Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1426 Position
Empress Guo was worried: "I heard that officials and generals in Yizhou don't like fighting. What if no one stands up?"

Cao Pi sneered and said, “No, I can see through the minds of these people.

"When Liu Yan was the governor of Yizhou, the Yizhou nobles launched a rebellion and tried to stop Liu Yan from entering Sichuan. As a result, Liu Yan used the powerful people in Hanzhong to defeat the rebellious Yizhou nobles and thus took control of Yizhou."

"When Liu Yan was about to die, according to reason, his descendants could not succeed him. However, Liu Zhang joined forces with Wu Zhi and other Dongzhou tyrants, and with Dongzhou soldiers as the main force, he once again suppressed the Yizhou gentry, and only then was he able to secure his control of Yizhou again."

"After these two battles, the local nobles of Yizhou were severely weakened, and their hatred towards Liu Zhang reached its peak. That's why Xiahou Yuan's army was so unstoppable. Cities controlled by the Yizhou nobles along the way surrendered one after another, because they didn't want to work for Liu Zhang anymore."

"In the end, Chengdu was left with only an isolated city, and Liu Zhang had no choice but to surrender. The Yizhou nobles who had come to surrender wanted to kill him immediately. If the Wei Kingdom had not needed to keep him alive, how could he have survived until now?"

"Now that I have come to Chengdu, in addition to the strongest Wei forces I brought with me, the Dongzhou faction and the Yizhou faction are also not to be underestimated. Fortunately, the two are incompatible, so I have a chance. Otherwise, if they unite with me, I will have a headache."

Empress Guo asked, "Your Majesty, have you come up with a good idea?"

Cao Pi sneered and said, "The Dongzhou faction is confident of its strength, and many of them have joined me, but there are also quite a few who want to wait for a good price, so I have to warn them."

"The Yizhou faction has been suppressed for more than ten years and continues to look for an opportunity to turn things around."

"Now I just need to give them a hint."

He gave a command, asking the eunuch to call someone over. When Empress Guo heard it, a hint of surprise flashed in her eyes. The person Cao Pi summoned turned out to be Xu Chu's son Xu Yi.

After Xu Chu died, his title of marquis was inherited by Xu Yi. However, since Xu Yi's martial arts were far inferior to his father's, he could not lead the troops and could only serve as a guard in front of the palace. Cao Pi hardly ever spoke to him.

What Cao Pi is going to do now is obviously a secret matter. Is he planning to train Xu Yi as his confidant?
Soon, Xu Yi hurried over, knelt down as soon as he entered the hall and said, "Yi pays respect to Your Majesty."

Cao Pi asked, "How have you improved your martial arts in recent years?"

Xu Yi said, "Although I am far inferior to my father, I can still easily deal with three or five ordinary people."

Empress Guo thought to herself that these three or five people were just ordinary warriors, right?

What can this do?
Cao Pi nodded slightly, "I want you to do something."

Xu Yi bowed quickly and said, "Your Majesty has given the order, and I will not refuse even if I die!"

Cao Pi spoke slowly, "Liu Zhang is now under house arrest in the East City Mansion. You go there with my token and tell them that I have a command to summon him alone."

"When you are alone in the room with him, kill him. Remember not to leave any external injuries."

"You can just come back directly afterwards. I will let the school office take care of everything afterwards."

After hearing this, Xu Yi said without hesitation: "I will go now!"

Seeing Xu Yi leave, Empress Guo asked, "Your Majesty, aren't you afraid that the matter will be leaked?"

Cao Pi said calmly: "Do you know why Xu Yi was sent?"

"It's just for the Yizhou faction and the Dongzhou faction to see."

"These people have been thinking a lot all day long, and it's time to teach them a lesson. If they don't want to live and die with me and Yizhou, then I will send them away in advance."

"They think they are a rare commodity, but they don't know that I don't care about unrest at all. When they see that I dare to kill Liu Zhang, they will know that my bottom line is much lower than they think."

Xu Yi was riding on a horse, his eyes filled with excitement and cruelty. He felt that he had made the right bet. He had offended Cao Zhi's faction, which had forced him to cling to Cao Pi's thighs tightly. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

And now this assignment means that he will do dirty things for Cao Pi in the future. This is the treatment only for confidants. As long as he endures it, he will be able to climb to a position higher than his father sooner or later!

Xu Yi arrived at Liu Zhang's residence and took out the emperor's token. The guards hurriedly welcomed him in. Liu Zhang ran out to greet him and Xu Yi said, "Your Majesty has a special message for General Zhenwei."

Liu Zhang was originally worried, but when he saw that Xu Yi had nothing in his hands, he felt relieved.

If Your Majesty wanted to kill me, he would have to bring poisoned wine and white silk or something like that, right?
He dismissed the servants and said, "Zhang respectfully accepts your majesty's order."

Xu Yi cleared his throat and shouted, "General Zhenwei, accept the order!"

Liu Zhang quickly knelt down, and when he saw Xu Chu take two steps forward, he lowered his head even lower.

However, the next moment he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, his vision suddenly went dark, and his body was shaking. Xu Yi had already circled behind Liu Zhang, held his head with both hands, and twisted it to the left and right with force.

The next morning, the news of Liu Zhang's sudden death spread throughout Chengdu. At the same time, the Wei court said that it would make exceptions to select officials and generals. The officials and nobles of various factions knew what was going on and submitted letters to Cao Pi to show their loyalty. Under such circumstances, Cao Pi selected a group of people from the Dongzhou faction and made important use of officials and generals from Yizhou. Huang Quan, Wang Ping, Ma Zhong, Zhang Yi, Yang Hong and others were all promoted.

