The news of Huangtianzhai's regain and loss reached Mindong, and it has been 22 days.

In late October, Mindong still feels that there is not much deep autumn, and the distant mountains on the north bank of the Minjiang River are lush and endless.

The flames of war on Nantai Island had not yet been completely extinguished, and clusters of black smoke rose up, darkening the sky.

It has been two days since Nantai Island was taken, and there are still three or five remnants on the island who refuse to disarm their weapons, and they are stubbornly resisting and are making every effort to wipe them out. A group of soldiers rushed down the dock from the warship and entered Nantai Island, where the soldiers and civilians were using ropes to clear the sunken ships, hidden piles and other obstacles in the middle of the river......

Nantai Island is the gateway to the east of Jin'an City, the Min River bypasses from the south of Jin'an City, and the river water divides Nantai Island in the center of the river into two rivers into the north and south. The south is wide and shallow, the water is turbid, and it is called the Wulong River; The Beiqi water is narrow, about 80 zhang wide, the water rapids are deep, it is the Bailong River, and it is also the main channel of the Minjiang River estuary.

Nantai Island is crossing the mouth of the Minjiang River, and the luxury family is building a garrison, which is the feudal screen in the southeast of Jin'an City.

In the north and south of the Yangtze River, to burned, sunken warships or half of the hull exposed to the water, or only the high mast lonely expenditure, the blood-stained river has been washed by the upstream water, and it has become clear again, only the aquatic grass near the shore is still entangled in the corpses of the generals of both sides, the soldiers and armor sunk at the bottom of the river are even more unknown, and the Nantai Island is even more wolflike, and the remnants of the soldiers are not known to be mortal.

From the end of September to the end of the war in eastern Fujian, the battle of Nantai Island was the most fierce, annihilating 3,000 enemies, and the luxury family was not willing to give up Jin'an Mansion and give up this ancestral land that had taken root for more than 200 years.

In order to defend the Jin'an Mansion, the luxury family was able to select enough dead soldiers, which also made the Huaidong army push under the city of Jin'an, and the resistance increased sharply.

In the first battle of Nantai Island, the First Water Battalion of the Huaidong Army and the Quanzhou Army also paid nearly 3,000 casualties. In the previous recapture of Fu'an, Xiapu, Luoyuan, Jiaocheng and other places, the total number of casualties was less than this, which indicates that the next battle against Jin'an Mansion will also be a tough battle with casualties that will not be low.

******************

Jin'an City is surrounded by mountains and rivers, and its status is in the Minjiang River estuary basin.

The lower reaches of the Minjiang River are the topography of the estuary basin, with Beifeng Mountain in the north, Drum Mountain in the east, Qishan Mountain in the west, Gaogai Mountain and Wuhu Mountain in the north and south, and the Minjiang River intersperses through the basin.

Jin'an City was built in the north of the Min River, and after October, the defenders also retreated to the north bank of the Min River, so Huaidong wanted to fight Jin'an City, and after controlling the Gaogai Mountain and Wuhu Mountain on the south bank of the Min River, the Min River should be controlled in their hands.

After conquering Nantai Island, the remnants of the Nantai Island Navy of the Zhejiang-Fujian Army withdrew to the west, and did not enter Jin'an City from the Water Gate, and the warships of the Jinghai No. 1 Water Battalion sailed from the Bailongjiang River in Beixia to the west to control the Minjiang River waterway south of Jin'an City.

Lin Jian stood on the deck of the aft cabin of the "Lin Zhengjun", looking at Jin'an City in the distance.

Eight surnames into Fujian, that is, to build Jin'an City, more than 200 years, many times to increase and repair, today's Jin'an City is towering like a mountain, and its northwest Shou Mountain, the north peak dissolves into one.

"The luxury family hid an ambush in the deep valley, lost Huangtianzhai first, lured the southern army of Huinan to go south, ambushed the soldiers again, and recaptured Huangtianzhai," Gao Zongting took a piece of paper and said, "It seems that the southern army of Huinan has fallen into the trap of the luxury family......

