial court, and there is a Yuan Shao in the middle? The imperial court will definitely not be able to attack us, and if the imperial court wants to send troops to fight against us, we will only have to rely on Yuan Shao's strength, and sooner or later there will be a war between us and Yuan Shao. This is inevitable, so the consequences of our non-payment are also reasonable! I think whether Yuan Shao can pay the money and grain is still between the two, so why should we be in a hurry? If Yuan Shao doesn't pay, the imperial court will definitely send troops to fight, maybe there will be a time when we will be used! So this deal is a win for us anyway! Gongsun Chan then analyzed Tian Kai.

After hearing this, Tian Kai realized: "The lord is wise! O wise lord! ”

The two couldn't help but laugh when they finished speaking

Cao Cao thought for a while and then convened all the strategists to discuss countermeasures, and the strategist Cheng Yu first recommended: "This is obviously instigated by Guan Yu, and he changed the previous rules and regulations just after becoming prime minister." It seems that he has great ambitions! ”

Cao Cao asked, "Then how do we deal with it?" ”

"Since it is a document sent to all the princes, don't act in a hurry first, Guan Yu's move is a plan to repair the plank road and secretly Chen Cang, in fact, his levy of money and grain is fake, development and reform is true, even if the lord does not pay, he will not raise troops to crusade against the lord! So the lord doesn't have to pay attention to it! Strategist Xun Yu analyzed.

Cao Cao nodded after hearing this: "Xun Wenruo's analysis is reasonable!" ”

"True! However, Guan Yu is not an ordinary opponent, he can't attack each other if he wants to carry out reforms, but this doesn't mean that he won't let others attack! The military advisor sacrificed wine Guo Jia said.

After hearing this, Cao Cao asked, "Feng Xiao said it carefully!" ”

Guo Jia made an impassioned analysis and said: "Guan Yu is certainly a dark Chen Cang who cultivates the plank road. However, he did not attack each other, perhaps in order to reform him, he did not have the energy to fight, but he could mobilize other princes to attack the lord. And the excuse for the attack is that the lord has disobeyed the will of the imperial court! In this way, the lord needs to be ready to fight with the other princes! ”

"What does Fengxiao mean by Yuan Shao of Hebei and Yuan Shu of Huainan?" Cao Cao then asked.

Guo Jia smiled and said, "Guan Yu is very likely to use this opportunity to stir up disputes between the princes!" And he can take advantage of the strife to carry out his reform plan with peace of mind! ”

"The imperial court sent a document to the princes to collect money and grain, and all the princes were burdened, so how could they attack each other if they complained about the court?" Cao Cao asked.

Guo Jia then analyzed: "Guan Yu is very kind, he will continue to send the second one after he sends the first message, I think the second article will be told to the lord!" ”

Cao Cao wondered: "Fengxiao in detail? ”

"The lord doesn't need to be in a hurry, there is no need to act on this matter. Just wait for the second text to come before making a decision! Guo Jia continued.

Cao Cao smiled when he heard this: "Leave me a suspense, but I have already guessed nine points!" ”

The two looked at each other and laughed, but Cheng Yu and Xun Yu were a little puzzled, and Cao Cao then decided: "Don't pay attention to this matter, since he Guan Yu is busy reforming and developing the plan." Naturally, we can't lag behind, and we must also work hard to develop our livelihoods! ”

After Cao Cao finished speaking, the subordinates and ministers took orders and left

Besides, the text was sent to Yuan Shu, Yuan Shu was really surprised, the court actually let himself out of a hundred thousand taels of silver, and assigned such a burden to himself, Yuan Shu then summoned his subordinates to discuss countermeasures, the strategist Yang Hong and the generals were summoned to the house, Yuan Shu made a report to his subordinates, everyone had many doubts after hearing it, and the strategist Yang Hong first said: "If the court requisitions money and grain, if it refuses, it is disrespectful." The imperial court has the pretext to send troops, but if the imperial court is given so much money and food, it will be tantamount to a burden on our heads! To solve this matter, the lord must not be in a hurry, first observe that we do not border Luoyang, even if Guan Yu wants to send troops to attack, he must take the road. So don't worry! ”

