"Open the door!" Outside the dock fort of the Yangxia Xie clan, there were a few people wrapped in turbans and leading horses covered with linen.

They shouted loudly, and claimed that they were ordered by Lu Zhijun of Xiang County to travel back and forth to the counties, and orders were given.

After checking the handwriting and seals on the letters, the generals invited them in.

Xie Pei, who was teaching students at home, went to the main hall to greet her.

"Chen Tonggen, a member of the Hou Mansion, has seen Duke Xie." Chen Tonggen bowed and said.

"Who are you from the Long Sword Army, Governor Chen?" Xie Pei glanced at him and asked.

"Brother."

Xie Qi nodded, and then asked, "What did the envoy send you for?" ”

"Let the king have a word, people take the grain as their life, and now the locusts infest the grain are harming people's lives." Chen Tonggen said: "Food is expensive, and you should take protecting food and the people as your top priority, and you must not be an enemy." If there is a offender, Chen Hou will be held accountable on the day he returns. The He family is shattered, Yin Jian is not far away, and you should think about it carefully. ”

After listening to this, Xie Qi was silent for a long time.

Chen Tonggen didn't urge, he left after conveying the order, he was still in a hurry to go to the next house, and he didn't have time to talk to them.

Xie Pei stood quietly at the door of the hall, smiled bitterly after a long time, and said to himself: "Lu Zidao is not polite, but he has the capital. Locust plagues are everywhere, people are suffering, and if you want food, you will die, who can hand it over quickly? ”

After speaking, he shook his head, and his heart was full of sorrow.

Since the beginning of this year, his mood has been very heavy.

On the one hand, they felt the gradual collapse of the order in the north, and the energy of the scholars began to fade. At the time of this great change, food and military strength became more important, the importance of fame, official position, and family rank began to decrease, and a large group of people began to rise.

Shao Xun is just one of the representatives.

Didn't his men rise? Twenty or thirty years ago, they would never have thought of becoming an official in their lives. You don't even have to go so far, just look at how difficult it was for Shao Xun to become an official six or seven years ago.

If he doesn't make a great contribution to capturing Sima Yi in the palace, the filial piety of Donghai County will definitely not be his turn.

But what about now? Tian Shefu, military households, pig killers and even thieves have all won the office, and they are simply crowned by monkeys.

On the other hand, Xie Pei's confidence was severely damaged by the years of wars and disasters in the north, and there were many scholars who held the same view as him. Between the correspondence, Xie Pei saw too many discouragements and disappointments, and the number of people who wanted to cross south surged.

No one doesn't like to live in a stable environment.

Luoyang was besieged twice, the war lasted for three days, and the drought locusts alternated, whoever in the north likes to stay, anyway, I won't stay - this is the idea of many people.

Xie Qi was also a little moved.

The elder brother Xie Kun has already arrived in Jianye, found a position in the shogunate of King Langya, and initially settled down.

He brought over more than 3,000 children, relatives, servants and maids, tribesmen, and villagers, and was placed in the Jingkou area, and heard that they would be moved to other counties in the future, and in short, they would be given a piece of land to build a manor.

As for the people, I heard that King Langya tried to set up Qiao County and Qiao County to settle down, and did not interfere with the locals in Jiangnan.

Anyway, the south is barren and there is a lot of open space, so it is not difficult to settle it at all, as long as you are willing to open up the wasteland.

"A leaf falls and you know the autumn ......" After Xie Qi said this, he shook his head and sighed and left.

He also had to educate and teach his students—the children of the scholars, of course.

If you go to the south in the future, these children of the scholar clan who have the friendship of teachers and students will be a great help to the Xie family.

******

Just when Lu Zhi, the assassin of Yuzhou, sent a large number of messengers to the counties to convey the order of Jianbi Qingye, the southern part of Chenliu County, the western part of Liang State, the northern part of Chen County, and even the northwest of Yingchuan, fierce battles had already begun.

After suffering a loss, Peach Leopard regrouped and defeated the begging army in Suiyang.

The beggar army retreated, and the peach leopard attacked the county town of Liangguo, and went down in three days, burning and looting on a large scale.

Sima Xi, the king of Liang, was in Luoyang, but his fief was ruined - the former king of Liang, Sima Wei (Rong), died in the first year of Tai'an (302), without children, Sima Xi, the grandson of Sima Ling, the king of Langya, and the son of Sima Xi, the king of Wuling, succeeded to the throne and inherited the fief of more than 5,300 households.

Kui'an patrolled in Yangxia and Fugou.

First, the cavalry was sent to the walls of each fort to send a message, ordering them to offer grain and grass, but no one answered.

