I am not an ant thief in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 397, Unsafe

August of the first year of Xingping in the Han Dynasty (AD 194)
After August, it finally rained a few times. The drought in Jizhou and Bingzhou has finally eased. Even Xu Wei is relieved. Bingzhou and Jizhou are the largest grain producing areas in Dagan. If there is no more rain, the autumn harvest will be affected. The time to attack the big man will be slowed down by a few years.

And Wang Ge and the others are highly concerned about the Central Plains. After conquering Jizhou, Wang Ge and other high-level officials had plans to attack the Central Plains, but they did not expect that last year's drought made their plan scrapped, and Dagan could only stop the pace of attack. Find ways to dig canals, build waterwheels, build new water conservancy and find ways to accumulate food.

But man is not as good as God, and Wang Ge and the others did not expect that God would have two droughts in succession, and this year's drought is actually worse than last year!Affecting the entire eight prefectures of the Han Dynasty, Jizhou is considered to be a relatively lightly affected place, but there has been no rain for 3-4 months, and Guanzhong, the center of the disaster, has not rained for 8 months, and there are locust plagues and military disasters , it can be said that Guanzhong at this time has become a purgatory on earth!
The two droughts and the locust plague in Guanzhong frightened Xu Wei. After he knew that there were locusts in Guanzhong, he immediately found someone to transport all the chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry to the line near Sili, and even In order to expand the number of chickens, ducks and geese, Xu Wei also came up with the method of hatching chickens on the heated kang. Although the success rate has not been high, it can explosively increase the number of poultry in Dagan!
In Shangjun, Xihe County, Shangdang County in Bingzhou, and Weijun County in Jizhou, Xu Wei in each county tried his best to get hundreds of thousands of poultry and placed them on the border.As long as there are locusts crossing the border, Xu Wei will let his subordinates command these poultry troops to cull them. In order to control the number of locusts, Xu Wei even buys dried locusts at the price of 4 catties of locusts for a catty of wheat!

It may be that Xu Wei's methods have worked. Maybe the locust plague did not leave the customs in history. Anyway, the locust plague has come to an end now, and it has not spread to Bingzhou and Jizhou. This also makes Xu Weisong In one breath, the spread of the locust plague in Bingzhou and Jizhou was finally stopped!

But after these two years of disasters, Xu Wei thought of the disasters just after the founding of the Celestial Dynasty. If it weren't for the fact that there are few people in this world and a lot of land, plus he extracted thousands of years to get struvite to fertilize the land, thousands of years in advance The development of Liaodong, if not for these things, I am afraid that this drought will also make Daqian peel off, instead of going through it so easily.

But these two scares also made Xu Wei pay more attention to the food problem than ever before!Dagan's grain security line has always been in a red state, and when the grain accumulation in the granary was the largest, it was only enough for the people of Dagan to eat for six months, and Xu Wei's goal of accumulating three-year rations had never been achieved.

He feels that now is the time to accomplish this goal!

He even raised the goal of three years of food rations to all the senior executives of Daqian in the high-level meeting of Daqi!
It's just that Wang Ge said regretfully: "In power, most of us are short of food, but this is a shortage of food reserves. Yuan Shao, Cao Cao and the others can no longer eat. At the beginning of August, Cao Cao and Yuan Shao's subordinates went down the mountain almost at the same time to the powerful families in Xuzhou. They broke through the Wubao of Xuzhou's noble families and robbed them of their money and food. Now they are all killing each other. It can be seen how far they think of the food crisis. Now the Central Plains is just a dead tree. We just need to push Just fall!"

Xu Wei was surprised and said: "Cao Cao and Yuan Shao also started to fight the local tyrants, and divided the land?"

Wang Ke said disdainfully: "How could they attack the local tyrants and divide the land? This is just their internal fat distribution. In order to resist us, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao recruited hundreds of thousands of troops in the Central Plains and Qingzhou. They were suppressed by them, and when the drought came, they had no ability to resist, and the merchant class and ordinary people of the Han Dynasty had already been squeezed out by them, and it was impossible to provide money and food.

The ones with the most money and food in the Central Plains have now become Xuzhou's elite clans. Because Xuzhou's elite clans are far away from us, and Tao Qian is also supported by them, this makes Xuzhou's elite clans no different from the original big Han clan. Life is getting better, which naturally caused dissatisfaction among Cao Cao and the nobles under Yuan Shao's rule. In addition, the nobles of Xuzhou were defeated in the war and did not know themselves, so they were naturally swallowed up by Yuan Shao and Cao Cao! "

Then Wang Ge said excitedly to Xu Wei: "In power, they are all killing each other. They must not be able to bear it anymore. After our autumn harvest, we will have enough food. At this time, when we attack the Central Plains, only 20 troops are enough to defeat them." Yuan Shao and Cao Cao occupy the Central Plains, and then we can defeat them one by one. First destroy Yuan Shao, and then punish Cao Cao. In less than five years, the entire Central Plains will be annexed by us."

