"Okay, then just as Feng Xiao said, send someone to reply and agree to form an alliance with Cao Cao, and also send Gan Ning to Qingzhou by sea to secretly befriend Lu Bu. There are many refugees in Qingzhou, and Lu Bu is very poor, so he must be very short of food and salary. We use money and food to help them

He will definitely be very happy to trade refugees!"

Yuan Shu planned to adopt the American method, allowing the Central Plains to fight and act as a biased referee. Favoring whoever is weak, suppressing whoever is strong, letting them criticize each other, and taking advantage from behind to make war fortune.

.

In the next few years, natural disasters were everywhere in the Central Plains. Yuan Shu planned to use his humanitarian spirit to publicize the methods of preventing and controlling the plague, and also opened up trade with the princes of the Central Plains, exchanging food for population.

If Yuan Shu wants to conquer the Central Plains, the princes of the Central Plains will definitely unite, and Yuan Shu will be in a passive state. But now Yuan Shu has changed his direction and chosen to capture Yizhou, so the position relationship between the princes of the Central Plains and Yuan Shu is

It’s different.

Yuan Shu's identity has changed from an enemy to an ally that can be won over. No matter how fearful Cao Cao and Lu Bu are of Yuan Shu, they cannot fight with Yuan Shu for the benefit of the entire Central Plains princes. They are all heroes who want to unify the Central Plains, and Yuan Shu must guard against him.

But the first priority is to capture the Central Plains.

"Zibu, how is Zhongjing's research on plague prevention and control methods going?"

The reason why there were thousands of miles of red land and dead bodies everywhere in the late Han Dynasty was certainly due to man-made factors, but the role of natural disasters cannot be ignored.

** is the root cause, but the power of natural disasters is far more powerful than **. The two most terrible natural disasters are drought and plague.

In the late Han Dynasty, these two kinds of natural disasters were very common and occurred almost every year.

Fortunately, droughts basically only occur north of the Yangtze River and rarely occur in the south where Yuan Shu is located. Therefore, Yuan Shu can just pay attention to floods from time to time.

Yuan Shu, who was not short of food, could even make a fortune by taking advantage of the drought in the Central Plains, exchanging food for population and attracting refugees.

Unlike in history, due to the undeveloped south and Liu Biao's inaction, the world was starved to death. Yuan Shu, who vigorously developed agriculture and resettled refugees, is now extremely rich. To put it bluntly, now relying on the two states of Jingyang

, Yuan Shu can support the entire Central Plains.

Therefore, even if there is a drought and locust plague in the Central Plains, Yuan Shu can still use food to attract and exchange refugees. As long as Liu Bei, Cao Cao and others are not stupid, they will not refuse their terms.

After all, this is extremely beneficial to both parties. What if Cao Cao and the others detain the refugees? If they can't afford to support them, it will only arouse public resentment. It is better to give some to themselves in exchange for food. This kind of thing will not only save Cao Cao and others trouble, but also

There will be more food to feed the troops.

This matter is similar to that of capitalizing on the enemy. It is estimated that no one will do it except Yuan Shu. After all, it is food! If Yuan Shu does not provide these food trading opportunities, the population of the Central Plains may be reduced by less than half, but the number of soldiers under Cao Cao and others will definitely be

It will be reduced by half.

But Yuan Shu didn't care. He was confident that he would not lose to anyone in terms of development, and he was also confident that he would not lose to Cao Cao and others. He wanted to win the world, but what he wanted to win was not a broken world.

After the Three Kingdoms, the population of the entire Han Dynasty dropped from 50 million to less than 10 million. What if Yuan Shu unified the world? If the population is not enough, there is no way to go abroad, and it can only develop steadily for several decades.

Therefore, while Yuan Shu was fighting for the world, he also wanted to preserve the vitality of the Han Dynasty. Therefore, it was imperative to reduce population losses. The most critical thing was to solve food problems and disease problems such as plague.

As long as Yuan Shu takes Yizhou next, he won't have to worry about food problems. With the three southern states, Yuan Shu can support the entire area except Hebei.

The food problem has been basically solved, and what Yuan Shu has to consider is the plague problem.

How terrible is the plague? A very simple statistic. About 20 million people died from the plague in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Even the more than 200 people in the family of the medical sage Zhang Zhongjing, two-thirds of them died from the plague. Four of the seven sons of Jian'an died from the plague.

Someone died on this.

Yuan Shu now gathered all the nearly famous doctors in the world to study this problem, in order to prevent and cure the plagues that would break out one after another in the world.

In fact, these things are not difficult to study, especially with Yuan Shu who knows what disinfection and isolation are and some common hygiene knowledge. Historically, Zhang Zhongjing was able to compile Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases by himself, not to mention Yuan Shu’s help.

.

"My lord, many effective prescriptions for treating the plague have been developed. A lot of medicinal herbs have been planted and stocked, and they can be put into production at any time."

Yuan Shu nodded. Plague is not a terrible thing. As long as the ruler manages it properly, it can be well suppressed.

Under his own command, Yuan Shu was absolutely sure to contain the plague in time when it first appeared, but that was not necessarily the case elsewhere.

Therefore, Yuan Shu had asked Zhang Zhongjing to summarize the medical knowledge he knew and the methods to avoid contracting the plague, and spread it throughout the world. This also gained him a lot of reputation along the way.

Today, Zhang Zhongjing has been revered as the "Medical Sage" by the people of the world in advance due to his meritorious service in controlling the plague. Yuan Shu has also gained the reputation of a "Benevolent Lord" along the way.

By distributing these prescriptions and medicines this time, Zhang Zhongjing's status as "Medical Saint" will be completely stable.

"How is the training of medical soldiers going?"

Yuan Shu was most concerned about two aspects: population and the army. Both of these aspects were inseparable from medical care.

Yuan Shu understood the importance of medicine far better than people of this era, so before the status of businessmen was raised, the status of doctors had already been elevated by Yuan Shu.

From improving the survival probability of children to reducing the number of civilians and soldiers dying from illness, the role of doctors was extremely important in Yuan Shu's eyes.

"With the help of Zhongjing's medical system, our army now has one qualified medical soldier for every 100 people, and most of the soldiers know how to deal with basic wounds from swords and arrows," Zhang Zhao said.

After Yuan Shu's ideological indoctrination, the following counselors basically understood the importance of medical soldiers. This was a powerful weapon that could significantly reduce the casualty rate of his subordinates and increase the number of veterans.

"It's really unimaginable that this small number of medical soldiers can reduce the casualty ratio to this level!" Guo Jiaman said with emotion.

Even an old fox like him who has experienced many battlefields has not discovered the importance of this kind of medical soldier.
Chapter completed!