After all, the armies of Xuzhou, Wei Yan and Sun Jian failed to stop Xiahou Yuan.

Xia Houyuan led his army to cover 500 miles in three days and thousands of miles in six days. Even though he lost a small part of his troops due to Wei Yan's careful ambush, he still managed to escape Wei Yan's pursuit without any danger.

At the same time, Lu Bu in Xiapi learned the news that Cao Cao sent troops to Qingzhou, and he was very anxious. Although he stopped thinking about going back immediately to support under Chen Gong's dissuasion, he was still uneasy and had no intention of attacking Xiapi.

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After learning the news that Xia Houyuan had returned for reinforcements, Lu Bu became even more furious: "Gongtai, Xiahou Yuan has led his troops to return for reinforcements. We will definitely not be able to take Pi City now, so we should retreat to Qingzhou!"

When Chen Gong saw Lu Bu's return of thoughts, he sighed inwardly. As a master, he had no courage at all, he only wanted stability and did not seek progress.

There are more than 40,000 garrison troops left in Qingzhou. With the strength of Cao Cao's troops in Yanzhou, unless they all go out, there will definitely be no loss. As long as Cao Cao's mind is right, he will never do this. But the truth is all said and done.

, Lu Bu still wanted to retreat.

"My lord, retreat now. Don't you want the rest of Yuan Jiujiu's great gift? Our army has been besieging Xiapi City for more than ten days now, and the defenders in the city have suffered heavy losses. As long as my lord persists for a few more days, we will definitely take it."

"My lord is brave and invincible. I can't attack the city easily, but Xia Houyuan can be easily solved by land battle. My lord, this is a God-given opportunity. We must not retreat!"

Lu Bu was tired of hearing this, and said dissatisfiedly: "But now the walls of Pi City are high and strong, and Cao Zixiao is a good defensive general. It is really difficult for us to take it! If Cao Cao's army is allowed to wait for us,

With the raging on the territory, won’t the efforts of the past six months be in vain? It’s better to retreat as soon as possible and find other ways!”

Chen Gong still wanted to persuade, but Lu Bu's patience had already been exhausted, and he directly said to the generals: "This matter is settled. We will withdraw our troops first, and then come back to capture the two new counties of Xuzhou. Don't give up."

, come back and capture Xuzhou in the future!"

Lu Bu himself has a character that makes peace with being rich, and he is very satisfied to have the land of a state to protect himself. Although it is a pity to lose the money promised by Yuan Shu, he is very satisfied to have the land of two counties.

When Chen Gong saw Lu Bu like this, he sighed and stamped his feet helplessly. However, what Lu Bu said made some sense. With Cao Ren around, Xiapi would be difficult to capture after all, so withdrawing the troops at this time might not be a bad choice. But strategically, this

Withdrawing the troops at this time would mean handing over the position of overlord of the Central Plains to Cao Cao.

Without capturing Xiapi, the two counties in Xuzhou could not be defended at all, and they would have to be recaptured by Cao Cao once he regained his composure.

This place in Xuzhou is like this. It is a battleground for military strategists, but it is flat and difficult to defend. Historically, Sun Quan was so close to Xuzhou, but he basically had no intention of attacking this place. This is because he knew that it would be easy to capture Xuzhou, but he would not be able to defend it.

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He didn't have many cavalry under his command. Attacking this place was completely self-destructive. Therefore, the focus of his attacks was always on Hefei. He sent troops to attack Hefei five times, and he and Cao Wei were locked in a deadly fight here.

Hefei is completely different from Xuzhou. This place is close to the Yangtze River and Nanjing. Only by occupying this place can we ensure that we have no worries about the dangers of the Yangtze River and occupy an active position that can advance, attack, retreat, and defend.

Moreover, this place is located between the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River. If Sun Quan occupied this place, he could push the battlefield to the Huaihe River, adding another layer of natural danger. Soochow relied on its navy, and the Yangtze River and Huaihe River were its best battlefields.

Everything was as Xi Zhicai expected. When Lu Bu heard the news about Xia Houyuan, he immediately gave up his thoughts on taking Xia Pi and turned around to go back to defend Qingzhou.

