Chapter 191 Gaoshan
Xie Bi is a very low-key one among the generals of the Taishan Army. This is also related to his experience. No matter who is stabbed by his family leader like a pig or a dog, his aspirations will be different.
He prides himself on being the handsomest among his clan members, and feels that even if he is on the sidelines, he can gain his own glory through his own efforts. But in the three ridges outside the Xue clan, the sword given to him by his clan leader made him truly understand what it means. Some things are determined from birth. As long as you work hard, these things are not yours.
Simply put, not everyone in this world is like this. At least there are heroes like Qu Kui, who will bring fairness to the world so that everyone who works hard can have the opportunity to gain his own glory.
Therefore, although Xie Bi's mind has changed, he is not dead, but is more tenacious than before. The result is that Xie Bi no longer has the arrogance of the past, but has become restrained and low-key.
But keeping a low profile, Xie Bi is undoubtedly a recognized wise general in the military.
Once, Zhang Chong asked military advisor He Kui:
"Among the many generals, such as Ding Sheng, Dian Wei, and Tian Jun, can they be called good generals?"
He Kuidao:
"Ding Sheng is a fierce general, not a strategic general; Dian Wei is a fighting general, not a leading general; Tian Jun is a cavalry general, not a general."
Zhang Chong did not comment, but asked:
"Who does Shulong think is a good general?"
He Kuidao:
"Guan Yu is brave and righteous, Zhang Dan is wise, Xie Bi is benevolent in planning, Li Da is powerful in eyesight, and strict in prohibiting faith. They are all good generals."
Zhang Chong was silent for a while and said this:
"Sun Tzu said, there are five dangers in generals: death can be killed, life can be captured, anger can be insulted, integrity can be humiliated, and love for the people can be annoying. Any of these five will lead to military disaster if the general fails. Overthrow the army and kill the general. , there must be five dangers, which must be paid attention to.”
What does Zhang Chong mean by this? Even when He Kui commented on the generals in the army, they all used good words such as bravery, strictness, benevolence and righteousness. But actually? These shining qualities in human nature can also become your flaws.
For example, if you love the people very much, when the enemy knows about it, they will go outside the city to kill the people and force you to fight. If you just love the people and don't want them to die in vain, then you will fall into the enemy's trap and overthrow the army and kill the generals right before your eyes. And if you are a person who cares about your reputation very much, then when the enemy finds out, he will give you a set of women's clothes and humiliate you. A person with such a character will definitely go out to protect his reputation, and then he will overthrow the army and kill the general. .
Therefore, we always think that tenacity, integrity, benevolence, and courage are the flashes of human nature, and generals also require this of themselves. This is good and right, but it is not enough.
As a general, the most important thing is to know the right way. This is not only true for using troops, but also for your own character and emotions. Benevolence and righteousness are innate qualities and must be adhered to, but more importantly, knowing when benevolence and righteousness is more useful.
In the words of later generations of Zhang Chong, generals must understand materialist dialectics, which can be learned for a lifetime. Later, this passage was recorded by Zhang Chong in the "General Strategy" class at the Military Academy, so that the generals should always be alert.
Returning to Xie Bi, he did not have many military exploits in the past, because at that time there were not many people in the army who were good at planning, so he was often stationed in the base area to assist him. During this expedition, Zhang Chong deliberately promoted Xie Bi and made him the vanguard of the front army.
Xie Bi lived up to his trust, wading through rivers, paving roads and building strongholds properly. Not only that, Xie Bi was also cautious. When encountering steep mountains and hills, he would send out sentries with flags behind his back before proceeding.
They built a bridge in a shallow and narrow part of Wenshui River, and then crossed the river to the west bank of Wenshui River. The next road needs to be along the west bank.
When we came to a group of mountains, although these mountains were not very high, they were right next to Xie Bi's marching path, with mountains on the left and water on the right, which was an ideal place for an ambush.
