Chapter 307: Am I being played by Liu Bei again? We need to speed up the process. We should do what Cao Cao failed to do!
Yuan Shao's face turned pale with horror.

All the counselors in the tent were shocked and exploded.

The head of a high-ranking official was actually hanging above the Chu camp?

Isn't this a joke?
At this time, didn't Gao Gan follow Gao Lan to Chengfu to gain military merit and rob Liu Bei's 150,000 hu of grain?

How could he die suddenly?
The head is still hanging above the Chu camp?

In an instant, several questions flooded into Yuan Shao's mind.

"I don't believe it, this is impossible!"

Yuan Shao suddenly sobered up, threw the wine glass on the ground, struggled to get up, and walked out of the tent with his crutches.

Everyone then reacted and hurriedly stood up, supporting Yuan Shao and heading straight for the camp wall.

Several people hurried to the camp wall, Yuan Shao climbed up the watchtower, and looked into the distance anxiously.

There was indeed a human head hanging high above the Chu army's fortress. Upon closer inspection, the outline was indeed somewhat similar to Gao Gan.

However, the two armies were only an arrow away from each other, and Yuan Shao could only see the resemblance but could not confirm it.

"Your Majesty, that can't be the head of Master Yuancai. It must be a conspiracy by Xiao Fang, just to disrupt the morale of our army."

"Prince Yuancai and Gao Lan were robbing the enemy's food supplies. How could they be killed by the Chu army? How could their heads appear here?"

"Your Majesty, do not trust me so easily!"

Feng Ji tried his best to deny it, but his tone revealed guilt and uneasiness.

Yuan Shao secretly breathed a sigh of relief and nodded:
"You are right. How could Yuancai be killed by the big-eared thief? This must be the evil plot of that country bumpkin."

"Impossible, this is impossible--"

Yuan Shao also tried his best to deny it, but the uneasiness in his eyes could not be hidden.

aside.

Ju Su, who had been thinking for a long time, suddenly thought of something and said anxiously:

"That Xiao Fang is indeed cunning, but I think that with his intelligence, he would not come up with such a clumsy trick to disrupt the morale of our army."

"I am only worried that something may have gone wrong in Chengfu. Have Gao Lan and Master Yuancai met with any misfortune?"

Yuan Shao's face changed and his heart skipped a beat.

"impossible!"

Feng Ji waved his hand and said decisively:
"Gao Lan and his men can't possibly make a mistake. The Chu army only has a few thousand soldiers guarding the grain. How can they be a match for my 10,000 cavalry?"

"Let's take a step back and say that even if Gao Lan and his men failed in their food robbery, at most they would just flee in defeat. How could Master Yuancai be killed?"

"Ju Gongyu, please stop making random guesses and spreading rumors. You are disrupting the morale of our army!"

Ju Shou was so frustrated that he wanted to fight back immediately.

Yuan Shao raised his hand to interrupt him and said sternly:

"Yuan Tu's words make sense. Even if Gao Lan and his men fail, they will never fail to the point where Yuan Cai is killed."

"Ju Gongyu, don't listen to the threatening words and disturb the morale of the troops!"

Ju Su was speechless and could only lower his head silently.

Yuan Shao took another look at the head in the Chu camp, then turned around and said disdainfully:
"That must be Liu Bei's trick to disrupt our army's morale. Pass the order down and tell the soldiers to ignore it!"

After saying this, Yuan Shao walked down to the watchtower with his crutches.

Just when he reached one step, a horseman came galloping, dismounted, and knelt on the watchtower.

"Your Majesty, my cavalry is back."

"Our nine thousand cavalrymen were ambushed by the Chu army in Chengfu, and almost all of them were wiped out, with only less than a thousand cavalrymen escaping."

"General Gao was killed by the enemy general Huang Zhong, and Master Yuancai was captured alive by the enemy general Zhang Liao, and his life or death is unknown."

A bolt from the blue, hitting me on the head!
Yuan Shao, who was originally walking down the stairs calmly, suddenly his feet went soft, his body lost control, and he rolled down the wooden stairs.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

Guo Tu and others were horrified and followed in a hurry.

Yuan Shao rolled to the ground, feeling dizzy and almost fainting.

Fortunately, the stairs were not very high and he was not injured when he rolled down. However, the bad news was like a bolt from the blue and made Yuan Shao's head buzz and his eyes went blank.

"Your Majesty! Call the medical officer quickly!"

Ju Shou was shouting for a doctor and was frantically pinching Yuan Shao's Ren Zhong point to relax his back, making the whole place a mess.

After a while.

Yuan Shao finally recovered, struggled to sit up, and grabbed Ju Su's hand.

"Sir, tell me, I heard it wrong!"

"My cavalry is still here, Gao Lan hasn't been killed, and my nephew hasn't been captured by the big-eared thief, he's still alive!"

"Tell me, everything I heard was fake!"

Yuan Shao's voice was hoarse, his eyes full of hope, he just hoped to get a negative answer from Ju Shou.

Ju Su had a bitter face and let out a long sigh of helplessness.

"I dare not deceive the king. We may have fallen into Liu Bei's trap of luring the snake out of its hole!"

"Li Tong never intended to surrender to the king. What Master Yuancai brought back was just Liu Bei's false information."

"The Yingshui route is Liu Bei's real grain transport army, and the Woshui route is actually Liu Bei's real bait, just to lure all our cavalry away and kill us by surprise."

"If my calculations are correct, the enemy troops in Chengfu must be equipped with crossbows, which is why my nine thousand cavalry were almost completely wiped out!"

"After Master Yuancai was captured alive by the enemy, Liu Bei must have beheaded him and hung his head on the camp wall to demonstrate to our army and dampen our morale!" "My king, this must have been the work of Xiao Fang from the beginning to the end!"

