Most of Cao Cao's advisers were either stationed in Yanzhou or followed the army to attack Yecheng. Now he only had one adviser with him.
Xun Yu.
But the most surprising thing about this incident is that Cao Cao would appear here at this moment.
Logically speaking, this is the most critical battle between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao. Cao Cao should have been stationed on the front line of Yecheng, but instead he came to Sili!
However, it was obvious that Cao Cao was under a lot of pressure. He was worried all the way and his face was always serious. After all, this time he let Xiahou Dun lead the generals to face the Jizhou army. It was a risky move, which made him feel at ease. No less.
But Cao Cao had no other choice, because Huaicheng needed him to be in charge personally, and he chose this time to take action, in order to take a two-pronged approach and not give other forces a chance to intervene!
He turned his head, glanced at Xun Yu beside him, and sighed: "Wen Ruo is following me this time. Is this the first time I have ridden a horse for such a long time?"
Indeed, as Cao Cao said, Xun Yu was not good at riding horses. After running around all day, he felt that his body was about to fall apart. Even the inner thighs were often wet, which made Xun Yu feel that he must have worn out a lot of places.
But he said in a deep voice: "If we can successfully welcome the emperor, it will be worth it together."
Cao Cao looked at the dark distance outside the Black Mountain Pass, "But there are many enemies there, so things may not go smoothly this time."
"Although Ma Chao, Han Sui, and Yuan Shu promised to share the benefits equally with us, they cannot be fully trusted. Therefore, we must rush to Yecheng as soon as possible and move the emperor's chariot to Xu County."
"Of course," Cao Cao sighed: "If Yuan Rang (Xiahou Dun) can capture Yecheng, we can go directly to Jizhou, but I'm afraid things may not go so smoothly."
"It would be good if the two sides can reach a stalemate. If not, Yuan Rang might be forced to return to Yanzhou."
"When we return to our territory, that will be the real decisive battle."
Xun Yu thought about it for a moment and said, "This series of your plans are intertwined. Problems in every link may lead to an irreversible situation. Why did you choose this dangerous strategy?"
Cao Cao smiled and said: "That's why it's interesting."
"Besides, there isn't much road left for us."
"After all, we have been targeted with purpose in the past two years. If we cannot break out of the situation, we will only be slowly bled to death."
He raised his riding crop and pointed at the invisible Huaicheng in the distance, "That's where we start to counterattack!"
North of Sili, at the junction of Liangzhou, two armies and horses were fighting.
On one side was Duan Xuan, who had made contributions in defeating Li Jue and Guo Si. He was awarded the title of General of the Four Directions and was ordered to hunt down Guo Si. His troops were currently at a disadvantage.
The other side has a very large number of people, roughly tens of thousands of them, and most of them are cavalry. Although the soldiers and armor are quite crude, they are better at bows and horses.
These are the Xiliang army under Ma Teng and Han Sui. They were once a bandit army that caused rebellion, and later became an official army under the orders of the Han court. However, their attitude has always been ambiguous. It can be said that they are a force with a very special status.
Both Ma Teng and Han Sui came from famous families, and both served as officials in the Han Dynasty. However, they had different intentions. When Emperor Ling was in power, Liangzhou rebelled and bandits emerged. Emperor Ling sent Geng Bi, the governor of Liangzhou, to quell the rebellion. The Liang rebels were so fierce that Geng Bi was killed.
At that time, Ma Teng served as Sima under Geng Bi and took over the Han court army after Geng Bi's death. However, instead of avenging Geng Bi, he joined the rebels and rebelled!
He gathered Guo Guo, Han Sui and others, united many rebel armies, and became the leader of the rebels. In the sixth year of Zhongping (189), he brazenly invaded Guanzhong and attacked Chang'an.
Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty urgently mobilized Huangfu Song and Dong Zhuo to quell the rebellion, repulsed Ma Teng's rebels, and forced Ma Teng to retreat to Longxi. This was the initial Liangzhou Rebellion.
This incident also contributed to the rise of Dong Zhuo, who came from a humble background. In the same year, Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty died of illness. Dong Zhuo showed his ambition and went to Beijing on the order of He Jin. At the same time, he secretly sent someone to hook up with Ma Teng and Han Sui to help him.
