Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang discovered and attracted Jingzhou talents on the Jiangxia County side as planned, and spread Liu Bei's name of benevolence and courtesy.

On the one hand, it focuses on the exploration and mining of Daye iron ore, the enhancement of iron smelting and armaments, and the improvement of some forging processes by the way.

More than a month passed in a flash, and the time soon came to the fourth year of Jian'an. Everything is going well and everything is in order.

Before officially starting to attract talents in Jingzhou, Liu Bei thought that this work would be difficult to promote.

Because what he wants to attract, after all, is the talent in the occupied area of Liu Biao. And if he can't swagger to Liu Biao's territory to openly promote virtue and politics, he will definitely be obstructed by Liu Biao.

But after actually doing it, Liu Bei soon found that things were not so complicated, the two sides were only separated by the Yangtze River and the Han River, and the bordering border was hundreds of miles long.

Wherever a small fishing boat is sent to cross the river or the Han River, it can go deep into the area controlled by Liu Biao.

In previous years, Liu Biao was able to seal the infiltration of the border between Jing and Yang, mainly relying on Huang Zu to set up a card check in Exian and Yi County, the Yangtze River passes. This place has the remnants of Dabie Mountain in the north of Yi County, and there is the Mugu Mountain in the east of Exian County in the south.

During the Huangzu period, water villages were set up on both sides of the river, and the Yangtze River channel was cut off. In history, when Gan Ning wanted to vote for Yangzhou, he was stuck by this pass for several years. In the end, it was Su Fei who helped him open the back door and persuaded Huang Zu to appoint Gan Ning as the county magistrate, that is, Gan Ning himself became the manager of the north bank of the river defense line, so that the guards successfully escaped.

Therefore, in this life, after Huang Zu was destroyed and the pass of Exian County was broken through by Liu Beijun, Liu Bei wanted to penetrate Liu Biao's core hinterland, which was already as easy as a hand, and Liu Biao's Jianghan defense line leaked like a sieve.

And the two sides did not officially tear their faces, even if Liu Biao was aware, he did not dare to stop it directly, lest he create an incident and cause the two sides to go to war, so he could only turn a blind eye and secretly defend -

After all, the current Liu Biao only relies on Cai Mao, Zhang Yunwen, Wenpin and the Kuai family brothers, and he can't even make absolute autonomy in the personnel arrangements of the four counties of Jingnan, so where does he have the courage to start a war with Liu Bei.

Although both sides are the lords of a state, the difference in control between the lord of a state that is really defeated by force and the lord of a state who rides into the state alone is still too big.

From this point of view, Liu Biao is much worse than Yuan Shao in terms of power. Yuan Shao also rode into the state alone, but soon took advantage of the conflict with Gongsun Zan to completely control the military, political, human and financial powers in the state, and grasped them all.

Liu Biao was powerless to stop it, but he vaguely felt that in Xiangyang, Jiangling and other places, more and more people said good things about Liu Bei in the past month or two.

There were also many exiled northern soldiers who had come to Nanjun for several years and could not be used, but suddenly quieted down, and then they could not hear from them.

During the whole process, even Liu Biao and Zhuge Liang faintly felt a trace of unbelievability, a little too smooth, but maybe this is Liu Bei's specialty.

As long as Liu Bei is given a chance to publicize and show himself, he can always spontaneously recruit a steady stream of talents to vote.

With the success of the first battle of talent absorption and the time is ripe, Liu Bei decided to be ruthless.

So he discussed it with Zhuge Liang and decided to let Pang Tong help him go deep into Xiangyang by water to do a big thing before Pang Tong returned to Yuzhang to take office.

Considering that Pang Tong's identity may be a little sensitive, even if it is "going home to visit relatives", it is easy to be noticed by Liu Biao. So I had to take Zhuge Liang's father-in-law Huang Chengyan with him, and Pang Tong was temporarily appointed as Huang Chengyan's entourage in a low-key manner.

