On the Tongguan Pass, Fan Chou, the general who was sent by Li Dao and Guo Yan to guard the gate of Chang'an, has been very unhappy recently.

Originally, everyone used to be the general of Dong Zhuo's Xiliang army, and the headquarters of each leader was relied on by Dong Zhuo in this Yongliang land, and there was little difference between each other's official positions.

After successfully taking control of Chang'an, it was okay at first, Li Dao, who was wantonly begged for the title of these Dong Zhuo's old generals in front of the Son of Heaven, went from the position of a lieutenant to the high position of the right general and Wannian Hou, and he was also satisfied. Therefore, he was also pleased with Li Dao Guo Yan's order to guard Tongguan, the east gate of Chang'an.

After all, although this place is not as prosperous and lively as Chang'an City, it is the throat of Gyeonggi, which shows the importance of Li Dao. Moreover, Li Wei is also a military person, and after getting Dong Zhuo Meiwu's grain storage, the food supply to Fan Chou's army is the most generous among the 200,000 people in the entire Xiliang Iron Cavalry, and it also makes Fan Chou have the mind of dying for a few soldiers as a confidant.

But the good times didn't last long, because he was born in Jincheng, Liangzhou, and Han Sui, who came to attack Chang'an because of his personal grudge with Li Wei, sent troops to attack Chang'an, and for a few months, Fan Chou obviously felt the change in Li Wei's attitude towards himself, from the previous co-optation and valuation, and gradually became a little cold, and even when he was stuck in Chang'an with Ma Teng and Han Sui, he sent Yang Feng, the former white wave thief who surrendered, to prevent the Kwantung princes from attacking Dong again. In Fan Chou's eyes, Yang Feng is just a bandit leader, but he was named the general of the chariot cavalry by Li Dao, above himself, and in Tongguan.

Facts have proved that Fan Chou still has a certain vision, just when Ma Teng and Han Sui could not capture Chang'an for a long time, and Li Wei's suspicion of himself became more and more intense, one of the original Kwantung princes, Yanzhou Mu Cao Ying, suddenly attacked, and will rely on the officials and high-ranking people, do not listen to good words, and are determined to "rise up" with the whole army, and kill the enemy Yang Feng, who was outside the gate, was defeated in one fell swoop, not only with less than 10,000 Yanzhou elite soldiers to annihilate more than 20,000 Baibo thieves who had been incorporated, and surrendered most of them and won the general Xu Huang, not to mention, but also Yang Feng insisted on taking out of Tongguan, I am afraid that what I don't have privately, enough military supplies for tens of thousands of troops for several months can also be given innumerable, and now I am leading more than double the number of troops, killing all the way, until I was stopped by myself under Tongguan. But Tongguan is far away from Chang'an, but it is less than 100 miles.

In Fan Chou's view, this Cao Ying is also worthy of being valued by Dong Taishi at the beginning, although he could not attack the pass several times, but also caused immeasurable losses to the Tongguan guards, especially at the beginning of the true and false fraud pass, night raids and other schemes, it is even more Fan Chou can not be guarded against, coupled with the drive to surrender troops to forcibly attack the city, it is even more so that Yang Feng's army was completely annihilated and not very good to explain to Chang'an Fan Chou, cast a mouse taboo, lest there be villains in Chang'an to talk about this, so that the Tiger Prison and Bishui Pass were forced to evacuate, The Kwantung Coalition took advantage of the opportunity to repeat itself. I had to give up my face, and use such a humiliating thing as hanging up the battle card, in order to delay for a while, so as to attract the attention of Li Dao, Guo Yan and others in Chang'an, and come up with a foolproof strategy to deal with Cao Jun, who has been besieged for nearly a month, but still has no morale.

