Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1326 Suspicion
When Yuan Xi and Gao Lan arrived near Luoyang, the offensive and defensive battle had already come to an end.

The siege actually did not take much time. On the one hand, Zhao Yun, Xu Huang and Gao Gan's Bingzhou cavalry cooperated well to prevent the mobile Xiliang cavalry outside the city from getting close to the city, thus eliminating the possibility of cooperation from the Wei army.

On the other hand, because Luoyang was the main attack direction of Jin State this time, the siege equipment was almost all concentrated along this route. Moreover, after Luoyang was burned by Dong Zhuo and suffered several military disasters, the city walls were damaged in many places. Although Wei State tried its best to repair them later, there were still many loopholes. Under the attack of Jin State's equipment and fortifications, the city walls soon collapsed in many places, making it impossible for Cao's army to carry out effective defense.

Although Xiahou Shang was young, he had shown abilities far superior to other Cao Wei clan generals of the same age before the Battle of Yecheng. After being tempered by several major battles, his performance along the way was remarkable.

As Xiahou Yuan's cousin, he also showed a sense of courage when facing the Jin army. He almost performed exceptionally well and defended against multiple waves of attacks by the Jin army. Gao Gan's Bingzhou army and Zhang Xun's infantry joined forces to attack the city several times, but all failed.

But Xiahou Shang's efforts could only go so far. When Yuan Xi arrived with Zhuge Liang, he immediately found that his strategy was completely restrained by the other side. It seemed that no matter what he did, the Jin army could respond in advance, and the situation of defending the city began to take a sharp turn for the worse.

However, there was no reinforcement from the Wei State. Seeing the bad situation, Xiahou Shang quickly sent people to break out at night and ask for help from Xu Du. He also knew that due to his lack of experience, it was too late for him to ask for help. Even if the messenger could make it to Xu Du, he would not be able to hold on until the reinforcements arrived!
Seeing that the Jin army was attacking very rapidly, Xiahou Shang had to make the decision to abandon Luoyang after careful consideration. He was extremely decisive. After resisting the Jin army for a whole day, he immediately issued an order to withdraw at dark and retreated towards Xu Du overnight.

Xu Huang, who was confronting the Xiliang soldiers outside the city, keenly noticed that the Wei soldiers on the city wall were frequently mobilized, so he tried to send people to knock on the door. At this time, the retreating Wei army had no intention of defending, and as a result, the soldiers sent by Xu Huang broke the gate and rushed in.

This was beyond Xu Huang's expectations. He thought that Zhang Xun's infantry had been fighting for so many days and were resting at night. He didn't expect that he would take advantage of an opportunity, so he immediately sent someone to inform Zhuge Liang.

When Zhuge Liang learned about it, he ordered Gao Gan Zhang Xun to lead the troops to attack the city. Although the two felt a little regretful, they knew that the opportunity was not to be missed, so they quickly gathered soldiers and attacked the city gate from other directions. As a result, they easily entered.

Because of the previous experience of the fire in Yecheng, they were quite cautious when entering the city. However, after entering, they found that the Wei army had almost fled and they did not set fire before leaving, so they sent someone to report to Zhuge Liang.

After thinking about it, Zhuge Liang ordered Zhao Yun and others to pursue and drive out the Xiliang army with all their might, and to show leniency to the Wei army, as a response to Xiahou Shang for not burying the people in the city with him.

When Yuan Xi and Gao Lan arrived, Zhuge Liang had already wiped out all the Wei troops in the city after a night of fighting. Xiahou Shang escaped with more than 10,000 people, while Zhao Yun and Xu Huang went to pursue Ma Chao and Han Sui's Xiliang troops.

When Yuan Xi saw Zhuge Liang coming to meet him at the city gate, he stepped forward, shook Zhuge Liang's hand and said, "Thank you for your hard work, Prime Minister."

Zhuge Liang briefly described the situation in the city, and several people entered the city together. They saw that although the houses of the people in the city were a little dilapidated, they did not look like they had been ravaged by war. This alone showed that Xiahou Shang had a good way of commanding the army, and this kind of military discipline was very rare among the generals of the Wei army.

Yuan Xi sighed: "I didn't expect that there would be such a general among Cao Wei."

Zhuge Liang also felt the same way. "If everyone is like this, it will be much more difficult to defeat Wei."

Gao Lan was somewhat puzzled and said, "I don't understand. If the Wei army held the people hostage to defend the city, wouldn't it be more difficult to fight?"

"It's like the families of Cao Wei soldiers were kept under guard in the rear, and they would be punished together if they lost the battle. I think it would be difficult to fight like this."

Zhuge Liang explained: "There is still a difference."

"Cao Wei's practice of holding civilian soldiers hostage may gain an advantage on the battlefield in the short term, but in the long run it will lose the support of the people."

"If there is a clear disparity between the policies of Jin and Wei, it will cause the people to flee to the rich and enlightened regions."

"If this continues, the population of the areas with population outflow will decrease, and the output will also decrease, which will greatly weaken the national strength. If this trend continues, it will be difficult to recover."

"In fact, if we mobilized a large army and used the entire strength of Jin to attack the city, Wei might have been destroyed within five years. However, my lord felt that this move would be too costly, so he adopted the method of taking the long view and removing the firewood from under the cauldron."

Zhuge Liang actually knew why. Yuan Xi once said that it was not good to conquer a place too early. This would lead to the conflicts accumulated among the gentry and the people of Cao Wei being directly transferred to the State of Jin.

The best time was when Wei was forced to exploit the people and even the gentry due to years of wars and rising taxes and prices, which intensified conflicts and made them lose the support of the people. That was the best time for Jin.