"When's the news?" Lin Jian asked.

"Huangtianzhai fell on the 16th, and the news was transferred through Mingzhou on the 18th......," Gao Zongting said.

"It's been six days!" Lin Jian sighed lightly and said, "Then you can't intervene at all." It's okay for us to concentrate on hitting our ......"

Up to now, so many resources have been invested in eastern Mindong, and Jin'an Mansion must be taken down.

Taking Jin'an Mansion can not only shake the morale of the Zhejiang-Fujian army and blockade the Zhejiang-Fujian army in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, but also ensure that Xiapu, Quanzhou, Luoyuan, Jiaocheng and other coastal counties in eastern Fujian and southern Fujian can be firmly controlled by Huaidong with only a small number of garrisons.

Can't beat Jin'an Mansion, Huaidong wants to occupy Xiapu, Quanzhou and other places, need to invest twice as much as the enemy or more garrisons, this situation is definitely not what Lin Jian and Huaidong people want to see, it is likely that Huaidong will also be dragged down.

What Huaidong has to face is not only an enemy of luxury.

Lin Jian made such a decision, and the surrounding Ye Jun'an, Song Fu, Zhao Qingshan, Zhou Tong, Song Yi, Song Bo and others had different expressions, but they all responded in unison: "Obey the orders of the adults......

"From now on, Song Yi led the Quanzhou army to march west along the south bank of the Minjiang River, and must take Zhuqi before attacking the city here, Zuo Shiying led the eastward camp army of Zhejiang to march westward by boat, capture Jingxi on the north bank, and take Jingxi and Zhuqi, that is, it can block the Zhejiang-Fujian army Jian'an soldiers and horses to advance eastward along the Minjiang River, and Zhou Tong will be responsible for approaching Jin'an City from the south, if you want nothing else, you will all go down and prepare!" Lin Jian followed the instructions he had drawn up before.

Jingxi and Zhuqi are the west mouth of the Mindong estuary basin, there are flat land on both sides of the river to march, after Zhuqi, and then go to the mountains on both sides of the Minjiang River in the west, in addition to the Minjiang River waterway, a large force of soldiers and horses can not enter the Minjiang estuary basin by land.

Even if Jin'an City is successfully captured, Zhuqi and Jingxi will also be the key passes and rushes to defend in the future.

******************

Zhou Tong, Song Yi, and Zuo Shiguang immediately led their troops westward to advance, and Lin Jian did not land with the army from Nantai Island until the third day.

Traveling west along the north shore of Nantai Island, until you reach the west end of Nantai Island, you can face Jin'an City and the western foot of Gushan across the river, and the Bailongjiang waterway here is even less than 70 zhang wide.

After autumn, the climate in eastern Fujian is not cold, and the grass and trees have no signs of withering, but there is an obvious change that the water level of the Minjiang River has become shallower.

According to reliable information, the defenders who retreated to Jin'an City and Qishan and Beifeng Mountain on the north bank of the Minjiang River were less than 15,000 people, while the Huaidong Army had more than 50,000 soldiers and horses in Mindong, occupying an absolute advantage in troops.

But the next step is to attack the first fortified city in eastern Fujian, and the advantage of troops is not so obvious.

The sentinels of the Huaidong Army landed from the north bank, because the Drum Mountain in the east of Jin'an City is far away from Jin'an City, there is a large area in the middle, hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland is easy for the Huai'an Army to cut into, when the Huaidong Army ascends the city from the north bank, the defenders of the Zhejiang-Fujian Army in the Drum Mountain retreat into the city from the west.

When Lin Jian landed on Nantai Island, he could no longer see the defenders in the east of Jin'an City, and they all retreated to the city.

After the defenders were annihilated, the people of eastern Fujian could not be seen on Nantai Island, and they were all withdrawn by the luxury family, and a large area of farmland was barren there, waiting for the people to move in.

The camp is erecting two trestle bridges between the west end of Nantai Island and the west foot of Gushan Mountain, and the north and south of the trestle bridge must be built to defend the fortress, but the main force of soldiers and horses will continue to approach to the foot of the Jin'an River, and set up camp to besiege.

