It was late at night, in the Xingqing Palace of Chang'an, Li Ye stood solemnly in front of the sand table of the Tang Mountains and Rivers made of glutinous rice, mercury, colored silk, etc., and it was difficult to calm down for a long time. The sand table is made of small red colored silk to represent the black eagle flag of the Qin Domain, which has gradually approached the Central Plains from the east, and in just half a year this year, the territory of the Qin Domain has expanded a large area, swallowing Chengde and Weibo in Hebei, Hedong in Hedong, Heyang and Luoyang in Henan, Li Jing swallowed five towns, Hezhong and Zhaoyi in Hedong are also in danger, seeing that Li Jing has become the overlord who occupies half of the country from a dominant party in the East, how can Li Ye sleep peacefully.

Zhaoyi Li Yanrong held a silk cloak in his hand, slowly came behind Li Ye, and gently draped it for him.

"The night is heavy, and your majesty still doesn't rest?"

Li Ye stared at Li Zhaoyi, tears flowed out, "I know that you never interfere in political affairs, but you should also know that the current situation is really not good, and I can't pretend that none of this has happened." Zhaoyi, Li Jing, he is going to usurp the Tang Dynasty. Yang Jianjun was captured, Li Keyong died in battle, and who else in this world can stop Li Jing. ”

Li Yanrong comfortingly stroked Li Ye's arm, "Lieutenant Yang has already united Emperor Taishang and Zhu Wen, a total of twenty-one towns and soldiers and horses to jointly crusade against Li Jing, Your Majesty, don't worry too much, just wait for good news." ”

Li Ye smiled bitterly: "Concubine Ai, you can pretend not to know how powerful Li Jing is, and pin your hopes on Yang Fugong and them." But I can't pretend not to know how powerful Li Jing is, all along, Li Jing has been swallowing constantly, but now it has become a climate, and he swallowed it directly. Look at how many feudal towns he has annexed over the years? Ziqing, Pinglu, Andong, Lulong, Yiwu, Cangjing, Chengde, Weibo, Datong, Yanmen, Taiyuan, Tianping, Ganhua, Yicheng, Taining, Hedong, Hanoi, Luoyang, as well as Fujian, Zhedong, Huaixi, Shannan, Lingnandong, Lingnanxi, and Annan Zhenneng did not command so many feudal towns. Li Jing. It has turned into a dragon, and no one can stop it, and the Tang Dynasty is about to perish in my hands."

"Li Jing is indeed very strong, but. Until the last step, Your Majesty must not give up, thinking about how rampant the thieves were during the Anshi Rebellion, but in the end, the court did not recover the mountains and rivers. Not long ago, Huang Chao also ran rampant in the world and captured the two capitals, but now Huang Chao was strangled and killed? ”

"They are not Li Jing, and Li Jing is not them. The dynasty rose and fell for three hundred years. The Li family has enjoyed the country so far, but it has been abandoned by God after all. He let out a long sigh, and he grew more and more emaciated, and by this time he had grown a great number of gray hairs on his head, when in fact he was only sixteen years old. Step on the front foot and put the back foot on the heel. Only then can people stand firm. People can't always stand with one foot in front of the other, Li Jing has already taken one foot forward, and his other foot will soon follow. I've stepped back one foot. Now for our own sake, we can only stand firm by stepping back one more foot and putting our feet together. ”

For the coalition forces pulled up by Yang Fugong, and for the upcoming decisive battle, Li Ye is full of pessimism. "I want to live!"

Li Zhaoyi looked at the young son of heaven in surprise. In her eyes, the emperor is a strong person, even when he was just King Shou, when Huang Chao attacked Guanzhong and drove out of Beijing, he had never been so negative.

