Brother Zhuge made a plan and ordered the soldiers to be rewarded and have a good rest that night.
Take out the stock of wine and meat left by the rebel army and give the army extra food.
Zhuge Jin also did not forget to immediately reward those soldiers who abandoned the dark side and surrendered to the bright side, so he rewarded the brothers Li Yi and Li Wu, the Marquis of Qujun, who surrendered, with several ingots of horseshoe gold.
Huanxian promoted Li Yi to Army Sima and made him responsible for leading all 1,200 people in Pengze County to surrender. He did not break up their old troops or play with the control of others.
This is not the art of war. Normally, the control of the troops should be more cautious.
After Zhuge Liang heard about his eldest brother's decision, he also complained privately and gave a few reminders, saying, "These surrendered troops will be put into new attacks soon. If they are not broken up, I am afraid that the fighting spirit will not be firm in times of crisis." However, he did not force it. , just say that.
Because Zhuge Liang also knew that once the reward order was issued and then withdrawn, it would definitely arouse greater backlash and distrust.
He just expressed euphemistically that he hoped that his eldest brother would be more comprehensive in terms of rewards and punishments in the future.
Regarding his brother's proposal, Zhuge Jin also took the attitude of "I cannot accept it this time, but I still encourage you to propose it" and patiently explained:
"It's not that I don't know the art of war, but my second brother, you haven't been in contact with our army for a long time, and you don't understand the composition of our army yet - don't look at the fact that Duke Xuande only gave us four thousand reinforcements, and half of them are with Yun Chang, but these They are all elite soldiers, Danyang soldiers who have been slowly accumulated since Tao Qian was in charge of Xuzhou many years ago.
Most of Danyang's soldiers were from Shanyue, and those county soldiers who were coerced by Zuo Rong were mostly local Han farmers in Guangling and Danyang. Scattering the county soldiers who were farmers into the Danyang soldiers would inevitably cause more trouble due to incompatibility of customs. It would be better to show trust and allow Li Yi to continue to lead the old army.
Moreover, it’s not that I didn’t pay attention to the win-win control. I’ve already learned about it from the sidelines. It seems that Li Yi had family members in Guangling County back then. Although I don’t know if they are still alive now, there must be some family members.
I just temporarily adjusted and promoted a few demobilized officers, all of whom had concerns in Guangling. But Guangling is now in a state of decline under the rule of Xuande Gong.
In the past two days, I have arranged for some Danyang Army officers who have lived in Guangling for a long time and are familiar with the current local conditions to make friends with these officers who are concerned about Guangling. I will introduce more about the current situation in Guangling, which will surely win over the morale of the army in a subtle way. "
After Zhuge Liang listened, he nodded in admiration.
It turns out that it's not that the eldest brother doesn't know the art of war, but that the eldest brother understands the actual situation of this army better than he does and is well-targeted.
Of course, Zhuge Liang is not bad either. He didn't expect this. It was not a problem of ability. He just saw his eldest brother's army today and didn't have time to understand the inside story.
However, this also buried another piece of experience, or "notes" in Zhuge Liang's mind:
In the future, when leading troops, you must try to understand all aspects of the army in detail, such as the soldiers' place of origin, background composition, and other factors, so that you can manage the army in a targeted manner.
Zhuge Liang, who had just made his debut in actual combat for one day, had grown up so quickly and learned several valuable battlefield experiences, which were combined with the art of war he had learned on paper.
If it weren't for his brother who taught him step by step and led him to fight.
If you want to learn by yourself at a disadvantage or by watching others learn from others, each of these experiences will take months or even a year and a half to learn.
…
After a night of heavy pay for the soldiers and adequate rest, the army mobilized again early the next morning.
Although there were more than 1,200 surrendering troops, Zhuge Jin could not take them all away.
So he left 600 Danyang soldiers to guard the city, and 500 others led by Chen Dao to protect him, and stayed in Pengze County for a few days to create some psychological means.
The remaining 3,500 people, led by Gan Ning, first sailed west to Penglize, preparing to besiege Chaisang and establish a siege camp first.
Calculating the time, when the troops arrived, the Chaisang defenders should also know the news of Pengze's fall, but they might not have time to react.
Gan Ning had 3,500 men, and he was definitely not afraid of the more than 6,000 men in the city rushing out to counterattack in the field, nor was he afraid of the defenders opening the water gate and taking boats out to fight in the water——
If that happened, Zhuge Jin would laugh out of his dreams.
If the rebel soldiers under Zuo Rong dare to start a water fight with Gan Ning, who is a former Jinfan thief, even if they have several times the strength advantage, they are looking for death.
Gan Ning appeared outside Chaisang City, surrounded the south side of the city, and blocked the east side facing the lake with warships.
