?Just when the direction of Xiliang was busy, Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, who had secretly reached a conspiracy, finally began to attack Qingzhou.

In mid-March, Cao Cao suddenly submitted a letter to the court, saying that there are still a large amount of banned Jin salt in Yanzhou for sale, and as the governor of the state, he did not fulfill his responsibilities, so he asked the court to reduce the punishment.

Not long after, the court indeed issued a decree, reprimanding Cao Cao for not strictly enforcing the imperial orders, which led to the repeated ban on the snowflake salt of Jin in Yanzhou. Therefore, he was fined for half a year to serve as a warning. The imperial court also required Cao Cao to investigate the matter strictly and completely ban the snowflake salt of Jin in any case.

After receiving the imperial edict from the court, Cao Cao showed enough fear and fear. In front of a group of civil and military staff, he pulled out the sword from his waist and slashed his neck!

Lao Cao is too serious! Why do you really take a guy's neck? In fact, Cao Cao just cut off a "tubble of hair" close to his ear with a long sword. This move has a name, called "Sharpening the hair to replace the head". Cao Cao said to his subordinates with a heavy face: "Regularly, I should commit suicide to thank the emperor, but if I am uneasy today, I still need to keep this body and be loyal to the Han Dynasty, so I cut my hair to replace the head. I hope you will testify!"

Although Xun Yu, Xun You, Cheng Yu and others knew that this was Lao Cao's personal performance, everyone still saluted Cao Cao with admiration and shouted: "Cao Gong is loyal to the king and the country, and he can be a role model for us. He will be a useful person and devote himself to his work!"

Shortly after Cao cut his hair, a severe crackdown on the tidying of the commercial market suddenly broke out. Many small merchants who smuggled salt from Qingzhou and Xuzhou to Yanzhou were arrested by Cao Cao. After some interrogation, these "little vendors" provided the backstage boss Kong Rong and Tao Qian, and claimed that they were making money for Kongzhou and Taozhou mulberry.

Now, Cao Cao caught the handle of Kong Rong and Tao Qian. While writing to the court to ask for instructions on how to deal with the matter, he stepped up the rectification of the army and prepared for war. He only waited for Yuan Shao to show up with the court and attacked Qingzhou.

When Cao Cao was struggling, Yuan Shao was naturally not idle either. He had already made up his mind to leave Jizhou and reopened a new base, so before leaving, he desperately plundered the wealth of Wei County, Qinghe Kingdom and other places, and forced more than 30,000 young and strong men into his troops with outrageous means, and expanded the troops, which had originally only more than 20,000 people, to 60,000. Although the combat effectiveness level has dropped sharply, it seems to be huge enough in terms of momentum.

Yuan Shao, who had almost prepared, suddenly sent someone to send a letter to Zhu Yan, who was stationed in Quliang area of ​​Wei County, claiming that he had limited troops and was really unable to bear the heavy responsibility of resisting the Jin army. He begged Zhu Yan to take over the command of the Jizhou coalition forces and be responsible for fighting against the 120,000 Jin ** teams on the front battlefield.

Without waiting for Zhu Yan to send someone to reply, Yuan Shao led 60,000 troops out of Yecheng without a sound and headed straight to the vicinity of Ling County in Qinghe Kingdom. More than ten miles east of Ling County is Qingzhou Pingyuan County. From here, it is only more than forty miles to the water city of Gaotang on the south bank of the Yellow River. Yuan Shao's army can arrive in just one day.

When Yuan Shao's army was in operation, Cao Cao sent Xiahou Dun, who went north to support Jizhou, to lead 20,000 troops from Guantao area to Yangping in Yanzhou. In this way, the only ones who stayed in Jizhou to fight against the Jin army were the 50,000 Southern Army led by Zhu Ye and the 80,000 coalition forces jointly dispatched by Yangzhou, Yuzhou and Jingzhou, were basically the same as those of the four Jin army.

The court quickly replied to Cao Cao a decree, telling Cao Cao not to retreat or leniently towards anyone or force who dares to offend the court's orders. To put it bluntly, this decree is to indulge and acquiesce Cao Cao to use force against Kong Rong, Qingzhou and Tao Qian, Xuzhou.

