Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1182 Counter-Plan
The news that Xionghu was coming in person almost broke Xiahou Yuan's defense, because the person Cao Ying feared most was Xionghu himself. If Xiahou Yuan had known that he would come to Jingzhou in person, he would never have responded so carelessly!
He cursed Cai Mao in his heart. He should have known the previous battle situation and would never have missed such important military information as the presence of the fierce tiger. But why didn't he tell him about this in advance?

Are you trying to kill yourself by hiding something like this?

But then Xiahou Yuan thought of something and his face suddenly became gloomy. Did Cai Mao really do it on purpose?

Could it be that Cai Mao had secretly sided with the evil tiger, and was going to turn against him at the critical moment, surround him from both sides, and cooperate with the evil tiger to kill him and take credit for himself?
The more Xiahou Yuan thought about it, the more possible it seemed. Cai was a villain who changed his attitude according to the situation and surrendered without realizing it. He was not worthy of trust at all!

So he took advantage of the battle to take out Cao Cao's earlier edict, which was about Liu Cong.

Liu Cong was appointed as the governor of Yanzhou and took office immediately.

This method was exactly the same as the one used by Yizhou to send Liu Zhang away, which eliminated the influence of the Liu family in Jingzhou to the greatest extent. Without the status of Liu Cong, Cai Mao could only rely on Cao Cao obediently.

To be fair, this edict did hold something against Liu Cong and the Cai family, but in Mrs. Cai's view, this was not the case at all.

Yanzhou is close to Yecheng. Didn't Cao Cao openly let her go and then take the opportunity to get his hands on her?

After hearing the news, she was even more shocked and confused, but Cao Cao was leading the troops on the water, so she was unable to find Cai Mao to discuss in time.

Little did he know that Cai Mao, who was fighting with Guan Yu on the river at this time, was also cursing, but the person he was cursing was Zhang Yun.

Because Zhang Yun did not mention anything about Xionghu in his letter of surrender to Cai Mao, Cai Mao was completely unaware of the news that Xionghu had come in person.

So much so that after the war broke out, Cai Mao was so frightened when he saw the flag of Prince of Jin on Yuan Xi's fleet that he almost wanted to escape on the spot.

Because for him who was familiar with naval battles, the navy commanded by Xionghu himself was the most terrifying enemy. The other side had personally defeated the Wu navy twice, and how could the Jingzhou navy compare to the Wu navy?

At the same time, he also realized the dirty mentality of Zhang Yun. The other party surrendered to Xionghu, and his troops were almost wiped out. Naturally, his status in Xionghu Army was not very high.

If Cai Mao surrendered with tens of thousands of Jingzhou troops at this time, his status would definitely be much higher than Zhang Yun, so Zhang Yun played a trick and deliberately was vague in the letter, only saying that the Prince of Jin was inviting surrender, but did not say that the Prince of Jin was commanding the battle!
This gave Cai Mao the illusion that the Yuan-Liu coalition was weak, so he was determined to stand on the side of Cao's army to fight against the Yuan-Liu coalition.

In this way, for Zhang Yun, it would be impossible for Cai Mao to surrender to Yuan Xi and surpass him!

This damn thing!

Although both Cai and Zhang families surrendered to Liu Biao, there were many open and covert struggles between them in order to determine the priority.

Although the Cai family later relied on Madam Cai to suppress the Zhang family, the Zhang family, who was originally more powerful than the Cai family, was naturally not convinced and was always looking for an opportunity to turn the tables.

Cai Mao’s guess was correct, Zhang Yun really thought so.

After Zhang Yun surrendered, Yuan Xi only gave him an honorary title and did not let him lead the army, because Zhang Yun was good at training naval forces but was mediocre at fighting in battles. Yuan Xi now had no shortage of naval generals, so he naturally put Zhang Yun aside for the time being.

In order to show his trust, Yuan Xi did not read Zhang Yun's letter of surrender, nor did he expect Zhang Yun to write such a letter. He did not expect that this unexpected letter would make Xiahou Yuan suspicious of Cai Mao.

This letter triggered unpredictable consequences on both sides. Once Xiahou Yuan became suspicious, coupled with the huge pressure from Yuan Xi's personal arrival, he made the decision to exile Liu Cong in order to eliminate potential risks to the greatest extent.

After Liu Cong left, Cai Mao lost his status, and the Jingzhou navy was gradually controlled by Xiahou Yuan, who would eventually sideline Cai Mao. This was Xiahou Yuan's plan.

There is a risk in this approach. If Cai Mao realizes Xiahou Yuan's intentions, he may become dissatisfied and become even more alienated from Cao's camp.

Xiahou Yuan naturally did not ignore this. After discussing with his advisers, he finally concluded that the possibility of Cai Mao rebelling was not high.

Based on his previous courage of not wanting to fight against Cao's army in Jingzhou, as well as the personal relationship between Cai and Cao Cao, Xiahou Yuan and his advisers finally concluded that Cai Mao was a coward who was afraid of death and would only obey orders and become an idle official even if he was deprived of his military power.

This judgment was actually very accurate, but Xiahou Yuan missed one person.

Mrs. Cai.

Compared with Cai Mao, Mrs. Cai has come to her current situation step by step, and it can be said that she was swept away by the general trend. It is certainly impossible to say that she was completely willing.

Especially when she heard the news that she was going to Yanzhou with Liu Cong, Mrs. Cai panicked. The first thing she thought of was that Cao Cao wanted to get rid of her and Liu Cong and then kill them after tricking them to Yanzhou.