"We lost. We were fooled by him again!"

Ju Shou was an upright person, so he naturally would not hide anything. With his own wisdom, he silently told the cruel truth that he had deduced.

Yuan Shao let go of Ju Su, his eyes were dazed and he froze in place.

"My nine thousand cavalrymen are gone just like that?"

"One of my great generals, my own nephew, was killed by Liu Bei just like that?"

"That big-eared thief leader actually played me like a clown?"

Yuan Shao muttered to himself, his face began to distort, bloodshot began to form in his eye sockets, and flames of anger burned wildly in his heart.

The earthen hill was destroyed, one of my legs was broken, and I became a cripple!
Now the grain robbery failed, the cavalry corps was lost, the general was lost, and the nephew was lost. Liu Bei was hit hard again!
As the head of the Yuan family and the king of the Great Wei, how could he have ever suffered such humiliation in his life?

The more Yuan Shao thought about it, the angrier he became, and the more ashamed and indignant he felt. The rage in his heart could no longer be controlled and rushed to his head.

"Big Ear Thief——"

Yuan Shao suddenly looked up to the sky and let out a mournful cry.

Then the blood rushed to his head, his vision went black, and he fell to the ground with his head tilted back.

I was so angry that I fainted again!

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

The entire Wei camp was once again in chaos.

...

In the blink of an eye, half a month had passed.

The two armies formed a standoff on the Xiangcheng line.

This time it was a real confrontation.

The Wei cavalry suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Chengfu and was no longer able to move south to attack the Chu army's food supply routes. Their strategy of cutting off food supply thus failed.

Yuan Shao was first wounded, then fainted from anger, and both his body and mind were severely damaged. Although his life was not in danger, he was temporarily unable to lead the Wei army to launch an attack.

While Yuan Shao was recuperating on his sickbed, the offensive on the frontal battlefield had to be stopped, and hopes were placed on the two flank battlefields to the east to make some progress.

Unfortunately, in Qingzhou and Kunyang, the Wei army not only failed to advance southward even a single step, but was also repeatedly defeated by the Chu army.

Although the casualties were not large, it had a considerable impact on the morale of the Wei army.

From then on, the Wei troops on both the east and west routes had to go on the defensive, retreating and not fighting, not daring to engage in a head-on confrontation with the Chu army again.

From east to west, from south to north, the armies of Chu and Wei formed a confrontation on a battle line that stretched for thousands of miles.

Chu camp, king's tent.

"According to the latest intelligence sent back by the spies in Guanzhong, under the strong persuasion of Jia Xu, Ma Teng led the Ma family to Chang'an and handed over the military power of the Ma family army."

"Ma Chao was unwilling to enter the court, so he and his cousin Ma Dai led part of the Ma family army and left Fufeng for Longxi."

"Cao Cao used Ma Chao's refusal to come to the court as an excuse to send troops to Longxi to attack him, and used Ma Teng's influence to successfully disintegrate Ma Chao's followers and the Xiliang generals who followed him."

"Ma Chao was defeated and went south to Hanzhong to seek refuge with Zhang Lu. After Cao Cao eliminated the remaining resistance forces in Longxi and Liangzhou, he executed Ma Teng and his sons on charges of treason."

"At present, the entire Guanzhong area and the Liangzhou area have basically been brought under the control of Cao Cao."

Pang Tong read out one by one the various dramatic changes that had taken place in Guanlong.

There was a lot of discussion in the account immediately.

"I didn't expect that Cao Cao would pacify Guanlong so quickly?"

"Ma Teng is the leader of all the generals in Xiliang, commanding a large army, yet he went to the imperial court as a hostage without any resistance, allowing Cao Cao to slaughter him!"

"What a shame! What a shame!"

Liu Bei shook his head and sighed, feeling quite sorry that Ma Teng was killed so easily.

Xiao Fang was not surprised at all.

Ma Teng was a man of few ambitions. His biggest ambition was to obtain a nominal official position in the imperial court and to have a wife and children to live with.

In history, Ma Teng, after being deceived by Cao Cao many times, obediently brought his sons to serve as officials in the court.

What's more, Ma Teng now has Jia Xu by his side.

What this poisonous scholar was best at was self-protection. In history, in order to get a job from Cao Cao, he even persuaded Zhang Xiu to surrender to Cao Cao again even though Zhang Xiu had killed Cao Cao's son, nephew and favorite general.

Cao Cao did not touch Zhang Xiu, but after Zhang Xiu's death, Cao Pi took advantage of Wei Feng's case of treason to exterminate his son Zhang Quan and the entire Zhang family.

It is no surprise then that Jia Xu, judging the situation now, used his eloquence to persuade Ma Teng to come to the court as a hostage, while he himself lay on Cao Cao's chopping board.

"Cao Cao has taken control of Guanlong. His next step will be to take advantage of our confrontation with Yuan Shao to attack and destroy Zhang Lu in the south and take over Hanzhong."

"The next step is to continue southward to Shu, destroy Liu Zhang, and take over Yizhou."

"When he controls the three states of Yong, Liang and Yi, he will be able to regain his power and march eastward to conquer the Central Plains again."

"Your Majesty, it seems that we must speed up the progress of this battle and defeat Yuan Shao's 160,000 troops as quickly as possible!"

There was a hint of cold murderous intent in Xiao Fang's tone.

Liu Bei understood the hidden meaning of Xiao Fang's words, and he was immediately inspired. He asked hurriedly:
"Jinglue, do you have a plan to quickly defeat Yuan Shao?"

A playful smile flashed across Xiao Fang's eyes:
"Does your Majesty still remember the Battle of Guandu, Cao Cao's last stand?"

"We should do what Cao Cao failed to do!"

(End of this chapter)