Chapter 117: Wei's Response

It is said that Liu Hou led the Northern Expeditionary army down the river to Jingzhou. Guan Gong was very happy with Liu Hou's arrival, and he entertained the emperor and son-in-law with a large banquet. Not long after Zhao Yun arrived in Jingzhou, Guan Cheng took care of him and washed the dust together.

During the banquet, Guan Gong asked him to lead his troops north to attack Wei and avenge the previous one-arrow revenge. Of course Liu Hou didn't want to, Guan Gong was so old, and he let him go to the battlefield to fight, in case something went wrong, how could he be worthy of his sworn brother, his dead ghost father.

"Second uncle, you are my elder, the elder has something, and it is only natural for the junior to obey him. The little nephew going to help you avenge is no different from you going to avenge in person, so it's better to trouble the second uncle to help the little nephew sit in Jingzhou and guard against those sinister villains in Dongwu. Liu Hou couldn't be called lonely in front of Guan Gong, and directly called himself "I", not "I".

"Adou, although you can help your uncle kill those people, my uncle is also very happy, but it is not as happy as killing the enemy with your own hands." Guan Gong was not polite to Liu Hou, and called him by his nickname as before.

"Second uncle, if you want to talk about enemies, your biggest enemies are not those people in Wei, but the people of Eastern Wu, Lu Xun and Sun Quan. If it weren't for their reneging on the covenant and their despicable and shameless sneak attack on Jingzhou, you wouldn't have ended up like that. Therefore, you should sit in Jingzhou and be careful of being taken advantage of by those despicable villains. ”

Liu Hou's words are not untargeted, nor is it an overreaction, because with the Shu army's Northern Expedition gathering in Jingzhou, the Eastern Wu people also stationed 150,000 troops in Xiakou, and there are countless warships patrolling day and night on the Yangtze River, obviously they are also very nervous about the actions of the Shu army, and they are afraid that the Shu army will play a drama of attacking the east and the west, and suddenly change the route to attack Wu.

Prevention, suspicion, and fear of being attacked are all mutual, Dongwu is worried about being attacked by the Shu army, and the Shu army is not the same worried about being copied by Dongwu during the Northern Expedition. Therefore, these two countries claim to be an alliance, but in fact, there is no trust in each other at all, everyone is guarding against each other, and there is tension on the border all day long.

"Humph! Those despicable villains, second uncle, I will make them look good sooner or later. "It's fair.

"Yes, second uncle, don't worry, when I clean up the Wei State and free my hands, I will definitely let you personally go to the Dongwu people to take revenge. Now, please bear with my uncle. ”

"Okay, Adou, you have to talk about it, you can't stop the second uncle next time."

"Hehe, don't worry, you have no jokes."

In fact, in addition to being too old, having too many old problems, and not being in good physical condition, there is another reason why Liu Hou doesn't want Guan Gong to go into battle, that is, his familiarity with the firearms unit is not very high. A veteran like Guan Gong has superb martial arts, and he has fought all his life, relying on his own superb martial arts.

They are far less trusting of firearms than they are in their own martial arts, and naturally their affinity for firearms is not so high. Attitude determines behavior, and also determines success or failure, for a person who likes the Qinglong Yanyue Knife more than he likes fire # gun # cannon # how could Liu Hou let him command the firearms troops to fight.

On the contrary, Zhao Yun has been by Liu Hou's side all the year round, so that he is very familiar with both cold weapon combat and hot # soldier # weapon combat, as the chief instructor of the Hong Army, his attainments in both combat methods can be called grandmaster-level. After so many years of experience in the Hong army, Zhao Yun can be said to have surpassed Guan Gong in an all-round way.

Even if it is purely about martial arts, Guan Gong was too seriously injured in the last Northern Expedition, and the old illness Yan zhòng affected his physical fitness, and the wound would still be painful whenever the weather changed, and he was tortured by these injuries, not only did his martial arts not improve in recent years, but there were signs of regression.

And Zhao Yun has never suffered any injuries in his life, because of the physical training effect of the Five Birds Opera, although he is getting older, his physical fitness and physique are maintained very well.

After combining the ideas of Tai Chi, his marksmanship has advanced to another level. His current marksmanship is as shocking as a dragon, and he is extremely fluctuating, the key is that he has understood the use of internal strength, and he can sweep out a shot full of strength, even if he can't catch the vulture bone that is known for brute strength.

Of course, even if Guan Gong's martial arts have regressed a little, in the current Liu Hou's Hong army, except for Zhao Yun, he has not been able to find another person who is his opponent. If he simply wants to find a super thug, he can still do it, Liu Houda can leave Zhao Yun to guard Jingzhou, and take him north to attack Cao instead.

However, the Hong Army's current combat methods have almost completely changed, and the role of individual bravery is becoming less and less, so Liu Hou now does not need a superhero, but a general who can flexibly use the tactics of firearms troops. In this regard, even Guan Xing, the son of Guan Gong, is stronger than him.

With the application of new weapons, the superheroes of the past are destined to be eliminated by the trend, swept into the pile of old papers, and turned into historical symbols one by one. The old-style generals of Shu are not bad, they are eliminated and waiting for their fate is just retirement, while the generals of Wei and Wu are much more miserable, if they can't keep up with the development of the historical trend, what awaits them will be broken bones.

