Chapter 39 5. Layout in the southeast

In the second year after the Battle of Guandu, that is, the sixth year of Jian'an (201), another major event happened in Cao Cao's camp: Chen Deng, the prefect of Guangling County appointed by Cao Cao, died of illness, which affected Cao Cao's development in Xuzhou, Yangzhou and other southeastern areas It was a hard blow. Guangling County is the southernmost county of the Xuzhou Governor's Department, roughly equivalent to part of the area north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province today. The county's Guangling County is now Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province.At the end of the Han Dynasty, Yangzhou City was under the jurisdiction of the Xuzhou Governor's Department, and the Yangzhou Governor's Department was located in Liyang (now Hexian County, Anhui Province) in Jiujiang County. The base, and later the pseudo-imperial palace was also set up there.

Guangling County is adjacent to Jiujiang County and Lujiang County of the Yangzhou Governor's Department to the west, and faces the Jiangnan Four Counties of the Yangzhou Governor's Department to the south. Yangzhou is traditionally occupied by Yuan Shu, and Cao Cao has no influence here.Sun Ce quickly unified Jiangnan after his rise, and later expelled Liu Xun, who was pro-Cao Cao, and expanded his sphere of influence to the north of the Yangtze River. After Sun Ce's accidental death, Sun Quan took over his elder brother's career and further expanded his sphere of influence.At that time, Cao Cao was concentrating on fighting in the north and was unable to consider the affairs in the southeast. Guangling County occupied by Chen Deng became the only fulcrum for Cao Cao's layout in the southeast.

As mentioned earlier, Chen Deng, who was born in Xuzhou, is a local powerful person. He has assisted Tao Qian, Liu Bei, and then followed Lu Bu. These people rely heavily on Chen Deng because he is very influential in Xuzhou.After judging the situation, Chen Deng believed that Lv Bu would not be successful, so he and his father Chen secretly took refuge in Cao Cao. He made great efforts in the battle of Cao Cao's destruction of Lv Bu, and was appointed by Cao Cao as the prefect of Guangling County. Military and political affairs in the southeast. Cao Cao's support for the southeast side was very limited. He had hoped that Chen Deng could just guard the gate to the southeast side, without any extravagance, but Chen Deng did a great job, far exceeding Cao Cao's expectations.

After Chen Deng arrived in Guangling County, he first paid attention to the construction of cadres. He made rewards and punishments and emphasized authority, which made officials at all levels look new and won the trust of the people.With a good mass base, he further appeased the masses, developed production, and soon made the local government flourish. Chen Deng also established a high prestige (he was very popular among Jianghuai).Chen Deng also incorporated the rogue armed forces in the county and established his own military force. Chen Deng was a very ambitious person. According to the book "The History of the Sages", Chen Deng had "the ambition to swallow up the south of the Yangtze River" at this time.

Chen Deng's development in Guangling County attracted the attention of the Jiangdong Sun family.In the fourth year of Jian'an (199), when Sun Ce was alive, while fighting with Liu Xun, the prefect of Lujiang County, he sent Sun Quan to attack Chen Deng's military base Kuangqi City (near Sheyang, Jiangsu today).At that time, the power ratio between the enemy and ourselves was ten to one. Chen Deng was calm and did not take Sun Quan seriously at all. According to the records of the "Sages", Chen Deng ordered the city gates to be closed, the flags and drums to be silenced, to show weakness to the enemy, and he climbed the tower to observe.When the enemy outside the city didn't know what happened, Chen Deng suddenly ordered to open the south gate to attack.Sun Quan's troops were not prepared for Chen Denghui's move, and the formation was in chaos.Chen Deng personally beat the drums to cheer, and defeated the enemy.Sun Quan lost more than 10,000 people in this battle.