So he sent the infantry to break through several earthen enclosures and small barriers, but the gains were extremely limited, and they turned to attack the dock fort established by the big and powerful people, and in a few days, they lost more than 1,000 soldiers and horses.

When he saw the soldiers secretly hiding the corpses of the dead on both sides, his mentality collapsed......

On May 20, Zhixiong besieged Tran Liuwei County and broke the city in one day, but when besieging the Shi clan and Haoqiangwu Fort led by the Ruan clan in the countryside of Wei Clan, he lost his troops and lost his generals.

After a few days, only two barriers were broken, and 25,000 pieces of grain were obtained, which was enough for them to have food for a few days.

In desperation, he could only slaughter all the men, women and children who had broken through the fortress wall to make dried meat.

And their behavior naturally made the people of the other fortresses more united, desperately guarding the palace, and they refused to compromise no matter what.

Things seem to be slowly changing.

On the 25th, the army arrived at the border of Yanling County, and the number of locusts at this time had decreased, but they were still overwhelming and could be seen everywhere.

The reason for the decline in locusts is that they have eaten up everything they can eat, and they either starve to death or migrate elsewhere. This is not a problem for them, who fly 150 kilometers a day, and they must eat everything they can eat before stopping.

Yu Liang stood at the head of the wall of his dock fort, staring into the distance.

He was dressed in a set of shiny bright light armor, with a bow in his hand, a knife hanging from his waist, and a spear stuck in his back, which looked majestic.

Behind him stood a hundred samurai, each armed with an iron armor, fully equipped with weapons, and high morale.

If Shao Xun sees it, he will definitely feel that the scholars are still rich, and there are a lot of good things hidden at home.

Compared with these warriors behind Yu Liang, the hundreds of parts that their family sent to Guang Chengze were definitely not elite.

The Yu family has a big business and many branches.

Some of the Yuanzhi may have a small mansion in their home, which will either be held behind closed doors, or converge into a large dock fort with relatively complete defense facilities, or simply flee.

Yu Liang and his family hid in the dock fort of Uncle Yu.

There are thousands of houses crammed up and down the fort, and it is so full that it is almost impossible to live in. As a last resort, a second trench was dug outside the dock fort, an earthen wall was erected, and the adult Ding Zhuang was sent outside, and each person was issued with a rudimentary weapon as a peripheral barrier.

"After this year, no matter how comfortable the manor is, no one will live in it, right?" The enemy had already begun to walk around outside, looking for weak points in the defense, but Yu Liang came up with such a sentence.

As soon as his cousin Yu Mi (Yu Gon's son) came up from downstairs, he heard Yu Liang's words, and immediately laughed: "The dock fort is dim and damp, narrow and cramped, who loves to live?" It is even more inconvenient to entertain guests, and over time, fame cannot be spread. ”

"Life and elegance can only choose one or the other." Yu Liang said.

Yu Yan glanced at this cousin, but he didn't expect him to change so much.

This kind of thing should be a person like him who followed his father to study everywhere when he was a teenager, built a dock fort, and worked endlessly.

It seems that after following Chen Hou for so long, Yuan Gui has learned a lot, and he is no longer the young man who only talks about scriptures and mysteries.

"The thieves are coming." Yu contempt reminded.

Yu Liang looked forward, but saw more than a thousand thieves lined up behind, driving thousands of men, women, and children to rush forward.

The arrows flew out.

After all, the Shi clan is not an official army, not as regular as them, and there are not so many bows and crossbows and arrows, so the arrows shot out are not dense.

But Rao was like this, and the thieves who rushed over still fell in large numbers, and a considerable part of them fell down while walking on their own - probably fainting from starvation.

Men, women, and children rushed to the earthen wall after consuming a wave of arrows.

Behind the earthen walls, shouts rang out to the sky, spears, broadswords, and even wooden sticks were brandished, and it was another bloody killing.

The thieves took advantage of the situation and hid themselves.

They had a bit of discipline and good equipment, and after paying a certain price for casualties, they broke through the earthen wall in just one fell swoop and scattered the Yujia Zhuangke.

A large canopy of arrows fell on the wall, and a large number of the thieves who had just been in full swing fell.

The guest leaders of Yujiazhuang took advantage of the situation and rushed out with the reserves and fought with the thieves.

Their skills were rusty and their equipment was poor, but after the locust plague, they had a strong fighting spirit, so they killed the thieves who had fallen into chaos and retreated.

Everyone knows that they are now fighting for themselves and for their families to get food to live.

There are so many people who died in the troubled times, and even those who survived were not human, and the difference between them and death was not very big.

