In the end, Lu Yi was able to lead the troops to retreat to Xiuxian smoothly, thanks to Liu He, the eldest prince who was far away in Jicheng. If it weren't for Liu He's request for Jizhou to temporarily maintain the situation of confrontation between the north and the south, Lu Zhi, who likes to use dangerous tactics, would have sent Tai Shici to Nanpi to besiege Liyi.

With the remaining forces of Koji Yi, it is okay to fight against Xu Rong, Xian Yufu or Tai Shici's soldiers and horses alone, but if he is allowed to fight against the combined attack of these three soldiers and horses at the same time, even if Koji Yi has an elite like the first death soldier under his command, it will also be difficult to escape.

As Lu Yi speculated, Xu Rong was indeed using himself as bait to hang him near Zhangshui, and then create an opportunity for Tai Shici, who had never been dispatched in Gaoyi City, to besiege him. Since Nanpi City has been firmly controlled by Xian Yufu, Xu Rong does not need to rush to Nanpi City, so he can think and deal with it from the overall situation of the Jizhou battlefield.

In Xu Rong's view, after Yan Liang's army withdrew from Jizhou and merged with the state, as long as there were 10,000 infantry stationed in Gaoyi City, it could resist Yuan Shao's attack of more than 50,000 troops for more than three months, but there are now 20,000 soldiers and horses in Gaoyi City, so it is completely possible to send 10,000 troops out of the city to besiege Liyi.

Koyi's troops were in a narrow strip of land at the confluence of Zhangshui and Jiangshui, and if Gaoyi sent an army down Jiangshui, he could completely block the way for him to retreat to Qinghe. At that time, Xian Yufu was in the east, Xu Rong was in the north, and Tai Shici was in the southwest, and the three-way army was 30,000 soldiers and horses, and they could definitely kill the remaining more than 10,000 soldiers and horses left in the attack on Nanpi by Liyi to the north of Jiangshui and south of Zhangshui.

The reason why Liu He asked Jizhou to maintain the situation of confrontation between the north and the south is related to his strategic layout of "first the north and then the south, and the east and then the west".

The northern part of Youzhou is a vast grassland and desert, which can not only provide Liu He with a steady stream of high-quality war horses, cattle and sheep, but also the best training ground. Although the nomads in the north are unruly and brutal by nature, they are just difficult opponents in the eyes of the smart and warlike Han people, and the original Huns are more ferocious than the current Xianbei and Wuhuan people, and they are also beaten by the army led by Wei Qing and Huo Quzhi, and they migrate and flee. It turns out. As long as the Han regime did not fall into internal strife, the nomads in the north had nothing to fear.

Not to mention complete control, as long as Liu He can control the situation north of Youzhou, he can exchange the horses, cattle and sheep he needs through mutual markets, so as to further improve the combat effectiveness of the troops, increase the agricultural output of Youzhou, and improve the physical fitness of the people.

Horses can be used as mounts for cavalry, can carry goods, and can go down to the ground to pull plows; Cattle can be domesticated and raised as farming cattle, and they can also be used to eat meat. Cow tendon is the core material for making high-strength bows and crossbows, and cowhide is the material for making armor and large siege equipment; Sheep can take wool to make felt, can take leather to make clothing, can take milk to drink, and can also eat meat directly.

To the east of Youzhou is the resource-rich Northeast region, which is not only rich in all kinds of precious timber and high-quality animal skins and medicinal materials, but also has several large iron mines and coal that are convenient for shallow excavation, and a large area of black soil with fertile soil and convenient water conservancy, which is enough to feed the entire population of the Han Dynasty but is almost uncultivated!

Later, after a certain island nation stole the northeast, it once excavated in Fushun and Benxi and other areas that produce coal and iron for decades. Huge ships were then used to transport massive resources back to the mainland for reclamation, and even this did not empty the resources of these places, which shows that coal and iron ore are abundant and easy to recover.

