Chapter 194

2. Liu Bei? Liu Biao is merely a guest of idle talk. He knows his own talent is insufficient to control Bei; if he gives him heavy responsibility, he fears he cannot control him; if he gives him light responsibility, Bei will not serve him.

(Liu Biao is a talker; he knows he can't manage Liu Bei and doesn't dare to delegate power, and Liu Bei won't truly work for him, so he is not worth worrying about.)

3. Now the people of the four provinces submit only out of fear, and virtue has not yet been bestowed. If we abandon them to go south, Yuan Shang will rely on Wuhuan's resources to recruit the followers of his dead father. Once the Hu people move, the people and the barbarians will both respond, fueling Tadun's ambitions and his plans for covetousness. I fear Qing and Ji will no longer be ours.

(If we don't eliminate the hidden danger, the north will not be peaceful, and our base camp might be lost.)

4. In war, speed is precious. Now, raiding someone a thousand miles away with heavy baggage is difficult to gain an advantage. It is better to travel light and take a shortcut to catch them by surprise.

(We must be fast, raid with light equipment!)

Cao Cao was completely convinced. He left the baggage behind, led light cavalry, exited through the Lulong Pass, and raided a thousand miles, encountering the enemy at White Wolf Mountain.

The Cao army had few troops, their baggage was behind, and few were armored; everyone around was afraid.

Cao Cao climbed a height, saw the enemy formation was disorganized, and used Zhang Liao as the vanguard to charge, crushing the Wuhuan, beheading Tadun in battle, and receiving the surrender of over two hundred thousand Hu and Han people.

Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi fled to Liaodong and were killed by Gongsun Kang, who sent their heads.

(Guo Jia not only calculated the military, he calculated the human heart, and even calculated the enemy's end.)

(This battle can be called the pinnacle of his strategic career, clearing away the northern border threats of Cao Wei in one stroke.)

The scene shows the grandeur of the Cao army's iron cavalry trampling the Wuhuan tribes, intercut with Guo Jia coughing on his sickbed in Xudu while simulating the battlefield on a sand table.

【Act VII: The Meteor Falls, An Early Death】

On the way back from the northern expedition, Guo Jia fell ill due to the climate and years of exhaustion, and never recovered.

In 207 AD, this ghost talent who had calculated all the secrets of heaven passed away in Liucheng at the age of only thirty-eight.

Cao Cao personally came to pay his respects, weeping bitterly: "Alas, Fengxiao! Painful, Fengxiao! Pity, Fengxiao!"

Later, he said to Xun You and others: "You are all of my generation, only Fengxiao was the youngest. I intended to entrust the affairs of the world to him after it was pacified, but he died in his prime—this is fate!"

(You are all about my age; only Fengxiao was the youngest. I had intended to entrust the great affairs of the future to him after the world was pacified, but I did not expect him to die in his prime. This is fate!)

After the crushing defeat at the Battle of Red Cliffs, Cao Cao wept again: "If Guo Fengxiao were here, I would not have come to this!"

In this weeping, there was regret for the loss, and perhaps a hint of nostalgia for Guo Jia's "unreasonable" strategy of certain victory.

"He calculated Sun Ce's death, calculated the Wuhuan's defeat, and calculated the Yuan family's demise, yet he alone did not calculate—or rather, was powerless to change—his own life, which was as short as a meteor."

The final scene is a lonely grave on the northern wilderness, Cao Cao's back looking desolate, forming a sorrowful contrast with Guo Jia's spirited and infallible image during his lifetime.

【Heavenly Screen General Review: "In talent and strategy, a genius of the age. In pure governance and virtue, distinct from Xun Yu; in planning and anticipating the enemy, surpassing Jia Xu."】

【His strategy was a wild rhapsody, an armor-piercing bullet pointing straight to the vital point. He did not get entangled in trivial details, focusing instead on core contradictions, often using the simplest and most unexpected ways to solve the most complex problems.】

【He was like a top-tier "game-breaker" born for troubled times, specializing in curing all kinds of defiance and untying all kinds of dead knots. Unfortunately, heaven envied his talent; his time was too short—so short that he had just outlined the blueprint for the north for Cao Cao when it abruptly ended.】