Yuan Shu stroked his beard after hearing this, and suddenly his eyes lit up and said: "When it comes to this matter of collecting money and grain, I think of one thing, Cao Cao invited us to attack Luoyang before, saying that as long as we send troops, we will be rewarded with 10,000 stone of grain, by the way, I immediately replied to the court and said that we are willing to pay, Cao Cao still owes us 10,000 stone of grain converted into one million taels of silver, which is regarded as our filial piety to the court, although it is to Cao Cao!" What do you think of this idea? Yes? ”

After Yuan Shu finished speaking, all the civil and military officers under the stairs unanimously praised: "The lord has a wonderful plan!" Wonderful! ”

Yuan Shu showed a sinister and cunning expression after hearing this, with a cold light in his eyes, and a sneer at the corner of his mouth, very hideous. Then he said: "This is called treating others the way they do!" Hahaha! ”

Yuan Shu just sent Guan Yu's text away.

But he said that Sun Ce couldn't help but be indignant when he received the court's message: "I have never had the court when I was in trouble, this time I made a fortune, but the court saw me, my foundation was not given by the court, I broke out by myself, naturally I can't pay tribute to the court, this is not in line with the rules, the court stretched out to me, I naturally have to refuse!" Sun Ce immediately made a decision to categorically refuse the imperial court's conquest. And the decision made by one person was not discussed with the ministers.

said that Sun Ce, after Sun Jian's death, although Sun Ce failed to return to his father's old ministry for a while. But in Shouchun, he got acquainted with Sun He and Lu Fan, two retainers. Sun He is Sun Ce's brother, and he used to follow Sun Jian everywhere to fight, and Sun Jian was one of Sun Jian's most trusted confidants and retainers. Sun He saw Sun Ce's young and heroic hair in Shouchun, so he followed the drive from then on. Lu Fan is a native of Runan, Yuzhou, and came to Shouchun for refuge because of the war in Yuzhou for many years, and the two were also happy to meet the master. Not only did he return the hundreds of family guests to Sun Ce's drive, but also followed Sun Ce across the river and went to Danyang to carry out his business.

When Sun Ce arrived in Danyang, he was worried about his mother and younger siblings who lived in Jiangdu. Because Yuan Shu has been known as "Xuzhou Bo", he obviously has the heart of Xuzhou. Now that he is attached to Yuan Shu again, Sun Ce is very worried that Tao Qian will be unfavorable to his family, so he sent Lu Fan to Jiangdu to pick up his family to get together. When Lu Fan arrived in Jiangdu, he was arrested and tortured by Tao Qian, thanks to Lu Fan's family members who rescued him. So Lü Fan accompanied Mrs. Wu and Sun Ce's younger siblings across the river and settled down in Qu'a in Wu County.

Danyang is located in the heart of Yangzhou, in addition to the more prosperous county towns along the Yangtze River, the southern valley of Wanzhong area gathered a large number of mountain people who evaded the pursuit of the government or evaded taxes, these mountain people are brave and practiced, under the command of the local marshal or the king of the mountain, from time to time become robbers. In fact, this phenomenon is not only found in Danyang County, but also in the mountains of southern Yangzhou, because most of them are Yue people in the pre-Qin era, and they are generally called Shanyue or mountain thieves. It is precisely because the people in the Danyang area have the characteristics of being brave and brave in battle, so Yuan Shu will say that Danyang is a place of elite soldiers, and ask Sun Ce to recruit troops here. At this time, although Wu Jing was the Taishou of Danyang, the area that he could control was limited to a few county towns along the Yangtze River, and the southern mountains were still an area where many mountains and thieves were located.