But what left Fan Chou speechless was. I don't know if it's because my fellow countryman Han Sui and his allied army Ma Teng are too capable of tossing, or if his military intelligence report is not cared about by Li Wei, who is already suspicious of Guo Yan because of the high position, or if he still thinks that this is a trick by himself, the Tongguan guard, to think about Han Sui and Ma Teng and divert the Chang'an army's bad intentions. In short, just more than 100 miles away, Fan Chou almost every other day has a military intelligence report from Tongguan urgently asking for help to return to Chang'an, but it seems to be like a stone sinking into the sea, and there is always no news. So much so that instead of waiting for reinforcements from Chang'an, he sent a detailed detective horse to investigate the military situation under the pass, and brought back Yuan Shao, who was honestly staying in Jizhou and fighting for the territory of Hebei with the original allied Gongsun Zan forces, and even joined in the news of the excitement.

The Tongguan garrison was less than 20,000, because of the arrival of Yang Feng before, the strength once reached nearly 50,000, but because Yang Feng insisted on going his own way and was defeated and died, the army surrendered countless people, coupled with Cao Ying's offensive this month, in addition to the three thousand elite iron cavalry of Xiliang in the headquarters of Fan Chou, there are only more than 10,000 defenders left. Relying on the pass and guarding Cao's army, it was already struggling, and now coupled with the news that Yuan Shao claimed to have an army of 150,000, the most unfortunate actual strength was half and there were 70,000 or 80,000 Hebei forces to join. This made Fan Chou as his name suggests, and he was really worried.

Fan Chou has been in Xiliang for a long time, and he doesn't know about the discord between Yuan Shao and Cao Ying. It's just that I heard that these two people were childhood friends, young friends, and now they are allies who help each other, and they also jointly organized and participated in the crusade against Dong Zhuo by the Kwantung princes back then, and subconsciously thought that Yuan Shao was here, and eighty percent of them would be the "reinforcements" invited by Cao Ying.

On his own side, Yang Feng was killed, most of his subordinates surrendered, and Li Wei in Chang'an suspected that he had a conspiracy with his fellow countryman Han Sui and became estranged, and the other big man Guo Yan was even more suspicious because he was close to Li Dao and had this matter; It is estimated that if it weren't for the fact that the place where Tongguan was disposed of was really important, and Fan Chou was also friendly with Zhang Ji and Han Xian, who relied on these two thieves in the Xiliang army, and Zhang Ji was based on Wancheng to prevent Cao Ying and Liu Biao, Han Xian was leading the rest of Baibo to fight with Ma Teng, for fear that he would be suspicious, and he would have taken himself down for the foreign enemy. At present, Fan Chou is in Tongguan, there is a strong enemy outside and there is no reinforcement after that, almost because of his own origin, he has fallen to the point of isolation.

"General, then Cao Ying came to scold the pass again, let the general go out of the pass and fight with him!" In Tongguan, Fan Chou was angry that the military report sent by the previous day was once again as if there was no news of the sea like a stone sinking into the sea, and suddenly he heard a noise of drums and horns, and then a pro-military captain came to report and asked: "Please give instructions to the general, how should we deal with ourselves?" ”

"Yourself? I also want to know how to deal with myself! For the 3,000-strong Xiliang cavalry under his command, Fan Chou knew that he was afraid that in the current situation of external difficulties and internal worries, he would have the last bit of dependence, so he didn't shy away from it, and said with a bitter smile to the captain who had been with him for at least ten years: "You pass on my military order, and the whole army guards all passes and defends them tightly." Tongguan is tenacious, not inferior to the original Si Lixiong Guan Tiger Prison and Bishui, as long as he sticks to it and ignores it, even if there are more people in Cao Ying and Yuan Shaolai, they are not worried. After holding out for a while, when their army runs out of food, they will naturally retreat. At the moment, it is inconvenient to use troops, otherwise it will definitely fall into the mouth of the villain. ”

"No! It's just ......" This lieutenant, as Fan Chou's pro-army, has also heard about the affairs of his own forces, and knows the meaning of Fan Chou's words, but after this person responded to Fan Chou's words, it seemed that there was something unspeakable, and he did not retreat immediately.

"What else?" Fan Chou saw that the lieutenant was not leaving, but he did not have the intention to get angry immediately, so he rubbed his head and asked.