Sun Quan met the seasoned Chen Deng right after his debut. The memory of this battle must have been very deep in Sun Quan's life. Although the enemy was defeated, they were still strong. Chen Deng organized the army and the people to actively prepare for the defense of the city, and at the same time sent Chen Jiao, the chief of the personnel department of the county government (Gong Cao), to Cao Cao's place to rescue soldiers.Before the rescuers arrived, in order to confuse the enemy, Chen Deng ordered everyone to prepare a lot of firewood ten miles outside the barracks, put a pile of firewood every ten steps, and light the fire at night, and then organized everyone to shout and cheer, as if following the fire. It's the same as the reinforcements joining forces.

Taking advantage of the enemy's suspicion and fear, Chen Deng took the initiative to attack again and captured more than 10,000 people. Without the support of Cao Jun's main force, he resolved the crisis. However, Guangling County was located too close to the south of the Yangtze River. Cao Cao considered that it would cost too much to defend this place, so he shrunk his defense line and established a new Dongcheng County in the occupied area between Yangzhou and Xuzhou. Chen Deng served as the prefect concurrently as General Fubo. With Chen Deng's military and political talents and personal ambitions, he should have shown his talents here, but he died young at the age of thirty-nine.

It is a bit strange that Chen Deng was not given a single independent biography in "Three Kingdoms", but he was introduced by the way in "The Biography of Lu Bu", which usually means that Chen Deng has a problem, either a traitor, or was killed for a crime, But there is no evidence of this in all historical materials. Some analysts believe that Chen Deng is not really attached to Cao Cao, he is a local powerful faction, a bit like Zang Ba, and even freer than Zang Ba.Chen Deng has always threatened to annex Jiangnan, not necessarily because he wants to conquer the world for Cao Cao. Chen Deng also wants to build his own business and become a prince like Cao Cao and Sun Quan.

This kind of analysis is just speculation, but it seems that this is the only way to explain the reason why there is no separate biography for Chen Deng in "Three Kingdoms". However, Chen Deng's cause of death can be found in "Three Kingdoms Fang Ji Zhuan", he died of illness.Not long after Chen Deng took office as the prefect of Guangling County, he felt chest tightness for a while, his face turned red, and he couldn't eat. Hua Tuo, who was born in Peiguoqiao County like Cao Cao, was already a well-known doctor in the world at that time. He liked to practice medicine everywhere, and treated patients equally regardless of their status.Chen Deng's father, Chen Deng, was the chancellor of Peiguo, during which time he recommended Hua Tuo as Xiaolian. For this reason, Chen Deng and Hua Tuo had old friends.

Hua Tuo made a diagnosis on Chen Deng, thinking that Chen Deng ate too much fishy food such as seafood and aquatic products, and had a large number of parasites in his stomach, which was hard to get rid of.Hua Tuo decocted two liters of decoction and asked Chen Deng to take half of it first, and then drink the other half after a while. Chen Deng took the decoction according to the doctor's advice, and in less than a meal, he vomited out more than three liters of strange-looking worms, and he recovered immediately.Hua Tuo said: "This disease will recur after three years, and it will be cured only by meeting a good doctor." Three years later, shortly after Chen Denggang was transferred to the prefect of Dongcheng County, his disease really relapsed. Unfortunately, Hua Tuo didn't know where it was at this time. , the people around could only watch Chen Deng die.Cao Cao's headaches that started to strike at the Guandu front line tended to become more and more serious. Every time he had an attack, he was flustered and staring at his eyes. The general doctor's treatment effect was not great.After he heard about this incident, he sent someone to find Hua Tuo.Hua Tuo used acupuncture and moxibustion to prick the diaphragm acupoint on Cao Cao's back, and Cao Cao's condition was relieved immediately, so he kept Hua Tuo by his side as a full-time health care doctor.

