Chapter 336: Lu Yuqi knows people with eyes, Xu Gongming takes Huguan
Xia Zhao suddenly heard that Cao Jun had entered the city, his eyes widened in disbelief and asked: "What did you say???"
Seeing that Xia Zhao still didn't believe it, the messenger repeated: "Come back...general, Cao's army has really entered the city!!!"
"Crack!"
Xia Zhao threw the messenger back to the ground and shouted angrily: "Nonsense! Why is Cao Jun so silent..."
"It's absolutely true, General!" After saying this, the messenger suddenly remembered something and added: "But Cao's army did not attack from the east city gate, they sneaked in from the west city gate!"
At this point, Xia Zhao suddenly came back to his senses, "I see... It turns out that the trebuchets and the massive siege momentum a few days ago were all deliberately done to show me! I was still too careless.
Cao Jun was fooled by the truth!"
The regretful Xia Zhao knew that he had been tricked by Cao Jun, but he still shouted loudly: "Send the order, gather all the defenders and follow me to drive Cao Jun out of the city!"
However, when Xia Zhao and his personal guards had just walked out of the governor's mansion, a group of Cao's troops were already darkly surrounding them outside the gate of the governor's mansion.
"So...surrounded so quickly?" Xia Zhao, who was surrounded by a group of strong men as soon as he walked out of the gate, was dumbfounded and thought to himself: "This shouldn't be the case. There are still more than 30,000 defenders in the city.
No matter what, we wouldn’t be able to be completely broken through so quickly, right?”
However, Xia Zhao's doubts were quickly answered.
I saw Cao's army surrounding the Huguan Prefecture suddenly opened a passage, and Xu Huang, Huang Zhong and Deng Sheng walked out of the passage immediately.
Seeing Deng Sheng, Xia Zhao was shocked at first, then suddenly realized, and finally pointed at Deng Sheng angrily and asked: "Deng Sheng, you are so good, you don't talk about surrendering to the enemy, but you actually persuaded my soldiers to come and catch me! How could you?
Don’t you feel any guilt at all?!”
Xia Zhao's guess was correct. It was precisely because of Deng Sheng's personal persuasion to surrender that most of the defenders in Huguan City surrendered without any resistance.
Huang Zhong had been left behind by Lu Yan behind Huguan to deal with the aftermath.
Before surrendering to Lu Yan, Deng Sheng did his best to guard Hu Pass. Although Kaicheng finally surrendered, it was not his original intention.
After Deng Sheng surrendered to Lu Yan, in order to make it easier for Huang Zhong to clean up the Bingzhou Army forces on the Huguan front line, Lu Yan assigned Deng Sheng to Huang Zhong to act as his assistant.
After Lu Yan assigned Xu Huang the task, he immediately summoned Huang Zhong to assist Xu Huang in attacking the city. When Huang Zhong came to help, he also brought Deng Sheng, who was temporarily acting as his deputy, with him.
Not to mention, Deng Sheng really played a big role after he came.
After Cao Jun invaded Huguan City from the other side of the city wall by concealing the truth, in addition to encountering a fierce resistance at the beginning, a considerable number of the defenders in the city were directly persuaded to surrender by Deng Sheng. The surrender of the defenders not only greatly
It reduced the casualties of Cao's army and accelerated the progress of Cao's army in occupying Huguan City. Xia Zhao was even blocked at the entrance of the county governor's house.
Most of the defenders in the city surrendered to Cao's army, and a small number who resisted were either killed on the spot, or were defeated and made prisoners.
Under the leadership of Deng Sheng, Xu Huang and Huang Zhong soon led the army to the governor's mansion where Xia Zhao was hiding.
Faced with Xia Zhao's question, Deng Sheng said righteously: "Brother Xia, you and I have assisted the senior officials for many years, and we are brothers... Let me tell you honestly, as brothers, the senior officials went to invite reinforcements as an excuse, but in fact
He has already fled to Hedong County. He doesn't care about the life and death of you, my brother, and all the brothers in the army. The only thing he cares about is himself!"