"General, I just asked the grain officer of the Central Division, I don't know...... I don't know when Chang'an will deliver military rations? The captain hesitated for a moment, looking at Fan Chou's worried face, he had long since lost the high-spirited look he had when he commanded the cavalry with Dong Taishi, and then had Jia Xu's strategy, and followed the remnants of Xiliang to counterattack Chang'an, and he didn't know what he said next, what Fan Chou's reaction would be, and asked with a sad face.

"Transporting grain? How? Is there no food in Guanzhong? "For more than a month, Fan Chou was worried about Cao Ying and the upcoming Yuan Shao offensive under the pass, as well as the chilling Li Dao's actions in Chang'an City, and since he hung out the war-free card, he rarely asked about the affairs in the army. ”

"The general was angry, and the last general had also said to Yan before, when General Yang came to Tongguan nearly two months ago, he said that the supply of food for the army led by him had arrived in Tongguan, and Tongguan should be responsible; When he went out to meet the enemy, in addition to the military rations carried by his headquarters, he also took away some of the military resources from our armaments, and the general had said, "Let him go......," the lieutenant's voice became smaller and smaller, because Fan Chou's eyes widened more and more because of the captain's words, and finally they almost bulged out of their sockets.

"Yang Feng thief! White wave thief! You just put on an official robe, and this thief's surname won't change?! At that time, because Yang Feng was the person personally recruited by Li Dao, and he was treated very well, and his official position was above him, even if Fan Chou knew about Yang Feng's "taking advantage" moves, he had to turn a blind eye for the sake of the "overall situation". I thought that no matter how greedy Yang Feng was, he wouldn't dare to go too far, but now I learned that Yang Feng didn't know if his thief's surname had not changed, or that he might have secretly served Li Dao's private order to weaken his military strength. Originally, Fan Chou still had hopes for Li Dao, and he was still thinking in his heart that maybe when Ma Teng and Han Sui failed to attack Chang'an, and after the food was exhausted, maybe he could still repair the relationship with Li Dao, and it was not impossible to return to the honeymoon period when he first occupied Chang'an. But what I didn't expect was that Yang Feng would do such a great job.

Take 10,000 steps back, Li Dao may have something unspeakable, and Yang Feng may also act on orders, everyone has a last resort, and they just take a step back. What is hateful is that Yang Feng is carrying so much grain and grass, and it is not good to stay in Tongguan, even if it is to go back to Chang'an to "restore his life", but he went to provoke Cao Ying. In the end, Cao Ying was sent a source of soldiers out of thin air, not to mention that not only the food of his troops, but even the grain stored in Tongguan was "gifted" to Cao Ying for free. At this time, Fan Chou finally knew the real reason why Cao Ying was able to go against the normal state of the battlefield, when the drought in the Central Plains was raging, the supply line was so long, and the soldiers were close to the pass for nearly a month, and they could not retreat. At this time, Fan Chou wanted to bring Yang Feng, who was already dead, back to life and kill him again.

"General ......" Seeing Fan Chou's sometimes wry smile and sometimes ruthless look, the captain was also standing aside tremblingly, not daring to disturb easily, seeing that Fan Chou sighed and seemed to have made a decision, he carefully glanced at Fan Chou's face and asked in a low voice.

"The report of the battle was hidden, there was no hope for reinforcements, and now the three thousand brothers were still waiting for dinner. I'm not a human being inside and out this time! That's it! Since someone is unkind, don't blame someone for being unjust! Fan Chou's eyes flashed with determination, his lips were bitten out of blood, and he looked at the pro-military lieutenant who was still hanging his head to the side, waiting for his orders, sighed heavily, patted the lieutenant's shoulder, a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, and said: "Go and tell the brothers, don't worry!" Among you and others, the least of them have been with Fan for five or six years, and when they brought you to Chang'an, they didn't let you suffer this grievance with someone, but also starve! After instructing, Fan had already made up his mind on this matter, but it was inconvenient to say more at the moment. But no matter what, I will definitely give an explanation to the brothers! ”

"This ...... Checkmate! The lieutenant wanted to say anything more, but saw that Fan Chou had already turned his head, and roughly guessed what Fan Chou wanted to do, and his face also showed a little bitterness, so he could only clasp his fists and bow his hands, and made a heavy military salute at Fan Chou's back, and responded in a deep voice: "No!" ”