From the thirty-sixth to the thirty-eighth time of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the author Luo Guanzhong devotes three full pages to detailing the process of the two male protagonists of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang, from meeting, acquaintance to acquaintance.
Among them, the author Luo Guanzhong used a lot of preliminary preparation, first Xu Shu recommended Zhuge Liang for Liu Bei, then Sima Hui, a famous scholar in Jingzhou, recommended Zhuge Liang to Liu Bei again, and then Liu Bei put down his body, worked tirelessly, and took care of Maolu, and personally invited Zhuge Liang to become his own military master.
Although Zhuge Liang was known as the "Sleeping Dragon" at that time, and the legend was that he had the talent of the heavens and the earth, objectively speaking, he was only a cloth literati, and his talent had not undergone any practical test, and outsiders said that it was unreliable and no one knew. So, why did Liu Bei condescend to invite this young man who was 20 years younger than himself?
In fact, in addition to the reasons why Liu Bei urgently needs talents, he can't wait to get Zhuge Liang's talent, and there are also very huge practical interests behind it, mainly in the following three aspects:
01 Zhuge Liang is a famous disciple of the family
Today's Linyi City, Shandong Province, is Zhuge Liang's hometown. In the Han Dynasty, Zhuge Liang's family, the Langya Zhuge Clan, was also a famous local family. Zhuge Liang's ancestor Zhuge Feng, served as a lieutenant in the Western Han Dynasty, equivalent to a local official in the capital area. Zhuge Liang's father, Zhuge Jue, served as a county magistrate in Taishan County, equivalent to the second-in-command of a prefecture-level city. After Zhuge Jue's death, Zhuge Liang was cared for by his uncle Zhuge Xuan, who served as the Taishou of Yuzhang, then yuzhang, which covered most of present-day Jiangxi Province. It can be seen that Zhuge Xuan's officials are also not small.
As a teenager, Zhuge Liang moved to the south with his uncle and finally settled in Longzhong, Jingzhou. Therefore, Zhuge Liang is not the "Zhuge Village Man" scolded by Cao Cao in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and his origin is even better than That of Cao Cao after the eunuchs! And Zhuge Liang's family children are exactly the talents urgently needed by Liu Bei's team, after all, his subordinates have a large number of "grassroots", although they can fight, but their social influence is seriously insufficient!
02 Zhuge Liang in Jingzhou background "deep"
As I said just now, Cao Cao scolded Zhuge Liang as a "Zhuge villager", which really shows that he did too little homework in Jingzhou, and even the basic interpersonal network in Jingzhou did not have a sober and accurate understanding, so it is no wonder that the Battle of Chibi was defeated.
For example, zhuge liang, although he came to Jingzhou to settle down when he was a teenager, he was a typical "floating population" and "foreigner", but in the few years after Jingzhou, the Zhuge family built a huge network of interpersonal relations here.
At that time, in Jingzhou, there were two largest families, they were the Cai and Pu clans, followed by the Huang clan, the Pang clan and so on. Their representative figures, you must have heard them all. The daughter of the Cai family married Liu Biao, the boss of Jingzhou, while Cai Mao of the Cai family commanded the military of Jingzhou. The Ku clan had the brothers Ku Yue and Qu Liang, who were in charge of the administration of Jingzhou and were Liu Biao's think tanks. The representative figure of the Pang family is Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong's master, Pang Degong.
And this Wong, we want to focus on. Zhuge Liang later married a wife, a girl of the Huang family, her father was Huang Chengyan, and her mother was also a member of the Cai family. The yellow girl also has an uncle, he is Cai Mao. Therefore, Cai Mao was also Zhuge Liang's uncle.
Not only Zhuge Liang, but also the rest of the Zhuge family were also related to the native nobles of Jingzhou. Zhuge Liang's eldest sister married into the Pu family, and the second sister married into the Pang family. His eldest brother Zhuge Jin was already an official in Sun Wu's place, and the mixture was flourishing. Therefore, although Zhuge Liang was a fallen nobleman from the north, "the skinny camel was bigger than The horse", and they combined with local nobles such as Liu, Kuo, Cai, Huang, and Pang in Jingzhou, and had become a local family force that could not be underestimated.
03 Zhuge Liang can bring real money and silver
After introducing Zhuge Liang's background, we can make up the scene at that time: in 201, the 40-year-old Liu Bei was forced to flee to Jingzhou and defected to Liu Biao. After accepting Liu Bei, Liu Biao sent him to Guard the Northern Gate of Jingzhou in Xinye. During this period, Liu Bei did not do nothing all day, he explored the relationship between the characters in Jingzhou thoroughly, and recommended them through Sima Hui, Xu Shu and others, and finally at the age of 46, he invited Zhuge Liang out.
The first thing Zhuge Liang did for Liu Bei was not to "burn Bowangpo" as stated in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but to raise military supplies. According to the "Yibu Tanzi", Zhuge Liang once used his own name as a guarantee to borrow money from the Chao clan of Nanyang at that time for military supplies. This is also the real gold and silver that Zhuge Liang brought to Liu Bei. Just imagine, if Zhuge Liang was just a "mountain village man", could he do it?