My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 823: Closing the door and beating the dog, encircling Bingzhou

"Sun Quan is dead! Those who surrender will not be killed!"

Guan Ping quickly cut through the enemy's center and beheaded Sun Quan with one blow. He then waved Sun Quan's head and shouted loudly to force the remaining troops to surrender.

Guan Ping certainly knew that Sun Quan was a regicide. If he could be captured alive, brought back for trial, and then executed according to the law, it would definitely be more valuable than beheading him in battle like this.

But he had no choice, because in today's battle, he was only leading a small group of cavalry to ambush and attack, and he was attacking under the guise of his father's reputation.

If we really talk about combat strength, the troops that Sun Quan led to break out had more people than Guan Ping's cavalry.

If Sun Quan reacted and found out that this "Guan Yu" was an imposter, and saw clearly the strength of Guan Ping's troops and organized a resistance, the situation would be unpredictable.

Therefore, Guan Ping had to seize the opportunity as soon as possible, and take advantage of the moment when he gained the upper hand and the enemy could not tell the truth, and then he quickly killed the enemy commander.

Once Sun Quan's head is in hand, even if the remaining enemies find out that he has few men and is an impostor, it will be impossible for them to turn the tables.

As expected, the remaining Cao troops gave up resistance the moment they saw Sun Quan's head. They laid down their weapons in large numbers, knelt down in surrender, and were too lazy to even run away.

Only at this moment did Guan Ping feel completely relieved, and he immediately ordered his troops to collect all the enemy's weapons.

After a busy period, Guan Ping left some people to clean up the battlefield and guard the prisoners.
While holding Sun Quan's head, he led his troops straight to Anyi County to persuade the county to surrender.

There were still more than a thousand remnants of Cao's regular army in Anyi County, as well as many more temporarily recruited militiamen defending the city. The moment they saw Sun Quan's head, the morale of the soldiers defending the city collapsed.

Only one captain still wanted to hold on, but he was killed by several of his subordinates and a military commander who rebelled against his superiors and stabbed him in the back. They took his head as a token of their loyalty and surrendered.

Only dozens of people died and over a hundred were injured in the entire city. The stubborn resistance in Anyi City was completely wiped out. Guan Ping led the cavalry along the long street into the city and controlled the Hedong prefectural government and the official warehouse before he stopped.

After doing all this, Guan Ping immediately sent a fast horse to report the victory to his father. Just one day later, the news arrived in Jie County.

……

"The general is feared throughout China. Over the years, who among us, the elders of Jie County, does not secretly admire him? We only regret that Hedong has been occupied by Cao Cao. We can only think about it in our hearts and dare not show it. Today, the general is here, and the elders of our hometown can finally see the light. Please make sure to drink this cup to the full!"

At this moment in Xie County, Guan Yu was in the county government office, surrounded by a group of elders from his hometown who were flattering and toasting him.

Guan Yu was a man who was always proud of his superiors and could not bear to be treated as inferiors. Even though he did not drink much during battles and had good self-control, he could not resist the smiles of the elders in his hometown who urged him to drink. Naturally, he drank the wine until the cup was empty.

"I dare not refuse the gift from the elders, but I really have military duties to attend to. If I drink any more, it will delay my work. Let's stop here today! I appreciate your kindness!"

As Guan Yu drank, his face turned red, and he waved his hands to decline, but he was not rude. He could not drink anymore, so he asked his staff to drink for him, and he made sure to accompany all the elders in his hometown, so that everyone could drink to their heart's content.

While they were drinking and chatting, a group of cavalrymen from the upper reaches of the Wei River came to Jie County at full speed. The gatekeeper checked the bamboo tube with the official seal and immediately opened the gate to let the messenger in. In just a quarter of an hour, the messenger arrived in front of Guan Yu.

"General, you are so happy! The young general has killed Sun Quan in battle and has captured Anyi without a single drop of blood!"