Then Wei Yan immediately issued an edict. As Hannan Kingdom had repeatedly invaded the border, Wei Kingdom wanted to send people from Chengdu eastward, down the Han River, to attack Xiangyang.

As for the candidate for commander-in-chief, after a period of debate in the court, Chen Qun could not go, and the only ones left were Cao Ren and Xiahou Dun.

When Cao Wei officials thought that Cao Ren was more likely, Cao Pi unexpectedly chose Xiahou Dun and ordered him to lead 30,000 soldiers out of Yizhou Road to attack Shangyong Maicheng where Guan Ping was stationed.

These 30,000 soldiers were fiercely assembled by the State of Wei. Except for 5,000 original Wei soldiers, the rest were half from Dongzhou and half from Yizhou.

The generals of the Yizhou troops were Huang Quan and Wang Ping Ma Zhong's men, while the generals of the Dongzhou troops were led by Fei Guan and Wu Yi.

Because there was no public appointment of generals, everyone went to the emperor one by one to get the imperial edict, military token and official seal. After Fei Guan received the imperial edict, he went home, but heard the guard say that Wu Yi came to visit and had been waiting for him.

After hearing this, Fei Guan hurried into the room to see Wu Yi. Seeing that Wu Yi was in the hall, he ordered the strangers to leave and then said, "Ziyuan, congratulations."

Wu Yi sighed after hearing this and said, "What is there to congratulate? Both you and I are in an awkward situation right now."

"Especially since the sudden death of the governor of Yizhou the other day, don't you have any ideas, Bimbo?"

Fei Guan smiled bitterly and said, "What can I think of? I just want to survive."

When Liu Zhang died suddenly, Fei Guan thought he was finished for a time. This was obviously done by Wei Ting.

When Li Yan, who was previously on good terms with him, was killed, Fei Guan thought that it would be his turn to take charge of the Xiyige. However, he was unexpectedly appointed to lead the army again.

Speaking of Wu Yi and Fei Guan, including the deceased Li Yan, there are secrets. Although they seem to be from Dongzhou and have extremely close relations with Liu Zhang, when the Wei army arrived, they saw that Liu Zhang was no match for them, and had actually colluded with the Wei Kingdom in private.

This is also the reason why after the war, Liu Zhang and his followers were placed under house arrest, while Wu Yi and Li Yan were still in use. However, Li Yan later committed suicide by repeatedly betraying his commander on the battlefield. The first time he betrayed Xiahou Yuan, and the second time he betrayed Sima Yi.

Xiahou Yuanming was speechless because he had died in battle, but Sima Yi would not tolerate Li Yan and decisively executed him by military law. This shocked Fei Guan and others, and they had to keep their heads down for a long time.

They defected to the State of Wei because they saw that it had a better future than the weak Liu Zhang. However, they did not expect that the State of Wei would suffer a crushing defeat and retreat all the way to Yizhou, becoming like the second Liu Zhang.

Seeing this situation, both the Yizhou faction and the Dongzhou faction had a lot of ideas. If Jin State had not yet had a large-scale border with Yizhou, officials from both factions would have probably already started to flee on a large scale.

Of course, there were also some who had already taken action, namely the areas around Shangyong and Fangling. The former Yizhou officials Fa Zheng, Meng Da and others, when Pang Tong and Guan Ping were coming all the way from Xiangyang to attack Fangling, they ran away to surrender to Hannan Kingdom, resulting in the loss of Shangyong. This was also the reason why Wei State wanted to solve the hidden danger of Hannan Kingdom first before its eastward expedition.

Seeing Fei Guan so pessimistic, Wu Yi comforted him, "Things may not be as bad as Bin Bo imagined."

"We all surrendered to the state in the beginning. Although Yizhou is in a state of poverty, Cao Wei does not have many generals capable of fighting. If they kill us all, how can they resist Jin?"

Fei Guan said, "Bin Bo is the most unfortunate. I heard that your sister had the potential to be the queen, but she died in the great plague in Xudu. I thought that Bin Bo could have a relationship with Your Majesty."

Wu Yi smiled bitterly and said, "Others may not know, but don't you know that these prophecies were made up by alchemists to build momentum for the Wu family."

"Your Majesty has his own queen now. Even if she is still alive, I will not let Wu get involved in this mess."

"What we have to do now is to keep a low profile. Otherwise, if we offend this person at any time, we will die inexplicably."

But he didn't know that his sister, Wu, had been staying in Yecheng bored for several years.

She originally wanted to know the truth about Liu Mao's death and take revenge on Liu Zhang, the most suspected person. Naturally, the only person in the world who could help her realize this idea was the Emperor of Jin.

So when he escaped with Liu He and his wife, he was still thinking about how to get closer to Yuan Xi. As a result, Yuan Xi directly sent someone to send her to Yecheng and found a house for her to live in.

Then it was gone.

For four whole years, Wu never saw Yuan Xi again. Yuan Xi was busy fighting wars and had completely forgotten about her.

Although someone provided her with firewood and food for daily needs, Wu couldn't help but doubt the meaning of her existence. Was she going to live like this for the rest of her life?

There were no restrictions on her daily comings and goings, so Wu could go out and relax often. Her identity as Liu Yan's daughter-in-law also allowed her to get to know many ladies from aristocratic families who were on good terms with Liu.

And then that's it.

She seemed to have been completely forgotten until one day, news came from Yizhou that Liu Zhang had died suddenly.

When Mrs. Wu heard the news, she couldn't help but laugh towards the sky. She felt so ironic. If she had known this would happen, she would have just waited. Why would she bother with all this worry?
What is the meaning of what you did before?
(End of this chapter)