Xie Bi was a little surprised and ordered his troops to stop. He called the guide and asked why this mountain was? The guide said this is Gaoshan Mountain.
Xie Bi thought for a while and ordered the detective horse to go up the mountain to investigate. After a moment, the detective horse reported back that there was a Han army lying on the mountain. On the one hand, Xie Bi asked people to report back to the Chinese army, and on the other hand, he asked the drummers to beat the drums to scare out the Han soldiers.
Sure enough, the Han soldiers, who knew that the ambush had been released, no longer hid themselves, but waved their flags on the mountain to declare their power.
Zhang Chong's previous guess was correct. The Huang clan and county soldiers in Zhang County had indeed joined forces with the Wuyan Liu clan. But what Zhang Chong didn't know was that this time it was not only the Wuyan Liu clan who joined forces, but also the Wuyan Liu clan. There are soldiers from other counties.
There are seven counties in Dongping State. Except for Fucheng, Xuchang, and Ningyang counties, which are far away, others such as Shouzhang, Wuyan, Dongpinglu, and Zhangxian are all on the Wenshui River. This time, seven counties joined forces, and troops from four counties came directly. They wanted to destroy the Taishan Army heading north here.
Yes, they knew the strength of the Taishan Army, and they also knew that this wave of bandits had turned into the Yellow Turban Army, so they had no illusions and directly joined forces to ambush the Taishan Army. Dongping Kingdom's response was very quick and timely, and all this must be attributed to Li Zan, the Prime Minister of Dongping Kingdom. This gentleman is from Xiangcheng, Yingchuan, and is well-known throughout the world.
How famous is it?
In this way, every scholar-official in the world knows him. Just because his father's name is Li Ying, the Li Ying who is a model in the world. The Li family in Xiangcheng originally belonged to a public family. Later, Li Ying became the leader of the Qingliu Party. He had thousands of disciples. It can be said that his disciples were former officials all over the world. Later, he was arrested in the first party imprisonment and was arrested in the second party imprisonment. Zhong's generous sacrifice brought Li's reputation to a new height.
So when Li Zan gave the military order, all counties responded immediately because he had such prestige. Even Liu Kai, King of Dongping, handed over his guards to Li Zan and let him lead them. This is very rare. Generally speaking, the relationship between the state minister and the local fiefdom king is not very good, because after all, the state minister has usurped the authority of the county king, and even has the intention of monitoring. But who made Li Zan a model for the world
Liu Kai's son Li Ying, and the current King of Dongping, Liu Kai, was still young and had only been king for two years, so he naturally had admiration for this kind of famous person who helped the world.
Li Zan lived up to his father's name. In his prime, he was a rare and courageous minister in the Han Dynasty. Since the death of Chen Gui from Jibei Kingdom next door, he sent people to investigate the situation of the Taishan bandits.
Some people are smart and capable because they do things first, instead of being like some humble people who talk about their hearts and minds and die in danger to repay the king. What's the use of having integrity? What's important is to solve the problem.
So when the Taishan Army began to move north and set off along the Wenshui River, Li Zan knew that his Dongping Kingdom would bear the brunt. Originally, he had to make more preparations. After all, there was a snake hill in front of him, and there were at least a thousand soldiers in the city, and many Cao officials were also there. As long as he defended, it would be no problem to defend for several months. At that time, he, Li Zan, had assembled the troops of the Dongping Kingdom and sailed down the Wen River, which would take him three days to reach. When the time comes, won’t it be easy to defeat thieves?
But who would have thought that Sheqiu would run away without even defending. A bunch of incompetent and mediocre officials ruined the good situation.
Reluctantly, in order to block the Taishan Yellow Turban Army's northward march, Li Zan no longer wanted to sit idle in the county, so he rushed directly to Zhang County, the southernmost gateway of Dongping Kingdom, and parked all the carriages and carriages here.