Zhou Pu was the commander-in-chief of the siege, walked over, and said: "Qishan and Beifeng Mountain sent people to touch it twice, it was too high and too dangerous, and the luxury general fortress was built on the key pass, so he could only honestly attack Jin'an City......"

Lin Jian looked at Song Fu to see if he had a good idea.

Jin'an City is almost next to Qishan, Beifeng Mountain, northwest peaks and mountains, thousands of peaks and drops, if you want to encircle the Jin'an defenders, only first take down several key passes and dangerous villages of Qishan and Beifeng Mountain, in order to cut off the possibility of the defenders escaping along the valley road between Beifeng Mountain and Qishan.

Song Fu shook his head, Luxury's main force of Huaidong's soldiers and horses will be dragged in eastern Fujian for a longer time, and the last 10,000 or so defenders in Jin'an City should all be Fujian soldiers who are loyal to the Luxury family and evacuate first, but obviously it is impossible for Luwenzhuang to let these fifteen thousand elites be wiped out in Jin'an City.

If the Huaidong Army wants to cut off the possibility of the Jin'an defenders escaping to the northwest, it will send a small elite force to infiltrate the deep mountains and valleys further northwest of Beifeng Mountain and Qishan to intercept them.

Obviously, Luwenzhuang should also be prepared for this, and will not let Huaidong take too much advantage.

Song Fu, who is most familiar with Mindong, has no good strategy, and can only honestly fight siege warfare, Lin Lian said to Zhou Tong: "Then fight honestly, prepare those many oil cans and stone crossbows, you can't spend your mind in vain......"

Jin'an City is the root of the soldiers of Fujian, and the defenders who stayed in Jin'an City are mourning soldiers and dead soldiers.

*************

Twenty miles around the city of Jin'an, 30,000 soldiers and horses crossing the river in Huaidong were forced into the city from the east and south, and they could not use men and horses to surround the two city walls.

Zhou Tong sent people to block the city gate of the defenders' attack, sent elite soldiers and horses to keep an eye on it, and used the soldiers and forcibly recruited people to quickly dig trenches and build fortifications and set up camp in the back. It only took two days to build a series of barracks in the east and south of Jin'an City, and prepare for the siege of the city.

It is rainy in eastern Fujian, the earth springs are dense, and the city of Jin'an is built of bricks and stones, and it is not very likely that there is a secret door, which also makes Huaidong have no way to dig a crypt to attack it.

Taking the mound of earth and connecting with the city to form a siege road is also a common means of siege, but it requires a lot of time and manpower. The sooner Jin'an City is taken, the more Huaidong will be able to seize the initiative in the entire battle situation, and there will be no time to waste here.

It can only be attacked honestly by consistent means.

Although the Jin'an city wall is high, it is an old-fashioned single-style city wall, and there is only one moat ring on the outside.

When Huaidong built a large city in the Xusi area, the luxury family had enough financial resources to carry out a large-scale transformation of the Jin'an Xiongcheng City in more than 20 miles of Zhou, which also made Huaidong use the traditional offensive tactics and slightly less resistance.

The war is always cruel, Huaidong has 30,000 soldiers in Jin'an City, 10,000 soldiers, and more than 40,000 people from Xiapu, Quanzhou, Luoyuan and other places.

80,000 horses piled up under the city, built camps, and in two days, they also took soil and filled in the moats at the same time, and filled out more than a dozen passages outside the Jin'an city with a width of seven or eight zhang.

Under the cover of the cave house carts, curtains, and half-cut boats, the soldiers and men approached the root of the city wall, wielding shovels and shovels, and worked hard to dig and loosen the foundation of the city wall.

The defenders smashed the rolling stones and logs from the top of the city. No matter how strong the cave house, the veil, and the half-cut ship are, it is difficult to resist the repeated smashing of large rocks and giant trees. Cave houses and carts were constantly smashed and smashed, and the men and soldiers who covered them were shot or stoned to death, or scalded and burned to death by the oil poured down, and the wails were everywhere.