The messenger didn't care about etiquette and went straight to the point. It was obvious that he was very excited.

Guan Yu had just drunk too much and was feeling dizzy, but after hearing these words, he sobered up immediately.

"Oh? So fast? Ping'er's progress is beyond my expectation, really..."

"The young general is truly a talented son of a general. Given time, he may be able to catch up with the general's might!" The staff and generals beside him congratulated him in unison, saying what Guan Yu was embarrassed to say.

Hearing this, Guan Yu laughed awkwardly with a mixture of pride and embarrassment: "Hey, my son still needs some experience! This time, I was just lucky and happened to run into Sun Quan!"

The generals naturally did not argue with him, but just followed his words and said: "Young General has occupied Anyi, and Hedong has also fallen into the control of the court. It only took the general seven or eight days to take a large county and cut off the connection between Cao Cao's Guanzhong and Bingzhou. Your Majesty will definitely be relieved when he hears about it."

Guan Yu waved his hands despite his drunkenness and said in a matter-of-fact manner: "We can't be careless. Hedong is a vast territory. Even if we take the county seat, we can't say that we have taken it all. At most, we can only say that we control both sides of the Weishui River. We still have to slowly persuade the other counties deep into the Luliang Mountain area to surrender."

The generals said: "What kind of trouble can those places cause? Anyi has surrendered, Sun Quan has been beheaded, and the rest will surely be conquered by issuing an edict."

Guan Yu: "Those small counties are indeed not a concern, but it will take some time, so let Zhongda take them over slowly. However, we still have an important matter to do: simply occupying the Minshui River Basin is still not enough to completely cut off Xiahou Dun's retreat route.

Going north over Wangwu Mountain, there is the Fen River that flows into the Yellow River. The Fen River flows directly to Taiyuan, so we must go north and cut off Linfen to completely cut off Xiahou Dun’s retreat route.”

As Guan Yu spoke, he ignored the fact that he was drunk and had someone bring a map at night so that he could make some measurements on it.

The entire Yushui River basin is located in the heart of Hedong County. By capturing Hedong County, one can completely control the Yushui River basin.

The Fen River is the boundary between Sili and Bingzhou in this area.

To the north of the Fen River are Pingyang County and Xihe County of Bingzhou, and to the south of the Fen River is Hedong County.

Therefore, in order to completely cut off Xiahou Dun's retreat, it was necessary not only to occupy the hinterland of the county, but also to cut off the boundary river between the county and Bingzhou.

If we go north and cross the mountains and capture Linfen as well, we will be completely stable.

Of course, Guan Yu has been fighting and expanding territory continuously these days, and he is very tired. He drank heavily again tonight, and he will have to rest for a while in the next two days, and by the way, wait for the infantry reinforcements from the rear to catch up and take over the defense zone.

Xiahou Dun was still in Shangdang. Even if he received the urgent report from Sun Quan, he could only retreat northward from Shangdang at most.

At this moment, Xiahou Dun did not know that Sun Quan had lost Anyi and his heads had been chopped off, so even if Xiahou Dun wanted to withdraw his troops and return to Guanzhong to join forces, he would be in a panic for a while and would not know which way to go.

If he chose to retreat via Pubanjin along the Wushui River, he would be very unlucky because he would find out halfway that the road was blocked and would have to turn back and change the route, which would waste a lot of time.

Unless Xiahou Dun immediately concluded, as soon as he heard Sun Quan's urgent report, that "Sun Quan is definitely not going to be able to hold on, and may have already died", and then made a prompt decision to head north first, withdraw from Shangdang to Taiyuan, and then go south from Taiyuan via the Fen River, it might have been possible to go faster.

But even so, Guan Yu was confident that he could stop him.

There's no need to rush.

... Guan Yu rested in Jie County for two days, and Gao Shun's vanguard infantry reinforcements finally arrived and took over Jie County. By the way, they continued downstream and took over Pubanjin, an important ferry crossing on the east bank of the Yellow River.