The general of Chaisang's bandit army was indeed agitated, but he did not go out to fight.
Gan Ning was quite satisfied with the result, so he maintained the siege pressure while building heavy siege equipment on the spot.
He had previously learned from the surrendered general that Chaisang's current general was Zuo Rong's cousin Zuo Yuan; there was another deputy general, Chen Heng, who was a military commander under Xue Li, the former prefect of Danyang. These people are not enterprising people.
At the beginning of last year, Chen Heng participated in the Battle of Danyang with Xue Li and Zuo Rong, but was defeated by Sun Ce. Then Zuo Rong killed his master, and Chen Heng was kidnapped.
In terms of military capabilities, Chen Heng is definitely stronger, but his level of trust is definitely not as good as his own.
In fact, Zuo Yuan is not his real name, but is similar to his "Dharma name". After the Zuorong clan pretended to believe in Buddhism, they all changed their names, often using words like "harmony and mastery" to show that Buddhism is very profound.
It is estimated that if the names of the Zuo family are put together, they can be used as the brand of express delivery companies in future generations.
Gan Ning continued to build it steadily and slowly, and several days passed quickly.
The troops in the city were completely motionless, but the enemies in Haihun County in the south sent some reinforcements from the lake through the Pengli Ze Waterway and wanted to know how Chai Sang was doing.
So the two armies fought a battle on the lake, and there was no doubt about the outcome. The Zuo family army gave away hundreds of extra heads in vain, and also captured more than 20 boats and 300 to 400 prisoners.
There were more defeated soldiers who were picked up by Gan Ning's army and jumped to the side. After being obviously crushed in hand-to-hand fighting, they chose to jump directly into the lake to escape. In total, there were hundreds of them.
Gan Ning's casualties were only a few dozen in total. It can only be said that Zuo Rong's water warfare strength was far inferior to Gan Ning's.
For such a small price, another one or two thousand men of the Ze family army were wiped out. It must be said that it was a good deal.
Moreover, the rebels in Chaisang City could see the waterway reinforcements coming from Haihun being beaten on the lake. This was also a big blow to the morale of the rebels defending the city. .
Since ancient times, there has been no more depressing situation than seeing reinforcements destroyed in city defense battles.
The accumulated fluctuations bit by bit continued to promote the gradual collapse of the psychological defense line of Chaisang's defenders.
…
Gan Ning firmly tightened the siege pressure on the front line, and Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang in the rear certainly did not waste time.
In the past few days, they all followed their own ideas and urgently deployed some tricks to destroy the enemy's morale.
Zhuge Liang took the lead in conducting a thorough investigation of the properties of all captured rebel officials in the city, and found out those evil thieves who were usually known for their piety, but were eventually found to have large savings.
Then, their behavior of selfishly greedy for Buddhist money was turned into all kinds of irrefutable propaganda.
And Zhuge Jin also gave a little push when his younger brother was doing this.
Those thief army officials originally had their hair cut off, so they were chased by Gan Ning's army when they broke into the city, and most of them were injured.
Those who were seriously injured were going to die. Even if they didn't die, they would definitely be beheaded for their crimes. Mingzheng's punishment was a worthy death.
Therefore, Zhuge Jin would not feel bad if their deaths were a little more miserable——
He knew very well that those believers who were deceived by the theory of monastic Buddha believed that as long as they were pious, they would be blissful after death. I also believe that the death of a devout person will be relatively peaceful, just like passing away in nirvana after meditating, which seems very indifferent to life and death.
In this case, Zhuge Jin used some common sense of infection medicine that he knew well to make these people suffer from chronic ulceration, filth, and constant screams when they died, which would also damage the faith of the believers. No one would believe that someone who died so ugly would ascend to bliss.
In addition to catching these monks guilty of duplicity, Zhuge Liang also did something in the past few days. Under the inspiration and guidance of his elder brother, he finally used paper or waxed gauze, paired with bamboo strips, to make The "Kongming Lantern" appeared,
You can use the heat generated by the small candle in the lamp body to float the lamp into the air. Although it cannot control the direction, it can only float randomly, and it will burn out and fall after one stick of incense at most, so it is difficult to have practical value. But this kind of thing is very useful when "creating miracles" and attacking the psychology of fanatical and superstitious people. It can be regarded as a professional counterpart.
Zhuge Jin also wanted to help his brother achieve the results he deserved as soon as possible to avoid being annihilated by his own butterfly effect.
It's a pity that Zhuge Liang hasn't taken the Chinese character "Kongming" yet, so he can't name it Kongming lantern. He can only call it "Zhuge lantern". However, Zhuge Jin didn't steal the name anyway, and said it was his second brother who made it. enough.
…
All the measures and techniques prepared by Zhuge Liang were carried out in an orderly manner, and Zhuge Jin was certainly not willing to lag behind.