On the first day of the fifth month of the first year of Jianxing (224 AD), Liu Hou bid farewell to Guan Gong and set off from Jingzhou to the north to attack Cao. From north to south, like five fingers in the palm of a hand, the Fifth Route Army surrounded the Northern Expedition army that grabbed Liu Hou from all directions.

In this Northern Expedition, Liu Hou never concealed his intentions and did not do any secrecy work, especially in the process of negotiating with the Eastern Wu people, he mentioned many times that he wanted to go north to Cao Wei, therefore, the Wei spies had already received the news that Shu Han was going to go on the Northern Expedition, and when the Shu army was in full swing to do pre-war mobilization, Wei had already begun pre-war preparations.

Not long ago, the Wei court also launched a heated debate on the Northern Expedition of the Shu Army. This court meeting was to discuss the strategy to deal with the Northern Expedition of Shu, and the courtiers put forward various opinions. Among them, there were those who were in favor of playing the diplomatic card, and Jian Yì sent people to lobby Sun Quan with Eastern Wu to let Eastern Wu form an alliance with Wei to jointly fight against Shu.

However, with the signing of the alliance between Shu and Eastern Wu and the publication of a document to jointly defeat Cao, this voice gradually became quieter.

There are conservatives, who rely on the big city and the big pass to hold out, and use these strong walls to constantly consume the attack momentum of the Shu army. To everyone's surprise, this conservative opinion was put forward by Sima Yi, who is known as cunning as a fox.

In fact, in terms of the current strength of Wei and Shu, this opinion is extremely correct, if the Wei army stationed a large army in each city, relying on the defense of the fortified city, although the Shu army can also break through these cities, but one by one the cities will take a long time, and the loss of the army is relatively large, and after occupying the city, it will have to divide the troops to guard.

In this way, as more and more cities are breached, the Shu army's already not very large army will soon be almost consumed, and at that time, the Shu army will have to stop attacking forward and turn to a temporary truce to digest and consolidate the newly occupied territory.

In this way, in this Northern Expedition, Shu can only occupy a few cities, and it cannot achieve the goal of destroying the country, so such a Northern Expedition cannot be regarded as too successful. And Wei has a large number of troops, they can counterattack these cities at any time, and it is not certain whether Shu can occupy these cities at that time.

It's a pity that there are only a few people who agree with this opinion, and there is only Sima Yi who has a weighty figure, Jia Xu, Cheng Yu and other strategists have died in the past two years, otherwise they will definitely not see this in their eyes.

However, there was widespread opposition to this practice in the Wei court. From Emperor Cao Pi to the ministers, they are still immersed in the glorious historical memory that Wei is the first military power in the Three Kingdoms.

Even Cao Pi, who has always attached importance to Sima Yi's opinion, did not support his opinion this time. This strategy of defensive counterattack had no market in Wei, and the last opinion: taking the initiative to meet the enemy was approved by most people.

Taiwei Zhong Xuan, Situ # Hua Xin, and Sikong Wang Lang are all supporters of this opinion, these three people are the three dukes of Wei, and they are the three largest ministers of Wei, and Cao Pi must certainly pay attention to their opinions.

As a result, the court quickly made a resolution and decided to send a large army south to meet the Shu army. Naturally, we moved on to the next issue, which was who to send in command and how many troops to send to meet the enemy.

When Cao Pi asked this question, the ministers looked at each other, this period, it was the time when Cao Wei's talents were not in flux, and the famous generals of Cao Cao's period were almost dead, especially in the past three or five years, a group of famous generals and strategists died one after another in this period.

The once prominent "five good generals": former general Zhang Liao, right general Le Jin, left general Yu Ban, general Zhang He and right general Xu Huang of the expedition to the west, now only Zhang He is dead.

Zhang Liao and Le Jin died of illness two or three years ago, and were captured by Guan Gong when the Seventh Army was flooded in the year of the ban, and later released back, and died of depression within a year.

Originally, there was a Xu Huang, when Liu Hou went to Jingzhou to rescue Guan Gong for the first time, this guy wanted to trick Liu Hou into going head-to-head with him, but Liu Hou was shot five times with a left # rother # gun, and he died extremely aggrieved.

Therefore, now there is only one Zhang He left in the fruit of the five good generals, but he is now leading the troops to confront Zhang Fei and Pang Tong in Hanzhong, and he can't get out.

There are few people in the Cao clan left, Cao Ren died two years ago, and it is estimated that only Cao Hong can still take on the big responsibility. However, although Cao Hong's family is rich, his character is very stingy, Cao Pi borrowed money from him when he was young, but he refused to borrow, so Cao Pi has always held a grudge against him.

Now that Cao Pi is the emperor, he is willing to be reused there, so Cao Hong is now at home, and he didn't even come to participate in such an important court meeting, of course, no one will think of letting him lead troops to fight at this time.

Xiahou Yuan, Xiahou Chun and other Xiahou brothers have also passed away in the past few years, and the current Wei State is far less talented than when Cao Cao was there. It can be said that in the entire Wei State now, Sima Yi is the most capable of leading troops to fight, and Sima Yi is almost deservedly the best candidate to lead troops to meet the Shu army.