Although Liu He did not come from an engineering background, he also understood the significance of coal and steel to a country. Therefore, the resource-rich Northeast region cannot fall into the hands of outsiders under any circumstances.

The northeast of Youzhou is now occupied by the Gongsun Dushi Luli, in the east of Gongsun Dushi Luli there is the Goguryeo Kingdom, the north is the Fuyu State, and further northeast there are the Rulou and Wofu tribes that are still in the primitive social form. In the southeast of Lelang County on the Korean Peninsula, there are countries and tribes such as the Tapir, Mahan, Benhan, and Jinhan.

Liu He's plan was to first eliminate the power of Gongsun Du in Liaodong. further strengthen themselves, and then adopt the strategy of simultaneous purging and pacification to continue to expand in the northeast, and finally assimilate or eliminate all these seemingly backward but dangerous ethnic groups in the north. So that the footprints of the Han people can be all over the banks of the weak water.

Passing through the Great Northeast will be an extremely long and arduous process, which will need to be completed in at least three steps.

In the first step, Liu He needed to recapture the existing Han territory from Gongsun Du, so that he could not only eliminate the huge hidden danger in the northeast, but also provide continuous and strong support for Liu He to go south to fight for the world. With the convenience of the sea transportation channel, Liu He can easily incorporate the Bohai Rim region into his own territory.

In the second step, Liu He shifted the strategic focus from Youzhou to the south of the Yellow River and to the west of Bingzhou. In this process, Liu He needed to first drive Yuan Shao out of Jizhou, and then eliminate Yuan Shao in Bingzhou, so as to achieve the strategic intention of completely controlling the north of the Yellow River. During this period, the Xianbei people in the north would become the greatest destabilizing factor, so Liu He was required to form a strong enough cavalry force to stop the Xianbei people from moving south.

After Liu He developed steadily north of the Yellow River, he crossed the Yellow River and fought a big battle with the Central Plains, fought to the edge of the Yangtze River in one go, and then continued to cross the river and fight in Shu, thus completely ending the situation of warlords within the Han Dynasty. This process will take at least a decade or so, during which time the northeast direction will remain dominated by entrenchment.

In the third step, all kinds of forces within the Han Dynasty were cleared out, and the power of the Central Dynasty was completely consolidated, and Liu He could then take a forced approach to migrate at least five million people from the densely populated areas of the Central Plains to the Northeast region, so as to completely occupy the Northeast and completely curb the development of other ethnic groups.

Historically, the nomadic peoples who posed the greatest threat to the Han regime were all from the northeast, and they were not unrelated to the Sushen people in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Liu He was too lazy to care about the inextricable connections between the ancestors of the Donghu people, the Fuyu people, the Rulou people, the Goguryeo people, the Wofu people, the filthy tapir people, and the Sanhan people, so he recognized one point: if you want to be truly peaceful and peaceful in the future, you must completely control the Great Northeast region in the hands of the Han people!

In order to accumulate strength to deal with Gongsun Du in Liaodong, and also to stabilize the northern front, in the case of tight troops, Liu He was temporarily unwilling to have a fierce battle with Yuan Shao and consume his own troops, so the war in Jizhou did not expand in the end, but ended temporarily with two stalemates and a city attack and defense battle.

Yuan Shao saw that the matter of Youzhou was no longer possible, and there was Lu Zhi, an eyesore old man in Jizhou, who was obstructing him. There was no bargain to be gained, so he adopted Tian Feng's suggestion and shrank his troops to the south of Zhao, south of Mainland, and Qinghe, and from then on changed from a strategic offensive posture to a strategic defense.

Attacking and defending are only a word apart, but the energy, troops, and financial resources required are completely different. At the end of the Han Dynasty, before the appearance of hot weapons, the side that took the initiative to start the war had to pay at least three to five times more losses than the side that took advantage of the city's topography to defend.