Sun Ce had just recruited a few hundred people in the south of Danyang, but he was attacked by the handsome Zulang in the mountains in the upper reaches of the Qinhuai River, and almost lost his life. After Sun Ce retreated to Wanling, he and Wu Jing jointly led the troops along the Qinhuai River south to attack Zulang, who was defeated and fled southwest to Lingyang County to continue to be his mountain king.

Sun Ce saw that the Danyang bandits were difficult to pacify for a while, and it was not easy to recruit troops locally, so he had to return to Shouchun again, hoping to get back his father's old ministry from Yuan Shu. Sun Ce returned to Shouchun, Sun Ce was young and handsome, had a hearty personality, and loved to tell jokes, and was quite popular in Yuan Shu's army, everyone called him Sun Lang, and Yuan Shu's generals Qiao Rui and Zhang Xun also respected him. Even Yuan Shu often sighed and said: "If you have a son like Sun Lang, why hate death!" Later, Sun Ce's cavalry committed a crime and fled to the stables in Yuan Shu's camp, and Sun Ce did not shy away from sending people inside to kill him, and only then reported to Yuan Shu.

Yuan Shu replied: "The soldiers are rebellious, when they are sick, what is the thanks?" This not only shows Sun Ce's rigor in governing the army, but also shows Yuan Shu's preference for Sun Ce, so everyone's fear of Sun Ce is a little heavier. During the Shouchun period, Sun Ce continued to recruit talents from all walks of life. Jiang Qin, Zhou Tai, Chen Wu and others began to follow Sun Ce during this period.

Sun Ce returned to Shouchun, and Yuan Shu originally promised him to take over as the Taishou of Jiujiang, but later broke his promise and sent his subordinate Chen Ji instead. Soon after, Yuan Shu planned to use troops against Xuzhou, and because of the lack of food, he asked Lu Kang, the Taishou of Lujiang, for 30,000 yuan of food, and Lu Kang thought that Yuan Shu was a rebel, so he cut off contact with him. Internal repair and combat readiness. Yuan Shu was furious when he heard this, so he negotiated a deal with Sun Ce, not only returning more than 1,000 people from Sun Jian's old department to him, but also promising to let him take over as the Taishou of Lujiang if he attacked Lujiang.

On the one hand, in order to retrieve his father's old department, and on the other hand, he hated Lu Kang's indifference and contempt for him back then, so he agreed to Yuan Shu. As a result, Sun Jian's former generals, including Cheng Pu, Huang Gai, Han Dang, Zhu Zhi and others, finally returned to Sun Ce's side. After getting this group of men, Sun Ce led his troops south into the Lujiang River. The first official battle of his life began. Sun Ce led his father's old troops and horses all the way to Anhui City in Lujiang, and Lu Kang, the Taishou of Lujiang, heard that Sun Ce was coming, and quickly moved his family and wife away, including Lu Kang's youngest son Lu Ji and his nephew Lu Xun. Lu Xun was twelve years old this year, because he lost his father at a young age, so he took refuge with his uncle and grandfather Lu Kang in Lujiang. Lu Kang was afraid that the innocent family would be affected by the war, so he sent them back to his hometown in Wu County, while he stayed in Anhui City.

Sun Ce led his troops to attack Lujiang. The siege was heavy, and Lu Kang held on to it in the city. Because Lu Kang is usually a politician and virtuous. Won the hearts of the people, the Lujiang soldiers who were on vacation before took advantage of the night to climb the city wall and came back to help defend the city, the two sides were deadlocked for a year, the soldiers and civilians in the city starved to death because of the lack of food, and the city of Anhui was finally captured by Sun Ce, and Lu Kang died of illness after a month after the fall of the city. He was seventy years old.

During Sun Ce's attack on Lujiang, the situation in Yang and Xu Prefectures changed considerably. Liu Xuan, who had only been in office for a short time, heard that Yuan Shu sent Sun Ce to attack Lujiang, and was worried that Yuan Shu would be unfavorable to him sooner or later, so he made the first move and sent Fan Neng, Yu Mi to guard Hengjiangjin, and Zhang Ying to be the mouth. In order to prevent Yuan Shu from sending troops to cross the river.