On the other side, Zhou Tong deployed a large number of nest cars to place strong bows and scorpion crossbows, as well as a large number of counterweight stone-throwing crossbows under the city, covering the city wall to smash the southeast corner of the city wall, suppressing the defenders at the head of the city, and covering the soldiers to take the ladder near the city ant.

The Zhejiang-Fujian army also had a large number of stone-throwing crossbows and other bows and crossbows in the city, and there was no weakness in the confrontation.

The Wangshao Yuntai has been erected twenty zhang high, and can see the situation in the city at a glance, Lin Jian personally climbed it to see, and said to Song Fu and others after coming down: "In addition to more than 10,000 defenders in the city, the luxury family has almost evacuated the people in the city, this is good news, but also bad news, immediately organize craftsmen to cut down wood and build more stone-throwing crossbows - the defenders' stone-throwing crossbows are still old-fashioned, and if you have an advantage, you must do everything possible to expand." ”

In addition to the scorpion crossbow, the stone-throwing crossbow used by Huaidong is a counterweight, the tail of the crossbow is tied with a large iron ball, and the stone projectile is launched by using the momentum of the big iron ball, and more than a dozen people can operate a heavy stone-throwing crossbow. The old-style stone-throwing crossbow purely uses human or animal power to pull and exert force, and a heavy-duty stone-throwing crossbow often requires dozens or even hundreds of people to operate.

Defending the city and attacking the city is not entirely a matter of the generals, as long as a city organizes the people, it can be called a real heroic city.

Huaidong built a hundred heavy stone-throwing crossbows, which only needed one or two thousand people to operate. Since the luxury family withdrew all the soldiers and civilians in the city first, even if they built a hundred heavy stone-throwing crossbows, even if they did not consider the advantages of counterweight-type stone-throwing crossbows in terms of accuracy and ease of operation, there were not enough manpower to operate them in Jin'an City.

The small number of people left in the city by the luxury family also had to assist in the use of stone and wood arrows to get to the city, and even directly assisted the defenders in battle.

The luxury family does not have too many people left in Jin'an City, and it can also be seen that the luxury family population resources are in short supply.

In the end, the city of Jin'an was not defended, and the defenders abandoned their baggage and could withdraw from the northwest, and the people were in a mess and could not withdraw with the army. The luxury family is obviously reluctant to leave too much Dingkou to Huaidong.

Before the war in Eastern Fujian, the population of the eight prefectures in Eastern Fujian was about 3 million, and the population of Jin'an Prefecture was as high as 800,000.

Even if the entire population of Eastern Fujian is controlled by the luxury family, the adult Ding Zhuang is less than one million. After these years of brutal wars, Ding Zhuang, who was directly lost by the war in Eastern Fujian, is not far behind, even if he does not have 200,000.

At this point, in addition to the grain fields, Dingkou has also become a scarce resource for luxury families.

Even if Huaidong does not disturb the coastal areas of eastern Fujian in the later period, the luxury family will face the dilemma of abandoning grain fields and not being able to fully cultivate them due to the shortage of labor.

The luxury family gave up eastern and southern Fujian and moved the military, civilians, and materials inward, but there were also a considerable number of people who were nostalgic for their homeland and refused to move west.

Quanzhou and the 300,000 Dingkou under the Quanzhou Prefecture are naturally the entire Huaidong that is attached, including the prefectures and counties of southern Fujian and the three counties of northeast Fujian, and the new Dingkou of Huaidong is about one million.

After the luxury family lost Jin'an Mansion, the people who really moved to the upper reaches of eastern Fujian, plus the aborigines of Jian'an Mansion, probably will not exceed one million. What is even more a headache for the luxury family is that the grain fields in the upper reaches of eastern Fujian can only barely reach a million people, and the maintenance of its tens of thousands of troops depends on its war plundering from Jiangxi and other places.