Li Ye stroked the sand table with his hand and sighed: "If it's just for me, I'm not afraid of death, but I have to think about the Li family." Since Li Jing's usurpation of the Tang Dynasty is inevitable, I have to leave a way for the Li family. I heard that Li Jing has always treated those who surrendered preferentially, not only the marshals who were annexed by him were treated very well, but even the chiefs of the tribes who were conquered by him outside the border were also living well. I thought that if I couldn't do anything about the current affairs, I would take the initiative to meditate on him, and maybe Li Jing would be able to protect the Li family. ”

Central Plains, Luoyang City.

Just after the first hand officially pushed away the persuasion of the ministers, Li Jing immediately convened a high-scale meeting of important ministers.

At the meeting, Gongsun Lan, on behalf of the Supervision Department, informed the imperial meeting of the most effective information, Yang Fugong and Tian Lingzi reached an alliance, and this time also won over Zhu Wen, Guanzhong Eight Towns, Sanchuan Three Towns, Jianghan Five Towns, Hedong Two Towns plus Henan Three Towns, a total of 21 towns, gathered a patchwork of 350,000 troops, divided into five routes, ready to attack Luoyang.

"Please go back to Taiyuan to supervise the battle and attack Hezhong and Zhaoyi!" Shangshu's left servant shot Zheng Congyan and said loudly.

"The ministers seconded it!" The second minister, Zheng Jin, and others also echoed it.

As soon as Li Jing saw everyone's expressions, he immediately guessed what they meant. This is obviously to let him leave Luoyang, the frontline land, but in order to take care of his face, he used the excuse of returning to Taiyuan to supervise the war. Li Jing smiled: "The soldiers are coming, the water is flooding, how can you avoid the war and fear the enemy?" You don't need to say more, since Lone has come to Luoyang, unless Lone wants to leave, no one can scare him away. ”

Li Jing will not leave Luoyang easily, especially at this time, the Qin army has just taken over Heyang and Luoyang, and the morale is high, if at this time, as soon as he sees the arrival of the imperial court coalition army, he will run away in fright, then who is willing to defend to the death, how can the morale of the army still be there? Although the Qin army now has only 50,000 horses in Luoyang City. But there are land and water passages, and the transfer of troops and reinforcements is not a problem. Another thing is that Li Jing didn't take the coalition army seriously, although there are twenty-one towns, which sounds scary, but in fact they are just a rabble.

Three hundred and fifty thousand? The real elite can have 100,000, which is amazing. These armies did not even have a unified command, and they were divided into five routes, which was obviously to give the Qin army a chance to break through. There is another one, such as Baoda, Dingnan and other four towns in Guanzhong, although there are 40,000 people, but in fact, it can only be regarded as 40,000 people, and the four towns are not able to contribute at all. Another example is the five towns in Shannan, although there are tens of thousands of people, but they are still far away in Xiangyang, according to Li Jing's estimate, even if the war is over, these tens of thousands of people will not be able to leave Shannan, with Qin Zongquan's army, it is enough to deal with them.

There are also the two towns in Hedong, now that they are surrounded by Li Jing, they are too busy to take care of themselves, how can they be regarded as soldiers and horses all the way? No matter how you look at it, the situation of the Qin army is very good, and there is no need to worry about it at all. How could he, the commander, be frightened and retreat to Taiyuan?

"You don't need to say much, you won't go anywhere."

"Your Highness, the son of a daughter. I can't sit down."

Li Jing shook his head and interrupted Luo Yin's words, turned his head to Cui An and said, "Zeng Shuai." How can the Staff respond to the enemy? ”