Lao Tzu is not afraid of life, but he is also afraid of death! If you cut off a person's head today, you can get three buckets of food, and if you don't cut a few more, how can you face your parents, wives and children who are waiting to be fed when you go back?

The battle quickly heats up.

Inside and outside the earthen wall, flesh and blood flew everywhere, and corpses were everywhere.

Yu Liang subconsciously rubbed his eyes.

After the locust plague, there was no grass and thousands of miles of red land. More than 2,000 people on both sides were huddled together, fighting to the death, so that he could barely tell whether the land was the same color or was watered with blood.

"Boom......" The sound of gold sounded behind the thief army.

The morale of the guests of Yujiazhuang was greatly boosted.

Hundreds of relatively capable private soldiers rushed out of the dock fort, and led Zhuang Ke to pursue bravely, and only slowly retreated after killing a stone's throw away.

The battlefield soon returned to calm.

There are enemy troops who want to come and collect the corpses. An arrow fell on the top of the city, killing seven or eight people, and the rest of the people scattered.

Yu Liang retracted his gaze and looked into the distance.

There were dozens of large and small flags, and it seemed that there were thousands of thieves.

They are hesitating to continue to invest their forces and launch a new offensive.

This is not an easy decision to make.

The Yingchuan Shi clan is strong and strong, it may be the place with the least number of self-cultivated farmers in the whole Yuzhou, and there are not a few soil fences and small fort walls at all, all of which are large manors and big dock forts.

The manor was easier to fight, but there were also walls and ditches, and the resistance was fierce.

This locust plague seems to have greatly boosted the determination of the people of Yuzhou to resist desperately, so that their southward troops ran into walls everywhere, and every time they captured each place, a large number of good men were killed and wounded. Even if it is possible to enlist in the Latin army to replenish the battle damage, how much combat power do the new recruits have?

As for morale, it's even lower.

Perhaps, it's time to withdraw the troops, this battle shouldn't have been fought in the first place.

The general should be glad that the whole army did not go south.

Otherwise, 80,000 horsemen struggled in the locust plague, and there was not enough food to eat, and when they captured the fortress wall, they continued to bleed and their morale was low. At this time, if you encounter a surprise attack by elite soldiers who are recuperated, you will have the worry of annihilation.

On the horizon to the west of "Knock Knock Knock...... a passionate war drum sounded.

I don't know how many people came from the other side.

It is not known how effective they are.

I don't know what their morale is.

But the thieves outside the Yujiawu Fort withdrew directly, and they didn't even have the idea of fighting.

"Yuan Gui, you are the main general, you should send troops to pursue." Yu Yan reminded on the side.

Yu Liang turned his head to look at Yu Contempt, and suddenly realized.

Yu Yan lowered his voice again and said, "I heard that there are many concubines from the family in Chenhou's mansion, and they have contributed a lot. Although Wenjun's sister is a wife, she has a soft temperament and may not be able to suppress them. At this time, it's time for the people of the mother's family to contribute. ”

Yu Liang nodded and immediately ordered.

After a while, hundreds of parts with two thousand Zhuang guests shouted and chased out.

"Yuan Gui, it's best to send someone to the Xun family, the Zhong family, the Chen family, and the Yin family." Yu said contemptuously: "When the battle comes to this, the thieves should have no morale, and it will not be a problem for everyone to get together and produce 30,000 or 40,000 soldiers." The thieves are short of food, their morale is low, and they have come from afar, and the people are panicking, and I see that few of their horses can run, and there is not much risk in pursuing them at this time. After the war, Yuan Gui, you initiated this matter, and you will definitely be favored by Chen Hou. ”

"Brother has a point." Yu Liang bowed and said sincerely.

Yu Wei waved his hand and said, "It's all my own family, why do you need to do this?" ”

There are many branches of the Yingchuan Yu clan, as far as his father Yu Gon is concerned, because he is away all the year round, in recent years, he has built a dock fort in the Lin Shu Mountain in Ji County, cultivating and harvesting by himself, and he is very alienated from his hometown, and many juniors don't even know them.

But the world is so wonderful, because of Shao Xun's relationship, there are more movements between their branch and their own family, and the relationship has become closer and closer.

This is not a bad thing, Yu Mi also wants to return to his family, although his father prefers to die in the mountains.

A moment later, the people from the west were already outside the dock fort.

Yu Mi and Yu Liang looked around and saw a force of about 5,000 people.

At the forefront were more than 2,000 iron-armored warriors.

Armed with heavy swords and crossbows, they led their sackcloth-covered horses in pursuit of the thieves in the direction of their escape.

The Sword Army! The soldiers under Chen Hou's tent were strong in battle.

Yu Liang breathed a sigh of relief, this battle was stable.