On the eighth day of the third month, Yecheng, the General's Mansion was shrouded in a strange atmosphere, and it seemed that every slave or servant who came and went in and out did not dare to show off.

Yuan Shang has been in a very depressed mood recently. His father has only been dead for more than three months. He has not even settled in the position of general. He has almost relied on both soft and hard methods to treat Emperor Liu He and isolate his inside and outside, so he can only be considered as receiving the title of general left by his father.

For these reasons, the Yecheng court has not been in court for half a month. Yuan Shang was afraid that the emperor Liu He, who was forced by him, would say something unfavorable to him to the foreign ministers and give the foreign enemy an excuse to attack him. He could only follow the power in an urgent matter and not let the foreign ministers see the emperor.

But everyone knows that this situation cannot last. When Yuan Shao was alive, with the prestige of the four generations and the merits of supporting Liu He, Liu He could only be obedient, but Yuan Shang did not have the status and means. Such a situation lasted at most several months to half a year, which would definitely lead to Cao Cao and Yuan Tan shouting the slogan "clean the king's side".

It has been nearly two months since my brother colluded with outsiders to fight him, and the situation on the front line of Liyang is becoming more and more dangerous.

That brother Ni, who was inferior to the beast, was completely unwilling to obey his father's will. He was extremely disobedient and unfilial. He had never seen such a shameless person in his life.

On that day, Yuan Shang was handling military dispatch, and suddenly another maid and a guest came to report the matter at the same time. Yuan Shang was depressed and did not want to listen to the bad news first. He asked the guest to wait outside with an ostrich mentality. He got up first to go to the back hall to listen to the maid's report.

When the envoy Li Fu heard it outside, he shook his head and sighed secretly, thinking to himself: How long can such a young master be able to assist? I am afraid that he will not be able to fight against the eldest son and Cao Cao sooner or later... At this time, he is still greedy for women and care about the affairs of the family first!

Of course, Yuan Shang is not greedy for female sex, he is just an ostrich mentality, but unfortunately the people below don’t understand.

When I came to find Yuan Shang's maid, I was quite pretty. I was favored by the young master. I was originally the close maid next to her mother Liu. At this moment, she told Yuan Shang a bad news in shock:

"Young Master has time, so I'd better advise my wife. The wife has been angered in the past two days. She has killed three concubines of the old general. Now she has to check it in the back house, and... she has to verify the body of the maid one by one. If anyone who was secretly favored by the old general during his lifetime, she will be executed on excuses.

Shaojun, you know that my body was given to you, but it was not implicated by the old general. You should save me and other maids in the room of your wife whom you favored."

It turned out that it was Yuan Shao's second wife, Liu, who was as serious as in history. He was terminally ill, but he still followed the inertia of history to kill all the remaining concubines of Yuan Shao, or disfigure him first and then kill him.

I can only say that although Yuan Shao’s family has some personality flaws, it is pretty good in comparison. His wife and son are even more bizarre than him. His wife and wife kill each other and his concubines, and his son and brothers kill each other.

Moreover, because Yuan Shao died even more miserably in this life, Liu didn't know where he was holding on to evil fire. It was not enough to kill five concubines on the surface, and even gave all the beautiful maids a physical examination.

If Yuan Shang did not take the initiative to stand up and stop his mother and admitted that among the maids, he was not broken by his father, those maids who lost their virginity would die.

Yuan Shang is just one big, two big ones. What's the big deal? I asked his son to go to the front of his mother to admit how many women he played with in the back house. This is nonsense! It's just that it's still a big deal.

Yuan Shang ran to the back house angrily, stopped his angry mother, and met again with a big conspiracy. Liu was just angry, and after scolding his son, he was angry, and finally stopped killing his maid.

After dealing with this mess, how good can Yuan Shang be?

Originally, the ostrich had an idea of ​​trying to find some good mood to lay the groundwork and then work well, but in the end he became angry before working.

So half an hour later, when he met Li Fu, the guest who came back from Li Yang's army, he was not angry:

"What's the shortage of Tian Feng on the Liyang front line? If you want money, grain, and civil servants, you won't have reinforcements, right? Let's go back and tell Tian Feng that you can't get it."

