At the beginning of June, Shen Zhezi rushed from Xuchang to Chenliuyu City, and went to the front line to check the details of the specific battles and the changes to be made later.

Yucheng is a newly recovered area of the Huainan Army, and Shen Zhezi traveled all the way, and he could still see the traces of war in the wilderness. Now that the chaotic army in this realm has long been swept away, it has been turned into the front-line base camp for the Huainan Army to continue to maintain its offensive, and Han Huang has led nearly 10,000 troops to garrison here.

When Shen Zhezi rushed here, Han Huang sent more than a dozen generals to greet him, and before Shen Zhezi could speak, everyone was already bowing down with shame on their faces. A group gradually has cohesion from scratch, and even takes pride in being a member of this group, which will naturally derive unique characteristics, and Huainan's characteristics are pragmatism and arrogance.

At the beginning of the Chenliu War, it was indeed a succession of victories, and the Huainan army devoured the thieves with the momentum of destroying and decaying. But on the facts, this is not something to be proud of, the Huainan Army has the most superior armament supply, has the most dazzling meritorious record, and exterminated the broken and chaotic army all the way, victory is a matter of course, defeat is unforgivable. Previously, they also ridiculed the Xuzhou army for its incompetence, and they had to rely on the help of the Huainan army to solve Liu Zheng's rebellion, but now that the predicament is on their heads, they really can't let go.

Shen Zhezi was originally a little dissatisfied with the generals on the front line, even when he specified the strategic plan, he despised Chen Guang's chaotic army tactically, but with the foundation and strength of the Huainan Army, he should not have suffered such a heavy loss. This kind of combat performance is simply worse than before, which makes Shen Zhezi feel that raising the army in the past few years is almost a joke.

However, seeing that Han Huang and other generals were bloodshot in their eyes, it could be seen that they were also deeply ashamed and anxious about this, and they were not deliberate. It was not easy for him to directly reprimand the generals in public, so he entered the barracks first accompanied by the generals.

Yuancheng is also a place with a strong humanistic atmosphere in Chenliu County, and there are many virtuous ministers and celebrities who are significant for a while, such as Cai Yong, a famous scholar in the late Han Dynasty, Gao Rou, a famous minister of the five generations of kings of Cao Wei, and Jiang Tong, who made "The Theory of Migration" by acupuncture and cheating at the times, are all from Yuancheng. Even Cao Zhi, the king of Chen Si, who was respected as a talented man in later generations, lived here for a long time.

However, the so-called humanistic atmosphere was only a luxury in these troubled times, and it had long since disappeared after repeated wars, no different from the desolation of other counties and counties that Shen Zhezi saw when he first arrived in Yuzhou.

The Huainan military camp is built near Caishui, and the high post made of soil is piled up, and the camp is not inferior to the city. This is actually Shen Zhezi's instruction, this camp will be used as the basis for the construction of the new city after the chaos is settled, so as to quickly establish the Tuntian people's livelihood base on the recovered land.

Therefore, this camp is much stronger than ordinary military construction, the cavalry runs to trample and tamp the soil foundation, layer upon layer and appear higher than the top, and even the Cai Shui outside the camp is further digging deep and wide, building water conservancy. Naturally, such a systematic work could not be completed within ten days, so when Shen Zhezi arrived, there were still a large number of laborers working hard here.

Most of these laborers were captured by the local people in Chenliu, all of them were dressed in vegetables, ragged clothes, and their expressions were sad and numb, like walking corpses, and their appearance was different from that of the villagers in Yingchuan and Chenjun in the south. Therefore, this scene of construction is really not thriving and exciting, and there are even some corpses left between the trenches that have died of hunger and have not had time to be collected. And the Huainan Army's envoys to these captives and laborers were really not gentle, and the beatings, scoldings and punishments were ordinary.

