In desperation, Cao Cao had no other choice but to use Sima Lang as Xun Yu's deputy envoy.

Considering that Sima Lang was not smart enough after all, Cao Cao was afraid that he would not see Xun Yu's problem. Or that he acted too hard and was suspected by Xun Yu.

So the day before departure, Cao Cao called the Sima family and carefully inspected the film and asked if it was possible to be competent.

Unexpectedly, Sima Lang himself did not seem to be smart enough during the investigation, but his younger brother Sima Yi, who was helping him in charge of affairs, could understand the leader's intentions very well.

Moreover, Cao Cao could see that Sima Yi was very good at protecting himself. He didn't say much about what he shouldn't say, but he knew what he should do.

After just one day of in-depth exchange, Cao Cao formed a subtle tacit understanding with the other party.

That is, Cao Cao "knows that Sima Yi knows what he asked him to do."

Sima Yi also "knows that Cao Cao knew that he 'knows what Cao Cao asked him to do'".

But neither of them made it clear, so Sima Lang didn't know that the Prime Minister and his younger brother knew so much about each other.

Cao Cao was very satisfied with the result, so he felt relieved and asked the Sima brothers to follow Xun Yu.

Xun Yu also felt that the Prime Minister did not seem to be suspicious of him. After all, Xun Yu knew very well about Sima Lang's weight.

As for Sima Lang's younger brother, he did not have any achievements in doing things independently before, and Xun Yu could not see through the other party. He only knew that he was a very cautious young man who did not seek performance.

Xun Yu didn't take Sima Yi to heart.

The delegation spent a whole day on the road, and only walked the more than 70 miles in the evening to reach Ruyang, controlled by Liu Bei's army.

In fact, when he was thirty miles away from the city, Xun Yu and his party were discovered and surrounded by Liu Bei's patrol cavalry scouts. The cavalry officer who led the patrol that day was Chen Dao.

But Xun Yu promptly showed Cao Cao's request for peace, and his own talisman and seal as the Secretary of the Guandong court, explaining his purpose. Chen realized that the other party was here to seek peace and negotiate, so he did not dare to act rashly, so he took hundreds of cavalry to escort Xun Yu back to the city.

Considering that it was getting late and after the news came in, Liu Bei was quite surprised and wanted to discuss it with his advisers a little, so he didn't receive him immediately.

However, Liu Bei was still courteous to the envoy who took the initiative to seek peace. He ordered the private room to be cleaned up in the inn in Ruyang County, prepare clean food, entertain Xun Yu and his party to check in, and meet again tomorrow morning.

This is the first time that Xun Yu has come into contact with the civil and military officials of Liu Bei, and has seen the scene under Liu Bei's rule for the first time.

Seeing the Han army's strong and tidy armor, the people in Ruyang City could still live and work in peace, I was secretly shocked and ashamed.

Xun Yu knew that Liu Bei, the monarch, was still kind to the people and love things.

He also knew that Li Su and Zhuge Liang were good at governing the country. He not only could carry out economic construction, but also encouraged craftsmanship and production. He was also a rare genius in advocating people's hearts and implementing moral governance.

At this moment, Xun Yu thought to himself in his letter:

"Liu Bei occupied Yancheng in June. It should be the end of June and early July, until early October. It is said that Liu Bei's army was digging the canal connecting Yancheng to Ruyang, and named it the Chaolu Canal.

I didn't believe it at the beginning, at least I thought that even if I dig, it would be a waste of money and it would be possible to get through next year as soon as possible.

But now I have come to Ruyang in person and witnessed it with my own eyes before entering the city that the river in the west is stretching and the fleet is coming in a row, which is absolutely impossible to fake.

Wouldn't that beneath Zhuge Liang's plan, the enemy soldiers, Ru, and the local civilians in Yan really dug this river in three months? How magnificent and grand is this?

If I were asked to take charge of such a great cause, or even any civil servant under the Prime Minister came to prepare for it, including Cheng Zhongde, would never have been able to do it! And it would inevitably lead to tens of thousands of casualties and injuries caused by the construction of rivers in Ruyang!

But when I entered the city just now, even the ordinary people of Ruyang had never met anyone with a good fortune. How could this look like I was tortured by endless corvee service?"

The more Xun Yu observed, the more he felt doubting life, and his faith collapsed.

Who made him help Cao Cao deal with the internal affairs of the rear over the years? He did know a lot of internal affairs information about the enemy, but those were paper data.

The nature of his work has led to his lack of intuitive understanding of the "enemy-occupied area" and has never seen it with his own eyes.

A civil servant who claims to be the talent of the king and Zuo secretly regards Xiao He as a person in his heart, and uses the support of the king to assist the country, so that the soldiers and food in the front are responsible for being strong. Even if he knows that the opponent is stronger, as long as he is not intuitively humiliated, he will always be lucky.

In the end, I found that I was so completely defeated by the opponent in terms of full soldiers and food, and my mentality was of course extremely explosive.

The meals provided by the Han army to the envoys were pretty good, but they were not deliberately and grandly entertained.

Xun Yu and Sima Lang and Sima Yi were treated the same. Each person had a food box, which contained a steamed grass carp in sections, covered with shredded ginger and scallions to remove the fishy smell. Some pickled jerky was also steamed, with ginger, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots underneath.

The staple food is rough steamed rice with indica rice.

Xun Yu had no appetite at all, and he just wanted to relieve his doubts. So he left the table and went to the door of the house to inspect the Cao army guards and cavalry he brought.

Then Xun Yu saw that the rice and steamed meat they ate were the same as those of them who were officials. The difference was that the fish eaten by civil servants were fresh and the vegetables were fresh. The cavalry ate pickled vegetables, without fish.