The envoy Li Fu was blocked and his breath was suffocated, and he became increasingly disappointed with Yuan Shang. However, others said lightly and were originally a messenger who could only beg with a smile:

"Tian Jianjun, Zhang He and Gao Lan, saw that the battle situation was getting increasingly difficult, Cao Cao failed to cross the river in Liyang, and then asked Da... Yuan Tan to cross the river in Gaotang more than a hundred miles downstream, threatening Li Yang on his flanks, and even stooped to plunder Hejian, Bohai and other places.

Tian Jianjun asked the lord to send out rescue troops as soon as possible in order to turn defense into attack. If Cao's army and Yuan Tan's army gave up the plan to directly take Yecheng, they would plunder and divide the eastern counties of Jizhou first. Once the eastern counties are changed to follow Yuan Tan, the lord will definitely be in a state of decline."

Li Fu's words were very unpleasant. It was obvious that he had not thought about it yet and said nothing more than that. Of course, it was also possible that he was angry with Yuan Shang's attitude towards office today. He had already wanted to leave and dared to say such words as "the situation is despair" in front of Yuan Shang.

Even if it is an assumption, in order to alert Yuan Shang, he should not say this, so he has to be more tactful.

However, Tian Feng’s strategic decision reposted by Li Fu cannot be miscalculated. Because the strength of Yuan Shang and Yuan Tan and Cao Cao’s coalition forces in this life are incomparable.

Because Yuan Shao in this life suffered nearly 200,000 troops from Liu Bei's battle two years ago, his strength was already almost the same as Cao Cao. Last year, Yuan and Cao had about 300,000 troops.

Of course, both sides were also consumed in the past year. Yuan Shao's camp lost 50,000 veterans, mainly because the Bingzhou army was destroyed and Lu Bu surrendered to the enemy, leaving only three states, so the veterans were reduced to 250,000. Later, they wanted to temporarily expand their troops, and they were all newly recruited mobs.

Cao Cao was not much better. He had been holding back his strength for so long. In the end, Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang defended and counterattacked by Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang, killing 50,000 people and shooting Xiahou Dun in one eye. Xiahou Dun is still seriously injured and cannot lead his troops. Cao Chun was even killed, causing more than half of the tiger and leopard cavalry to be damaged.

Therefore, the number of veterans in the Yuan family and the Cao family has been reduced to about 250,000.

The Yuan family's 250,000 are divided into three states, Yuan Shang owns the most, Yuan Tan, followed by Yuan Xi, the northernmost one, because it does not border large areas with hostile countries, so the number of troops is the least. Therefore, the average Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi combined is exactly twice that of Yuan Tan.

It is equivalent to a total of 170,000 second and third brothers, 80,000 people who beat the elder brother, and 250,000 outsiders who joined forces with the elder brother.

Of course, Cao Cao's 250,000 would not be piled up to deal with Yuan Shang. He left at least 100,000 people to defend the Yuzhou defense line and guarded Liu Bei, and also left 50,000 on the Yangtze River defense line. Cao Cao could deal with Yuan Shang's mobile troops at most 100,000.

No matter how many, you have to recruit new soldiers to fill in the other two defense lines and draw out the long-term battle soldiers to attack the offensive battle.

Therefore, it was Yuan Shang, Yuan Xi and Yuan Tan and Cao Cao, who each had 180,000 regular troops confronting each other.

But Yuan Shang also has to suffer some more losses, that is, his second brother Yuan Xi's troops are still trying to persuade his eldest brother and third brother to resolve the issue peacefully.

Yuan Xi just nominally obeyed his father's will to pass on the throne and recognized Yuan Shang as the main person. He also wanted to persuade his elder brother to recognize his third brother like him, but he didn't really want to transfer the army's foundation and help the third brother kill him.

If Yuan Xi's 60,000 people did not come, Yuan Shang had only his own 120,000 people, which was indeed difficult. Zhang He and Gao Lan brought 50,000 people to defend the Ferry Camp in Liyang and could not stand it, and Zhang He and Gao Lan could not blame him.

Tian Feng was supervising the army in front and found that Cao's army and Yuan Tan's army no longer pursued a quick battle. Instead, they wanted to advance step by step in circles. They were also very anxious, so they wanted to persuade Yuan Shang to take the initiative to seek a decisive battle, and not give Cao Cao, Yuan Tan the opportunity to divide the counties.

Tian Feng thought about this, on the one hand, it was for Yuan Shang, and on the other hand, it was for the worst case, so that the Yuan brothers could decide the winner as soon as possible.