Everyone saw that Li Jing had made up his mind, but it was not easy to persuade him again, and Li Jing was not the kind of peaceful emperor, this was a great general who started a hundred battles, although the enemy army was very loud at the moment. But everyone also knows that it is just a silver-like wax spear head, and the surface of sheep dung and eggs is shiny. Not to mention that there is a fortified city like Luoyang, which is connected to Hanoi by the Yellow River in the north: "The battle plan of the General Staff is to take advantage of the enemy's arrival and break through each one. First of all, while increasing our troops to Luoyang, we will launch a fierce attack on the two towns in the east of the river. The attack was divided into four routes, all the way down the Fenshui River to attack the river. All the way out of Taiyuan southeast to attack Luzhou. The third road was to attack from the newly acquired Weizhou to the Xingwei Prefecture east of the Taihang Mountain in Zhaoyi Town, and the fourth road was to attack Tianjing Pass from Hanoi and cross the Taihang Mountain to attack Zezhou. The four roads were launched together, and before the five-way coalition army of the imperial court surrounded Luoyang, the two towns of Hedong were captured first. ”

The decision was certain, and the war machine of the Qin army immediately sped up again.

According to the strategy set by Li Jing, various strategies were implemented to break the coalition forces. Among them, the second town of Hedong was hit first, and Zhaoyi Town was the most important target of the two towns in Hedong.

Zhaoyi Town, also known as Zelu Town. A district was located in the southeastern part of present-day Shanxi Province and the feudal town in the southwestern part of Hebei Province, beginning in the Middle Tang Dynasty. The capital is Luzhou, which is under the jurisdiction of Xing, Wei and Cizhou east of Taihang Mountain and Ze and Lu two prefectures west of Taihang Mountain. The establishment of this feudal town was to contain the three towns of Heshuo. Since its establishment more than 100 years ago, it has been generally loyal to the imperial court, but there have also been rebellions such as Lu Congshi, Liu Congji, and Liu Zhi. In the towns of the Tang Dynasty. The number of mutinies in Zhaoyi Town in more than 100 years can be ranked in the top three in more than 100 years.

Today's Zhaoyi Festival Marshal Meng Fangli came to power through mutiny.

Meng Fangli was originally a native of Xingzhou, and when Huangchao invaded Guanzhong in the first year of Zhonghe, he served as the defense envoy of Tianjing Pass in Zezhou. At that time, the commander of Zhaoyi was Gao Xun, who led the army to King Guanzhong, but was killed by the general Chenglin. After Chenglin killed Gao Xun, he seized military power and returned to Luzhou. When Meng Fangli heard the news, he led his subordinates to attack Chenglin, and killed Chenglin after the victory.

After killing Cheng Lin, Meng Fangli did not stay in Luzhou, Yacheng, but led the army back to his hometown Xingzhou. In the second year of Zhonghe, the imperial court appointed Meng Fangli as the assassin of Xingzhou, but Meng Fangli refused to accept and detained Wu Quanxuan, saying that the eunuch could not be the queen. He wrote a letter asking the imperial court to send a civil official to serve as the marshal, and the imperial court sent Zheng Changtu as the queen. As a result, Meng Lifang bribed Wei Bojieshuai's son Le Congxun to ambush Zheng Changtu. The imperial court had no choice but to appoint Wang Hui as the commander of Zhaoyi, but Wang Hui knew that Meng Fangli had already controlled the three states of Xing Luci in the east of Taihang Mountain, and ambushed Zheng Changtu, so he refused to take office. As a result, no one was willing to go to Zhaoyi, and Meng Fangli actually controlled Zhaoyi Town.

In order to strengthen his control over Zhaoyi, Meng Fangli moved the capital of Zhaoyi from Luzhou to his hometown Xingzhou, proclaimed himself the commander of the Jie, and appointed Li Yinrui, the former general, as the assassin of Luzhou. The reason why he moved the capital to Xingzhou was mainly because he thought that the Luzhou soldiers were fierce and had overthrown the festival marshal several times in history. In order to weaken the tooth soldiers in Luzhou, he built a new army of tooth soldiers and forced the generals and wealthy people to move their families to the three states east of the Taihang Mountains. This action made the generals of Zelu Erzhou west of Taihang Mountain very dissatisfied. The eunuch Qi Xianzhi of the supervising army united with Wuxiang Township to curb An Jushou and wrote a secret letter to Zhuge Shuang, the commander of Heyang at that time, asking him to send troops to intervene. Subsequently, Zhuge Shuang sent troops to Zelu and captured Zezhou.