Huang Chengyan and Liu Biao are brothers-in-law, even if his son-in-law has already become Jiangxia Taishou with Liu Bei, it is absolutely impossible for Huang Chengyan to be embarrassed by Liu Biao when he returns to Xiangyang.

Huang Chengyan also knew this, so he did not shirk after being idle in Yangzhou for two years, and just took the opportunity to go back to his hometown in Jingzhou to have a look, visit his old friends by the way, and cover Pang Tong.

Liu Bei immediately sent a new keel clipper to Huang Chengyan and Pang Tong, as well as elite guards and sailors, and also brought a lot of property for gifts.

The boats are in the style of ordinary civilian ships, and there are no defensive facilities such as shipbuilding battlements, so as not to irritate Liu Biao's sailors when sailing on the Han River. But there are also a lot of sophisticated bows and crossbows, which are enough for self-defense, and the new ships built by the Zhuge family have an absolute advantage in speed, and they can escape by speed when they are intercepted by water invaders.

……

On the eighth day of the lunar month, after just two days of sailing, Huang Chengyan and Pang Tong returned to the area of Deng County, west of Xiangyang County.

The Huang family and the Pang family have lived in this area for many years and have quite a manor. Pang Tong's uncle, Pang Degong, is still living in seclusion on Lumen Mountain in the east of Deng County, taking Zhuang Ke to occupy the mountain.

Sima Hui, who is as famous as Pang Degong, also has a manor nearby. Only the manor of the Huang family, after Huang Chengyan and Huang Yueying's father and daughter moved away, was almost completely handed over to the Huang family's side clan and the villager to take care of casually, and Huang Chengyan didn't bother to come back to collect rent in the past two years, so he regarded it as reducing the burden on the villager.

As soon as the big ship docked at the wharf on the south bank of Hanshui outside Deng County, it was immediately noticed by the merchants and bankers of the surrounding clans.

The new ship built with the shipbuilding technique of the Zhuge family is more slender than the traditional ship without keel. Basically, it can be lengthened from the length and width ratio of the traditional ship to five or six to one, and this gap is still obvious.

In order to ensure that the sails have the same or even greater frontal area, the mast has to be fitted with transverse sail support booms, which can sometimes be wider than the hull, in order to ensure that the sails have the same or even larger windward area of the same tonnage.

In the traditional Chinese sailing boats, because the Chinese have used hard sailboats since ancient times, not Western-style canvas soft sails, so there is no need for transverse booms, this new structure and exaggerated sail width are naturally extremely conspicuous and eye-catching.

Jingzhou Business Travel had never seen such a ship before, and as soon as they saw it, they stared at it.

After a while, the ship's guards went ashore first to set up a board and escorted Huang Chengyan and Pang Tong ashore.

Because he did not notify the Huang family's guests in advance to greet him, and Huangjiazhuang had its own carriage and horses, Huang Chengyan did not bring it with the boat this time, and planned to walk back home with a wooden stick as a car first, and then go to visit old friends everywhere after taking the carriage and horses.

As a result, because the boat he was on was too conspicuous, he didn't get out of half a mile before he leaked the wind and was watched.

"It's Pang Degong's nephew who has returned! Huang Gong and Pang Gongzi are back! ”

In this era, there are very few businessmen who go around doing business without any background, so most of the local businessmen are relatives of the side branches of the Huang family, the Cai family, and the Pang family, and select the children of the same clan who are not good at reading but know a little arithmetic to do business.

Everyone's first reaction was to shout out Pang Tong's identity first, because his appearance was too conspicuous and unforgettable. Only then did I notice Huang Chengyan.

The shouts came and went, and after a while, they returned to the Huang family and the Sima family's Zhuangzi. On the contrary, the Pang family's Zhuangzi is a little farther away, on Lumen Mountain, and it can't be passed on for a while.

Before Huang Chengyan walked two or three miles, there were Huangjiazhuang guests who were in a car to greet him.

