Chapter 47 Kowloon seizes the heir

As mentioned last time, Liu Hou wanted to use schistosomiasis as a weapon to launch a biochemical war against Wu and Wei. Guo Youzhi discouraged him, believing that although this work was very good, once the schistosomiasis epidemic spread, it would cause thousands of people to fall ill and die, and this method was not taken by a gentleman.

"His Royal Highness the Crown Prince also said just now that this is a terminal disease, once this plague insect is infected, it will definitely die, Mr. Zhongjing also said just now that once the epidemic spreads, it will cause the epidemic area to be sparsely populated, ten rooms and nine empty, and the countryside is barren.

Such a tragic thing, if it is done, it will hurt the peace of heaven and the prestige of the prince. Yes, I am not in favor of doing so. ”

After Guo Youzhi finished speaking, Liu Hou also frowned. Seeing a big killer weapon in front of him, but he couldn't use it, he was really as aggrieved as he was. The situation is as embarrassing as Saddam Hussein, who clearly possessed the atomic bomb and watched the Mi army attack the capital Baghdad, only to find that the computer had been hacked and could not launch the atomic bomb. 1

However, Guo Youzhi is also right, biological and chemical weapons are notorious in history, they are all weapons of mass destruction, and every time they appear, they will create a terrible tragedy.

A famous example is the use of plague to storm the city of Faka in 1346 during the Tatar invasion of the Crimea. In this war, some of the Tatar soldiers died of the plague, and they threw the corpses of the dead into the city of Faka, as a result of which the plague spread among the defenders, and finally caused them to abandon the city.

In addition, in the 18th century, the British invading army spread smallpox among the Indian tribes in Canada by giving quilts and handkerchiefs to smallpox patients, so that the Indians were defeated without a fight, which is a shameful record of the colonial rulers.

Later, people finally realized that biological and chemical weapons were inhumane, and an international convention was signed prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling and use of such weapons. Although it has not been possible to ban such weapons completely, no one dares to use them blatantly anymore.

After listening to Guo Youzhi's words, Liu Hou was deeply ashamed, he was a person from later generations, and he was known as a civilized Cheng dù who had advanced almost 2,000 years compared to the people of the Three Kingdoms era, and his ideological consciousness was not as high as Guo Youzhi's.

If he really did this, not to mention whether his reputation would stink, he would definitely be condemned in the future, and he would not be at ease for the rest of his life.

"In that case, then forget it, let's find another way to contain the forces of Wei and Wu, and prevent them from sending troops to interfere with our recovery of Chengdu." Liu Houchao said in a bad way. Just when Liu Hou wanted to give up the use of biochemical warfare, he listened to Guo You's way:

"These plagues can't be used on a large scale, so as not to harm the people, but we can use them on a small scale, and it doesn't hurt if we only use them against the leaders of Eastern Wu. Even if only Sun Quan was sick, the Eastern Wu court would inevitably be in chaos, which would not only create chaos for them, but also not poison the world. ”

When Liu Hou heard this, his eyes lit up, yes, the beheading operation, wouldn't it be okay to use these plague insects in the leaders of Wei and Wu. In this era, the role of the individual leader is very large, and it is easy to lead the entire army to collapse when you kill the general of an army, so what about killing the king of a country? It won't collapse the country, but chaos is a certainty.

As long as Sun Quan or (and) Cao Pi died, their courtiers would inevitably fall into the quagmire of the battle for succession, and before the new emperor sat down, they would definitely not be able to send troops to interfere in foreign affairs, and this was a good time for them to recover Chengdu.

So, Liu Hou and Guo Youzhi talked secretly, this time, they had a clear purpose, and the conversation was much smoother. By the time the banquet was over, they had already negotiated a rough framework.

This operation Liu Hou named "Nine Dragons to seize the heir", which means that after the assassination of the two emperors, there will be many princes and grandsons to participate in the operation of seizing the heir, "nine" is an approximate number, just for the sake of sound. Cao Pi alone has nine sons, Sun Quan has seven sons, and Liu Bei also has three sons, and a total of nineteen princes of the Three Kingdoms participated in this carnival of succession.