During this civil strife in Heyang, Liu Jing returned Zezhou to Meng Fangli and brought him in for reinforcements, but in the end he was defeated, but although he lost a lot of soldiers and horses, Meng Fangli recaptured Zezhou north of Taihang Pass.

Although Meng Fangli controlled Zhaoyi for several years, Zhaoyi was not monolithic, especially the three states east of Taihang Mountain and the two states west of Taihang Mountain, which were full of contradictions. The internal contradictions of the Military Intelligence Bureau for Zhaoyi Town are early

Feel it clearly.

The courtyard of Wangwu and Zezhou in the north of Taihang Mountain was closed, and the guard Xi Zhongxin was on the door, and his wife had just given birth to a big fat boy for him. Xi Zhongxin was in his forties, and he gave birth to seven daughters in a row, and many wives and concubines, none of whom gave birth to a son for him, and he was often sad about this. I don't want to accept an eighth lady this year, but I got pregnant not long after I entered the door, and I actually gave birth to a big fat boy in my first child. Xi Zhongxin was overjoyed, his heart was excited, and he generously ordered to reward the entire army in the pass and feast for three days.

The entire defenders of Tianjing Pass were immersed in this jubilant and delicious wine and meat, and Xi Zhongxin sat in the general's mansion with a red face. Keep raising a glass and shouting, "!"

The generals below raised their glasses and drank them all. The dishes were delivered like water, and everyone ate comfortably, only one of the generals didn't eat much, this captain Ma was under the command of Xi Zhongxin who only voted a year ago, and he was just Xi Zhongxin's personal soldier at the beginning. However, because of his skillful bow and crossbow, he performed well in several battles, and was promoted to the rank of captain of the Ma Military Academy.

"Lao Liu, why don't you eat it?" Zhao Dutou, a colleague next to him, asked quietly, "Not to taste?" ”

"Ah, nothing." Captain Liu said: "I just feel that I have not made any credit to the general, but I often have to be treated well by the general, and I can't help it." ”

Zhao Dutou is a veteran oilman. Strange smiled and said: "I heard an allusion from Zhang Jichen's room before, saying that the emperor of the Jin Dynasty was probably Emperor Yuan, and when he gave birth to Emperor Ming, he feasted the ministers and said. Prime Minister Wang Dao is as embarrassed as our Liu Xiaowei, saying that his subordinates have no merit and deserve it. At that time, Emperor Yuan laughed and said. How can you take credit for this! ”

Everyone was stunned at first, and then when they came back to their senses, they all burst into laughter. Xi Zhongxin, who was slightly drunk, listened. I didn't think it was wrong, and laughed together. Captain Liu's black face suddenly turned into a purple face, and he smiled helplessly.

He poured a glass of wine and stood up. ”

"General Xi, General Liu is very grateful for the love of General Liu. Today's big day. Liu had something to say that he wanted to take this opportunity to say. ”

"If you have something to say, why are you so polite?" Xi Zhongxin used to be a general of Zhaoyi, and he was the commander of the official appointment, and later had a dispute with the Zhaoyi general Ma Shuang, Ma Shuang tried to kill Xi Zhongxin, but Xi Zhongxin attacked first, Ma Shuang fled to Weibo, and Xi Zhongxin bought Tongle to kill him. For this matter, Meng Fangli finally demoted Xi Zhongxin by several levels, and this time he was able to become the general of Tianjing Guan, but also because he had previously sent troops to Heyang, and he made great contributions.

Captain Liu glanced at the generals and colonels in the hall, and said in an astonishing voice, "The general is so happy today, he shouldn't have said this." However, it is not possible to say it. General, the Qin army has taken Hedong Town, Chengde Town, Weibo Town, Heyang Town, Luoyang, our Zhaoyi has now become an island in the vast ocean of the Qin army, seeing that the next tide of the Qin army is coming, do we still have to sit and wait to be swallowed? ”

As soon as these words came out, all the generals present restrained their smiles and fell silent one by one.