And he naturally thought of a way to "show miracles and attack the beliefs of fanatics", which was to slightly transform and reproduce the Hero steam ball that was used to open the temple in the Ptolemaic Empire more than a hundred years ago.
It is obviously a dream to ask Zhuge Jin to build a steam engine in the Han Dynasty. Even the Newcomen steam engine, which was an era more primitive than the Watt steam engine, was absolutely impossible.
However, it is really not that difficult to just make a copper steam ball that sprays steam through a tube. Just forge and weld two approximately hemispherical copper pots together to seal them as much as possible, and then open holes and fuse a few copper pipes on them.
The reason why Zhuge Jin thought of building such a "toy" was obviously because he knew:
Historically, the steam ball was first spotted by the temple priests of the Ptolemaic Empire, who were willing to use this expensive, flashy, energy-inefficient and uneconomical thing to perform miracles.
The temple filled this kind of water-heating copper ball with an air pipe at each end. The two air pipes spray steam in opposite directions, so the copper ball can be driven to rotate by torque.
The shaft of the copper ball is connected to the shaft of the temple door, which can drive the temple door to open and close automatically without anyone pushing it.
To put it bluntly, using this kind of steam ball to open the door consumes at least a hundred times the energy of pushing the door manually. The energy consumption efficiency is simply appallingly low.
But showing miracles has never been economical. What the priests want is the shocking effect of "the divine power can automatically open and close the temple door without anyone pushing it", in exchange for a hundredfold piety and worship from believers.
Just like when Gutenberg's printing press was first invented, the first batch of customers were printing indulgences, the second batch of customers were printing playing cards, and the third batch of customers were printing indescribable things with colors.
Superstition and gambling, plus another kind of primitive demand, are often the earliest investors and users of a new technology in its most inefficient and least economical nascent stage. Because these industries are profitable enough to withstand the huge costs of inefficient new technologies.
Zhuge Jin knew the general rules of the evolution of human technology, so it was only normal to make such a choice.
…
Zhuge Jin's steam ball plan, Zhuge Liang's Kongming Lantern project, and the thorough investigation of monks and officials' crimes of collecting money were completed almost simultaneously, and it only took three days.
The twenty-second day of the twelfth lunar month, the fourth day after Pengze County was destroyed.
More than a hundred lightly wounded monk soldiers who were about to be released were pulled to the Jialan built a year ago in the city.
These monks and soldiers were all in a panic, thinking that they would be treated harshly.
When they entered the main hall, they saw that the statue that was originally standing and made of thousands of kilograms of copper was actually covered by two paper doors. They were all upset, thinking that the bronze statue had been melted down by the army and taken back to mint money.
But that concern quickly dissipated. Because just when they were worried, there was a copper ball under each of the two paper doors, making a whining sound, and then spinning.
While rotating, there are also auspicious clouds lingering around, filled with bursts of fairy energy.
Although there was clearly a huge ever-burning lamp burning under the two copper balls, and the flames were extremely bright, no one thought of steam. People in this era were really lacking in scientific knowledge.
In particular, the air-conducting copper tubes on these two copper balls are completely different from the Hero steam balls of the Ptolemaic Empire - the Hero steam balls only have two copper tubes that blow in opposite directions, but these balls have four. The roots are distributed in a "swastika" shape, which just seems to match the beliefs of those monks and soldiers.
The four strokes of the character "卍" blow out air from the end, which makes the ball rotate clockwise.
After the auspicious clouds lingered around for a while, the paper door in front of the bronze statue was opened by the force of the rotating copper ball. The bronze statue was still shining in its place, but with an extra layer of clouds and mist, making the monks and soldiers couldn't help but kneel down and worship.
At this moment, some disembodied sounds suddenly floated from somewhere in the Buddhist hall. Of course, the people in the hall did not know that this was Zhuge Jin who used the principle of echo to make some adjustments to the structure and display of the room in the past few days. Made some changes.
Zhuge Jin doesn't know much about the design of echo effects, but he at least knows the idea of "changing the furnishings and distance in the room can change the echo effect." The rest is to let people slowly trial and error, and whatever level can be achieved will be achieved. .
Nowadays, the echo design of this room is still not good enough, but it is barely enough for the requirement of "hiding the original position of the speaker's voice". It is also equipped with a wooden speaker as a "voice changer" and tries to hold the throat as much as possible when speaking. It can definitely mislead those monk soldiers.
Then, the disembodied voice enumerated the sins of those monks and officials who were amassing money. He also said that the gods and Buddhas knew everything. They had already known about their greed and making money in the name of the gods and Buddhas. These people would definitely go to hell. It would be worse than unbelief. The people are so miserable.
