Can I get to the other side?

The one sent by His Majesty?

Xu You stopped struggling, but there was a look of doubt in his eyes.

Before he could think about it, Xu Chu's questioning voice came from outside the house: "Mr. Ziyuan, what happened?"

Xu You felt the hand covering his mouth loosen. After a little hesitation, he said in a calm tone: "It's okay, I just tripped and fell."

After dealing with Xu Chu, Xu You got up from the ground and looked at the person behind him, and found that it was a strange middle-aged man with an unremarkable appearance.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Xu You asked with some vigilance. Although the man told him that he was sent by the emperor, he still didn't dare to believe it.

This is Cao Cao's mansion, which is heavily guarded.

Moreover, the small courtyard where he was imprisoned was under close surveillance. The tiger guards were guarding outside. How did this person sneak in?

"Sir, I am the Embroidered Uniform Envoy."

"Codename: Wutong."

Wutong introduced himself and then said: "Your Majesty has not heard from you for a long time, so he specially ordered us, the Embroidered Uniform Envoys, to come to Yuzhou to inquire and contact you."

"After many inquiries, I learned that you were imprisoned here, so I sneaked into the room and met you."

"If I disturbed you, please forgive me."

Wutong took out a handwritten letter from the emperor and handed it to Xu You.

"This is your majesty's handwritten letter."

Xu You took it and carefully identified it. After confirming that the seal of the imperial seal on the handwritten letter was not fake, he finally dispelled his doubts about Wutong.

But what followed was deep worry.

"It turned out to be the Embroidered Uniform Envoy."

Xu You breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, he had heard of this famous organization, but he didn't expect that the emperor had actually reorganized it.

It even extended its tentacles to Cao Cao's mansion!

Suppressing the surprise in his heart, Xu You sighed helplessly: "I have been trapped here for a long time and cannot get in touch with His Majesty."

"A few months ago, the letter I wrote to His Majesty was intercepted by Cao Cao, and he learned my identity. Then he trapped me in this courtyard on the pretext of recuperating from illness, and I was not allowed to contact the outside world."

He patiently explained to Wutong.

It is not okay not to explain clearly that he has not contacted the emperor for such a long time. He does not want to be mistaken for a traitor.

"I already know about this matter."

Wutong nodded. He has secretly explored a lot of information during this period of time. He just heard the conversation between Xu You and Cao Cao and roughly deduced what the situation is.

"Since your identity has been exposed, please return to Yecheng with me. His Majesty is thinking about your contribution and waiting for you to return to be the Minister of the Chancellery."

Xu You was slightly startled, and then his eyes were red.

He was very moved.

He did not expect that the emperor missed him so much, and he still remembered the promise to let him be the Minister of the Chancellery!

After wiping away a tear from the corner of his eye, Xu You took a deep breath and said to Wutong in a serious tone: "Thank you for your kindness, but you should leave alone."

"This place is too dangerous. The soldiers guarding outside the courtyard are the Tiger Guards under Cao Cao. These guards are elite soldiers selected from a hundred miles away. Each of them can fight ten people. With them guarding outside, you can't rescue me."

The Tiger Guards are the most elite team under Cao Cao, with only a few hundred people. Usually, they are Cao Cao's personal guards, led by Xu Chu and Dian Wei.

After Dian Wei died, Xu Chu was the only one to guard.

Previously, he was also responsible for monitoring Emperor Xian of Han.

That day, when Cao Cao heard that Emperor Xian of Han led the Tiger Guards to kill Cao's mansion, a large part of the reason why he chose not to leave was because of the Tiger Guards.

"It's okay, I..."

Wu Tong was about to comfort Xu You when he suddenly heard a burst of dense footsteps and armor collisions outside the house. His face changed and he turned around abruptly.

"Bang!"

The door was kicked open, and more than a dozen fully armed guards with crossbows broke into the room and surrounded him and Xu You.

Then Xu Chu strode in, his cold eyes swept across Xu You's face, and finally fell on Wu Tong.

"Who are you, dare to trespass here?"

Wu Tong looked terrified, knelt down directly, and cried: "General, spare me, I just got lost and entered here by mistake-"

Before he finished speaking, he took advantage of Xu Chu's relaxation of vigilance and jumped out like a civet cat. In the blink of an eye, he slipped out of the gap between the crowd and jumped onto the wall lightly on his toes!

Wutong's lurking and escaping skills were extremely good, otherwise he would not have been able to sneak into Xu You's room without the surveillance of the tiger guards.

