Chapter 228: The Cai Clan

After listening to Sima Yi's words, Liu Hou said: "It doesn't matter, we only invite the leader to come up, and there will be no problem." ”

Seeing that the emperor said this, Sima Yi was not easy to persuade again, and it didn't take long for a middle-aged man with a dirty face and ragged clothes to be brought up. This person is very eye-catching, and he can see at a glance that Liu Hou is the main person here, he saluted Liu Hou with a fist, and said, "Thank you for the kindness of this young master, the villain is polite." ”

He was thanking Liu Hou for giving alms and giving food to the people below. Liu Hou was noncommittal, and observed the middle-aged man with fixed eyes, and found that although he was dressed in tatters, he was good-looking, with a Chinese face, two sword eyebrows inserted inverted at a forty-five-degree angle, a nose like a hanging gall, and the lower part of the face was a thick black beard, which looked rough and mighty.

Liu Hou saw that he was extraordinary, polite, and well-answered, not like ordinary people, so he couldn't help but ask curiously: "What is your name, who are you, and where do you come from?" ”

I only listened to the middle-aged man: "The villain's surname is Cai Mingban, and the people below are all the villain's family and people of the same clan, and we fled from Fancheng." ”

"Oh? I heard that the surname Cai is a big family in Xiangfan, but you are from the Cai clan? Why are you so depressed? Liu Hou asked.

"This ......" The middle-aged man hesitated?

"Oh? If it's inconvenient to say it, forget it, since you are from Fancheng, you must be familiar with the situation in Fancheng, so can you tell my son about the situation in Fancheng? ”

"The villain didn't mean to hide his son, but the villain's life experience was indeed a little embarrassing. Dare to ask Gongzi if he is a member of the Han army? The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment, and when he heard Liu Hou ask about the situation in Fancheng, his heart moved, and he asked rhetorically.

"That's right, both of us are members of the Han army, and we are looking for someone to inquire about the situation in Fancheng." Liu Hou pointed at himself, and then pointed at Sima Yidao.

"Guan Gongzi is old, not as weak as the crown, but he can play an important position in the Han army, and it is said that the little emperor of the Han Dynasty is eclectic in employing people, it seems that the rumors are really good. Since it is a Han army, the villain's life experience can be said. That's right, the villain is a member of the Xiangfan Cai clan. ”

"Oh, then, Cai Mao is your relative?" Liu Hou asked with interest.

"De Jue is just the uncle of the villain, on the eve of Chibi, because the uncle was killed by the Cao thief, my Cai clan in order to avoid being liquidated by the Cao thief, they have scattered into the people, incognito and hidden.

Over the years, Xiangfan has suffered from repeated wars, and the life of the people has become more and more unsustainable, and our people used to live in seclusion in Fancheng, but now there are 70,000 or 80,000 Cao troops stationed in Fancheng, and the people in the city have fled in all directions.

We were poor, there was no entanglement, we couldn't travel far, we originally thought of the nearest Xiangyang to take refuge in a clan brother, but unfortunately after coming to Xiangyang, we learned that the clan brother also fled early. We ran out of entanglements, and the population was large, so we had no choice but to beg on the streets, which is really ashamed, ashamed. ”

The middle-aged man said a lot of things in one round, Liu Hou understood that these people turned out to be the clansmen of the famous Cai Mao, because Cai Mao was killed by Cao Cao, they were afraid of being implicated, so they have been living a life of hiding in Tibet all these years, no wonder they will be so miserable.

The Cai family is a big family in the Xiangfan area, so this middle-aged man should have been well-educated when he was a child, so he was different from ordinary people in his behavior and conversation, but years of fugitive life still turned them into ragged beggars.

Cai Mao (the word Deqi) is indeed a character, although his fate in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is very sad, but that may not be a historical fact. His aunt was the wife of Taiwei Zhang Wen, and the eldest sister and second sister married Huang Chengyan and Liu Biao successively as step-families.