Tian Feng knew very well that the reason why Yuan Tan and Cao Cao chose to go straight to Yecheng at the beginning was that Yuan Shang's territory was also Yuan Shao's legacy, and they actually didn't have much disgust with Yuan Tan, the eldest son.

So as long as you capture the thief and the king are captured and Yuan Shang is destroyed, and there is no need to be beaten to other territory, Yuan Tan can directly accept the inheritance just because of the justification.

Not only Yuan Tan thought so, but Yuan Shang actually thought so too. He wanted to beat his elder brother, but he didn't want to destroy his elder brother's territory. He just wanted to kill Yuan Tan. The territory was the father's inheritance. Why did he destroy the inheritance in order to fight for inheritance? After fighting for a long time, they died of their father's troops.

In the best case, it is even better if the two brothers Yuan Shang and Yuan Tan fight one-on-one. Whoever dies will accept his fate, and the survival of the entire survival will minimize the internal friction of the Yuan family.

It is quite similar to the background of the line when Xiang Yu asked Liu Bang to fight one-on-one: "The people in the world beat to death because of the battle between you and me. Let's go out to fight one-on-one and share life and death, don't implicate others."

Of course, Xiang Yu would definitely end up in vain when he found someone to fight alone. Whoever was stupid in his martial arts was to fight? But the martial arts values ​​of the Yuan Tan and Yuan Shang brothers were not that great. In theory, this is indeed a good idea.

Now, Yuan Shang chose to shrink his defense and not fight against Yuan Tan in a field decisive battle. He first defended the Yellow River defense line with Li Yang, and then divided his troops to defend Yecheng. He wanted to use the defense's geographical advantages and strategic depth to drag Yuan Tan, which led to Yuan Tan and Cao Cao changing his plan to fight and decide quickly.

This made Tian Feng and even all the knowledgeable people in Yuan Shao's camp worried. They hoped that the two brothers would decide the winner as soon as possible, even if Yuan Shang's aggressive advance would lead to a quick defeat.

Don’t divide the troops to defend, just look for the main force to fight! Although you don’t have much confidence in winning, it’s better than dragging it out!

Yuan Shang was not stupid either. He caught a trace of Tian Feng’s request for help from Li Fu that was not entirely considered by him, so of course he could not agree to such request for help.

It seems that if Tian Feng is unreliable, he will have to remove Tian Feng's military supervisor position and let the most reliable judicial officers be appointed to the front-line military supervisor.

But in that case, who will preside over the defense of Yecheng? Moreover, Yecheng must not be empty. After all, Yuan Shang's threat is not only Cao Cao, but also Liu Bei! If there are too few soldiers in Yecheng and Huguan, Liu Bei will break Huguan and attack Yecheng directly, which is the biggest loss!

Yuan Shang was reluctant to give up Li Yang immediately retreated and relied on Yecheng to fight to the decisive battle. He did not dare to divide too many troops and was defeated by his elder brother and Cao Cao.

After thinking about it, he felt that he would just partially shrink his troops first, at least to reduce his main force from the current deployment of defense to only two places in Yecheng and Liyang, and then wait for an opportunity to fight the eldest brother.

Moreover, Tian Feng is still a military supervisor now, so he must stabilize first.

Yuan Shang then replied: "The main force of Yecheng must not move. Although Liu Bei has not attacked now, he is definitely eyeing Jizhou. Go back and tell Tian Jianjun that he knows the difficulties in Yecheng. It is not that I am unwilling to fight with Yuan Tan and decide quickly, but that I cannot be cheap.

However, in addition to Yecheng, other counties at the junction of Jizhou and Bingzhou, especially the defenders at the southern Taihang Passes, were assigned to Yecheng and Liyang as appropriate to concentrate their troops.

If Tian Jianjun felt that Li Yang could not defend, he could gradually retreat. Anyway, Yecheng was not far from Li Yang. After delaying enough time, he would come back to fight Gu Hebian in a decisive battle.

I was preparing to transfer Zhongshan County and Changshan County. The troops of my cousin Gao Gan who had returned from Bingzhou last year, and his generals Lu Kuang and Lu Xiang led 30,000 troops south to support. As for Changshan County in Taihang Mountain and the Xingkou main roads in Hengshan, Changshan, they were handed over to their second brother's Youzhou army to go south to assist in defense.
Chapter completed!