Chapter 25 116 Smell the chicken and dance

When the Xiongnu nobles ran rampant in the north and the Western Jin Dynasty was facing collapse, some ambitious generals of the Jin Dynasty insisted on fighting in the north.Liu Kun is such an outstanding representative. When Liu Kun was young, he had a good friend named Zu Ti.In the early days of the Western Jin Dynasty, they worked together as chief bookkeepers in Sizhou (where the government is located in the northeast of Luoyang today). At night, they slept on the same bed and talked about state affairs, often in the middle of the night. One night, when they were sleeping soundly, a rooster crowed and woke up Zu Ti.Zu Ti looked out of the window, and saw the waning moon hanging in the sky, and the east had not yet turned pale.

Zu Ti didn't want to sleep anymore, so he kicked Liu Kun with his feet.Liu Kun woke up, rubbed his eyes, and asked what was going on.Zuti said, "Listen, it's not a bad sound. It's urging us to get up." The two got up happily, took down the sword hanging on the wall, walked out of the room, and danced the sword in the faint morning light. In this way, they practiced martial arts and studied the art of war together every day, and finally became famous generals. In 308 AD, Emperor Huai of Jin appointed Liu Kun as governor of Bingzhou.At that time, Bingzhou was plundered and looted by the Huns, and the people fled everywhere.Liu Kun recruited more than a thousand soldiers, braved all kinds of difficulties and dangers, and moved to Jinyang in Bingzhou (now southwest of Taiyuan City, Shanxi).

In Jinyang City, houses were burned down, thorns grew all over the ground, and there was desolation everywhere.Occasionally, I saw some people who stayed behind, and they were already very hungry. Seeing this situation, Liu Kun was very sad.He ordered the soldiers to cut down the thorns, bury the corpses, and rebuild the houses and cities.He personally led the soldiers to guard the city against the attacks of the Huns.He also resorted to tactics to make the tribes of the Huns suspicious of each other.Later, more than 10,000 Huns surrendered to Liu Kun, and even Liu Yuan, the lord of the Han Dynasty, was afraid and did not dare to invade.

Liu Kun called all the exiled people back to cultivate the wasteland.In less than a year, the sound of chickens and dogs barking could be heard everywhere, and Jinyang City gradually recovered its prosperity. After Liu Cong broke through Luoyang, most of the troops of the Western Jin Dynasty in the north were dispersed, and only Liu Kun was still fighting in the Bingzhou area.After Jin Min ascended the throne in Chang'an, he sent someone to make Liu Kun a general and asked him to command the military in Bingzhou. At that time, Shi Le, a general of the Han Dynasty, occupied Xiangguo (in the southwest of Xingtai, Hebei today), and assembled hundreds of thousands of troops, trying to seize Bingzhou.Liu Kun had Liu Cong in the south and Shi Le in the north, and he was in an extremely difficult situation.But Liu Kun was not afraid, nor flinched.In a memorial to Emperor Jin Min, he said: "I am incompatible with Liu Cong and Shi Le. If I don't flatten them, I will never return to the court."

It is said that when Liu Kun was in Jinyang, Jinyang was once surrounded by cavalry of the Huns.There are too few troops in Jinyang City, and they have no strength to repel the enemy.Everyone panicked, but Liu Kun remained calm.In the evening, he boarded the tower and let out a long cry under the moonlight, with a solemn and solemn tone.The cavalry of the Huns heard this and sighed along with the roar.In the middle of the night, Liu Kun asked someone to play Hujia (a musical instrument) to play Hun tunes, which aroused the Hun cavalry's nostalgia for their hometown, and they were so sad that they shed tears.When the sky was about to dawn, the sound of slapping on the top of the city sounded again, and the Xiongnu soldiers ran away automatically.

Later, Liu Kun contacted the leader of the Xianbei tribe to attack Liu Cong, but failed.Then, Shi Le attacked Leping (now southwest of Xiyang, Shanxi). Liu Kun sent troops to rescue him, but Shi Le's pre-ambushed elite soldiers almost wiped out his army.At this time, news came that Chang'an had been captured by Liu Cong.At this stage of the field, no matter how stubborn Liu Kun was, he couldn't keep Bingzhou, so he had to lead the remnant soldiers to Youzhou.