Guan Yu did not go directly over the mountains to Linfen from Anyi or Jie County.

He waited leisurely until Gao Shun came to take over the defense, then raised enough boats, took a boat directly from Pubanjin into the Yellow River, then sailed north upstream for a while, then merged into the mouth of the Yellow River from the Fen River, turned back into the Fen River, and went upstream to Linfen.

Guan Yu's move not only made it difficult for Cao's army in Bingzhou to defend itself, but also frightened Cao Pi in Guanzhong. He had to send Sima Yi to lead the troops in person to set up defenses in Linjin County, Zuofengyi, opposite Pubanjin and on the west bank of the Yellow River.

Cao Pi was obviously afraid that Guan Yu would directly cross the river to Guanzhong and launch a landing battle.

In fact, if Liu Bei's army could ignore logistics and directly deploy more than 100,000 heavy troops in Hedong, and could find enough ships in Pubanjin, it would not be impossible to consider a direct attack on Guanzhong. Unfortunately, in reality, considering various logistical difficulties, this move could not be done.

After all, Guan Yu had just reached Hedong, and all the rivers in Hedong were not connected to the land previously occupied by Liu Bei's camp.

In other words, no matter how many ships Liu Bei's army built on the original territory, they could not cross Wangwu Mountain and Zhongtiao Mountain into Hedong and put them in the Wei River.

Therefore, all the ships that Guan Yu obtained when he was engaged in military operations in Hedong were civilian ships that were voluntarily given to him by the people of Jie County who surrendered, as well as a small number of warships and pleasure boats in Anyi City that he obtained after killing Sun Quan.

The total number of ships that could be controlled greatly limited the scale of Guan Yu's troops. Even if he had enough infantry and cavalry, with only so few boats, they could only cross the Yellow River at Pubanjin and enter Guanzhong in batches, and only a small number of people could go ashore each time.

This tactic of sending heads in batches would definitely be attacked by Sima Yi when the enemies were halfway across the river and defeated one by one.

So, don’t think that Guan Yu is delaying the unification process, he is just respecting objective laws.

If Liu Bei's army wanted to finally occupy Guanzhong, they had to mobilize manpower and material resources after conquering Hedong County, and build ships on a large scale in Hedong and on both sides of the Wei River or the future Fen River, so as to gather enough ships to carry 100,000 troops across the Yellow River at one time, and then launch the final general attack on Cao Cao.

You can't do it like the gourd baby saving his grandfather one by one.

This process actually doesn’t take that long. Even if it’s too late this year, it will definitely be in time next year.

Liu Bei already controlled 80% of the territory in the world, and there were plenty of carpenters and shipbuilders under his rule. Only the wood needed to be cut locally in Hedong County. Even the tools and equipment needed for shipbuilding could be transported from the rear, which didn't take much time.

However, although Guan Yu did not have the strength to cross the Yellow River and enter Guanzhong at the moment, Cao Pi was timid and Sima Yi was cautious, so they did not dare to take the risk.

Sima Yi was famous in history for his cowardice. He didn't even dare to fight Zhuge Liang's one mine against nine mines, let alone facing Guan Yu today?
Therefore, Sima Yi continued to guard Linjin County strictly, hiding in his turtle shell. He did not even dare to patrol the surface of the Yellow River, but only guarded along the river bank.

Sima Yi was even worried that the garrisons in Linfen and other places would be annihilated by Guan Yu, so he withdrew some of the troops on the east bank of the Yellow River to the west bank in advance. Once these people landed, they built a long line of simple defense fortifications along the bank of the Yellow River.

This cowardly tactic was an extreme form of cowardice. Throughout the entire Linjin County area, all the way upstream to the vicinity of the Hukou Waterfall, Sima Yi did not spare a single inch of the river bank. He had people dig a shallow trench, use the excavated earth to ram up a low wall, and build several lookout towers at intervals.

