Cao Cao's plan to relocate the capital was naturally not a sudden whim. In fact, around this same time the previous year, Xun You had already offered Cao Cao a similar suggestion.
At the time, Liu Bei had only just taken Huainan. To be honest, Old Cao had never expected to be driven to such a point.
Yet Xun You's prediction had clearly been correct. There was simply no way they could stop the strategy Qin Tian had laid out for Liu Bei.
Qin Tian had not even given them much time to react. Borrowing Yuan Shu's empty shell, he had forcibly raised Liu Bei up.
Two years—plainly speaking, that was not even enough time to stabilize a single great province. Yet Qin Tian had seized two and a half provinces for Liu Bei.
With Liu Bei rising at such a breakneck pace, relocating the capital seemed to have become Old Cao's only choice.
Yet in a sense, Cao Cao was not relocating the capital out of passivity at this moment. He wanted to seize the strategic advantage.
Just as Qin Tian had deduced, Cao Cao was plotting how to give Yuan Shao a vicious blow!
And so, to explain matters, time had to be turned back to when Cao Cao sent troops into Nanyang.
In the eighth month of the third year of the Jian'an Era, just as Liu Bei's army was plotting against Jiangdong, Cao Cao launched an attack on Nanyang.
This was Cao Cao's third attack on Zhang Xiu, and it was also the one for which he had prepared most thoroughly.
Yet in the original course of events, Old Cao's campaign against Zhang Xiu still ended in failure.
For while Cao Cao was besieging Zhang Xiu, word came from the north that Yuan Shao intended to