In addition, because Wu Jing and Sun Ji were appointed by Yuan Shu, Liu Miao also drove these two people to the north bank of the Yangtze River. Yuan Shu was very angry when he heard this, and appointed his subordinate Hui Qu as the assassin of Yangzhou, fought against Liu Xuan, and sent Wu Jing and Sun Qi to garrison Liyang to attack Liu Xuan, and the two sides could not break the deadlock after a year of confrontation. In addition, Yuan Shu also sent Zhou Yu's uncle Zhou Shang to take over as the Taishou of Danyang, and Zhou Shang was unable to take up his post in Wanling, the county on the south bank of the Yangtze River, so he transferred military and horse grain in the Jiangbei area as a backup.

In Xuzhou, in the winter of the year before Sun Ce sent troops to Lujiang, Cao Cao went east to Xuzhou to avenge the murder of his father, and slaughtered five cities in Pengcheng and Xiapi, killing until there were no chickens and dogs left, and the water did not flow, and Xuzhou, which was originally rich and stable, was in chaos. Seeing that Xu Tu was uneasy, he fled south with tens of thousands of disciples to Guangling County in Xuzhou, where Zhao Yu set up a banquet to entertain him. Zhenrong then crossed the Yangtze River south and ran to Moling (present-day Nanjing) in Danyang County, Yangzhou, where Xue Li, the prime minister of Pengcheng, was also stationed, and the two of them jointly attached themselves to Liu Xuan as the leader of the alliance to resist the invasion of Yuan Shu's forces.

Speaking of this Zhenrong, he is a very interesting character. When he brought hundreds of disciples to Xuzhou, Tao Qian valued him very much, appointed him as the minister of Xiapi, and asked him to supervise the transportation of food from Pengcheng, Xiapi and Guangling. Pray and read Buddhist scriptures in the Buddha shrine, and every day of bathing in the Buddha, they set up free wine and meals in a radius to entertain the believers who come to worship, and the number of people often gathers tens of thousands. It seems that Zhen Rong contributed to the promotion of Buddhism in China in his early years, but the records of his other deeds in the history books are extremely unbearable. Not to mention stealing public grain; Xuzhou was in trouble, he abandoned Tao Qian and ran to Jiangdu, and killed the famous Guangling Taishou Zhao Yu, and allowed his subordinates to loot in the local area, no matter how he looked, he didn't look like a good man and a woman.

At this time, Xuzhou fell into chaos, and there were three counties in the south of Xuzhou that were adjacent to Yuan Shu's forces, from west to east

It is Pengcheng State, Xiapi State and Guangling County. Xue Li, the prime minister of Pengcheng, and Xue Rong, the minister of Xiapi, ran to Moling in Jiangdong to attach themselves to Liu Xuan, and Zhao Yu, the Taishou of Guangling, was killed by Zhenrong, and the entire southern part of Xuzhou fell into anarchy, and Yuan Shu took this opportunity to send troops to occupy the southern part of Guangling County and the southwest of Xiapi State.

But he said that Sun Ce spent so much effort to lay down Lujiang, and originally thought that he could become the Taishou of Lujiang and occupy a county, but he didn't expect Yuan Shu to break his promise again and assign his subordinate Liu Xun to take over. Zhu Zhi saw that Yuan Shu was so dishonest, so he persuaded Sun Ce to break away from Yuan Shu and pacify Jiangdong with his own strength. Sun Ce was put on the road by Yuan Shu twice in a row, and his heart was quite unpleasant, anyway, his father's old ministry had returned to his side, so he decided to raise troops to cross east according to the plan he had drawn up with Zhang Hong.

Sun Ce said to Yuan Shu: "My family has an old favor in the east, I volunteer to help my uncle fight Hengjiang, after Hengjiang is attacked, I can raise 30,000 soldiers, and then I can assist the general Kuang Ji Han Dynasty." (To be continued......)