Chapter 66 Two, in a bitter struggle

News of the change in Yanzhou spread to Xuzhou, and Cao Cao was commanding troops to attack Tan County.Compared with the first expedition to Xuzhou, the preparations this time were more thorough, and the whole journey was in full swing.After Liu Bei who came for reinforcements was defeated, there was already panic in Xuzhou city, and even Tao Qian himself had the idea of ​​leaving. After taking Tan County, the whole territory of Xuzhou is expected to be under control. At that time, the west can develop towards Yuzhou, and the south can expand to Yangzhou. A grand blueprint is forming in Cao Cao's mind.

Although he suffered a lot and made many detours, his hard work finally paid off. When he was just forty years old, Cao Cao ushered in a new milestone in his career. But this bright prospect was suddenly shattered because of Zhang Miao and Chen Gong's stabbing in the back.Cao Cao had no other choice but to withdraw his troops immediately.Because even if he himself is willing to gamble once, ignore the rear, and take down Tanxian County and occupy Xuzhou, but most of his soldiers have family members and property in Yanzhou. Hearing that Yanzhou is occupied, he has no intentions. Hit it here.Cao Cao led his army to retreat from the original road, so Tao Qian escaped again.Last time it was because Cao Cao was too exhausted and unable to attack again, this time it was because Zhang Miao and Chen Gong helped.

Cao Cao had to pass by Kangfu on his way back to his teacher, which is near Jining City, Shandong Province today, on the west bank of Weishan Lake. The mountains here are steep and it is the main road to the west. "Parallel" is an extremely dangerous place where one man guards the gate and ten thousand men cannot open it.This is the place where Cao Cao must pass when returning to his teacher. If he detours elsewhere, it will greatly delay his time.Cao Cao was particularly worried that Lu Bu had sent people to occupy this place, so he urged the army to march day and night. After passing Surabaya, he saw that there was no Lu Bu's army here, so he was relieved.

Cao Cao said to everyone: "Although Lu Bu occupied a state, he did not take the opportunity to occupy Dongping, and then occupied the way of Kangfu and Taishan, intercepting us with danger, but garrisoned in Puyang. There is no strategy." Some people think that Cao Cao's words are self-motivation, or to encourage his subordinates.In fact, Lu Bu really had to have such a strategic vision. After occupying Puyang, he quickly moved eastward. Taking advantage of the favorable opportunity when Cao Cao was rebelling everywhere, he occupied Dongping Kingdom, the place Cao Jun must pass through when returning to the division, and blocked Cao Cao at the risk of his father. Delaying Cao Jun's actions, and then Chen Gong and Zhang Miao attack Juancheng with all their strength, that would be another result.

Cao Cao was glad that Lu Bu didn't do this, and he finally let go of his hanging heart. Cao Cao was not in a hurry to rescue Juancheng, but went straight to Puyang to fight Lu Bu.This was the first time Cao Cao and Lu Bu fought directly, and Cao Cao was defeated.Not only was Xiahou shot in one eye and became a "blind Xiahou", Cao Cao himself was injured and almost lost his life. The book "Xiandi Chunqiu" describes the details of this battle. In Puyang City, there was a rich family surnamed Tian who was willing to be Cao Jun's internal support, so he opened the east gate of Puyang at night to let Cao Jun enter the city.Cao Cao personally led the army into the city. After entering the city, he ordered the city gates to be burned to show that he would not return if he could not win.

If the battle is victorious, Cao Cao will undoubtedly create another battlefield story similar to "breaking the boat and sinking the boat".It's a pity that Lu Bu didn't give him this chance. The big family surnamed Tian was arranged by Lu Bu as a countermeasure. Cao Jun was ambushed when he entered Puyang City.Fighting in the streets is undoubtedly more beneficial to the defenders. The attackers are unfamiliar with the environment and may be plotted everywhere.Cao Jun was defeated, Cao Cao rushed to break out of the city, and finally reached the gate of the city, but found a very funny thing, there is no heavy army ambushed by Lu Bu, but the fire he set just now is still burning, blocking the way.

