People in the Three Kingdoms: Starting from Preaching

Chapter 336 Cao Liu Sun

The battle in the north completely established the situation in the northern border of Shenzhou. From then on, Xuanxia occupied four states and looked down on the world, and the situation in the entire world changed dramatically.

Although the course of history has completely deviated from its original direction, it also has its own huge inertia.

The three protagonists of the era, Sun, Cao and Liu, began to step onto the stage one after another, and started to pursue their own careers, either following the same historical trajectory or following different historical trajectories. And in this era, the subsequent stories would certainly not be the same.

Because they will all face a common enemy, that is Xuan Xia who is eyeing them covetously from the north.

Three years passed, and with the assistance of Zhou Yu, Sun Ce finally conquered Jiangdong and began to build a foundation in Yangzhou and Jiaozhou. He became the new protagonist of the era and gradually gained the reputation of the Little Overlord of Jiangdong.

As the founding ruler in the true sense, Sun Ce indeed had the qualities of a heroic ruler. Many Jiangdong nobles came to join him. For a time, as long as one cast their eyes towards the south of China, one would inevitably come across the name of Sun Ce.

In addition to their master-subordinate relationship, Sun Ce and Zhou Yu were also close brothers-in-law, which was a beautiful story in Jiangdong.

If nothing unexpected happened, perhaps Sun Ce would continue to expand his territory and develop himself with the assistance of Zhou Yu and become the true overlord of the world.

But perhaps it was a trick of fate that when Sun Ce's career was at the peak, he was assassinated and seriously injured.

Therefore, the Little Overlord of Jiangdong, who was seriously injured and knew that he would not live long, could only summon Zhang Zhao, Zhou Yu and others to begin to entrust his affairs with funeral arrangements. Finally, he handed over his seal to his younger brother Sun Quan, and left behind a sentence "Ask Zhang Zhao for internal affairs and Zhou Yu for external affairs" before passing away completely at the age of 26.

The Sun family's foundation was thus passed to Sun Quan, but it was still unknown whether Sun Quan, who was only sixteen years old, could shoulder such a heavy responsibility.

Although the Sun family of Jiangdong experienced many twists and turns, they finally stabilized their foundation. With the support of two large local clans headed by Zhang Zhao and Zhou Yu, as long as Sun Quan was not an extremely incompetent person, the situation in Jiangdong would not collapse.

Cao Cao of Yanzhou also gained a lot during these three years.

After gaining control of the Han Dynasty court, Cao Cao also began to serve the emperor and punish disobedience.

However, unlike Yuan Shao who used the name to deal with his enemy Xuan Xia, Cao Cao had a clear understanding of himself. He knew that with his current strength, he was not yet able to compete with Xuan Xia.

Even given the current situation in the south, it is a luxury to unite the princes to fight against the enemy together. People like Lu Bu and Liu Biao are not worthy of our hope.

If we want to fully unleash the power of the South to deal with the great enemy in the North, we must first achieve the integration of the South.

If this cannot be done, the "Han Court" in the south will have no hope of winning at all, and it will even be very difficult to survive Xuan Xia's fierce offensive.

In three years, the Sun family had occupied Jiangdong, while Cao Cao attacked Xuzhou.

During this period, Cao Cao and Lu Bu fought constant wars of varying sizes. In this struggle, Cao Cao became the ultimate winner. It took him two years to completely wipe out Lu Bu and occupy Xuzhou.

After seeing the situation clearly, Lu Bu finally had to accept his fate and lead his people to surrender, but Cao Cao had no mercy on him. No one would believe a guy who betrayed two "fathers" one after another.

Two years later, Cao Cao finally killed Lu Bu in front of the White Gate Tower. The fate of this powerful figure who had stirred up the world and become a local lord came to an end.

After this, Cao Cao's strength increased greatly. He went from being isolated in Yanzhou to actually controlling two states. His career finally made great progress, and he felt more confident when facing Xuan Xia.

But Cao Cao was not satisfied with this. After conquering Xuzhou, he immediately shifted his target and started trying to reach out to Yuzhou.

However, Xuan Xia would not let him succeed so easily. Although Xuan Xia had devoted all his energy to digesting the newly occupied land and people in the past three years and had not launched a large-scale attack on the south, small-scale battles had never stopped.

Wang Dang, the governor of Jizhou and the bridgehead of Xuanxia, ​​has been a thorn in Cao Cao's side in recent years. Cao Cao has suffered countless losses at the hands of Wang Dang.

In the three years of fighting countless times, he had rarely gained the upper hand. Now, whenever Wang Dang's name was mentioned in front of Cao Cao, Cao Cao would get a headache.

Although Cao Cao had many talented people at his disposal, including Xun Yu, Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren and other civil and military officials who had joined him early on, as well as top talents who joined later, such as Guo Jia, Xun You, Cheng Yu, Chen Qun, Zhang Liao, Xu Chu, etc., the quality of the upper elites could not determine everything.

In situations where military struggle is the main focus, the overall quality difference in the army is the key to determining victory or defeat. As for military construction, the Yellow Turbans, who have undergone complete ideological transformation and absolute hardware advantages, are an existence that the princes can only look up to.

Not to mention, Xuanxia also has a lot of talented people. Not to mention Zhao Yun and Taishi Ci, who are top talents from humble backgrounds and have been proven by history, even Xuanxia has a large number of military talents who come from the grassroots level of the military and are no weaker than the other side.

When Cao Cao pointed his spearhead at Yuzhou, Wang Dang also began to make efforts in Yuzhou.