As for the upper reaches of Hukou Waterfall, there is really no need to be on guard against it. Even a god would not be able to let a warship go over the waterfall.

All these deployments by Cao Pi and Sima Yi completely cut off the possibility of Guan Yu's immediate sneak attack on Guanzhong, but at the same time made it easier for Guan Yu to capture Linfen because the military forces around Linfen became more scarce.

Sima Yi's withdrawal also made the morale of the last soldiers left around Linfen even lower, because they all knew that they had been abandoned by the court. They were only left here because there was no time to retreat and a small number of people had to be left to stand guard.

How much fighting spirit could such an army have in the face of Guan Yu's advance? Naturally, they would collapse at the first blow.
Even those who were extremely loyal to Cao Cao would not choose to defend the situation, but would flee upstream against the Fen River, hoping to return to Taiyuan to join forces with Xiahou Dun.

Guan Yu was not in a hurry to pursue. After turning into the Fen River and landing, he easily rode his horse to encircle the land. Finally, he captured Linfen within just three days.

……

Xiahou Dun, who was opposite Guan Yu, was indeed slow to react.

Xiahou Dun, who was in Shangdang, received the emergency message from Sun Quan the day before Guan Yu killed Sun Quan.

After learning that his retreat route had been cut off, Xiahou Dun became very nervous and summoned all his generals that day to discuss a strategy for retreat.

His final decision was to leave some soldiers to block Zhang Fei, and lead 30,000 people to retreat, first to Shangdang, then turn west to support Sun Quan, and retreat to Guanzhong via Pubanjin before Guan Yu cut off the Weishui River.

However, the decision to withdraw troops was not smooth from the beginning.

First of all, it was because Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were very well-informed, even better than Sun Quan and Xiahou Dun.

So when Xiahou Dun just learned that Sun Quan was in danger and was still discussing whether and how to withdraw troops.

Zhang Fei on the opposite side already knew that his second brother had made a breakthrough.

Although Zhang Fei did not know whether Sun Quan was alive or dead at that time, he trusted his second brother too much. He believed that as long as his second brother broke through the Chenguan Pass and entered the heart of the Hedong Basin, Sun Quan and his generals would definitely not be his second brother's match!
Zhang Fei trusted his second brother so much that he felt his second brother would definitely win.

Therefore, Zhang Fei made preparations to pursue Xiahou Dun that day.

As a result, Xiahou Dun had just withdrawn his 30,000 troops, and did not even dare to make any obvious changes to the appearance of the camp, with the flags and stove smoke remaining the same. But Zhang Fei launched a full-scale general attack on the camp left behind by Xiahou Dun as soon as he left.

In Xiahou Dun's camp, there were more than 10,000 abandoned main forces responsible for the rear guard, as well as a part of the local militia from Bingzhou who were temporarily captured to guard the camp.

When these people faced Zhang Fei's offensive, the ordinary soldiers still hoped that the general would lead them in fighting to the death. As a result, Xiahou Dun ran away. These people were certainly no match for Zhang Fei.

In just half a day, the more than 10,000 main forces and all the local militiamen that Xiahou Dun left behind in Changping were defeated by Zhang Fei.

Except for a small number of those who escaped, the rest were either killed or wounded or surrounded and forced to land as prisoners.

Zhang Fei was not satisfied with just destroying Xiahou Dun's camp, and he continued to send out cavalry to pursue him, trying to catch Xiahou Dun's tail and kill him.

Xiahou Dun was stripped of his troops layer by layer along the way and had to constantly abandon the troops guarding the rear to delay Zhang Fei, and he lost several thousand men one after another.

When he fled back to Shangdang, there were only a little over 20,000 of them left. Adding the regular troops from all over the rear of Bingzhou, the fighting force that Xiahou Dun could muster was only about 30,000.

And the worst thing is that the retreat route of these 30,000 people had actually been cut off, but Xiahou Dun himself didn't know it.

(End of this chapter)