Chapter 115 Recommending Liu Ye, when it rains However, after receiving the order, Guan Yu and Qiao Rui led the troops and marched out of the city. Because he was worried about Qin Zhen's instructions, although Guan Yu was arrogant, he did not dare to be negligent, so he pulled Qiao Rui to ask about the details of Ruyin, Xincai and other places. Qiao Rui heard this and said to Guan Yu: "I dare to let General Guan know that Xincai and Ruyin are both difficult to conquer." "The two places are a hundred miles apart, separated by two tributaries, one leading from the Ying River to Ruyin, and the other leading from the Ru River to Xincai." "If you go to Xincai by water, you need to go through Yangquan, Liaoxian and other places." "If you go to Ruyin, you can follow the Huai River tributary directly to this place in the northwest direction!" "Both places are important towns, and they serve as shields for Runan. Although our army has more than 10,000 soldiers, it is difficult to attack the two cities by force. We must use our wits to take them!" When Guan Yu heard this, he stroked his beard and thought to himself: "These two cities are like this, no wonder the military advisor said it is difficult to take them." In all his battles, he always advanced according to conventional methods and in a steady manner; he had never captured two cities at the same time.

According to the information provided by Qiao Rui now, they have two routes of advance. One is to go directly through the Yingshui River to Ruyin; the other is to go through Yangquan and other places to Xincai. Both paths have their advantages and disadvantages. If they attacked Ruyin directly, they could certainly catch the enemy off guard, but after capturing Ruyin, they could only attack Xincai by land. Advancing by land would not be fast and would arouse Xincai's vigilance. By then, even if we attack Xincai, I'm afraid Yuan Shu will react. On the other hand, if you take the water route to Xincai, there are also two cities blocking the way. It can be said that no matter what, it will arouse Xincai’s vigilance. As he thought about it, Guan Yu couldn't help but look at Qiao Rui and said, "This mission is indeed difficult. "General Qiao, do you have any plans for advancing?" When Qiao Rui saw this, he shook his head and laughed: "The general is the commander-in-chief, and he has no plan. How can I have any plan?" "Why not send someone to ask the military advisor for advice before they go too far? Then we can move forward!" If others heard this, they would most likely give in and send someone back to ask Qin Zhen for advice. However, seeing this, Guan Yu waved his hand and said: "Hey, the military advisor didn't want me to go to this battle. We haven't fought yet. If I show any weakness, the military advisor will definitely say something!" "Wait for me to think of a plan, and let the military advisor see what I can do!" After all, he is not as famous as he will be in the future, and he is not willing to ask Qin Zhen for help in proving his ability. After thinking for a moment, he asked Qiao Rui again: "I wonder what kind of people Yuan Yin and Lu Mian are like?" Now that Shouchun had been captured, Liu Bei's army naturally knew the location of the garrison commanders of Yuan Shu's army. Guan Yu knew that the garrison commander of Ruyin was Lu Mian and the garrison commander of Xincai was Yuan Yin. Since we cannot attack the city directly, we can only start from the defenders. We must know the character of the enemy. When Qiao Rui heard this, he smiled and said:

"If the general asks about these two people, I won't say much. I can only tell you that although Lu Mian is a general, he is not good at military affairs, but he is quite brave!" "Although Yuan Yin is Yuan Shu's younger brother, he is a timid person and is definitely not a good defender!" When Guan Yu heard this, his phoenix eyes narrowed, he stroked his beard and smiled: "If that's the case, I have a plan!" "We can take Ruyin first, and then Xincai!" Seeing this, Qiao Rui couldn't help but wonder: "Does the general really have a plan? I wonder how we should proceed?" Seeing this, Guan Yu smiled mysteriously and said: "When we get to Ruyin, you will know, General!" Qiao Rui didn't know the reason, so he just followed Guan Yu all the way west. The two of them came to the bank of the Huai River from Shouchun. After crossing the river, they went upstream. At the same time, Liu Bei heard the news and called Qin Zhen over again and said with a smile: "As expected by the military advisor, Yunchang went all the way to Ruyin after leaving the city!" When Qin Zhen heard this, he praised Liu Bei: "If General Guan goes to Ruyin, he must have a plan to take Xincai. He is truly a great general!" "Now let the generals go to take Ruyin, but let Xu Sheng take the two cities first!" Liu Bei nodded and smiled: "I have ordered Xu Wen to go forward, but Yun Chang has already left. I wonder when our army will be able to capture Hefei?" Seeing this, Qin Zhen knew that Liu Bei was eager to go south, so he smiled and said: "If you want to take Hefei, you must first go to Chengde!" "You can order Yide and Yuan Yaoqing to guard here, and our army can march south with 5,000 soldiers and horses!" Liu Bei was delighted to hear that he could march forward, but when he heard Qin Zhen say that he only had 5,000 soldiers, he was shocked and said: "What are you talking about, military advisor? We still have more than eight or nine thousand people in Hefei." "How can we win with only 5,000 men?" Qin Zhen saw this and smiled slightly: "Our troops are divided into two groups, and our manpower is stretched to the limit. If we bring more troops, it will be difficult to stabilize the prisoners in the city." "So just march south with 5,000 soldiers!" "Besides, the quality of the troops is not important, but the quantity. Five thousand men are enough to capture Hefei." "The key to this trip south is not Hefei, but Chengde." "There is a man in Chengde. If you can invite him out, he can defeat tens of thousands of soldiers!" Liu Bei was surprised to hear him speak so strangely. "I wonder who the military advisor is talking about, and how could he have such ability?" Then he smiled at Qin Zhen and said: "My lord, have you ever heard of the name of Liu Ye, a man of great talent?"

