Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1143 Accident
What happened in Guangling City soon spread throughout Xuzhou, but contrary to Yuan Xi's expectations, it did not cause much stir.

According to Yuan Xi's idea, several big families in Xuzhou were uprooted by him, which was almost a massacre. However, those who were massacred were not the common people who had no voice, but the scholars who had the right to speak. How could this circle be so calm?
Later, the feedback from various parties made Yuan Xi understand the reason.

The main reason why the Xuzhou scholars did not stand on the side of the scholars from the rebellious family was that rebellion was a taboo among the gentry and it was not suitable to be discussed publicly. Moreover, the Xuzhou gentry had a criminal record. Even Liu Bei, who was lenient to him, was driven away. Who else could they obey?

The scholars in Xuzhou were not fools. They knew clearly that these rebellious nobles had brought this upon themselves. They were enjoying great benefits and living a carefree life in such a stable rear area, yet they were still dreaming of greater power. To put it bluntly, they were greedy and ungrateful.

Therefore, when several major aristocratic families in Xuzhou were massacred, most of the other scholars were gloating over their misfortune. Betraying the lord has always been a taboo. Even if they had to do it, they would defect to others. How could they stab the lord in the back?
What's more, the Xuzhou gentry have been implicated for this kind of thing twice. The last time was Liu Bei, and this time it was Yuan Xi. Both of them are lords who are known for their benevolent and righteous governance. If the Xuzhou gentry still do this, what's the difference between them and Lu Bu?
Lu Lingqi was sitting next to Yuan Xi. When she saw the words written on the bamboo slips sent by the Procuratorate, her face suddenly turned red with suffocation. She sat in the corner depressed and fanned herself vigorously.

Yuan Xi was amused watching from the side, "Do you value the reputation of the Lu family so much?"

"When Marquis Wen was alive, he didn't have so many concerns. Why are you so conflicted?"

Lu Lingqi said depressedly: "You don't understand. As long as I bear the surname Lu, I will never be at peace."

"Since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the surname Lu has been criticized because of Empress Lu. For hundreds of years, the people of the surname Lu have been affected by this to varying degrees."

"Especially as a woman with the surname Lu, the world is full of prejudice, not to mention a place like Bingzhou that is not well received in the Central Plains."

"Father." Lu Lingqi paused, "You did something inappropriate again, causing the world to see..."

Yuan Xi sighed, "I know you have a lot on your shoulders, but sometimes you think too much."

"I still think that the innocent and naive girl was cuter when we first met."

Lu Lingqi was slightly angry: "I didn't know anything at that time. I was so stupid. How could I be cute?"

Yuan Xi couldn't help laughing, "At that time you were fearless, just like a monkey, silly and cute, but also cute."

Lu Lingqi couldn't help but punched Yuan Xi in the stomach and said angrily: "I told you not to make fun of me!"

The punch was very light. Yuan Xi laughed and said, "Look, you have changed a lot in the past few years. If it were when we first met, I would have been lying on the ground long ago."

"To be honest, if you had your temper back then, you would have fought with Madam Zhen to some extent if you married me, right?"

"You behaved so honestly later. Was it because of the influence of the Lu family's reputation as mentioned earlier?"

Lu Lingqi nodded in agreement, "Yes, I..." Yuan Xi couldn't help laughing, "Do you really think that your straightforward thinking can compare to Empress Lu's?"

"The most adorable thing about our Lingqi is her almost endless self-confidence."

Lu Lingqi finally broke down her defense, jumped up in rage, threw Yuan Xi to the ground and beat him hard.

The Xuzhou incident actually caused even greater waves outside of Xuzhou. After Cao Cao learned about it, he stepped up his efforts to move troops towards Qingzhou. At the same time, he sent people into Xuzhou to harass, trying to instigate the local Xuzhou gentry to rebel against Yuan Xi.

The people in charge of this work were the direct descendants of the Yingchuan faction, headed by Xin Pi and assisted by Meng Gongwei, who intended to dig a gap in the city wall of Xuzhou.

But they were soon turned away. The Xuzhou gentry responded to them rather coldly. The only one who agreed was judged by Xin Pi to be a false surrender, fearing that he wanted to lure them into the city and then hand over their heads to Yuan Xi for the reward.

Meng Gongwei was extremely depressed about this. He said, "Didn't the Xuzhou nobles just get slaughtered by a vicious tiger?"

"They should hate Xiong Hu very much, why would they help him?"

Xin Pi said, "I'm afraid they are afraid of being killed. Maybe in their eyes, the fate of betraying the fierce tiger is more terrible."

"Of course, it is also possible that Xionghu has already eliminated most of the nobles who opposed him, and those who remain are naturally loyal to him."

Meng Gongwei said depressedly: "Then we came here for nothing?"

Xin Pi replied: "No, this is just the beginning."

"General Cao Zidan will be here in a few days. If soft tactics don't work, we'll have to use hard tactics."

"The Jianghuai region is extremely critical now. Except for the problem in Qingzhou, the breakthrough point comes here. If we can open up the passage to the south, we can respond to the Wu State and destroy the supply of the fierce tiger." Meng Gongwei thought to himself that this was easier said than done. The Cao Zidan that Xin Pi mentioned was Cao Zhen, Cao Cao's adopted son. He had followed Cao Ren on the left road before, and now he was ordered to go south. He was ordered to assemble a group of navy in the upper reaches of the Huai River and march eastward with the intention of destroying the passage to Xuzhou. As a result, he encountered Lu Xun's fleet.