Of course, it is also possible that Liu Cong was killed and she was taken into Cao Cao's harem. Thinking of this, Mrs. Cai had the idea of ​​escaping.

There was a reason why she thought so. All along, there were all kinds of bad rumors about Cao Cao around her. Among the rumors, it was especially said that Cao Cao would accept people who surrendered to him or those who surrendered to him on the surface, but would actually find an opportunity to deal with them later. The most typical example was Cao Cao killing Bian Rang, betraying Yuan Shao, forming an alliance with Yuan Tan and then turning against him, killing Xu You who surrendered, forcing Xun Yu to death, and so on. After such rumors were repeated countless times in Mrs. Cai's ears, the seeds of distrust were planted in Mrs. Cai.

So when Mrs. Cai heard Xiahou Yuan's order that she and Liu Cong should immediately head north to Yuzhou and then to Yanzhou, she became even more suspicious.

Because in this incident, firstly, Xiahou Yuan took over the military power of part of Cai Mao's navy in the name of assisting in the war; secondly, Liu Cong's route to the north was the northward passage between Yong'an and Yiling; thirdly, it was seen that it was not Cai Mao's navy but Xiahou Yuan's personal soldiers who escorted Liu Cong's wife.

Mrs. Cai was terrified when she thought about it. No matter how she looked at it, it seemed that Xiahou Yuan wanted to use the Fierce Tiger Army to get rid of her!
So she began to secretly plan her escape. After all, she had some loyal warriors in the Jingzhou army. So, with the planning of several confidants, she decided to take advantage of the moment when the northward-bound team was discovered by the Xionghu Army and came to fight with the Cao Army when they were close to Yiling, and take advantage of the chaos to find an opportunity to escape.

Of course, the premise of all this is not to be discovered by the Fierce Tiger Army.

So Mrs. Cai made a decision and sent someone to deliver a letter to the Xionghu Army, informing them of the route to escort Cao's army to the north.

Looking back afterwards, Mrs. Cai still couldn't understand how she made such a decision, which obviously still put herself in unknown danger.

But now she has determined in her heart that Cao's army will definitely attack her, so if that happens, she might as well take a risk.

So while Cai Mao was still fighting fiercely with Guan Yu on the river, Lady Cai and Liu Cong, escorted by thousands of Cao's troops, headed north from the waterway west of Yiling, preparing to cross the Han River and rush to Xiangyang, and then pass through Wancheng to enter Yuzhou.

Then, not surprisingly, Cao's army was intercepted by Jin's army.

Mrs. Cai quickly called Liu Cong, and then took the opportunity to escape with her trusted men. However, the carriage had just traveled a few miles when it was stopped by dozens of Cao's cavalry.

The leading General Cao held his sword in front of him and sneered, "Where are you going?"

Madam Cai lifted the carriage curtain and said, "The fighting is very intense. We are afraid of our lives being in danger, so we are temporarily avoiding the front line."

General Cao sneered, "Madam, stop pretending. The general already knows about your Cai clan collusion with the enemy!"

He took out a letter, which was the letter that Madam Cai wrote to the Jin army. "Madam, you want to use the Jin army to get rid of us. It's a good idea."

"It's a pity that Madam didn't expect that the letter had already been intercepted by the general, so he used the general's trick to ambush the Jin army!"

"The army behind us will arrive soon, Madam, you'd better give up on this idea!"

Madam Cao looked pale, but she forced herself to remain calm and said, "There must be a misunderstanding. I want to see General Xiahou."

General Cao sneered and said, "No need for that. The general has issued an order that the Cai family will be killed for collaborating with the enemy and betraying the country!"

He waved his hand, "Kill them all!"

"Don't worry, you were killed by the Jin army. The general will avenge you!"

Mrs. Cai finally understood and said in a hoarse voice: "So you... have been wanting to kill us for a long time, you are just looking for an excuse!"

General Cao showed a grim smile and rushed forward with his cavalry, all holding their swords high. Mrs. Cai hugged Liu Cong, and the two of them trembled with their eyes closed, waiting to die.

But at this moment, dense arrows covered General Cao and his subordinates. They all fell off their horses. After the rain of arrows, only a few riders were left on the field.

General Cao reined in his horse and was just beginning to wonder when the sound of dense horse hooves was heard and the Jin army rushed over from all over the mountains and plains.

As soon as General Cao saw the number of people, he knew something was wrong. The number of troops ambushed by the Jin army should definitely not be so large!

After Cao's army intercepted Mrs. Cao's letter, they came up with a tactic to turn the tables on the enemy and kill someone with a borrowed knife. The team escorting Mrs. Cai nominally had a thousand people. If the news were known to the Jin army, they would definitely send about three thousand people to intercept them.

But this number was the limit for the Jin army. After all, its main force was fighting against Cai Mao's navy on the river, and it was impossible for it to allocate more troops.

However, from what General Cao saw at a glance, there were at least four to five thousand people rushing over, and there was smoke and dust billowing on the forest road behind, and it was obvious that more people were coming!
This number obviously far exceeds the normal number of people in an ambush, which shows that something went wrong in this operation!
General Cao made a prompt decision and turned around to run south. He wanted to inform Xiahou Yuan who had arrived as soon as possible of the news to avoid an ambush!

But he didn't have this opportunity. Just as he had galloped a few dozen steps on his horse, an arrow shot from behind, hitting him in the back of the neck and knocking him off his horse.

Then a large number of Jin cavalry rushed over and headed straight for the direction where Xiahou Yuan was leading his troops. This time Yuan Xi's counter-strategy was successful. The Jin army was going to completely destroy Xiahou Yuan's reinforcements!

(End of this chapter)