"Where are you going!"

Xu Chu was furious when he saw this, and without waiting for his order, the tiger guards under his command activated their crossbows and shot sharp arrows one after another.

More than ten sharp arrows flew over, and Wutong felt a great sense of crisis emerging from his heart. He twisted his body forcefully in the air and avoided most of the sharp arrows.

But even so, he was accidentally hit by two arrows on his left arm, and blood immediately flowed.

But he could no longer care about this injury at this time, and endured the severe pain and jumped and tumbled on the eaves. Seeing this, Xu Chu took people to chase and kill without saying a word.

Not long after.

Cao Cao heard the sound and rushed to the small courtyard. He looked at Xu You who was tied up and the little blood on the ground outside the courtyard, and a trace of anger flashed in his eyes.

He stepped forward and grabbed Xu You by the collar, angrily saying, "Who was that man just now? What did you say to him?"

Xu You responded coldly and remained silent.

Seeing this, Cao Cao was furious. Just as he was about to use means to interrogate, Xu Chu came back with the Tiger Guards and brought back a corpse.

"My Lord, the person has been caught!"

Cao Cao looked at the corpse on the ground and saw that there were more than a dozen crossbow arrows stuck in the corpse. It was already dead.

This corpse was naturally Wutong.

Although he was agile, it was impossible for him to escape from the Cao Mansion, which was heavily guarded and equipped with bows and crossbows, without being discovered.

Before he left the inner mansion, he was shot and killed by a volley of Tiger Guards who came after hearing the noise.

"My Lord, this was found on him."

Another Tiger Guard handed over an object, which was the emperor's handwritten letter that Wutong had held before.

Cao Cao took the handwritten letter, took a closer look, and his face changed immediately. He said in a lost voice: "Embroidered Envoy? He is an Embroidered Envoy?!"

Embroidered Envoy!

This secret organization of the imperial court that disappeared for hundreds of years has now reappeared in the world, and even sneaked into his heavily guarded mansion and met Xu You under his nose!

What terrified him even more was how long this person had sneaked into his mansion? How long had he been in contact with Xu You? Has Xu You passed all his plans through this person?

In an instant, fear and anger overwhelmed Cao Cao.

He stared at Xu You with extremely fierce eyes, and said word by word: "Throw him into the dungeon! Torture him!"

"Yes!"

Xu Chu clasped his fists heavily and had Xu You dragged away.

Before being taken away, Xu You said to Cao Cao faintly: "Aman, you will regret it."

Cao Cao was furious: "You don't need a prisoner like you to teach me how to do things!"

Xu You sneered and was taken away.

But Cao Cao was still furious, and ordered Xu Chu: "Double the number of people on duty in the mansion, and check the identities of the people in the mansion every day! This must not happen again!"

He was so scared. If the embroidered clothes envoy came for him, he would be in danger even if he had tiger guards by his side.

And he was not sure how many people were lurking in the mansion!

For a moment, Cao Cao felt that the darkness around him was full of dangers, and added to Xu Chu with worry: "Zhongkang, you will sleep with me tonight."

"Ah?"

Xu Chu was stunned when he heard it, and the tiger guards around him were also stunned.

My lord... actually has a good relationship with Long Yang?

Although he was extremely resistant in his heart, Xu Chu hesitated again and again, and finally decided to go all out, gritting his teeth and said: "I will obey your order!"

The tiger guards cast admiring eyes at him.

As expected of a general, this loyalty is simply lamentable!

Cao Cao did not notice Xu Chu's abnormality, and left the courtyard with full of worries, intending to write a letter to Cao Ren immediately.

The retreat must be accelerated.

…

The Han army has been dispatched for several days.

Lü Bu led 5,000 Bingzhou cavalry, 1,000 Xianzhenzhen and more than 24,000 infantrymen from Jizhou to the south and headed straight for Yanzhou.

Sima Yi was still the military advisor for this march. Unlike the past, Chen Gong was not here, but stayed in Jinyang City to assist Zhang He in guarding Bingzhou.

In the central army camp.

Sima Yi was explaining his plan to Lu Bu, pointing to the geomancy map and saying, "Mr. Wen, the most important thing for us in this battle is to cross the Yellow River and take Dongjun."

"Only by taking Dongjun can our army gain a foothold in Yanzhou. After entering Yanzhou, we will cross Baima and Yanjin, and then we can go straight to Guandu and kill into Xu County, the base camp of Cao thieves."