With this order, Cao Cao immediately divided the 50,000 troops that had been assembled into two groups. One by the general Xiahou Yuan led 20,000 troops to attack Linfeng, Qingzhou in the northeast of Taishan County. The other by the veteran Cao Ren crossed the Yellow River north. The direction of the journey turned out to be Yecheng that Yuan Shao had just given out!

Yuan Shao was eager to rush to Qingzhou to grab territory, but Cao Cao keenly saw the importance of Yecheng's strategic position. Since Yuan Shao didn't care about the ownership of Yecheng, Cao Cao would not cause too much trouble if he sent someone to take over.

From this series of actions, Cao Cao finally exposed all his strength. Xiahou Dun's 20,000 troops were cavalry, Xiahou Yuan's 20,000 troops were mixed with infantry and cavalry, and Cao Ren's 30,000 soldiers were all infantry. In other words, after years of secret accumulation, Cao Cao actually had an army with a population of more than 70,000.

Because it was a coordinated action, after receiving the imperial decree from the court, Cao Cao immediately sent people to contact Yuan Shao, who was active in Lingxian, and jointly decided on the specific time for the besiege of Qingzhou.

Just as Yuan Shao and Cao Cao were sharpening their swords and preparing to attack Kong Rong, the shadow team members who were active in Jizhou and Yanzhou finally used some clues to speculate that Yuan Cao might have to use force against Qingzhou. While reporting the matter to Zhao Xing urgently, they contacted Kong Rong and Tao Qian, reminding the two of them to strengthen prevention and avoid the sudden outbreak of city destruction and death.

The available troops in Qingzhou and Xuzhou are really limited. If Zhao Xing had not helped Kong Rong and Tao Qian train 20,000 elite infantry, I would have been afraid that the combat power of Qingzhou and Xuzhou will still be at a very low level. After Kong Rong received the warning, he quickly notified Wu'anguo to gather all the troops and station them in Linzi, the capital of Qingzhou. As for the defense of other counties, it was no longer a problem that he could control. After receiving the warning, Tao Qian asked Cao Bao to step up the defense preparations for Xia Pi City, and at the same time hurriedly notified the Mi family in the Donghai to contact the State of Jin, hoping to get strong support from Zhao Xing.

In early April, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao entered Qingzhou under the banner of eliminating traitors for the court. In just ten days, they annexed Qingzhou Pingyuan County, Jinan County, Beihai County and Qi County, forcing Kong Rong to be trapped in Linzi City, and for a while became alone and could not see where the retreat was.

Xu You first told Cao Cao to take action against Qingzhou, but he said with a firm word that there were large gold mines in Qingzhou that could provide huge wealth to the Yuan and Cao coalition forces. In the following words, Xu You did have such a matter. In the territory of Jinan County, Qingzhou, there was a mine bought out by merchants from Jinan, which specialized in producing gold.

Since the Yuan and Cao coalition had occupied Jinan, they naturally would not allow the merchants of Jin to continue to control the mining rights of the gold mine. Instead, they divided the mine as quickly as possible, and immediately mobilized a large number of people to go into the mountains to mine, hoping to dig a huge mine vein in a few months.

In less than a month, Kongrong only had Linzi City, the prefecture capital, and Le'an Kingdom in the northeast direction of Linzi. Le'an Kingdom went northeast to the boundless Bohai Sea, and the mouth of the Yellow River was also in Le'an.

The Yuan and Cao coalition forces made such a big noise, so naturally they could not hide it from Zhao Xing, who was far away in Wohu City. When he heard that Yuan Shao led his army to attack Qingzhou in full swing, he immediately thought of two things.

The first thing was to immediately order Zhang Liao, Xu Shu, Li Jinwu and Zhang Yan to lead their troops to advance southward, and strive to capture the important city of Yecheng in one fell swoop.

The second thing is to quickly notify Taishici, asking him to lead the navy to support Qingzhou. In the worst case, Kong Rong and his family, as well as the 10,000 infantry commanded by Wu Anguo. ~ Please come to "" when you see the first release without any advertisements.

Please share


Chapter completed!