Sun Jian and Wei Yan under Yuan Shu saw that they had no advantage to take advantage of, so they directly chose to withdraw to Jiangdong.

For a time, except for Yuan Shu and Yuan Shao who were dealing with some issues in Yizhou and Bingzhou, all the princes in the world stopped their activities and began to develop with all their strength, waiting for the start of the next war.

In this battle in the Central Plains, Cao, Liu, and Lu all gained something, but compared to the heavy losses suffered by Cao and Liu, Lu Bu suffered almost no damage. But this guy was stupid and didn't take this opportunity to conquer Xuzhou, leaving Cao Cao a breathing space.

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Cao Cao also took this opportunity to become the largest prince in the Central Plains. Sitting on the two states of Yanxu, Liu Bei and Lu Bu were separated, and he had an absolute advantage. Once he regained his composure, he could quickly capture Lu Bu and then slow down the plan.

Yuzhou.

...

Jinling, Yuan Shu felt a burst of heartache when he saw the message from Guo Jia from Yizhou.

"Liu Yan is such a pig! The land of abundance has been tortured like this!"

Liu Yan didn't care about the development of Yizhou, he only cared about the power he had, so he didn't know much about the development of Yizhou over such a long time.

And when Guo Jia compiled statistics on Yizhou's tax situation in recent years from Yizhou Fuku, he immediately discovered something fishy.

People in this era are still relatively simple, and the level of making false accounts is quite low. After a little rough calculation using the new calculation method provided by Yuan Shu, Guo Jia knew that Yizhou’s tax revenue on the bright side in recent years has been 7%.

Cheng and above were hacked by family members.

No wonder Liu Yan could only afford an army of 30,000 men. He was so poor! Not to mention Yuan Shu, even Liu Bei could easily take out this amount of money. Only a poor man like Cao Cao could make a deal with him.

You must know that Yizhou is famous for its wealth, which is not comparable to war-torn places like Yanzhou.

In fact, Yanzhou was not a poor place at the beginning. In the hinterland of the Central Plains, it was only a little worse than Jizhou. But there were so many wars in this place!

Not to mention the Yellow Turban War and the like, just when the princes were fighting against Dong, four of the eighteen princes came from Yanzhou. This place was in chaos to a certain extent.

Cao Cao was so poor in the Battle of Guandu, isn't it because the Central Plains was destroyed! Otherwise, Yuan Shao only had two wealthy states, Jizhou and Qingzhou, how could he compare with Cao Cao's Central Plains?

Before the Yellow Turban, the prosperity of the Central Plains was at least twice that of Hebei. Before the princes attacked Dong, the prosperity of the Central Plains was no less than that of Hebei. But after Cao Cao unified the Central Plains, the prosperity of the Central Plains could not be compared with that of Hebei.

Yanzhou was destroyed because of Lu Bu's sneak attack and the previous war, Yuzhou was destroyed because of Yuan Shu's attempt to commit suicide, and Xuzhou was destroyed because of Cao Cao's revenge and Cao Liulu's three-way melee. Qingzhou, the only one outside the Central Plains, was also destroyed because of gold.

The thieves were rampant and were beaten to pieces. Isn't that how Cao Cao's Qingzhou soldiers came?

There are no tigers in the mountains, and monkeys are kings. The wealth of Jizhou became famous after the Central Plains was destroyed. The wealth of Jingzhou became famous because of the destruction of Jizhou. Not to mention the wealth of Yizhou, Zhuge Liang

I guess they just didn't know how incompetent Liu Yan and his son were to say that the people were rich and the country was prosperous.

But think about it, what kind of enemy needs to be faced? The father and son, who have been developing all the time, can reduce Yizhou with a population of more than 5 million to less than a million. It is really powerful. No one would have thought that Liu Yan

The father and son can be so useless, let alone the Yizhou family can be so ruthless.

Fortunately, those aristocratic families were buried together with Liu Yan. Yuan Shu accepted all this after scolding Liu Yan for a while. After all, many of the nearly two million people lost in Yizhou actually entered Jingzhou.

and Yangzhou's pocket, Yuan Shu just lost some money.
Chapter completed!