For example, in these two battles of Youzhou defense, although the attacking side made all kinds of preparations and gathered troops far more than Liu Yu's side, they ended in failure. The Zhigong Sun clan even paid a heavy price for this, not only withdrawing from Youzhou, but even completely disappearing from the territory of the Han Dynasty.

Now, Yuan Shao no longer tried to seize the entire territory of Jizhou, let alone the idea of fighting Youzhou, but began to build a large number of defensive fortifications along the route that Liu He might move south and west in the future, and dispatched capable generals to defend. In this way, it saved him troops and financial resources, and he could safely attack the northern counties of the state. Plot to seize Hanoi County and Hadong County in the Sili region.

In the future, if Liu He wants to go south and west from the northeast, he will have to start a fierce battle with Yuan Shaojun for one city and one place, and in turn experience the pain of the egg that Yuan Shaojun besieged Gaoliu for several months. Liu He has been in charge of the army since he was in charge. It is very rare to launch a frontal siege battle, most of the time it is to use the city to defend and counterattack, and a few times it is to use the high-speed mobility of the cavalry to annihilate the enemy in the field, so I have not yet learned the kind of stalemate and tragedy of the siege.

That's all for later. What the outcome will be is still difficult to determine. Anyway, because of the sanity and restraint of both sides. After all, no large-scale war broke out in Jizhou, but it saved the local people from a catastrophe and allowed them to spend another year in fear.

Liu He set off to return to Youzhou in August, and in less than half a year, he completely wiped out Gongsun Zhan, defeated Gongsun Du, and thwarted Yuan Shao, who was strong and strong, from the east and west, and successfully occupied Gongsun Zhan's territory in Jizhou, achieving an earth-shattering reversal. Such a terrifying piece of news was disseminated by people with good intentions and some condiments, and soon spread from the north of the Yellow River to Sili, Yanzhou, Qingzhou, Yuzhou, Xuzhou, Yangzhou, and Jingzhou on the south bank of the Yellow River.

I believe that it will not be long before other forces in Liangzhou, Yizhou and Jiaozhou will also learn of this "exciting" news.

It is conceivable that when the various forces heard that Liu Yu was not defeated in Youzhou, but became stronger and stronger, they were either happy or worried. In addition to the officials and people in Luoyang who would rejoice at the news, Cao Cao of Yanzhou, Tao Qian of Xuzhou, Yuan Shu of Yangzhou, Liu Biao of Jingzhou, and Lu Bu, Li Dao, Guo Yan and others in Guanzhong all had a jealousy and inexplicable sense of loss.

There is no way, who let the weak and pedantic Liu Yu raise a good son who is brave and resourceful!

Cao Cao had already felt a serious threat from this incident, although Chen Gui and Deng Hai, who pretended to be Liu He and traveled eastward, did not cause him much trouble, but Lao Cao understood that if Yuan Shao could not withstand Liu He's counterattack in Hebei in the future, then he would inevitably have a big war with Liu He, unless he was at the mercy of Liu He and took the initiative to give up the power and territory he had now.

In order to have enough strength to confront Liu He in the future, Cao Cao, who has stabilized the Yanzhou territory, set his sights on Xuzhou Tao Qian, Qingzhou Tian Kai and Beihai Kong Rong. If he can occupy the two states of Qingxu before Liu He goes south, Cao Cao may have the capital to compete with Liu He by virtue of the power of the three states in the Central Plains.

When Cao Cao was pondering Xuzhou and Qingzhou, Qingzhou Liu Bei, who had no news, was also actively planning secretly, his appetite was not small at all compared to Cao Cao, when the news of Gongsun Zhan's defeat and death came, the first thing that Da Er Liu thought of was how to get Tian Kai, swallow the 20,000 soldiers and horses left by Gongsun Zhan, and then go south from Qingzhou to occupy the rich Xuzhou, and then get a real place to live. (To be continued......)