"But we need to be vigilant that Cao Cao has set up ambushes at these ferry crossings. He will not watch us so easily capture the city."

"This crossing will be a fierce battle."

Baima, Yanjin, and Guandu are their first line of defense in attacking Yuzhou, and also the last line of defense in Xu County. Although according to their previous inference, Cao Cao will gather heavy troops at Guandu, but the other side will definitely not ignore their crossing of the river.

There will definitely be ambushes at these ferry crossings.

Because crossing the river is the easiest to cause casualties to their attackers, he does not believe that Cao Cao will waste this opportunity in vain.

So they can't rush.

This time they have sufficient troops and complete logistics, so they don't need to fight as fast and as urgently as they did last time when they attacked Bingzhou. They can take their time.

"What this general is best at is fighting a fierce battle!"

Lu Bu was not afraid at all when he heard this, but seemed extremely excited. "Three years ago, we also crossed the river to attack Yuan Shu, and we still defeated him?"

"This time Cao Cao will have the same fate!"

Sima Yi had a headache when he heard this. Of course, he had heard about the Huaihe River battle where Lu Bu fought Yuan Shu, but that was a complete exception.

It was only because Lu Bu shot a local general across the river with an arrow, causing the enemy to be in chaos and morale to decline, that Lu Bu successfully crossed the river at a very small cost.

Otherwise, with Yuan Shu's military strength at the time, if Lu Bu wanted to force his troops to cross the river, he would definitely suffer heavy casualties.

What's more, can the Huaihe River be compared with the Yellow River?

Sima Yi patiently advised: "Lord Wen, it is better to be cautious. Why not send some scouts across the river to investigate the situation and see how many troops the other side has deployed on the other side of the river and how they are defending. Then we can take countermeasures."

"You are not without reason."

Although Lu Bu felt that it was unnecessary and that crossing the river meant attacking in one go, Sima Yi was right. It was always right to be cautious when marching and fighting.

So he called Wei Yue and gave him an order: "You arrange some scouts to investigate the situation of Cao thieves and see if they have any ambush on the other side of the river."

"Yes!"

Wei Yue took the order and retreated.

Sima Yi was relieved when he saw this, and then he reminded: "The army must stay away from the mountains and forests when setting up camp."

"Be careful of the enemy's use of fire attack."

An army of 30,000 people set up camps for several miles. Once they are attacked by fire, the camps will be burned, and there will be heavy casualties.

Even if they are close to water at this time, they cannot be unprepared.

"As you say."

Lv Bu agreed without saying a word. These are just trivial matters. It doesn't hurt to listen to Sima Yi. Before the army set out, the emperor also reminded him to listen to Sima Yi's suggestions on marching and fighting.

As long as Sima Yi doesn't make comments when he leads his troops to charge, he has no objection.

That night, the army set up camp along the Yellow River.

Two days passed in this way.

The scouts sent out came back in batches to report. These scouts disguised themselves as merchants and civilians, and investigated and gathered intelligence at various places on the other side of the river.

The intelligence they reported was all consistent - no ambush was found on the other side of the river, nor was there any camp of Cao's army.

They even searched the mountains and forests, but did not see any trace of Cao's army.

"How is this possible?"

After listening to the report of the last scout, Sima Yi stood up in shock, his face full of disbelief.

There was no ambush on the other side of the river?

Did the other side really gather all their troops at Guandu, or gave up the Baima Ferry and gathered troops in Yanzhou?

"Military advisor, you should have listened to me earlier!"

Lü Bu laughed loudly, and ordered with a refreshed spirit: "Pass my military order, the whole army crosses the river!"

"Wait!"

Sima Yi's expression tightened, and he stopped Lu Bu again, and said very seriously: "Mr. Wen, there must be a trick!"

Lü Bu was stunned, and asked in great confusion: "Haven't we already checked that there are no ambushes? What else can there be? Military advisor, are you too suspicious?"

Sima Yi shook his head and said: "No, Mr. Wen, think about it carefully. Baima Ferry is so important, how can Cao not defend it? In my opinion, he must have set up troops in places we don't expect, even in the upper reaches of the Yellow River."

"They want to wait for us to relax our vigilance and the army to start crossing the river, and then suddenly rush out and catch us off guard!"

"Humph, such a trick, I have already seen through it!"

Sima Yi sneered, the other party's little tricks could not be hidden from his eyes at all. It's still too naive to want to confuse people with such means and attack halfway across the river!