Regarding whether Gao Gan really went to invite reinforcements or escaped, Xia Zhao had actually had similar thoughts for a long time, but he still held some illusions in his heart, hoping that Gao Gan would do what he said and invite reinforcements to rescue them.
Unfortunately, judging from the current situation, Xia Zhao's fantasy seems to be shattered, and the high-ranking officials may indeed abandon them and run away.
Thinking of this, Xia Zhao's face kept changing, showing that he was struggling extremely hard in his heart.
Huang Zhong saw that Xia Zhao was wavering, so he struck while the iron was hot: "Don't worry, General Xia. You can guard Huguan City and hold off our army for many days for senior officials. It shows that you are as loyal and dedicated as General Deng. Whether it is Prime Minister Cao or Lu
The Hussars are all merciful people, and they always treat loyal people with great courtesy... Far away there are two generals Zhang He and Gao Lan, and nearby General Deng Sheng, they are the best proof."
What Xia Zhao was worried about was exactly what Huang Zhong said... Firstly, he was worried that if he blocked Cao Jun for many days, Cao Jun would settle his account; secondly, he was worried that if he surrendered to Cao Jun, his future would be ruined.
Huang Zhong's words undoubtedly reassured Xia Zhao a lot.
Seeing that Xia Zhao's mood gradually calmed down, Deng Sheng knew that the matter was almost done.
"Hahaha!" Deng Sheng laughed and walked up to Xia Zhao alone, looked into his eyes and said, "Don't worry, brother, Mr. Cao will not treat us badly."
Seeing how sincere Deng Sheng and Cao Jun generals were, Xia Zhao finally made up his mind.
He sighed softly in his heart and said to himself: "Gao Jishi, Xia has tried his best..."
Immediately, Xia Zhao threw away the weapon in his hand, knelt down on one knee and asked Xu Huang to surrender: "Xia Zhao, the guilty general, is willing to surrender to Prime Minister Cao!"
Xu Huang successfully completed his task, and at the same time as his heart dropped, a sense of relief rose from the bottom of his heart.
"Okay! Hahaha!" Xu Huang laughed and came to Xia Zhao, helped him up and said: "General Xia has abandoned the dark side and turned to the bright side. The Prime Minister will definitely not treat you badly."
With Xu Huang's support, Xia Zhao stood up. He cupped his fists and said, "Thank you, general."
"We are all colleagues from now on, so there is no need for you to be polite.
Now I would like to ask General Xia and General Deng to accompany me to meet Lu Huiqi first. After the military situation here and the merits of the two generals are delivered to the Prime Minister, the imperial court will discuss the merits of the two generals and reward them!"
Hearing this, Deng Sheng and Xia Zhao couldn't help but said: "Well, thank you very much, General."
...
Xu Huang led the army to replace the guards in Huguan City. Huang Zhong and Deng Sheng led more than 20,000 troops from Xia Zhao to Lu Yan's camp.
In three days, Xu Huang captured Huguan City as promised, and because he outmaneuvered it, Cao's army suffered very few casualties.
At this moment, Lu Yan was receiving compliments from everyone in the Chinese army tent.
"General Xu outsmarted Huguan City, Lu Qiaoqi is really a good judge of people!"
"There are many talents under Duke Cao, but at least half of them were discovered by Lu Xiuqi... I sincerely admire you!"
"The admiration my subordinates have for Lu Qianqi is like the endless stream of a surging river..."
To be honest, even though Lu Yan was very thick, he still felt a little uncomfortable facing the Chinese army tent that turned into a large-scale boasting scene.
He raised his hand to stop everyone's praise and said: "It is the duty of a minister to recruit talents for the imperial court. Please do not praise him too much."
"No, no, no! There are too many people in this world who are jealous of talents, and there are too few people who can promote talents selflessly... With Lu Qiaoqi and you here, Mr. Cao will not worry about being domineering... I'm sorry for the slip of the tongue... I'm sorry..." Ma
Teng seemed to realize that he had let something slip, and apologized repeatedly.