Liu Hou's attack on Chengdu was not to seize the throne, but to fight for the throne, but he was relatively bad, and when he saw that he was going to fight for the throne, he wanted to confuse the water of the whole world, so that all the princes of the three countries had the throne to fight for. What is it called? In Liu Hou's words, this is called "Hello everyone, it is really good." ”

Liu Hou intends to hand over this matter to the "CIA" for execution. When he was in Jingzhou, Liu Hou arranged for the "CIA" to infiltrate Wei and Wu to inquire about military, people, and economic intelligence. Over the years, they have done a good job, but most of them are engaged in intelligence espionage, and nothing similar to an assassination has been done before, and this operation is also a test for them.

After the banquet, everything went relatively smoothly, and the Shu army crossed the river in batches after finding out that there were no Eastern Wu ships ambushing in the surrounding waters. Liu Hou sat on the super battleship "Jingzhou", riding the wind and waves. It was also escorted by the building ship "Chang'an" and another medium-sized ship captured from Soochow, which Liu Hou officially named "Baling".

After crossing the river, the army continued to march towards Jingzhou, cautious and heavily guarded along the way, Liu Hou was very worried about being attacked by Dongwu in the process, because this is the area that Dongwu and Shu repeatedly fought for, although the 200,000 troops of Dongwu said that they had withdrawn, but they only retreated to the border, and then they were eyeing the border, and they could kill again at any time.

In fact, what Liu Hou didn't know was that his worries were a little redundant, and Eastern Wu was wiped out by Liu Hou's Hong army in several major battles such as Lingnan, Guiyang, and Changsha.

Moreover, there are only a few troops in Eastern Wu, and there are only 700,000 or 800,000 soldiers who can fight when they are full, that is to say, the only thing that Eastern Wu can handle now is the 200,000 horses that Sun Quan has just retreated from Jingzhou.

Of course, there are still a small number of garrison troops in the locality, but those soldiers and horses are all old, weak, sick and disabled, and it is okay to maintain law and order in peacetime, so it is unreliable to let them go to war.

Therefore, Sun Quan's family background is only a little bit left, and he dares to take it out and fight Liu Hou to the death. Sun Quan has constantly ordered the conscription of strong men into the army, but unfortunately, the population of Eastern Wu is only a few million2, and it is already very difficult to form an army of 700,000, and the civil strong men are almost all conscripted, and there is really no way to think about it in a short time.

What's more, after the Battle of Changsha, Sun Quan has fully realized the terrible thing about this Shu army, 200,000 elites of Eastern Wu, and a wise general like Lu Xun led the army, they can't hold the siege of tens of thousands of people in this Shu army. Therefore, now the Eastern Wu army can only shrink up and avoid the Shu army, and it will take the initiative to come out to sneak attack.

On this day, the Hong army finally arrived at the city of Jingzhou, and Guan Gong and Zhuge Liang went out of the city to greet them. After the two sides finished saluting, they went straight back to the palace. Liu Hou's face was certainly not good-looking, and Zhuge Liang and Guan Gong also looked gloomy.

It was a great joy for the two sides to meet, but everyone's faces were solemn and the atmosphere was tense, among which Guan Gong not only blushed, but even his eyes were red, it seemed that something very bad had happened.

In the main hall of the palace, everyone sat down, Liu Hou and Guan Gong and Zhuge Liang exchanged a few words, and then asked: "Prime Minister, this palace has been running all the way from Lingnan, the mountains are high and the road is far away, the news is blocked, and I don't know what happened in Chengdu." On the way, I received a holy decree, saying that the palace was appointed as the pastor of Jiaozhou, and that the palace should be on standby in Lingnan and that it was not allowed to go north to rescue Jingzhou.