Finally, a group of guards sent by Zhuge Liang took the captured monk officials' hidden property and carried it in to show the monk soldiers who were about to be released.
Then, they also carried in several people who were covered with ulcers and were dying, screaming and repenting. These people no longer had the usual dignity, they just cried and begged to die quickly and end their pain.
These lightly injured monk soldiers were greatly shocked, and their entire faith collapsed.
Then Zhuge Jin sent someone to observe in secret, and selected the ones that had obviously collapsed particularly completely. He asked his own soldiers to monitor the imprisoned several warships, and prepared to call for the release of the prisoners when they arrived outside Chaisang City.
If the collapse is not complete enough, they will continue to be locked up and await transformation. The stubborn fanatics who did not collapse at all were executed.
…
"For those who defraud the fanatical hearts of others, it is not enough to destroy their physical bodies. They will also be remembered as martyrs.
Therefore, they must be discredited and filthy before they die, so that their souls and souls will be destroyed and they will never be restored.
In the future, this trick can be used against those fanatical believers among the remnants of the Yellow Turban, as well as cunning monks and rice thieves offering wine.
These bronze wares are really poorly made, their energy efficiency is too low, and they have no other use. They can only be used to play tricks on gods and ghosts, and to defeat witchcraft with illusions. "
After completing all these psychological battles, Zhuge Jin shared his experience with his brother during the final "project closing summary".
This is not a unilateral teaching by Zhuge Jin, but more like the brothers brainstorming and inspiring each other, each of them becoming more mature.
After all, the methods are still a bit ruthless, and Zhuge Liang's young mind is not suitable for experiencing too many extreme psychological battles.
Zhuge Jin shouldered most of the psychological pressure by himself, and Zhuge Liang didn't get too involved in the process. He just summarized a few words for Zhuge Liang to listen to.
After doing all this, the Zhuge brothers took five hundred guards and the slightly injured prisoners who were about to be released and whose minds had been transformed, and crossed Penglize to the siege camp outside Chaisang County to join forces with Gan Ning.
"Xingba, the siege of the city in the past few days has not been dangerous, right? I heard that you also repelled an enemy reinforcement from Haihun County?"
When Zhuge Jin saw Gan Ning, he asked about the battle situation. He still had deep dark circles under his eyes. It was obvious that he had been too busy these days with various deployments in Pengze County.
Zhuge Liang actually had some dark circles under his eyes, and Zhuge Jin also knew that young people shouldn't work too hard as they were still growing. However, this kind of opportunity to debut for the first time should be seized and practiced quickly.
After these few days, arrange some rest and adjustment time for A Liang to combine work and rest.
When Gan Ning saw Brother Zhuge's tired look, he knew that it must have been a big job. Although he didn't know the details yet, Gan Ning's inner confidence was already inspired.
The trick that allowed the Zhuge brothers to spend so much brains and energy, the moment it was actually used, wouldn't it trick the enemy so much that they couldn't even find their pants?
Just such a thought made Gan Ning feel more confident.
"Don't worry, Captain, the defenders of Chaisang have lost their courage. Now they only dare to defend to death." He assured, patting his chest.
Zhuge Jin nodded: "Then carry out the plan as planned. Go and ask someone to shout and tell the guard that we are going to release the prisoners, and they are monk soldiers."
Gan Ning was stunned and didn't understand why he should let those who refused to repent, but Captain Zhuge had spoken, which must have made sense, so he carried it out anyway.
After Chen Heng at the top of Chaisang City heard the news, he couldn't believe it for a moment, and asked his soldiers to inform Zuo Yuan. The other party went to the city to check in person and confirmed that what the officers and soldiers pushed up was indeed the captured monk soldier Peng Ze. An uneasiness also arose in his heart.
But not accepting the released prisoners in public would be very damaging to morale, not to mention that these monk soldiers were direct descendants.
In the end, Zuo Yuan took everyone back without understanding the enemy's intentions.
As everyone knows, nothing happened on the first day. The next day, some gossip started to spread, but it had not yet reached the ears of the senior officials.
On the third day, when Zuo Yuan heard something was wrong, it was already too late and he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
"What's going on? Aren't these people fanatically believing that my brother is a Bodhisattva? How could they rebel? This is impossible! What kind of evil tricks did those despicable people from the Zhuge family use!"
After Zuo Yuan severely tortured a traitor who spread rumors, he was so angry that his eyesight went black and he really couldn't figure it out.
The Zhuge army outside the city, after the attack and siege in the past few days, has obviously prepared siege equipment, at least a few ladders, and is ready to launch a strong attack on Chaisang.
Haihun County did not send any more reinforcements. I don't know whether it was because they were defeated, or because they had no reinforcements to send, or because they were entangled by Guan Yu.