Cao Zhen naturally could not defeat Lu Xun, and was in a very bad situation at the beginning. But later he gathered his warships to the Yuzhou defense line on the north bank of the Huai River, and relying on the water forts to hold on, he was able to withstand the attack of Lu Xun's fleet.

The two sides have been in a stalemate until now, how can it be as easy to break through as Xin Pi said?
The reason why Xuzhou underwent such a change was because the changes in Qingzhou made Cao Ying’s previous plan fail.

Because the Yellow River has run out of water!
Originally, Cao's army dug the Yellow River and wanted to flood Qingzhou. The plan went quite smoothly. However, seeing that several counties in Qingzhou were affected by the disaster, Cao's army on the border became restless and prepared to take advantage of the situation to rob.

As a result, a month later, the flow of the Yellow River suddenly decreased significantly. Qingzhou downstream took the opportunity to start dredging the river. In just a few days, a lot of the flooded water was dredged!
The Cao army, which was waiting and watching, was now in a panic. They had originally planned to take advantage of the flooding of the Yellow River to harass and raid Qingzhou using various means. For this purpose, the Cao army even prepared thousands of sampans in advance in order to gain the advantage of mobilizing troops in the water environment.

As a result, overnight, the water level of the tributaries formed by floods on their marching route inexplicably dropped, and in some places the water even emerged from the ground!
Although Cao's army had heard that Qingzhou was organizing people to dig canals to release water, they did not take it seriously. The volume of water in the Yellow River was so huge, how could it be solved by just a few thousand people digging ditches?
If the Yellow River floods were so easy to control, wouldn't the imperial courts in history that frequently affected tens or even hundreds of thousands of migrant workers be idiots?

Of course, Cao's army did not know that Yuan Xi had mobilized quite a few people in Qingzhou. The most critical part of the personnel was still in the work of diverting water from the Hetao Plain in Bingzhou upstream. Moreover, Yuan Xi had mobilized more than tens of thousands of people in Bingzhou, which was one of the rare large-scale conscription of labor in Yuan Xi's territory in recent years.

When the spies from Yecheng reported that the water volume in the upper reaches of the Yellow River had decreased significantly, the advisers of Cao's army finally understood what was going on.

The drying up of the Yellow River represented the temporary failure of Cao's plan to flood Qingzhou. This not only disrupted Cao's plan to enter Qingzhou, but also affected the fighting situation in Jizhou, thus having an unignorable impact on related overall strategies.

To make matters worse, Cao Zhen sent troops to Xuzhou and was in a stalemate with Lu Xun on the border of Xuzhou. The two sides fought several battles. Cao Zhen faced Lu Xun's navy both by land and sea, but not only did he fail to gain an advantage, but he was repeatedly defeated by harassment and attacks from an infantry unit sent by Lu Xun.

Cao Zhen himself was even defeated by one of the unknown vanguards and suffered serious injuries.

When the news came, everyone in Cao's camp was quite surprised, because Cao Zhen was Cao Cao's adopted son, and his martial arts and military strategy were ranked among the best among Cao's generals. Moreover, as the commander of an army, he was actually injured by the enemy's vanguard. This shows that when the two sides were fighting, at least Cao's army was suppressed, and the other side was the Jianghuai Army that was not good at land warfare!

The setbacks in Qingzhou and Xuzhou showed that the situation had changed. The previous strategic route was no longer applicable, and Cao's advisers were urgently needed to formulate a new strategic direction.

However, Cao Cao had to participate in this overall strategy. But the bad news was that Cao Cao's health suddenly worsened. He had a headache so severe that he became unconscious. He could only walk, sit or lie down normally for very few times a day, let alone preside over military affairs.

This made Cao's advisers panic. On the one hand, they blocked the news to avoid shaking the morale of the army. On the other hand, they made plans for the worst, and many people were already preparing for a rainy day.

Zhong Yao has been extremely anxious these days. He knows that many of Cao Cao's subordinates only put their own interests first. It was nothing when Cao's camp had the upper hand, but at this critical moment, the actions of these people would undoubtedly push Cao's camp into the abyss!

He had no choice but to find Xun You and others to control the situation in Yecheng while waiting in front of Cao Cao's bedroom day and night, just to wait for the moment when Cao Cao woke up.

Hard work pays off. After lying down for three days, Cao Cao finally regained consciousness. When Cao Cao heard that Zhong Yao and Xun You had been waiting outside, he immediately called them in.

Cao Cao knew that he had no idea how long he could stay awake, so he immediately issued several orders to the two men.

One is to summon Cao Pi and Cao Zhi to Yecheng.

Second, he summoned Sima Yi, who had returned to Xu Du from Xichuan, to Jizhou to serve as a military advisor.

The third was to summon Yang Biao from the Hongnong Yang family and Cui Yan from Qinghe to Jicheng.

Fourth, let Xiahou Dun and Cao Ren, who were fighting with the Jin army outside, return to Jicheng.

As orders were issued one after another, Zhong Yao could not hide the solemn look on his face. Did Cao Cao know that he would not live long and started to arrange his funeral affairs?

Can his body really not hold on any longer?

Zhong Yao's suspicion was unfounded, he just had a vague feeling that something was wrong. Cao Cao had been suffering from headaches for years, and it seemed reasonable for him to arrange his funeral now. However, as one of the people who understood Cao Cao best, Zhong Yao always felt that there was something inexplicably inconsistent in Cao Cao's current actions.

What's wrong?

Or am I overthinking it?
Zhong Yao suppressed his doubts and followed Cao Cao's arrangements one by one. Finally, Cao Cao showed a look of pain and asked him and Xun You to leave. Only then did Zhong Yao obediently leave.

The two walked outside, and Xun You asked, "What should we do now?"

(End of this chapter)