Guo Shao and his group ran out of Bingzhou, and no one came to chase them, so they gradually felt relieved. It seemed that the situation was not that serious at this time. At least Zhe Congruan did not dare to do anything to Guo Shao. The only thing that was uncertain was Li Chuyun's situation. If a general of the imperial army was to be lynched by the Jiedushi for beating up a young man who bullied men and women because of injustice, Zhe Congruan would probably not be able to become the Jiedushi.
Guo Shao and Zuo You both thought it was worth it to cause unpleasantness for Li Chuyun and Zhe Gong, because they could not win over a general of Zhe Gong's level, and only Li Chuyun was the candidate they should strive for.
After traveling for half a day, they immediately found an inn to rest as soon as they left Jingnan Town. They thought that if Zhe Congruan really wanted to do something, he wouldn't have to wait until now.
The largest post station in the interior of the country was a small city with city walls and gates. Travelers drove local commerce, and markets usually sprang up around it. Li Chuyun's family and servants numbered about ten people, and with Guo Shao and others, there was more than enough room for them to stay.
The wet nurse of the Li family's wife also came with them. She was not originally from Bingzhou. She followed the Li family to Bingzhou when Zhe Gong moved the town. The wet nurse has been taking care of the Li family's wife for more than ten years, and now she is almost equivalent to a member of the Li family. The wet nurse is proud of her seniority and often takes care of Li's affairs. As soon as she arrived at the post station, she started to work and wanted to take the robe to wash, saying that she would return it to others after it was clean and dried; the robe was the clothes that Li wrapped Guo Shao's clothes when she went home.
Li refused and didn't know how to explain. After thinking for a while, she argued that the clothes were damaged by the fire. She would wash them after she settled down in Fengxiang.
As soon as the nurse left the room, Li took out the robe from her bag, looked at it for a while, and couldn't help but hold it up to her nose and smell it. It seemed to smell a bit of sweat, and there were other smells, or maybe there was no smell at all, and she was just imagining it.
Just as she was in a daze, the door suddenly creaked and was pushed open again. Li hurriedly stuffed the clothes in her hands into her bag, shocked and embarrassed, and her face immediately turned red.
The next morning, a civil official from Fengxiang Town came to receive Guo Shao and asked him to meet with Jiedushi Wang Jing again after arriving at Fengxiang Prefecture. Based on this courtesy, Guo Shao guessed that Wang Jing might have received the letter from Wang Pu of Tokyo.
Guo Shao was even more relieved. After they settled down in Fengxiang Prefecture and paid a visit to Wang Jing, they left Li Chuyun's family in Fengxiang and left the city for Chencang the next day, concentrating on understanding the terrain.
Zhang Zhao, the chief secretary of the Fengxiang Town Shogunate, personally accompanied Guo Shao to Chencang, and then traveled to Sanguan.
The group set out from Chencang early in the morning, traveling light, and walked about thirty or forty miles before reaching Sanguan in the afternoon. Along the way, there were only high mountains and steep ridges, and the road had only one valley, like a traffic channel between the mountains.
As soon as they arrived at Sanguan, Zhang Zhao said: Envoy Guo cannot risk leaving Sanguan, because the territory ahead is controlled by the Shu army, and the terrain is complicated, so there is a fear of mishap.
Seeing that the mountains were steep and people in the valley were like being trapped in high walls, Guo Shao could not help but sigh: "This must be the Road to Shu. No wonder the poet Li Bai said that the Road to Shu is more difficult than the mountains and the sky."
Zhang Zhao smiled and said: "It is true that we have entered the Shu Road, but the road from Chencang to Sanguan is relatively easy to walk. We are riding horses. This road is called Chencang Road. The north end is in Chencang. There are several Shu Roads, and Chencang Road is the flattest one."
Guo Shao saw that Sanguan Pass was dangerous and was stuck in the middle of a valley, surrounded by steep mountains. Apart from the valley road in the middle, it was not easy for a large army or even a small group of people to cross the mountain. So he said: Since Chencang Road is the flattest road, it would be difficult for the Shu army to enter Guanzhong. It would be easy for Longyou and Gansu to enter Guanzhong.
Zhang Zhaodao: That’s right. Since ancient times, Longyou has been commanding Guanzhong from a high position, and Qinzhou is in Longyou.
Zuo You could explain these general things, so Guo Shao did not continue to discuss them. He was just thinking: Qinzhou is in Longyou, and the army can enter the Guanzhong Plain as long as it rushes down; the court is preparing to recover several states occupied by Shu, and it may be most concerned about the objective threat posed by Qinzhou.
Guo Shao and the others had never been to this place, let alone walked the Shu Road. At this time, they could not see much except looking at the mountains. He thought for a while and felt that Zhang Zhao had stayed in Fengxiang for a long time and might be familiar with the general area. He immediately went to the paper mill and set it up on the gate tower with everyone, and then took out a wooden ruler from his bag.
This checkpoint, which is a must-fight for military strategists, seemed very quiet at this time. There were only a few soldiers guarding the wall, and even few travelers passing through.
Guo Shao looked at the sun's position for a while, then drew a circle on the paper and wrote in tiny characters: Chencang. Then he used a ruler to draw a short line on the lower right corner of the paper and wrote: 40 li. He estimated the direction and drew another curved line, writing Sanguan at one end of the line.
Zhang Zhao and Zuo You both watched Guo Shao tinkering with this thing with great interest. Since the operation was simple and crude, they understood it, but they thought Guo Shao's approach was a bit strange.