Chen Shou probably doesn't know much about medicine, and the information he collected is not detailed enough. The diaphragm acupoint is located one inch and five minutes below the seventh vertebrae on the back. Pricking it here is usually used to treat cough, nausea and other diseases, and to relieve dizziness in the head. For pain, the Tongtian or Tianzhu points should be pierced. After Chen Deng, Cao Cao urgently needed to find a capable person to deal with the affairs in the southeast. He chose Liu Fu, who was the director (Situ 掾) in Situ's mansion. Liu Fu, courtesy name Yuanying, was born in Xiangxian County, Peiguo. He is a relative of the Liu family, but the branches are far away.When Cao Cao first arrived in Xu County, Liu Fu persuaded Yuan Shu's generals Qi Ji and Qin Yi to surrender. Cao Cao was very happy and asked Situ Zhao Wen to appoint Liu Fu as the leader. In the early years of Jian'an, one of the talents recommended by Xun to Cao Cao was Yan Xiang, a native of Guanzhong, who was knowledgeable and witty. Cao Cao had high hopes for him, and Yuan Shu appointed him as the governor of Yangzhou after his death.The governor of Yangzhou in the Cao Cao camp has more symbolic meaning. He can't mobilize Sun Ce, Sun Quan and others who are nominally his subordinates, and he must fight for territory by himself. In the fifth year of Jian'an (200 years), Li Shu, the prefect of Lujiang County under Sun Quan, suddenly attacked and killed Yan Xiang. Yan Xiang was thirty-eight years old when he died. Li Shu's move was not ordered by Sun Quan, and Li Shu was also a person who wanted to take advantage of the chaos and start anew.There should have been many local separatist forces like this at that time, and Chen Deng probably counted as one, but in the end, there were very few people who achieved great things like Sun Quan. It depends not only on courage and confidence, but also on strength and luck. I thought that pulling up a big banner would conquer the whole world. Li Shu probably thought that Sun Ce had just died, that Sun Quan was young and inexperienced and had no prestige, and that Cao Cao was unable to take care of the southeast affairs, so he wanted to establish his own family.But he was wrong, Sun Quan is young and true, but he has two brushes, for Li Shu's behavior of not listening to greetings, Sun Quan resolutely gave a severe blow. Sun Quan knew that Cao Cao also hated Li Shu, so he reported to Cao Cao first, under the guise of avenging Yan Xiang, and asked Cao Cao to ignore Li Shu when he asked for help.Sun Quan rushed to attack Li Shu's base camp, Wancheng. Li Shu was desperate, so he asked Cao Cao for help, but Cao Cao ignored him. After Li Shu's defeat, Cao Cao and Sun Quan stepped up their struggle for the second county of Jiangbei in Yangzhou.Cao Cao transferred Liu Fu from his idle position as the director of Situ's mansion, promoted him as governor of Yangzhou, and sent him to Jiujiang and Lujiang counties to compete with Sun Quan for land. At that time, in addition to Sun Quan and Cao Cao's forces in the two Jiangbei counties of Yangzhou, there were also rogue forces such as Meigan, Lei Xu, and Chen Lan.Liu Fu was very capable. After he accepted the appointment, he came to Hefei County in Jiujiang County (now Hefei, Anhui) alone, established a state government here, and then recruited Lei Xu and others. In the next few years, Liu Fu actively carried out local governance, developed production, recruited refugees, carried out large-scale farming, built and managed water conservancy projects such as Shaobei, Rupi, Qimen, and Wutang.He stepped up the construction of city defense, overhauled Hefei City, and prepared a large number of defense tools, making Hefei an important military base, and resisted Sun Wu's attacks time and time again.Over the past few decades, the forces of Wei and Wu have been rising and falling, but Sun Wu has never been able to cross the front line of Hefei, which is inseparable from Liu Fu's contribution. Liu Fu's ruling in Yangzhou blocked the further development of Sun Quan's forces to the north and bought time for Cao Cao to unify the north. Regrettably, Liu Fu's health was not very good. Six or seven years later, during the Battle of Chibi, Liu Fu also died of illness.