Ci is not in charge of the army, although it is only four words, but after Shen Zhezi crossed the river and the Northern Expedition, he also increased year by year and deepened his understanding of the cruelty under this word. is not boasting, in this life, when it comes to compassion for the small people, few people can compare to him. But when it comes to the level of military strategy, the sympathy in his heart for Xiaomin is more akin to a kind of false self-paralysis, because he can't do it at all.

Speaking from the heart, even if these people are thieves, they are not guilty of any serious crimes, and most of them are just struggling to survive involuntarily, becoming a stepping stone for ambitions, and even if they are to be punished for their crimes, they should not be punished.

Shen Zhezi is also occasionally thinking about the fact that his so-called righteous king, who abuses the people in his words, is only a difference between fifty steps and a hundred steps of laughter with Hu Lu, and the essence is the same. Even if the Northern Expedition is successful in the end, it is extremely difficult for him to see the real peaceful and prosperous world where the people will never be hungry and the old and young will live in peace, so what standard should the meaning of his life be measured? Success and defeat are nothing more than piles of corpses and bones.

However, although Huainan is growing stronger, Shen Zhezi rarely thinks about this kind of problem anymore, because his heart has become harder, and people have become more mature. The general trend is rolling, no one is exempt from it, even if Shen Zhezi himself, although the more powerful he is, he also feels more and more that he has a heavy responsibility, and he feels more and more that he is not enough.

He was not presumptuous, and he also knew that if these people lived under the rule of the Huainan Governor's Mansion, it would be far better than following Chen Guang's situation. But others may not agree that these villagers were either forced or took the initiative to join Chen Guang's rebellious army, and flocked to a bleak and narrower and narrower road, and finally did not have the fate to run the dividends of Huainan's growth, but became feed and nutrients to be digested and absorbed in a rather cruel way.

Whose sin is it in such a world?

Shen Zhezi also understood that he himself was not clean, pulling out the radish and bringing out the mud, when he chose to use a tough attitude to collide with those township sect portals, it was actually equivalent to giving up on the villagers who were under the shadow of those township sects and could not get out. Perhaps, in time, he will be able to choose a gentle way to solve these shortcomings, but those wolf-watching Hu Lu will not give him this time.

The white bone is the pen, the flesh and blood are crushed, and the sweat is green, and I can't bear to look at it closely. One year, I looked back in astonishment, only to find that I was also unrecognizable.

Shen Zhezi stayed on the bank of Cai Shui for a while, and instructed his subordinates to plan to expand the scale of repairing Cai Shui as soon as possible. Moreover, in the future, once Shi Kanti's troops come south to fight, if the army is confronted for a long time, a sneak attack on the grain route is a compulsory subject, so the more convenient the waterway, the greater the tactical flexibility.

In this war, he wanted to be Cao Cao, not Yuan Shao.

When Han Huang and the others heard Shen Zhezi's instructions and orders, their heads couldn't help but hang lower, they knew that it was they and the others who were not in a good position to fight, so they forced the governor to adjust the plan slightly and increase the investment in Chen Liu.

After entering the barracks, Shen Zhezi's mood improved. The atmosphere in the barracks is not bad, and the non-commissioned officers perform their duties, either manipulating the newly delivered ordnance, or quietly recuperating from the combat forces. After noticing that Liang Gong entered the camp to inspect, although he did not dare to leave the camp without permission, the atmosphere was obviously active, and there was no shortage of people who saluted to this attention, chanted words in their mouths, and expressed their reverence for the boss with some subtle facial movements.

After patrolling the camp for a while, Shen Zhezi entered the big tent surrounded by the generals, and after sitting down, he said directly: "There is no need to say much about the accusation. The war is negligent and ever-changing, and the Governor's Mansion is by no means without fault tolerance, and the war has been fought so far, with successes and setbacks, even if the battle is fruitless, the enemy is unpredictable and ignorant. I would like to hear your suggestions on how to attack the chaos in the future. ”

After everyone heard this, they no longer spoke falsely, but no one dared to express their opinions first, so Han Huang could only speak: "Although it has been a few years of war, there are still changes in the enemy's situation when the battle is ......"