Then he took over the military affairs from Magistrate Zhang, and urgently urged the county soldiers from the four counties on Wenshui River to come here to gather together. He wanted to ambush the Taishan Yellow Turban Army here and reverse the current situation in one fell swoop.
But Li Zan was able to do his job, but the soldiers who followed him were not all like him. When he rushed to Zhangxian County, he took 200 guards with him. When we set off, the soldiers were all pale and frightened, weeping and unwilling to die.
Li Zan ordered:
"Those who disobey my rules will be killed!"
In this way, these soldiers were brought to Zhang County.
Fortunately, while walking along the Wenshui River, we passed by Dongpinglu County. Liu Xiang, a brave man from the county, led his troops of 200 soldiers to bravely surrender to the army. They stabilized the morale of the army and made it all the way to Zhangxian County.
Then on the third day after Li Zan arrived in Zhang County, the first one who dared to come was Shouzhang Bing who was the furthest away. Zhang Chao, the younger brother of Shouzhang Zhang Miao and the captain of Shouzhang County, led a thousand men and marched two hundred miles a day to rush to Zhang County to join forces with the Prime Minister Li Zan.
At about the same time, Dongping Lu County Lieutenant Wu Zi led 500 county soldiers, and Wuyan Liu's tribesmen also rushed over. In addition, powerful men from various places, such as Gao Ya, Zhao Shu, and Li Zou, led their tribes to join the army. And famous people from the county also came to Zhang County to join Li Zan's shogunate, such as Wang Kai, Xu Si, etc., all of whom were the best of Dongping Kingdom.
The armies arrived one after another, allowing Li Zan to gather 3,000 troops, and this army was still expanding.
Then Li Zan ordered his troops to block Gao Ya's water surface and cut off the Wen River's communication lines. After that, he took Zhang Chao's Shouzhang soldiers, Wu Zi, Liu Xiang's Dongping land soldiers, Liu Gan's Wuyan soldiers, Huang Cen's Zhangxian soldiers, and Zhao Shu and Li Zou's tribesmen to move to Gaoshan. This is the only way along the west bank of Wenshui River, and Li Zan plans to ambush the Taishan Yellow Turbans heading north here.
Li Zan's plan was to ambush the Yellow Turban Moth Thieves here when they had just broken through Snake Hill and were complacent. In addition, he has already sent an order to Ningyang, asking them to go north to sneak up on the Yellow Turban thieves and prevent them from escaping. In addition, he has called on local heroes from all over the country to bring their own troops as a backup.
He just wanted to hide in front and block behind, and on the side of Gao Mountain and on the shore of Wenshui River, he would wipe out the fierce Taishan Yellow Turbans in one fell swoop and renew the luck of the Han Dynasty.
But Zhang Wei and Zhang Chao actually disagreed with Li Zan's view. He knew the situation of the Taishan bandits better than Li Zan. After all, two years ago, the Shouzhang Zhang family went to aid Hu's family and suffered a big loss from these bandits. Later, they spent a lot of effort to collect military reports from the Taishan bandits, and then they discovered that the Taishan army was truly invincible and invincible.
Regardless of whether those who have been hostile to the Taishan Army are useless, but at least one thing is certain, this Taishan Army is stronger than most armies. And now? Li Zan only had three thousand soldiers, and the number of people on the opposite side was uncertain, but at least it would not be less than them. But now where does Li Zan have the confidence to fight with others? It would be better to enter Zhang County and defend the city. Wouldn't that be safer?
Zhang Chao expressed his doubts, but Li Zan replied:
"Unexpectedly, Mrs. Zhang is as timid as a chicken."
Zhang Chao couldn't stand it all of a sudden. He boasted that he was the best in the provinces and counties in martial arts, and the Zhang family was famous in Yanzhou. Even if you, Li Zan, are famous all over the world, you can't humiliate me.
So Zhang Chao asked for orders and took himself as the vanguard, determined to show Li Zan whether Zhang's son was a dragon or an insect.
(End of chapter)