The main responsibility of Wang Dang, the governor of Jizhou, was not to expand the territory for Xuanxia, ​​but to maintain local peace and manage people's livelihood.

But three years later, Jizhou had been largely stable, and Xuanxia's new system had been implemented in almost every county in Jizhou. After the initial large-scale and difficult transformation work was completed, the subsequent governance only needed to be maintained, and Wang Dang began to have more energy to output military pressure, and now he was making Cao Cao more and more uncomfortable.

Xuan Xia didn't even need to use his full strength. The pressure from Jizhou alone was enough to make Cao Cao overwhelmed. This also made Cao Cao feel more and more urgent to integrate the power of the south.

Fortunately, Liu Bei, on whom he placed his hopes, finally achieved good results within three years.

Although Liu Bei was driven away at the beginning because he felt that Liu Bei was too much of an eyesore around the emperor, he did have the intention of using Liu Bei. If Liu Bei could successfully squeeze out Liu Biao and occupy Jingzhou, then Liu Bei would obviously be easier to control with the help of the emperor than Liu Biao.

Even if Liu Bei couldn't do it, it would not cause any loss to Cao Cao. It was just a casual move that came to his mind.

The effect that this idle chess piece finally played also gave Cao Cao a great surprise.

It took Liu Bei three years to actually drive Liu Biao out of Jingzhou, and he took control of Jingzhou and became a local lord.

The opportunity for this matter came from Yuan Shu's declaration of emperorship.

After obtaining the imperial seal, Yuan Shu saw that the Han Dynasty was about to be destroyed, and finally could not hold back. He formally declared himself emperor in Shouchun and established the Zhong Kingdom.

Liu Bei, who had been entrenched in Xinye, Jingzhou and had always been guarded against by Liu Biao, finally smelled an opportunity.

Following Xu Shu's suggestion, he contacted Cao Cao and obtained an imperial edict calling on all heroes to fight against the enemy, thus having the opportunity to recruit local militia.

Although Liu Bei had no roots in Jingzhou, he had been operating in Xinye for three years. With his talent for communication and his loyalty and integrity in understanding the righteousness of the emperor, he actually attracted the support of some local prominent families and managed to gather an army of 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers.

This naturally caused Liu Biao to be extremely dissatisfied, and at one point he even wanted to send troops to attack Liu Bei. However, Cao Cao was not vague at the critical moment. He immediately sent Zhang Liao, a surrendered general who had just been accepted, to lead an army of 20,000 to meet Liu Bei, and in the name of the emperor, the coalition forces attacked Yuan Shu.

Since Liu Bei had the support of Cao Cao, Liu Biao had to swallow his anger and eventually let Liu Bei become a little successful.

After that, the coalition forces of Cao and Liu fought against Yuan Shu for a long time and innumerable battles of various sizes, and finally outlasted Yuan Shu. It was not until a few years ago that Yuan Shu suddenly fell seriously ill and vomited blood and died. Only in this battle did the coalition forces of Cao and Liu win a great victory.

After this battle, Liu Bei's reputation soared and he was praised by all the scholars in Jingzhou. His momentum was unmatched at the time.

Cao Cao also came to the rescue in time and immediately ordered the emperor to issue an edict to severely reprimand Liu Biao for his selfish and disloyal behavior of refusing to obey orders and send troops. After this incident, Liu Biao was so angry that he fell seriously ill.

Liu Biao also has something to say. Liu Bei is about to become too arrogant. How can I send troops to cooperate with him? Don’t I have any shame?

Moreover, what is the Emperor's edict? Aren't those things given by Cao Cao in the name of the Emperor? Can we just listen to them casually?
No matter how wronged Liu Biao felt, his reputation plummeted after this incident.

No matter what, the emperor surnamed Liu was still the white moonlight in the hearts of a large number of scholars. This kind of thing, being directly reprimanded by the emperor, had a far greater impact on his reputation than one could imagine.

It happened that Liu Bei's popularity was at its peak at this time, and his character was respected by many scholars. More and more local gentry in Jingzhou began to get close to Liu Bei.

It was not until the beginning of the year that Liu Bei presented a memorial to the emperor, in which he took the lead in proposing the slogan of "supporting the Han Dynasty and punishing the Huang Rebellion". He clearly proposed to the Han scholars in the south the strategic goal of obeying the emperor and uniting all the strength of the south to achieve the Northern Expedition, which made Liu Bei completely famous.

This letter of advice submitted to the emperor at the advice of Xu Shu accurately grasped the greatest need of the Han scholars at that time, which was the need for security.

If the world is just a dispute among the princes, then no matter who wins, the nobles in the world will not care.

Because no matter who becomes the final winner, the gentry will still be the gentry, they will still be the superior ones, and the new winner will only choose to cooperate with the gentry in the world.

But Xuan Xia is different after all. It comes with great force to destroy everything and cleanse everything, which threatens the safety of every noble family.

A Liu Biao who only cares about his own interests and is conservative and cowardly is obviously not more worthy of their expectations than the one who clearly proposed a northern expedition against Xuanxia. After all, the latter is more in line with the survival needs of the gentry.

After this, Liu Bei's reputation was completely established, and the Jingzhou gentry no longer hesitated, and finally they chose to abandon Liu Biao.

Everything ended with a small war within Jingzhou. Liu Bei eventually became the winner and the real boss of Jingzhou.

He struggled for many years all the way from Youzhou, and finally got what he wanted and created a new situation.

(End of this chapter)