In desperation, Cao Cao had to take the lead and rushed into the fire. As a result, his left hand was burned and he fell off the horse.In a critical situation, one of his subordinates named Lou Yi (Sima) found him and helped Cao Cao to the horse.Lou Yi, the situation is unknown, and he has not been mentioned in history books since.Even more thrilling is yet to come.When Cao Cao was fleeing, he met Lu Bu's men. They stopped Cao Cao, but they didn't expect that this little man would be the famous Cao Cao, so they asked him where Cao Cao was.Cao Cao pointed at him casually and said, "That's the one riding the yellow horse." Lü Bu's men put Cao Cao down and chased after the man riding the yellow horse, and Cao Cao was able to escape.The person who stopped Cao Cao was not Lu Bu himself, because according to Lu Bu later, he had seen Cao Cao when he was in Luoyang, so he should be able to recognize Cao Cao.

"The Spring and Autumn Annals of Emperor Han" likes to write history as a novel, and it is quite legendary. This account is an example.So lifelike, full of details and character dialogues, where does the material come from?One of the answers is the person under Lu Bu who blocked Cao Cao, and the other is Cao Cao himself. It's normal for the man under Lu Bu not to know Cao Cao. There was no TV back then, and no matter how famous a person was, he wouldn't know what he looked like if he hadn't met him. But he didn't know at the time, so how could he know later?It can be seen that the possibility of people coming from Lu Bu's men is very small.

If it came from Cao Cao himself, he said that this incident may be to show off his heroic deeds, to see how resourceful and brave I am, it is not that the reaction was quick and I would have died.However, Cao Cao should know, how can it be worth showing off after losing this battle like that?Therefore, if it wasn't for Cao Cao's slip of the tongue, the author of "Xiandi Chunqiu" could have heard it.The latter possibility is more likely, because this incident is only seen in this book, and it is not recorded in "The Story of Heroes", which always likes to describe similar plots.

After the defeat in the first battle, the morale of Cao's army was low. Regardless of the injuries, Cao Cao personally labored and ordered to build siege equipment, and continued to attack the city, but there was no progress. The two sides stalemate for more than 100 days.Forty or fifty miles to the west of Puyang City, near Baima County, an army of Lu Bu was stationed.Cao Cao decided to sneak attack at night.The battle started relatively smoothly, and the enemy was wiped out before dawn. While cleaning the battlefield, Lv Bu's reinforcements encircled them from the north, east, and south. Lv Bu charged in person, and the battle went on extremely fiercely.Although Cao Cao has many strong generals under his command, fighting this kind of battle is Lv Bu's forte.Lu Bu was determined to win and refused to give up, Cao Jun fell into a hard fight.In particular, Lu Bu's cavalry charged too hard to stop Cao Bing.Cao Cao recruited death squads to break Lu Bu's cavalry before the battle. Dian Wei volunteered to recruit. He picked dozens of people, all wearing double armor, holding spears and halberds.