Yuan Xi set the time for destroying Wei to be between ten and fifteen years. During this period, Jin would only use half of its strength to target Wei, and the other half would be used to target the Xianbei outside the Great Wall.

The power of the Xianbei outside the Great Wall was almost spread along the Great Wall defense line, from the Tianshan Mountains in Liangzhou, to the Yinshan Mountains in Bingzhou, and then to the Yanshan Mountains in Youzhou to the Xianbei Mountains, stretching over a vast area of ​​nearly seven or eight thousand miles. For Yuan Xi, this threat was much greater than that of the Wei State, which was halfway into the coffin.

Yuan Xi once told Zhuge Liang that if he could defeat the Xianbei in his lifetime and extend the Chinese territory to the north by 2,000 miles, he would have no regrets in his life. The three of them walked slowly through the street. The people on both sides were all worried. Some hid in the house, and some knelt in the yard, fearing that they would anger the new master of Luoyang.

Seeing this, Yuan Xi sighed, “No matter how good the words are, no matter how legitimate the title is, they dare not trust any force to repay before these people are well fed.”

"This place has suffered too much war in the past twenty years, especially after Dong Zhuo burned Luoyang. The Southern Xiongnu went south several times to plunder and abduct and kill many civilians. That's why I told the senior officials not to let the Southern Xiongnu cavalry enter the city, otherwise it would only irritate them."

"It will probably take many years to heal the trauma of this war. Before that, let them live a stable life for a while."

Dark clouds gathered in the sky, rumbling thunder was heard, the sky gradually darkened, and heavy rain was about to come.

Zhuge Liang asked, "Then should we continue to attack Xudu or Chang'an?"

Yuan Xi thought for a moment and said, "The rainy season is coming. This will cause great losses to our soldiers and armor, and will also affect the summer harvest and autumn planting. Let's stop here."

"Send a letter to Zilong, Gongming and the others, asking them to come back and reorganize the army, and then to Luoyang."

He thought for a moment and said, "Let Gongming stay in this city for the time being. Brother Gao will be responsible for transporting grain and seeds from Jizhou to resume production as soon as possible."

Zhuge Liang said, "After this battle, the Wei army will not have the energy to counterattack, but the looting Xiliang army may not stop. They may continue to harass us. It will be difficult to defend with General Xu's thousands of mobile cavalry alone."

Yuan Xi thought for a moment and said, "I have an idea. Ma Chao should retreat to Henei. I will find someone to contact him and take out some of the treasures from the Wei treasury in the city and send them to him."

Gao Lan was a little confused, but Zhuge Liang understood immediately, "My lord, are you using money to buy peace?"

Yuan Xi said: "That's right, these wealth are just external things. The most important thing is that the land around Luoyang can be safely cultivated to feed the population."

"By comparison, giving Ma Chao some benefits and getting him to stop harassing the border is a win for us."

Gao Lan asked, "The Lord once ordered Gao Gan to massacre Ma Chao's base camp. Can he really bear this?"

Yuan Xi smiled and said, "He is a man who can let go of things easily. I believe he also wants to leave a way out for himself."

With a thunderclap, heavy rain began to fall, soaking Ma Chao who was leading his troops to retreat towards Hanoi. He wanted to raise his head and curse, but as soon as he opened his mouth, his mouth was filled with rain water.

He swallowed a big mouthful of rain water, and then sprayed out the excess water. The cold rain water did not wash away the hot summer heat and the stuffiness of the defeat. Ma Chao thought bitterly, what on earth have I been doing in the past few years!
He was constantly losing battles and running away, and his number of soldiers was decreasing. The Xiliang soldiers were not endless, and the reason they could be continuously replenished was that Liangzhou was also hit by natural disasters and man-made tragedies, food harvests were poor, and bandits were rampant. Most of the border residents had no choice but to join the army in order to survive.

Therefore, Ma Chao was able to maintain an army of tens of thousands, but feeding these people was a big problem. Moreover, in Ma Chao's view, these new recruits were far less reliable than the veterans he brought with him. The original Xiliang Iron Cavalry could defeat several others on their own, but now it was normal for several Xiliang cavalrymen to be unable to defeat one Jin cavalryman.

Ma Dai behind him said, "Brother, why don't we go to Xudu?"

Ma Chao snorted coldly: "Go to Xudu?"

"The current King of Wei is very suspicious and is so harsh on the Cao clan. As a former adopted son, I might be deprived of my military power one day!"

"So we don't need to get too close to Xudu. Having our own soldiers and territory is the most important thing. Now we must ensure our territory in Henei County, Zuofengyi Road, and focus on self-protection. As for Xudu's emergency, naturally someone will stand up. It's not our turn to rush in."

Ma Dai was silent for a long time before he said, "Han Sui has not put in much effort in the past few battles. I'm afraid he has the same idea. He ran away early again this time. Brother, I wonder if he will take advantage of the opportunity."

Ma Chao's face darkened. Compared with Cao Pi, he was more worried about Han Sui. Both the other party was in direct competition with Ma Chao in terms of position and goal. There is no room for two tigers in one mountain. Both of them had ideas about Liang Province, and they would break up sooner or later!

Ma Chao knew that Han Sui also had people in the Cao Wei court, and some even had more advantages than himself. After all, Ma Chao's status as an adopted son was not a good thing for Cao Pi. It was possible that once the situation changed, Ma Chao would become the first target to be eliminated!
After fleeing for a few days, Ma Chao finally arrived at Huaicheng, the capital of Henei County, and rested for some time. No news came from Wei State yet, but Jin State sent envoys instead.

(End of this chapter)