Huang Chengyan was still close to the people, and instructed his family to use oxen and donkey carts to load goods. He picked three donkeys by himself and rode one with Pang Tongren to settle down first. Even Meng Jian, who was united with Pang this time, also shared a donkey.

"Be careful! Handle with care! This is filled with celadon from Yuzhang County, and it will be broken if it falls hard! After Huang Chengyan got on the donkey, he saw that the hands and feet of the family who helped to carry the goods were too heavy, and he immediately stopped talking.

When he came back this time, he didn't bring anything like gold, silver, jewelry, or anything like that. Because he knew that Pang Degong and Sima Hui were all high-ranking people, and the young talents who studied with them were not greedy for money.

Therefore, I just brought some elegant things prepared by Zhuge Liang to give to relatives and friends. There are Jingdezhen celadon in Poyang County, as well as the new method of frying Lushan clouds and mist produced by Chaisang, plus a batch of folding fans, cranes and other clothing products produced by Zhuge Family, the materials are not expensive, just take a strange new elegance.

In addition, the Han Confucian civil and military families are not separated, and there is a lot of demand for swords, and the Zhuge brothers came up with the steel filling method at the beginning of the year, when most of the steel filling was used to produce steel armor, and later with the victory of Huang Zu, there was not so much demand for iron armor, and the famous craftsman Pu Yuan also had to spare himself to ponder the new use of steel filling.

Pu Sheng and Pu Yuan's uncle and nephew were originally born in building weapons and have been in this business for many years. After being idle, my first reaction was naturally to think of using steel to build a sword blade. Later, Zhuge Jin also inspected the point and dialed them once or twice.

Historically, Pu Yuan was known for his mastery of the quenching process, but without theoretical intervention, he would not have been able to reach that height until more than ten years later, when his craft was perfected.

Now with Zhuge Jin's point, Zhuge Jin knows the physical and chemical principles behind the quenching process, and under the combination of theory and practice, Pu Yuan has taken a lot of detours when doing quenching experiments, and has also understood some other process principles of metal surface hardening.

So this time, Huang Chengyan came to Jingzhou and brought a batch of precious gifts, that is, dozens of swords and swords, which can be given away and worn. Definitely a good thing for people with lofty ideals to want.

The Huang family's Zhuang guests divided the gifts on the ship into seven or eight ox carts and donkey carts, and dragged them back to Huangjiazhuang with heavy rut prints.

Huang Chengyan, Pang Tong, and Meng Jiancai just took a break for a while, took a simple bite in the village, and coped with lunch. After a while, I heard that an old friend came to visit.

Pang Tong and Meng Jian, as juniors, hurriedly went out to greet them, and as soon as they walked to the gate of the village, they saw an old man with a quinoa cane with a childish face, bringing a few young people to the door.

Pang Tong and Meng Jian hurriedly bowed to their disciples, and it turned out that the old man with the quinoa staff was Sima Hui.

"I heard that you have been away for two years, and you have made quite a lot of achievements, congratulations. But in these troubled times, we should not blindly focus on fame and fortune, and gentlemen should do something and not do something. Sima Hui posed as a senior, and he still had to say a few words.

Pang Tong is still as rebellious as when he was a teenager: "What Mr. said, how dare you forget it." We have been following the general for more than two years, and we have always walked straight on the right path, and we dare not forget our roots in the slightest. The upper is helpful to Anbang, and the lower is worthy of the Li people. ”

Sima Hui nodded: "The soldiers are not tired of deceit, and the old man is not accused of some tricks, I heard that you are governing the people in Yuzhang, but you really make the people on one side safe, and you deserve it."

Let's get to know each other, these people can be regarded as the junior disciples of Kong Ming and Gongwei, and they are the new ones who came to Xiangyang to study in the past three years after Kong Ming left. This is Xiang Lang of this county, this is Yingchuan Shan Fu, Shi Tao, this is Zitong Yin Mo, Li Ren. ”

When Pang Tong and Meng Jian heard this, they immediately bowed to a few people, and the five of them hurriedly returned the salute, which can be regarded as acquaintance.