The enemy cavalry rushed over again, firing arrows on their horses as they rushed, firing their bows and crossbows randomly, and the arrows rained like rain.Dian Wei ordered his men to crouch down, without looking at the arrows on both sides, and told the people beside him, "Call me when the enemy is ten paces away from us." After a while, the subordinates reported: "Only ten steps away!" Dian Wei shouted: "Report after five steps!" The subordinates were terrified and shouted: "The enemy has arrived!" Dian Wei rose up in response, carrying more than a dozen halberds on his back, and stabbing at the enemy cavalry while shouting, all the enemy soldiers fell down without responding. Inspired by Dian Wei's heroic spirit, all the death squads fought bravely to fight the enemy.The enemy was repulsed, and the battlefield situation stabilized slightly.It was delayed until dark before Cao Jun took advantage of the night to make a rescue. Dian Wei became famous in this battle.Afterwards, Cao Cao promoted Dianwei to the captaincy and officially became a senior officer of the Cao army.Cao Cao asked him to lead hundreds of personal soldiers, and arranged them to protect around the headquarters every time he deployed the formation. What was Zhang Miao doing during the months when Cao Cao returned to his teacher and when he and Lu Bu were stalemate in Puyang?There is no record of this in the history books.Zhang Miao should still be in Chenliu County at this moment, and his younger brother Zhang Chao, the former prefect of Guangling County, also came to help him. If, as Chen Gong said, Zhang Miao had nearly 100,000 horses in his hands at this time, he should take some action. The main force of Cao Jun fell into a stalemate on the front line of Puyang.Juancheng was guarded by Xun. Although Cao Cao could mobilize some troops to strengthen the defense force of Juancheng, the number would not be too many, because Xiahou who was in charge of the defense of Juancheng had already been taken away, and he was also injured on the front line of Puyang, indicating that Cao Cao's strength is limited at this time. If Zhang Miao attacks Juancheng with all his strength, Cao Jun will fall into a very passive situation of fighting on two fronts. With the front and rear unable to look at each other, Zhang Miao should be able to see the retreat across the board immediately. But Zhang Miao's strategy seems to be to wait and see.When Yuan Shu attacked Cao Cao, he hit Dongjun in one go and almost crossed the entire territory of Chenliu. Yuan Shu marched so briskly, which meant that Zhang Miao had already stepped aside.Now, he watched Lv Bu and Cao Cao stalemate in Puyang. Facts have proved that this way of thinking of sitting on the mountain and watching tigers fight is very harmful, not only harming others, but also harming himself in the end.This time was in April of the first year of Xingping (194). There was a severe drought, and there was a plague of locusts. Food prices skyrocketed. Millet was 500,000 yuan per dendrobium, and soybean wheat was 200,000 yuan per dendrobium, which was higher than normal. Thousands of times, there was a tragic situation of cannibalism.Emperor Xian Liu Xie in Chang'an ordered his servant Hou Wen to bring out rice and beans from Taicang to cook porridge for the refugees, but it was not enough to save so many people, and countless people died of starvation.Liu Xie suspected that someone was stealing food from it, so he sat in front of the cauldron and watched the porridge being cooked. In fact, the root cause was that there was too little food and too many victims, but it still didn't help. Cao Cao and Lu Bu fell into a food crisis at the same time.This year, due to natural disasters in the Yanzhou area, the summer grain production has been severely reduced, and the autumn grain has not kept up. Both sides are unable to continue fighting.Cao Cao withdrew his troops from Puyang, and the two sides temporarily entered a stalemate. The severity of the food shortage was beyond imagination. The book "World Language" records an incident, which can explain the extent of Cao Jun's food shortage from the side.Cheng Yu is a native of Yanzhou. Seeing that there was not enough food in the army, he went back to his hometown in Dong'e County to buy food, not from the common people, because no one would sell it if he had money. "Shiyu" said that Cheng Yu "leaved his own county", and "lue" means "plunder", that is, to rob, and it is probably no different from the Japanese devils entering the village.But even so, if all the food in the county was robbed, it would only be enough for Cao Jun's three-day ration. The food was distributed to the soldiers, and everyone was surprised to find that there was a horrible thing in it: human breasts.Candied meat is something dried in the sun. What human dried meat is, you can guess for yourself. There is not enough food, and even the army has reached the point of cannibalism, and ordinary people can imagine it.This incident greatly affected Cheng Yu's personal image. The highest position Cheng Yu held was Wei Wei. With his qualifications and contributions, he should have been promoted to a higher level and entered the ranks of the three princes, but because of this incident, Cheng Yu He did not become Sangong until his death, but Cao Pi posthumously gave him the title of General of Chariots and Cavalry after his death. This food crisis has temporarily eased the fierce confrontation between Cao Cao and Lu Bu. If you want to win, you must first solve the problem of survival.