【If strategists have realms, Guo Jia was perhaps the one closest to "art"—strategy for him was not just a tool, but a display of talent, the ultimate pleasure of an intellectual game.】

【Seventh Place on the List of the Ten Great Strategists of History—Guo Jia, Review Completed!】

【Heavenly Dao Blessing: Twenty years of lifespan added! Awarded one 【Soul-Cleansing Pill for Removing Illness】 (removes all chronic illnesses and hidden ailments, strengthens the foundation)!】

(Note: Guo Jia's greatest regret was that heaven did not grant him more years, and his ambitions remained unfulfilled. The Heavenly Dao blessing is highly targeted, increasing his lifespan, curing his illnesses, and strengthening his abilities, compensating for the shortcomings in his life and health, allowing his ghost talent to bloom for longer. Perhaps history will be rewritten because of this.)

Viewers across the myriad worlds, especially those who prided themselves on their intellect, could not help but feel yearning and sigh with regret upon seeing Guo Jia's review.

That charm of "seeing ten thousand years in a glance" and "words becoming law" was truly too astonishing.

And the Heavenly Dao blessing, which pointed directly to his core shortcomings, made people wonder:

If Guo Jia could really live for another twenty years, possessing a healthy body and an even sharper "wise eye," what would the history of the Three Kingdoms, and even the entire Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, look like?

Great Qin, Xianyang.

"Pity! Such a ghost talent, yet he did not live long!"

Ying Zheng could not help but sigh.

He loved talent, and he loved even more this kind of great talent who could see through the essence at a glance and propose miraculous plans to break deadlocks.

Guo Jia's style had much in common with his own decisive and results-oriented style.

"If this man were born in Qin, I would surely treat him as a national treasure!"

Li Si, Meng Yi, and others deeply agreed, gaining a more three-dimensional and legendary understanding of the value of a strategist.

The seventh and eighth places on the strategist list, one "ghost" and one "poison," had vastly different styles, yet both demonstrated the terrifying energy of top-tier strategists capable of leveraging history.

The list had reached the middle, and it was already so exciting; what kind of world-shaking, infallible peerless figures would the top six be?

The heavenly screen list was silent for a while, then immediately proceeded to review the next person on the list.

【Sixth Place Among the Ten Great Strategists of History: Liu Ji (Liu Bowen)】

【Era: Ming Dynasty】

【Titles: Imperial Teacher, Divine Strategist, "Zhuge Liang divides the world into three, Liu Bowen unifies the empire"】

The moment the list appeared, the image condensed on the left had a somewhat immortal air, yet his eyes were like torches, as if he could see through the affairs of the world.

An old man wearing the official robes of the early Ming, with a refined face and a long beard of three strands, stood before a huge map of the world, holding a scroll in one hand and pointing out the mountains and rivers with the other.

Behind him, faint phantoms of stars and mountain ranges flickered, adding a touch of mystery to him.

Beside the image, a few lines of large characters appeared:

"He knows astronomy above and geography below, he settles the people and stabilizes the universe in the middle.

He planned the founding of a three-hundred-year dynasty, and a single prophecy from Qingtian is known to all under heaven."

"Liu Ji? Liu Bowen?"

Once this name appeared, the reactions of the various dynasties were different.

People before the Ming Dynasty felt mostly unfamiliar, but the comparison to "unifying the empire" and "Zhuge Liang" carried immense weight, immediately attracting high attention.

And after the Ming Dynasty, especially in the Ming Dynasty itself, this name was like thunder to the ears.

The heavenly voice resonated, this time steady and grand, carrying the solemnity of narrating a founding epic, yet inadvertently revealing a faint sigh at the strangeness of fate:

【Liu Ji, courtesy name Bowen. A legend who, in the chaotic world at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, fused world-shaking talent, god-like and ghostly arts, and practical strategies for stabilizing the nation into one.】

【He was not an assassin who calculated everything (like Guo Jia), nor a lone wolf seeking only self-preservation (like Jia Xu).

He was an imperial teacher, a founder, a "chief designer" capable of outlining a clear future for a chaotic world and turning it into reality step by step.

Folk legends praise him as "knowing five hundred years before and five hundred years after." Although an exaggeration, his strategic vision and grasp of the times were indeed close to "supernatural."】