Xun Yu used this to judge the other side. It seemed that the difference in treatment between the officers and soldiers of the Han army was not very big.

This made him more and more shocked, so he wanted to go out for a walk in the inn, but was stopped by Chen Dao's people. After repeated application, Chen Dao sent cavalry to protect him and let them walk around the streets, but they could not go to military forbidden areas.

Xun Yu took the opportunity to ask some local people and grassroots soldiers, mainly choosing those who were involved in the digging of canals in the past few months and understand their lives.

Xun Yu was proficient in internal affairs, so it was easy to see whether the civilians had served for a long time. If he really couldn't, he would know that he could just pull his hand and look at the calluses on his palms.

People who swung shovels at high intensity for several consecutive months had obviously different hands.

Xun Yu asked them: When serving, did the government provide full food? Do you need civil servants to bring some dry food? Is corvee delaying the autumn harvest?

The answers received were that the government would provide food in a concentrated manner. When there was no autumn harvest, everyone would dig the river quickly. When it was not time to harvest autumn grain, even soldiers would help harvest it.

The time coordination is very good, and the lives of the people are limited. They only served for two months. Under normal circumstances, the people would have to perform labor service for at least one and a half months each year, which is legal.

Then, during the conversation with the people, Xun Yu also learned surprisingly that Liu Bei organized hundreds of thousands of people to work, and he could try his best to ensure that the people in front of him eat fresh vegetables. It was still the colder winter has become increasingly obvious, and the shortage of fresh vegetables has made the soldiers eat pickled vegetables.

Of course, Xun Yu knew that in rural areas, in the place of origin, fresh vegetables such as sausage and radish are lower than grain and rice. Letting people eat more miscellaneous vegetables and eat less is also a savings.

However, this is the battlefield ahead! There are so many people gathered in the local area, and the supplies need to be transported from elsewhere! The vegetables are bulky and the amount is not enough to fill the body, which means the transportation volume will increase!

Transportation is damaged by road! Vegetables are more prone to rot. If the transportation takes more than half a month, it will definitely rot!

How did Liu Bei do it? To be precise, how did Zhuge Liang do it.

Unfortunately, ordinary civilians couldn't answer these questions. Xun Yu visited for a long time but failed. In the end, when he returned to the inn, Chen Dao reported Xun Yu and his party's attempts. After obtaining permission, Chen Dao personally solved Xun Yu's doubts.

"Duke Xun, it seems that under Cao Cao's rule, people's livelihood is in decline, and there is no love for the people and talents to help coordinate. Under the liberation of the court, these are very basic. The Prime Minister and Zhuge Shangshu's disciples are well versed in the way of dispatching.

Before His Majesty sent troops this year, the land of the entire Nanyang County and Henan Yin, and even part of the fields of Xiangyang County, were guaranteed by the government to plant all vegetables. Growing grain is a task for the rear to stay away from the front line.

In addition, the Nanyang Canal and the Anti-Lu Canal were successively cleared, so what was the waterway transfer? Zhuge Shangshu said that he reviewed the Prime Minister's research last year and that eating more fresh vegetables would also be beneficial for the long-term garrison of the army and reduce epidemics.

Although I don’t know what the specific benefits are, since it is not worth it, with Your Majesty’s kindness and love for things, I will definitely try my best to do it thoroughly. Cao Cao is stubborn and wants to fight with Your Majesty. Once you have a long time, you don’t have to take action. Cao Cao’s army and horses will suffer from epidemics and disintegrate on their own!

If you really can return to your fate this time, it will be your luck. So we are not afraid to tell you this, because if Cao Cao dares to resist, he will perish in a moment! He will not have the chance to learn from the virtuous and imitate His Majesty’s virtues!”

Xun Yu's face was ashamed, and he forgot that the opposite side was just a middle-level general of the lieutenant level. He sighed dejectedly in front of the other side: "Prime Minister... No, Mr. Cao, this time he is very sincere."

As soon as Xun Yu said this, Sima Lang, who was wandering around and spying with him, suddenly felt a little inappropriate.

Sima Yi, who seemed to be harmless, felt even more contempt:

Even this is considered to be the talent of Wang Zuo? Why is he so unscrupulous? He is in a high position as a minister and serves as a mission to the prime minister, and his true feelings are revealed, and his trump card is revealed. Isn’t this to indulge Liu Bei to harshly suppress the price? Even if Cao Cao really surrenders, how can he negotiate a good price?

Sima Yi felt more and more that Xun Yu would not succeed in this negotiation, but there was no need for him to fight for it. He just needed to report it quietly after he went back and let Cao Cao know Xun Yu's true performance.

It was not long before Cao Cao had been working with his elder brother for a year and a half, and he had never asked for any outstanding official position.

However, the eldest brother Sima Lang has now achieved the Great Promise Order, which is equivalent to the official position when Yang Xiu was at Liu Bei six years ago. Sima Yi himself only had a Grand Master of Lu, only 600 stones, and was just a gangster.

Sima Yi didn't want to be labeled as Cao Cao's best friend at the last moment. He wanted to work peacefully until Cao Cao was finished. At worst, he could go back to his hometown to study and live in seclusion. When the news passed, he would find another opportunity to become an official.

...

Xun Yu's performance and the morale atmosphere of Cao's envoys, of course, these information quickly reached Liu Bei's ears.

Liu Bei did not meet the envoy overnight, which did not mean that he was tired and could not work overnight. He just needed to collect information first and let his subordinates make a plan.

Late at night, Ruyang was walking inside, and Liu Bei's study was bright and candles were bright, and civil officials such as Lu Su, Fa Zheng, Xu Shu, and Huang Quan were all there.

Liu Bei put a file in front of everyone. The content on the file was exactly what Chen Dao had just reported about the performance of Xun Yu and Sima brothers.
Chapter completed!