After identifying the horse thief, if Liu Biao took action against the horse thief, he was worried that it would give Wang Ding an excuse to send troops to Jingzhou.
But if he doesn't take action against this horse thief, then everyone else in Jingzhou will probably think that he is incompetent.
"Perhaps Wang Ding sent this cavalry on purpose. When I take action against this cavalry, he will have an excuse to march south."
Since Wang Ding asked the cavalry to disguise themselves as horse thieves, he should treat them as horse thieves.
Facing thousands of war horses, Liu Biao was still a little jealous.
Why doesn't he want to go north?
Not only did he have the troops in his hands, but mostly infantry and naval forces, it was too difficult to expand northward.
He has too few cavalry.
If you go to the north, you can only be led by the nose.
Liu Biao wanted to swallow up this cavalry, but he also did not want to have a conflict with Wang Ding.
The best way is to pretend not to know that this horse thief is Wang Ding's man.
Even if Wang Ding comes to him for an explanation in the future, he can always insist that he is just suppressing horse thieves.
But Liu Biao didn't know that Wang Ding was also among these horse thieves.
If he knew, Liu Biao would have already sent people to block all the important roads leading to Luoyang.
He didn't want to have a conflict with Wang Ding, but given such a good opportunity, Liu Biao naturally wouldn't give it up.
But now, Liu Biao decided to wait for a while. When the cavalry passed Xiangyang, he was preparing to take action to prevent the other party from running away early.
Wang Ding, Ma Chao and Zhang Xiu are currently only active in areas north of Xiangyang.
He naturally knew that it would be difficult to hide his whereabouts from Liu Biao.
After passing Xiangyang, if Liu Biao really wanted to take action against him, he would have few escape options.
South of Xiangyang, there are dense water nets. Even if the cavalry moves like the wind, it will often have to take detours.
Liu Biao's men, on the other hand, could use various waterways to quickly block his way.
Wang Ding must still go to the area south of Xiangyang. The counties in the north alone cannot allow him to harvest 400,000 shi of food and grass.
In the past few days, Wang Ding's route has been completely irregular.
Every day at dawn, after eating dry food, he picked off a leaf and threw it in front of him. Whichever direction the leaf tip pointed, he would walk in that direction.
Along the way, he encountered a manor and looted it.
In just half a month, Wang Ding had looted nearly 30,000 shi of food in the counties north of Xiangyang.
All these grains were hidden by him in various mountains and forests.
Liu Biao would receive the latest news from horse thieves every day.
But he frowned.
Because judging from the news these days, he had no idea when the horse thieves running around now would go south.
Obviously yesterday, the horse thieves had traveled a hundred miles south.
But today he suddenly headed east again. When he received the news tomorrow, the horse thief went another fifty miles north.
North of Xiangyang, Nanyang County and Xincheng County do not have so many waterways. If he wants to capture the horse thieves in Xincheng County, he must first dispatch cavalry.
But even so, it may not be possible to successfully capture this horse thief.
If it was a real horse thief, Liu Biao would have sent troops long ago if he was confident.
But I knew in my heart that this horse thieves were Wang Ding's cavalry and would definitely not be that easy to deal with.
Liu Biao only has 3,000 cavalry in his hands now, and he really doesn't want to be damaged by this.
Every cavalryman is a treasure.
Fortunately, according to the news he received, the horse thieves were only robbing food and grass and did not kill indiscriminately.
Liu Biao decided to continue waiting.
Now it seems that the horse thieves were robbing food.
Liu Biao didn't know how much grain the horse thieves had plundered, but he could roughly estimate the number from the number of manors attacked.
For half a month, the "horse thieves" were only attacking manors outside the city and harvesting grain.
But with only a thousand cavalry, they could not take away so much food.
Liu Biao only had to send a few troops to guard the main roads leading to Luoyang.
The cavalry that loses speed cannot fight out unless they throw away the food they grabbed and go into battle lightly.
Liu Biao now doubted whether this was a horse thief or a bait deliberately thrown by Wang Ding to lure him into sending troops.
After confirming that the horse thieves currently roaming Nanyang and Xincheng counties had no intention of leaving for the time being, Liu Biao chose to stay put.
No matter that the governor of Nanyang in the new city and the county magistrate kept sending people to ask for help, Liu Biao remained unmoved.
He has this patience.
A mere thousand cavalrymen, plundering a few manors outside the city, could not occupy the city.
Liu Biao was very relieved.
What he wants is to ensure that he can capture these thousand war horses.
No matter how much food has been looted now, it will still be returned to him when the time comes.
With just one switch, he could not only harvest a thousand cavalry, but also tens of thousands of stones of food.
Thinking of this, Liu Biao became even less anxious.
Although Liu Biao cooperated with the aristocratic families in Jingzhou, if he could take back the grain and eat the food in his mouth, Liu Biao would not be able to spit it out again.
He was just waiting quietly in Xiangyang.
He believed that even if this cavalry did not come to Xiangyang, they would definitely bypass Xiangyang and go to Nanjun, or Changsha County, to the south of Jingzhou.
Twenty days!
Wang Ding has already set foot in Nanyang and Xincheng counties, a total of eighteen counties.
The food hidden in the mountains and forests also accumulated to 50,000 dan.
Jingzhou is indeed richer than Yanzhou.
He just plundered the manor outside the city and did not even enter the city. He was already close to catching up with the amount of grain he harvested in Yanzhou.
If he had taken the opportunity to plunder a few small cities during this period, the amount of food would probably have been even greater.
And these are just the two counties north of Xiangyang.
"Xiangyang!"
In the mountain forest, Wang Ding and others hid the food, and he looked to the south.
Almost all the manors outside the cities in Nanyang and Xincheng counties have been looted by them.
If we don't break the city, we won't be able to harvest much food from these two counties.
Wang Ding was a little disappointed. He had not expected that Liu Biao would be so patient and helplessly watched him loot hundreds of manors in the two counties without sending troops to clear him out.
If Liu Biao really sends people, as long as the number does not exceed 10,000, Wang Ding is confident that he can use these 1,000 men to defeat Liu Biao's troops.
…
"Lord, it has been three days and there has been no news of the horse thieves." Wenpin said, cupping his fists.
"Why are you missing?" Liu Biao was a little unwilling. Could it be that he had fled back to Luoyang?
However, there are obviously tens of thousands of stones of food and only a thousand cavalry, which cannot be taken away so easily.
Wenpin said: "The other party was very cautious and did not look like an ordinary horse thief. He just entered a mountain forest and then disappeared. By the time the spies realized something was wrong and went into the mountain to investigate, the traces had been completely lost."