The two sides agreed that Dong Zhuo would march to Luoyang, and Ma Teng and Han Sui would attack Huangfu Song and occupy Chang'an. The two cities would be captured, and the world would be able to capture them.
However, Ma Teng and Han Sui were not optimistic about Dong Zhuo, who had entered Luoyang with thousands of soldiers. After Dong Zhuo left, he stood still and wanted to wait for both sides to suffer losses before taking action.
As a result, what the two of them didn't expect, and what everyone in the world didn't expect, was that Dong Zhuozhen controlled Luoyang with thousands of people, carried out the abolition and establishment, supported Emperor Xian of Han to ascend the throne, and became the final winner!
But Dong Zhuo didn't care about his past suspicions. After he instigated Lu Bu to kill Ding Yuan, he annexed the Bingzhou army and greatly increased his strength. He once again sent people to ask Ma Teng and Han Sui to surrender. Seeing that Dong Zhuo was powerful, Ma and Han attached themselves to Dong Zhuo. .
"The Biography of Dong Zhuo in the Later Han Dynasty" - (Dong) Zhuo entered the pass and asked Han Sui and Ma Teng to conspire with Shandong. Then Teng saw the chaos in the sky and wanted to rely on Zhuo to raise an army.
In the third year of Chuping (192), Dong Zhuo was killed, and Li Jue and Guo Si retook Chang'an. After the two took power, they continued Dong Zhuo's strategy and recruited Ma Teng and Han Sui to take control of Liangzhou.
"The Biography of Dong Zhuo in the Book of Wei": At that year, Han Sui, Ma Teng and others surrendered and led their troops to Chang'an. I then made him the General of Zhenxi and sent him back to Liangzhou. I then sent General Teng to conquer the West and settled in Yi.
Ma Teng is from Fufeng, and Yi County is located in Fufeng, so Ma Teng can be regarded as returning to his hometown in glory. At this point, Ma Teng has completed a great leap from a Han official to a border bandit, to a high-ranking official in the Han court and a heavy-duty general. Reached the pinnacle of life.
In the first year of Xingping (194), a food crisis occurred in Guanzhong. Ma Teng, who was stationed in Xi County, asked Li Jue for food but could not get it. He was resentful, so he colluded with Liu Fan, the Zuo Zhonglang general who served in Chang'an, and others to join forces with Liu Yan, the shepherd of Yizhou. (Father of Liu Fan), attacked Chang'an, this was the second Liangzhou Rebellion.
Li Jue sent Fan Chou and Li Li to fight and defeated Ma Teng and Liu Yan's coalition forces. Ma Teng and Han were defeated, Liu Fan and others were killed. Liu Yan fell ill and died suddenly after hearing the news, and Yizhou was in chaos.
It is worth mentioning that when Li Jue and Guo Si attacked Chang'an, it was also because Liu Yan's old soldiers rebelled, which led to Lu Bu's defeat and the fall of Chang'an.
Liu Yan, in fact, had been secretly planning to establish himself as emperor, and his actions also affected the general trend of the world in the late Han Dynasty. However, just like Yuan Shao, the final fruits of victory were taken away by others, and at the end of his life, he had almost no gains. any benefit.
Later, when Fan Chou pursued Ma Teng and Han Sui's army, Fan Chou and Han Sui ceased fighting. Therefore, when he returned to Chang'an, he was jealous of Li Jue. He felt that Fan Chou had the intention of becoming independent, so he found an opportunity to kill him.
This move also aroused Guo Si's vigilance, and he began to attack Li Jue, which led to a war in Chang'an, with countless casualties and many empty houses. This was also the reason why the emperor Liu Xie left Chang'an and returned to Luoyang.
After a series of events, Li Jue and Guo Si were defeated by the coalition forces of Cao Cao and Yuan Xi in Sili. Li Jue was killed, and Guo Si was chased back to Liangzhou by Duan Xuan. After losing all his wealth, he was forced to join Ma Teng and Han Sui. .
Ma Teng and Han Sui nominally accepted Guo Si's surrender, annexed Guo Si's Liangzhou army, and turned around to attack Duan Xuan.