But Xu Wei frowned and said: "A 20 army needs a million civilians. It will cost 1500 million stones, food and grass to fight this battle for half a year. This is not counted as expensive cavalry. Otherwise, 2000 million grains will not be able to fight. Now that the disaster in the Central Plains is much more severe than ours, it is impossible for us to get food from Yanzhou, and we may even get 100 to 200 million victims who have nothing, and we have to support these victims until next year's autumn harvest. It’s almost another year. Even if we raise them according to our minimum standards, we will need 200 million shi of food to feed 2400 million victims. This war will consume 4400 million shi of food. Adding some additional budget is 5000 million. food!"

Then Xu Wei looked at Wang Ge seriously and said, "Do you think we can afford the 5000 million food in our current situation!"

Dagan still has some food in reserve. After this year's autumn harvest, as long as there are no accidents, there are still tens of millions of grains in storage, but Xu Wei will not take out these grains, because these grains are the last guarantee of Dagan!

Then Xu Wei said more and more severely: "We don't need some food to prevent natural disasters? If the drought continues next year, you will just watch our subordinates starve to death like this!"

Wang Yong thought about whether he wanted to give up or not, and said: "The opportunity now is so rare, it's a pity to let it go like this, 20 troops are too many, we can only send 10 troops, 3000 infantry, and [-] cavalry outside the Great Wall. The [-] cavalry, plus the navy to support us from the Yellow River, is enough, so that the number of civilians can be reduced by more than half, and now Yanzhou is full of starvation, so we simply recruit civilians from Yanzhou, which can save more food. You can fight this battle with [-] million stones!
Our army transported soldiers from the [-]-mile-long Yellow River along the line of Dongwuyang and Chiping in Dongjun, Yanzhou. At the same time, we launched a cross-river attack to directly kill the Central Plains. It is impossible in Yuan Shao's current situation. I can resist it!

The [-] troops marching south to the Central Plains should be able to break through the Central Plains in one go. After we are in the Central Plains base area, we can not only divide the forces of Cao Cao and Yuan Shao so that they cannot unite, but also take the opportunity to weaken Yuan Shao's strength and prepare for the elimination of Yuan Shao's forces in the future! "

Huang Long on the side shook his head and said: "With our strength, it is not difficult to sweep the Central Plains, even if the princes of the Han Dynasty unite. The difficulty we have now is that we have no food and grass. The climate has been unstable for the past few years. No one knows." Will there be another disaster next year? If the drought in the Central Plains continues next year, I’m afraid that Jizhou will have to reduce production, and we may not even be able to support ourselves by then, and the millions of refugees in the Central Plains are not asking for trouble!”

Huanglong continued: "The ruling still has a long-term vision. This year we have been working hard, that is, the Liaodong area has not suffered from drought. Last year, the land reclaimed has a bumper harvest, which has allowed us to increase tens of millions of stones of grain. And wait for this year's autumn harvest. We can still produce tens of millions of shi of grain, and it can be said that if there is no grain transported from Liaodong, we will use food stamps again, and all the tribes will experience the days of starvation again!"

"At this moment, instead of going south to the Central Plains to get millions of refugees and a piece of land that has a high probability of drought, we should find a way to eliminate Fuyu and continue to immigrate and develop the land in Liaodong. Liaodong is more than 10 times larger than Jizhou. If we continue to develop, we will definitely be able to obtain a grain and grass that is several times more than Jizhou, and this grain and grass are not afraid of drought!"

Old Man Wang and Old Man Niu nodded their heads in agreement when they heard Huang Long's words, and said, "When you are experiencing a once-in-a-hundred-year drought, you still want to fight. This is not to starve everyone to death. Ordinary people in the Han Dynasty will also starve to death in large numbers because of the war, and our purpose of conquering the land was to get the people on the land, not to starve them to death! We do not agree to attack the Central Plains at this time!"

At this time, a staff officer handed Xu Wei a note. Xu Wei could only smile wryly and said to the old man, "We don't want to fight, but now the war is coming!"

July of the first year of Xingping in the Han Dynasty (AD 194)
Ma Teng and the others wandered around the pass for a month without even grabbing a single piece of grass, and Zhang Xi guarded the passes around the pass tightly. Ma Teng and the others could neither conquer the pass nor break through the pass to enter Sili. Place, when the food is about to run out, you can only exit Guanzhong!