Guo Shao asked again: Qinzhou is west of Chencang, and Zhang Changshi remembers how far it is to the north.
Zhang Zhaodao: The direction should indeed be towards the north, about five hundred miles away.
Guo Shao measured the distance and direction according to his instructions, and marked Qinzhou at a place far away from Chencang.
In the question-and-answer session, Zhang Zhao was indeed knowledgeable, and he could give the approximate location of any well-known place. So within a stick of incense, Guo Shao drew out the larger towns such as Fengzhou, Chengzhou, Jiezhou, Xiongsheng, Junguzhen, Xingzhou, Shannanxidao, Hanzhong, etc. Among them, Qin, Feng, Cheng, and Jie were the territories of Shu that the court was preparing to capture.
Chengfeng is located in the east-west line, south of Chencang. Fengzhou is the closest to Chencang, more than 200 miles southwest of Chencang; Chengzhou is 300 miles west of Fengzhou. Guzhen, the Xiongsheng Army of Shu, is the farthest between Chengfeng and Jizhou, nearly 300 miles southwest of Chengzhou.
Other places not too far away, but which Guo Shao believed were not within the scope of this campaign, included Xingzhou and Hanzhong of Shannan West Road. Xingzhou was just south of Guzhen, at the western end of the Hanzhong Plain; going east from Xingzhou, one entered the Hanzhong Plain, which was Xingyuan Prefecture, the governor of Shannan West Road.
Guo Shao had a rough idea of the direction and drew a rough diagram. However, the roads and terrain between these states and towns were not clear. Guo Shao knew that the marching route could not be determined by the straight-line distance. For example, the Qinling Mountains around Sanguan in front of him would be difficult to cross unless they flew.
Guo Shao looked at the diagram in his hand. Now that we have the points, we need lines to form a surface. He asked about the rivers first. There should be four rivers.
The Wei River is the northernmost river, and the river from Qinzhou to Chencang is the Wei River; the ancient road water connects to the Jialing River, and its flow direction is roughly the Chencang Road in the Shu Road, flowing from Chencang, Fengzhou, and Xingzhou in a north-south direction; the Qiang River flows eastward through Jiezhou and flows into the Jialing River; there is also the Han River that passes through the Shannan West Road.
Beyond the rivers are roads. Zhang Zhao couldn't remember them clearly, but he could only say it was the Shu Road, which was the Chencang Road here.
However, the general terrain is that the road from Chencang to Qinzhou is along the Wei River, which is relatively easy to travel, but the distance is very far; the line from Qinzhou to the south and then east to Chengfeng is also very flat, but the road is even longer. If you go through Chencang and bypass Qinzhou all the way to Fengzhou, it is at least a thousand miles away.
If you go directly south from Chencang to Chengxi Fengdong, you have to cross the Qinling Mountains; in fact, the southern part of the Weishui line between Chencang and Qinzhou is all Qinling Mountains, and the roads heading south are complicated due to the high mountains and steep hills.
Guo Shao's trip was somewhat fruitful. He at least understood that the purpose of the court's campaign was to control the Qinling Mountains and eliminate the threat from Longyou to Guanzhong.
When he was in Tokyo before, no one would tell him these things. It was impossible for the Queen and Wang Pu to teach him in detail. Zuo You, the only one who had some knowledge, also knew limited things about these things. Zuo You was mainly familiar with the officialdom in Tokyo.
Guo Shao was given command of 6,000 elite soldiers from the Imperial Guards, and should be a strong force in the upcoming war against Shu. If the commander-in-chief knew nothing about it, and the battle went badly, how could he explain himself if he only followed Wang Jingxiang's instructions and answered nothing when asked
Moreover, Guo Shao's idea was to fight with all his might and hope for a quick victory.
For a moment, Guo Shao was a little glad that he had lived in modern society and had some experience. Otherwise, if he were an ordinary junior officer, he would be soaring in a few months and commanding operations. In a situation like Guo Shao's, where there was almost no convenient source of information, he would probably be clueless.
Guo Shao then settled down at Sanguan Pass and did not return to Chencang or Fengxiang. While waiting for the entourage of Luo Yanhuan, the other two, and Jingniang, he made friends with the generals guarding the pass and inquired about the nearby terrain and the deployment of the Shu army.
In order to guard against attacks from the Shu army, the soldiers stationed at Sanguan had to regularly send out scouts to operate nearby, although the Shu army would basically not provoke a war in peacetime. Sometimes they would bring back a few guides.
In the past, Chengfeng and other places belonged to China, and now they belong to Shu. The local people don't care who rules them, they are all the same anyway, and there is no concept of justice. Fighting is just a civil war. As long as they are given certain benefits, they are willing to be the guide.
Guo Shao drew several smaller topographic and road maps based on this. His geographical knowledge came entirely from the high school entrance examination, and he had forgotten most of it. He did remember some methods of using the density of circles to represent the same height, but he couldn't use them. Who would draw such complicated ones? As long as there was no road to the mountain, it didn't matter how high the mountain was. He learned and put the scale to use.
When Zhang Zhaohe and Zuo You saw Guo Shao's paintings for the first time, they were all amazed.
Out of curiosity, Guo Shao asked for a map stored in the pass, and immediately understood why they were surprised. He thought the map he had drawn was already very rough, but he didn't expect the map used by the Zhou army to be even worse. The words were big, the mountains were drawn randomly, and there was no concept of scale. A city was drawn to occupy half of the Qinling Mountains. How big a city would it have to be