Shen Zhezi's eyelids drooped slightly, and he listened to Han Huang's statement. Han Huang said that the enemy situation changed, the most important thing is two points, one is that Chen Guang's subordinates and Dingkou are wrong, the original Governor's Mansion estimated that Chen Guang's troops and Ding He should be between fifty or sixty thousand, but only the cleaning of the periphery captured more than 30,000 people in Dingkou, and there must be only a lot more in Yongqiu, Waihuang, Cangyuan and other places in the core of Chen Guang's power.

Speaking of this, Shen Zhezi was also a little ashamed. The reason why Chen Guang's power has increased in recent years is very related to the tough decree of the Huainan Governor's Office, and many of the township sects who had already intended to take refuge in Huainan were unwilling to concede and divide power because the Governor's attitude was too tough, so they coerced the population to flee north.

Previously, Huainan estimated Chen Guang's supporters, one was to estimate the number of fugitives through the examination of the township, the other was to inform the internal trade, and the other was to count the frequent small scouts intrusion. The conclusions drawn by these methods are actually very sparse, and it is no wonder that the data collection of the Huainan Governor's Mansion is unfavorable, and even Chen Guang himself may not be able to tell how many people are living under his umbrella at the moment. You must know that even with such an efficient administrative structure of the Huainan Governor's Office, it is inevitable that the six counties under its rule will be hidden, not to mention the chaotic army.

Chen Guang has always been on guard against the Huainan Army's clearance in recent years, so he has also frequently used fortifications within his control, either to intercept the flow or to burst the embankment, and to artificially create obstacles by arbitrarily changing the water conditions.

As a result, Chen Guang drove the people to dig several ditches dozens of miles long in the past few years, linking Baiyangpi in the east with Gao's pi, and at the same time digging more than a dozen reservoirs, so that the scope of Gao's Pi was expanded by nearly half, and the entire southwest direction of Yongqiu was encircled.

These changes in the topography made all the information that the Huainan Army had before useless, and the previous combat goal was to make a quick decision, so it made the mistake of lightly advancing the enemy, and was ambushed by the chaotic army relying on the terrain. Fortunately, the Huainan Army is not the situation where there are many factions and fight separately in the Xuzhou Army, although the losses are large, but after all, they have made some gains, and even successfully gained a foothold in the old city of Chenliu, and at the same time mastered a very important dock wall in Nozawa, which can be regarded as a rough feeling of the situation in Gao's house.

With Han Huang's speech, the rest of the generals also spoke out one after another, some said that the logistics and transportation were not timely, some said that the Huainan Army's complete armament was not advantageous in the complex terrain, and some said that the chaotic soldiers and soldiers were hidden among the villagers and broke out, and it was difficult to screen them in detail. There are more than a dozen questions in total, which can be regarded as a comprehensive analysis of the current predicament. As for these problems, some can be remedied by perseverance or skill, while others are simply helpless.

Hearing that the crowd would seriously analyze the problem, although Shen Zhezi felt a little irritable, he was still generally relieved. On the one hand, the generals carefully reviewed and did not pass the buck, on the other hand, Chen Liu's current state was not an isolated case, and it was quite similar to Xingyang, the next target of the Huainan Army later.

After listening to the general's statement and summary, Shen Zhezi also realized that it was not easy to solve Chen Guang in the short term, and of course, it was not impossible to do it if it was not at any cost. However, the Huainan Army still has to face two unstable factors, Shikan and Taobao, which are far from being strong at any cost. The fact that these three combat directions are too close to each other, and each of them is independent and has a high degree of flexibility in choice, makes the situation doubly complicated.

Everyone was still deliberating, and suddenly a soldier outside the tent reported that Chen Guangchao's army had sent an envoy to ask for a meeting.