Ma Teng and Han Sui were always capricious. They had separatized the border areas for a long time and resisted the Eastern Han Dynasty. They had no loyalty at all. They sent troops several times to attack Guanzhong. Their purpose was to fish in troubled waters and covet the throne, just like Li Jue, Guo Si and others. To.
Judging from Cao Cao's attempts to find excuses to kill Ma Teng in later generations, the matter was not as simple as Ma Chao's rebellion. He may have already understood Ma Teng's bad character, so if Ma Teng's death is entirely attributed to Ma Chao, it does not seem to be the case. It's too fair. In the final analysis, it was Ma Teng who did it, but even Cao Cao couldn't stand it.
The current war between the two sides is also due to the different stances of Duan Yan and Ma Han.
As the only remaining general in Dong Zhuo's line, Duan Yan was naturally not as loyal to the Han court as Ma Teng and Han Sui. So when he learned that Ma Teng and Han Sui had taken in Guo Si, he asked Ma and Han to hand over Guo Si. Guo Si.
Ma Teng and Han Sui were now in great power, so naturally they looked down on Duan You. They were worried that they could not find an excuse to invade Guanzhong, but Duan You gave them an excuse, so Ma Teng and Han Sui mobilized all their troops to attack Duan You.
Duan Xuan only had more than 10,000 soldiers. Facing the Ma-Korean coalition forces that were several times his own, he could only fight and retreat. He retreated from Liang to the territory of Sili. He looked at the cavalry troops rushing towards him in darkness, with a worried look on his face. color.
Even though the number is small, the generals under his command are far inferior to those of the opposite side. In the past few days, two of his generals have died at the hands of Ma Teng's son Ma Chao. If this continues, if he returns to Huaicheng, wouldn't he be inviting a wolf into the house?
He thought for a long time, then decided to write an urgent letter, telling the emergency situation at the border, and asked the courier to deliver it to Huaicheng.
Then he ordered his soldiers to set up camp on the spot to block Ma Teng and Han Sui's rebels. Before the order from Huaicheng arrived, all Duan Yan could do was to block them and prevent them from invading Huaicheng.
As for how Huaicheng responded, it was not up to Duan Xuan, and he didn't care. He was a Han warrior, and all he had to do was fight to the last moment like his former peer and friend Xu Rong.
At the junction of Sili and Nanyang in Jingzhou, a capable cavalry army was patrolling. The leader was an eight-foot-long man who was extremely powerful and majestic, riding a tall horse and carrying a two-foot-long steel spear.
Zhang Xiu was a native of Wuwei, Liangzhou, and the nephew of the hussar general Zhang Ji. After Zhang Ji's death, he took over the Liangzhou cavalry under his command, attached himself to Liu Biao, and helped him garrison Nanyang, the northern gateway to Jingzhou.
During these days, Yuan Shu led his army to invade Nanyang, but Zhang Xiu led his troops to stop him. After the two sides fought several times, Yuan Shu was repulsed and withdrew from Nanyang.
Zhang Xiu led his men and circled dozens of miles around, and was finally sure that Yuan Shu's army in Nanyang had completely left.
After he led the army back to the camp, he invited Jia Xu and asked: "Sir, we fought with Yuan Shu's army several times. Although the opponent's losses were slightly larger, they were not at the point of retreating."
"What on earth did they come to Nanyang for?"
After hearing this, Jia Xu said, "General, does he know where Yuan Gongluo led his army?"
Zhang Xiu said: "According to the information from the spies, it is said that he went north and entered the territory of Sili."
"I can't figure it out. People's livelihood in the Sanfu area is now in decline and there is no human habitation for thousands of miles. Where is he going and what is he doing?"
Jia Xu thought for a long time, shook his head and said, "Yuan Gongdao is really difficult to deal with."
Zhang Xiu was shocked, "Why, his plan this time is very dangerous?"
"No," Jia Xu shook his head and said, "In my opinion, he is a mentally ill person."
"Guessing what a madman is thinking is the most difficult thing."
Recommended book: Level 5 veteran author,
"Survival in the Late Han Dynasty, I Am Not a Counselor": The protagonist Xu Shu beats the future public intellectual Dajing. The author of "The Rise of Liu Chan, an Internet Addicted Boy" has never been an eunuch, and updates are guaranteed.
(End of chapter)