No one knows the current situation, but no one has broken it before, so everyone hasn't thought about it.

Xi Zhongxin stared at Captain Liu, his eyes flashed, he had long seen that this old Liu was not simple, now it seems that he is really not simple, it turned out that he thought it was a spy sent by Li Keyong, he never moved him, but kept it by his side, in fact, he also planned to stay as a retreat. After all, as a general of Zhaoyiya, he had long been suspected by Meng Fangli. Otherwise, there would not have been the same thing with Ma Shuang. Now it seems that Lao Liu is very likely to be a chess piece arranged by Li Jing by his side.

At this moment, a shouting outside broke the silence in the hall.

"Xingzhou Meng Shuai urgently!"

Tanma gasped and took out the emergency document from his underwear pocket, Xi Zhongxin regained consciousness and said, "Submit it!" ”

The content of the letter surprised him, and Li Jing had already sent troops in all directions and attacked Zhaoyi. Among them, Hebei all the way, is from the Wei Bo states to the east of the Taihang Mountains Xing, Xu, Ci three states fiercely attacked, Meng Fangli sent his generals Ma Shu and Yuan Fengtao to resist, the result was a big defeat, the two generals were captured, almost the third day of the war, Shandong's Xing Wei Ci Sanzhou, has lost the two states of Ci, now Meng Fangli lost his troops, retreated in Xingzhou, and waited for help. Meng Fangli sent a messenger to come, hoping that Xi Zhongxin and Zelu's other generals would lead troops to rescue Xingzhou.

The speed of the Qin army's offensive was greater than Xi Zhongxin's expectations, and in three days, only three days, Meng Fangli lost two generals and lost two states. Now trapped in Xingzhou, it can no longer be supported. On second thought, the attack on Meng Fangli was only one of the four armies of the Qin army. Xi Zhongxin's face couldn't help but change a few times, and it was uncertain.

He stared at the urgent letter for a long time without saying a word, and all the generals put down their cups and chopsticks and asked, "General, what happened?" ”

Xi Zhongxin sighed, and said in a heavy tone: "It's Meng Shuai's letter for help, the Qin army in Hebei launched an attack three days ago, only three days, Ma Shu and Yuan Fengtao have been defeated and captured, and the two states of Ciwei have been lost, and now the three states of Shandong, only Xingzhou is still struggling to support, and Meng Shuai sent an order to transfer us to the rescue." ”

The generals and schools were silent together, and many of them bowed their heads and were thinking about something.

When Captain Liu heard the news, his eyes lit up, and he hurriedly said loudly: "General, you Meng Fangli is finished, the general should make a decision as soon as possible for himself and for the sake of your brothers." ”

Xi Zhongxin raised his eyes and stared at Captain Liu, and after pondering for a long time, he said with a smile: "Shouldn't Captain Liu also reintroduce his identity?" ”

Lieutenant Liu laughed, "If you don't mean to hide from the general, since this is the case today, then I will reintroduce Guo Wei, a lieutenant colonel intelligence officer of the Military Intelligence Bureau under the command of King Qin." ”

"I didn't expect Brother Liu to be a lieutenant colonel of Qin Fan, I really don't know Mount Tai." Xi Zhongxin was a little surprised by Guo Wei's level, he was actually a lieutenant colonel, which is not low.

After explaining their identities, everyone was surprised, but they didn't overreact. After all, the Qin Domain is powerful, and there has been no fight with Zhaoyi Town in the past few years. Now that he has made his identity clear, in the hearts of the generals, he is happy. At the very least, there is a way out.

Guo Wei did not expect it, "If the general and the brothers believe it, they are willing to introduce you to the King of Qin." As long as the general and his brothers put down their swords, open the patio and, abandon the darkness and turn to the light, a road is in front of them! ”