Therefore, we guess that something big must have happened in Chengdu, but we don't understand what is more important than the second uncle being besieged by heavy troops for half a year. At that time, we had already captured Changsha and were only one step away from Jingzhou, so after weighing the gains and losses, we still continued to go north and rushed to Jingzhou to meet the second uncle and the prime minister.

Jingzhou and Chengdu traffic is constant, the prime minister should be able to contact Chengdu often in Jingzhou, please tell me, what happened in Chengdu? ”

Liu Hou did not say the words of his detention of Qincha and disobedience to the holy decree, but only euphemistically explained the reason for not complying with the holy decree and continuing to go north, and postponed the time of receiving the holy decree until Changsha had already been captured, so that if this holy decree was really Liu Bei's intention, it would be lighter to be held accountable in the future.

Hearing this, Guan Gongtong's face turned pale, and Zhuge Liang also looked stunned. Zhuge Liang wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and said: "His Royal Highness the Prince, please mourn, I received a holy decree from Chengdu a few days ago, saying that Your Majesty is seriously ill, Zen is located in the prince's house, and the new emperor has ascended the throne 20 days ago. ”

"What!" Although he was mentally prepared, Liu Hou still couldn't believe his ears, "How can this be?" ”

Now it seems that the situation is not so simple, the prince said that when he was in Changsha, he received the holy decree, and this holy decree traveled to Nanzhong, Lingnan, Guiyang and then to Changsha, which took a long time, so this holy decree was issued at least three months ago. In this way, the accident in Chengdu happened at least three or four months ago.

That was not long after Liang had just left Chengdu. Before Liang left, His Majesty was in good health, eating normally, and there was no sign of illness. ”

"Humph! If I knew who murdered my eldest brother, I would swear to break him into pieces. At this time, Guan Gong, who was on the side, roared, and then tears rained down, looking at his eyes as red as his face, it seemed that he had shed tears for his sworn brother during this time.

"Second uncle, prime minister, you mean to say that the father is ......"

"Yes, we suspect that His Majesty may have been murdered, and now listening to you say this, it is even more confirmed that this matter has been planned for a long time, and it may have happened not long after the minister left Chengdu.

It is impossible for His Majesty to issue a decree to let you stay in Lingnan. Liang also repeatedly discussed with His Majesty before leaving, and the greatest hope for rescuing Jingzhou lies in you, the prince. He will only issue a holy decree urging you to go north, and will definitely not let you stand by in Lingnan, let alone make you the pastor of Jiaozhou.

Now it seems that things are far from being so simple, this time Wei and Wu poured their countries to attack, which is very strange in itself, and hundreds of thousands of troops from the two countries have besieged Jingzhou for more than half a year, which is even more bizarre. It seems that he deliberately wants to leave Chengdu. Liang has a feeling that he has fallen for someone's tricks.

However, it is impossible to think about it, Wei and Wu took great pains to dispatch hundreds of thousands of troops, what was it for? Is it to change a prince and an emperor for Shu? What's in it for them? ”

When Liu Hou and Guo Youzhi heard this, they glanced at each other and exchanged glances, it seemed that Zhuge Liang's judgment was similar to the result they had discussed before. In the end, Liu Hou said: "Alas, Mr. Guo, let's show the prime minister's confession." ”

Note 1: Iraq does not have an atomic bomb, but it is said that before attacking Iraq, the US army did launch an information war first, destroying Iraq's command system, so that Iraq had a large army but could not organize effective resistance.

Note 2: During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were tens of millions of people in the country, and during the Three Kingdoms period, there may have only a few million people left in the country. One can imagine how many people died in the war. Fighting to the back, all three countries have small populations and smaller armies. Especially in Shu, it is said that Zhuge Liang's army did not exceed 50,000 people each time he went out of Qishan. In order to create a scene of Hongdae, this book has made appropriate exaggerations, and hundreds of thousands of horses are dispatched at every turn, so please do not obsess over the number of troops for readers who are familiar with history.