During the period of serving Liu Biao, he successively served as the Taishou of Jiangxia, Nanjun, Zhangling and other counties, and Liu Biao served as his military advisor when he was awarded the title of General Zhennan by the Han Dynasty. After Liu Biao died of illness, he supported his second son Liu Cong to succeed him.

In 208 A.D., when Cao Cao waved his army into Jingzhou, he and Kuai Yue jointly forced Liu Cong to surrender to Cao Cao, and then entered Cao Cao's command, successively served as Zhonglang, Sima, and Changshui Lieutenant, and was knighted as the Marquis of Hanyang Pavilion.

Judging from this resume, this person is not a simple person, and those who can be military advisors are at least a wise man. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, after he descended to Cao, he was named the governor of the Zhennan Hou Water Army because of his deep understanding of the method of cultivating and training the water army, which was deeply jealous of Zhou Yu. The person who can make Zhou Yu jealous, it is conceivable that there must be some means.

Later, Zhou Yu set up a counter-plot, that is, the story of Jiang Gan's book theft mentioned earlier, Zhou Yu used Jiang Gan, who went to Eastern Wu to spy on the military situation, and presented Cao Cao with a letter of Cai Mao and Zhang Yun's conspiracy and rebellion, Cao Cao did not distinguish between its authenticity and falsehood for a while, and killed Cai Mao and Zhang Yun.

Cao Cao later learned that he had been tricked, but it was too late. Some later generations believed that Cai Mao and Zhang Yun were mistakenly killed by Cao Cao, leaving them without a general who was good at commanding the naval army, and at the same time reducing the loyalty of the Jingzhou army, which was one of the reasons for Cao Cao's defeat in the Battle of Red Cliffs.

"Oh? It turned out to be a famous family, disrespectful, disrespectful. Liu Houdao, "You have been incognito for so long, why are you telling the truth now?" ”

"Returning to Gongzi, the villain and the clansmen have been living in the territory of Wei before, and they are afraid of being poisoned by Cao thieves, so they have never dared to show their true identities. Now that the Han Dynasty has recovered Xiangyang, Fancheng will inevitably be recovered in the near future, so we no longer need to be afraid of the persecution of Cao thieves, and we no longer need to be incognito. The villain was willing to lead the clan to join the Han Dynasty, and the son was a kind-hearted person at first glance, and asked the prince to introduce the civil affairs officer of Xiangyang on his behalf to accept the return of the Cai family. ”

Liu Hou thought to himself, this person is really good at talking, seeing that I am kind-hearted and have a certain status in the Han army, he beat snakes and sticks, and wants me to help them enter the household registration. The problem is that these people are no longer the wealthy and well-established Cai family, but all of them have become beggars who have nothing, am I really here as a shelter?

"Oh, how many people are there in your Cai clan? Where are they now? What is the situation? Liu Hou asked quietly.

"Hui Gongzi, the villain estimates that there may be tens of thousands of people in the Cai clan now, most of them are scattered in the Xiangfan area, and a few are scattered in Zhangling, Nanyang, Nanjun and other places. The villains are not patriarchs, so the exact number and their situation are unknown.

However, the villain thinks that now that the army is in chaos, and many of the clansmen have been separated for a long time, and they are all hidden, I am afraid that even the patriarch will not be able to grasp the specific situation. ”

When Liu Hougang heard that there were tens of thousands of people, he was taken aback, it was not easy to settle tens of thousands of beggars, and if it was tens of thousands of young people, it would be better to say, it was a big deal to form another construction corps and let them engage in production and labor, and if there was production labor, they would not be afraid of starving to death.

But this is a normal population, that is to say, there are young and strong and old and weak women and children, and it is conceivable that there must be a large proportion of old and weak women and children, the reason is very simple, because of the perennial warlord scuffle, many young and strong people have been arrested, and the rest are mainly old and weak women and children.

Later, I was relieved to hear that these people were scattered all over the place and it was not easy to contact. Playing the card of benevolence and virtue by himself, when he sees the poor people, he naturally wants to help, but where does the money and food come from to help them?

Although he is the king of a country, but in this era, the productivity is low, the working population is small, and he has to raise countless armies, and he has to engage in research and development of new technologies.