"Liu Ye, the talent who helps the world?" Liu Bei was stunned and said in surprise again: "Who is this?" Although he didn't know Liu Ye, but when he heard the four words "talented person who can help the world", he knew that this person was no simple person. Qin Zhen saw that Liu Bei didn't know, so he simply said to him: "Speaking of which, this person is also a relative of the Han Dynasty, a descendant of Emperor Guangwu." He then introduced Liu Ye's life to Old Liu. Speaking of Liu Ye, he is definitely one of the remarkable men in the late Han Dynasty. He became famous when he was young. When he was seven years old, his mother passed away. Before her death, she told Liu Ye that one of her family servants had a very bad character, and asked him to get rid of this person when he grew up. As a result, before he grew up, at the age of thirteen, he killed this man directly. After the murder, he frankly apologized to his father and obtained his father's forgiveness. Xu Shao of Runan was taking refuge in Yangzhou at that time. As soon as he saw Liu Ye, he knew that this boy was no ordinary person and praised him as a talent who could help the world. After that, just as Xu Shao said, Liu Ye showed extraordinary talent. He was able to predict the future and his words were always right. He could be called a first-class counselor. It's a pity that in his original course, he joined Cao Cao. Because of his status as a relative of the Han royal family, he was not valued and died in depression. He didn't recommend him to Liu Bei before, one reason being that this guy was still very old, only nineteen years old at most. The second reason was that they were still far away in Pei State at that time and might not be able to get Liu Ye to come out. But now it’s different. They have already occupied Huainan. As a native of Huainan, Liu Ye can most likely succeed with Liu Bei coming in person! Therefore, they can take advantage of this opportunity to go south to visit Liu Ye. If Liu Ye could be invited, not only would Old Liu have another talented assistant, but his personal workload would also be greatly reduced. Now Xu Shu has to guard his home, and Yuan Huan is not good at military affairs. He can still support the small territory, but when the territory becomes larger in the future, it will be easy to have problems when dividing the troops. So this is definitely the best time to invite Liu Ye to come out of retirement. When Liu Bei heard what Qin Zhen said, he couldn't help but exclaimed in amazement: "I am so ignorant that I have never heard of such a talented person!" "Now it seems that I should go and invite him now!" At that moment, Liu Bei naturally no longer hesitated. He led his troops and marched south with Qin Zhen. This time, he left Zhang Fei, Lei Bu, Guan Ping and Yuan Shu's surrendered general Qi Ji to garrison Shouchun. He brought Zhao Yun, Chen Dao, Xiahou Lan and others along the way south. As a result, when the troops were halfway there, they received news that Sun Ce had completely abandoned Jiujiang and was heading south with all his troops. The reason why this happened has to do with the day when Sun Ce was defeated. However, after Sun Ce was defeated that day, he was full of resentment, but he was helpless in facing the coalition forces of Liu Bei and Lu Bu.