But at this time, Guo Tu, Yuan Shao's counselor, brought 4 shi of grain to Ma Teng and the others, and told them that Sili had no grain at all, and that their poor soldiers were going to eat dirt, and now the whole big man still had grain The only one left is Lei Gong. If you don't go to grab rich and rich Bingzhou, you will plunge into Guanzhong, which has experienced drought and locust plagues. How can you get food?

"The 4 shi of grain is our lord's support for you. If you really want to survive, you can only take your subordinates to grab Bingzhou. Even if you grab a county, it will be enough to feed your entire Xiliang!"

After being pointed out by Guo Tu and the others, Ma Teng and the others suddenly realized that they had snatched the wrong place.What they thought at the beginning was that Lei Gong was powerful and it would not be worthwhile to rob him, and Yuan Shao was weak and could rob Yuan Shao, but they forgot that there was nothing to rob in Guanzhong now, only Bingzhou had food, and the only target they could grab was Lei Gong!This has nothing to do with whether Lei Gong is strong or not!

So they turned their horses around, and tens of thousands of cavalry, like bandits, divided into dozens of roads and rushed to Shang County and Shuofang County from various directions such as grassland and desert.

However, Shuofang and the Shangjun defenders were unprepared, and Ma Teng and the others robbed tens of thousands of shi of grain, thousands of cattle, sheep and horses, and killed more than 500 troops. The two places suffered heavy losses!
Fei Ge, the prefect of the two places, delivered the battle report to Ji County, and at the same time they also called for a battle, wanting to enter Xiliang and completely wipe out Ma Teng and Han Sui's gang of horse thieves!

Everyone was speechless when they heard this information. Compared with the Central Plains, Xiliang is just a bad place. Xu Wei from the Central Plains doesn’t even want to fight, let alone Xiliang. Xiliang won’t have much money to fight. , but also to find a way to feed the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Xiliang.It can be said that it is Xu Wei's turn to face the situation that the big man had to face in the past.

But if you don’t fight Xiliang for rebellion, they will post it to harass you. If you fight them, Xiliang is 6000 miles long from east to west, and thousands of kilometers long from north to south. Xiliang is like a huge dumbbell. This terrain is enough to kill you in guerrilla warfare. anyone!
Ma Teng and Han Sui said they were vassals, rather than horse thieves. They never thought of building Xiliang. Xiliang has been in their hands for nearly 10 years. They have never built canals or planted fields. Among the thirteen prefectures of the Han Dynasty, the area is considered to be the top five, but it does not even have a population of one million. The last count of the population in the Eastern Han Dynasty was only 60.

Xu Wei didn't want to cling to Ma Teng and the others, but Ma Teng and the others wanted to cling to them by themselves, and even made Shuofang and Shangjun feel uneasy!
After knowing the chaos in Bingzhou, everyone turned their attention to Xu Wei!
Xu Wei immediately said: "Order Wang Lei to bring 2 cavalry to drive Ma Teng and the others out of Bingzhou! We will teach Ma Teng and the others a lesson when we are free!"

But at this time, Jia Xu, who was beside Xu Wei, smiled wryly and said: "I am from Xiliang in power, and I understand Ma Teng's thoughts! It is impossible for you to drive Ma Teng and them away! Since the first year of Zhongping , Xiliang has been fighting all the time. They fought against the Han army, against the Hu people and against their own people. It has not stopped. The 10 years of turmoil have wiped out all the fields in Xiliang, and the political system of Xiliang has also been destroyed. It has completely collapsed, and now Ma Teng and the others are not so much princes as big horse thieves!"

"They attacked Bingzhou not to seek death, nor to provoke the ruling party, but Xiliang has no food at all. If they don't attack us, we will starve to death. In this case, Ma Teng and the others don't care about the power of the ruling party. After all, the big men were so powerful back then, and the rebels in Xiliang were defeated repeatedly, but they still fought repeatedly because they would starve to death if they didn’t fight, and they might survive if they fought!”

Jia Xu finally said firmly: "If the ruler wants to avoid the troubles of Xiliang, it is best to take advantage of Ma Teng and the others to go out of Xiliang and wipe them out, and then occupy Xiliang, and use Xiliang to defend Bingzhou. At the same time, occupying Xiliang will allow us to fight Containing Shu by gathering together will occupy a geographical advantage for attacking Shuzhong in the future, and it will also allow us to form a situation where two sides attack Guanzhong, allowing us to occupy a strategic advantage in attacking Guanzhong in the future!
(End of this chapter)