They retreated for dozens of miles before they were able to gather the remaining troops. But after a whole day of gathering the defeated soldiers, he failed to gather many. When he heard the news that Chen Wu, Song Qian and others had died in battle, Sun Ce naturally felt unhappy. When he heard that the soldiers said Zhou Tai had escaped and was missing, he sent spies to search for Zhou Tai on the road. After searching for a whole day, there was still no sign of Zhou Tai. Zhou Yu felt uncomfortable seeing Sun Ce like this, but the current situation did not allow them to stay any longer, so he persuaded Sun Ce to lead his troops south. Sun Ce had no choice but to order his spies to continue searching for Zhou Tai's whereabouts, while at the same time leading his remaining troops south. After traveling all the way to Jundao City and seeing Xu Yi, the emperor and his ministers cried to each other. Upon hearing that Sun Ce's army was defeated in the north, Xu Yi was naturally angry and vowed to lead his troops north to attack him. However, at most, they only had more than 3,000 people under their command. Not to mention attacking from the north, we couldn't even take Hefei. Therefore, Sun Ce had to suppress Xu Yi's intention to go north. But as if things weren't bad enough, as soon as he arrived in Jundao, news came from Lu Fan of Wu County. It was said that there was a rebellion in Wu County. Zu Lang and Jiao Yi of Shanyue and Yan Baihu of Wucheng of Wu County and others gathered more than 40,000 troops and attacked cities and plundered land everywhere. In addition, Xu Gong's former subordinates in Wu County joined forces with the aristocratic families, and together with Yan Baihu and others, they captured Wu County. When Sun Ce heard this, he was naturally shocked and hurriedly asked the reason. Only then did they realize that before they went north, Chen Yu had sent Captain Wan Yan south to persuade everyone to rebel. Originally, Sun Ce was going to take action as soon as he went north. But for some reason, after Wan Yan and others persuaded Yan Baihu and others, they stopped their actions. Even Wan Yan and his men stayed on Shicheng Mountain around Wu County and never went down the mountain. At that time, Lu Fan followed Sun Ce's order and returned to Lu County to be on guard, hoping to catch Liu Bei's army's spies, and thus ignored the people from Guangling. This was exactly what Chen Deng wanted. On the one hand, he told Yan Baihu and others to keep their troops in place, while on the other hand he tried to instigate a rebellion among the Shanyue tribes. The rebellion of Zu Lang, the commander of the Shanyue Army, attracted Lu Fan's attention. At the same time, the nobles of Kuaiji were also persuaded to unite in rebellion. When Lu Fan saw this, he realized he had fallen into a trap and hurriedly asked Sun Ben and others to go south to resist the Shanyue. Unexpectedly, not long after the troops left, Yan Baihu and others came down the mountain and took Wu County. Thanks to the generals Sun He, Zhu Zhi and others who fought to the death, Sun Ce's family was saved. However, this also led to the complete fall of Wu County, which was used as a stronghold by Yan Baihu. Under Chen Deng's planning, local tyrants and rebels in Danyang, Xuancheng, Jingxian, Lingyang, Shi'an, Yixian, Shexian, Yangxian and other places rose up in rebellion. In just a few days, the entire Jiangdong was thrown into chaos. Most of Wujun fell, only Lu Fan, Zhu Zhi and others remained in Qu'a and refused to go out.

After hearing this news, Sun Ce was so angry that he trembled all over and said angrily: "I have no grudges against the old villain Chen Yu. How dare he plot against my Jiangdong territory?" He also thought that even if Liu Bei planned to take over Jiangdong, he would not be able to achieve great things. Unexpectedly, it was not Liu Bei who was planning at all, but Chen Yu who had not joined the army! The direction of the investigation is wrong. It would be strange if Liu Bei's spies could be found! When everyone heard Chen Yu's plan, they were terrified. Fortunately, Sun Ce sent Lu Fan to Wujun in advance, otherwise the entire Wujun would probably fall into the hands of the enemy. Moreover, the rebellion not only affected Wu County, but also Danyang and Kuaiji counties. It’s almost half of Sun Ce’s current territory! At that moment, Zhou Yu advised Sun Ce: "Brother, given the current situation, we should quickly return to Jiangdong. Otherwise, once Qu'a falls, we will have no place to stay even if we move south!" The current situation is not as simple as a defeat, but a danger of annihilation! If Sun Ce did not go south to take charge of the situation, Jiangdong might fall into the previous state of division among princes. In this way, Sun Ce's years of hard work would be ruined. He didn't know who his opponent this time was, but he knew that this opponent, like Qin Zhen, wanted to kill them! When Sun Ce heard this, he was extremely angry. If he still had troops, he would probably march directly to Guangling. But now he has no soldiers, so he can only return to Jiangdong first. So he gritted his teeth, emptied all the garrisons in Jundao, Quanjiao, Fuling, Liyang and other places, and gathered more than 4,000 soldiers and horses to cross the river. When Sun Ce left, the four cities in Jiangbei were empty in an instant. When Liu Bei heard the news, he was overjoyed and said to Qin Zhen: "Now that Sun Ce is gone, several cities in the south have been vacated. Once we take Hefei, Jiujiang will be in our hands!" Qin Zhen secretly thought that Chen Deng's methods were indeed extraordinary. He could cause such chaos in Jiangdong without even showing up. If Chen Deng hadn't died too early, it would have been questionable whether Bi Yaner could defend Jiangdong! He thought that Chen Deng still had three years to live, so if he could be saved, he would do so. But he was not sure about this, after all, Xi Zhicai died early and he failed to save him. Everyone has his own destiny; life and death are in the hands of God and are not something he can control. But those are things for the future. Their mission now is to capture Liu Ye first and then attack Hefei! (End of this chapter)