Not to mention the others, only in the Mindong estuary basin around Jin'an City, between Qishan, Gushan, Beifeng Mountain, and Wuhu Mountain, the grain fields reach 2 million mu, which shows how painful it was for the luxury family to consider giving up Jin'an Mansion at the beginning.

Huaidong prepared a large number of ordnance accessories before the war, and once it was decided to build a large number of stone-throwing crossbows, the craftsmen were pulled up, and the wood was cut for materials, and sixty or seventy crossbows could be built a day under the city.

The supply of stone bullets is not in a hurry, and the kiln is made to take soil and sinter, and the mud brick bombs are thrown, and the shape is more round than the stone bullets.

In this way, the battlements at the head of Jin'an City were mostly smashed, and the southern city was smashed into two large gaps, although the defenders were asked to fill the gaps with wooden fences in time, and the defenders were also killed and wounded in the past few days.

Next, the Huaidong soldiers and horses strengthened the ant-attached siege to the city, and forcibly fought with the defenders at the head of the city inch by foot with strong armor blades and thick shields of fire oil.

It was not until November 5 that the Zhejiang-Fujian army finally showed weakness, and the 6,000 defenders withdrew directly from the Yunqiao at the head of the northern city wall to the western foot of Beifeng Mountain, and the Huaidong army took Jin'an City with difficulty. The north gate directly with Beifeng Mountain was blocked, and it was impossible to go out of the city to chase and kill the fugitives for a while.

Counting the nearly 1,000 wounded soldiers who abandoned their weapons and surrendered in the city, Huaidong annihilated 7,000 enemies in this battle, and his own casualties were nearly 5,000.

But as long as Jin'an City is successfully taken, and there are twice as many casualties, Lin Jian can bear it in his heart.

***************

On the night of the fifth day, the remnants of the enemy in the city had not been cleared, and Lin Jian couldn't wait to enter Jin'an City, he had to urgently arrange everything here, and immediately led the main force of Huaidong soldiers and horses to return north.

Mingzhou constantly has new bad news to come, luxury Wenzhuang in the 23rd in Tongziwu to gather 30,000 elites, day and night fierce attack Yuyan, the general of the southern Huinan army urged the fierce battle, Yushi Zhai on the 28th was lost, luxury Wenzhuang non-stop wave troops north, Deng Yu had to stop attacking Huangtian Village, personally supervised the Feihuang Zhai, in the narrow terrain of the Feihuang Shan and the Zhejiang and Fujian army fought hard.

Huangtianzhai was lost and lost, although the news was revealed to Huaidong, but this slap hit the face of the imperial camp army and Emperor Yongxing in the face.

Jiang Ning refused to believe that Xie Chaozhong's 30,000 imperial battalion army could not hold Yuling Pass, so he only blindly urged Huaidong's soldiers and horses in eastern Zhejiang to fight Dongyang and urge the Hanghu army to attack Tonglu, hoping that Huaidong and Hanghu army could have all the way through the eastern front of western Zhejiang and relieve the siege of the southern Huinan army, but refused to withdraw the main force of the Hanghu army to defend Ningguo first.

In addition to assembling 30,000 elites in the Daqingxi River Valley north of Tongziwu, there are 20,000 elites in Dongyang, Lanxi, and Quzhou to block Huaidong's westward advance in eastern Zhejiang, and more than 10,000 elites in Tonglu and Chun'an to intercept the Hanghu army.

At the same time, in the central part of Jiangxi, from mid-October, Xuan Feixiong purposefully abandoned the outer cities of Yuzhang and concentrated his forces.

Although the outer cities of Yuzhang may be taken away by Yue Lengqiu's Jiangzhou in a short time, as long as Yuzhang is held, it cannot change the fundamental situation of Jiangxi, while the extravagant flying bear can concentrate the elite, in addition to holding Yuzhang steadily, he must also send troops to march west along the Xinjiang River to support the war in western Zhejiang.

Obviously, the luxury family is becoming more and more confident that they will make a big gap from Huizhou and directly attack Jiangning City.

Yue Lengqiu also realized the danger in Jiangzhou, and decisively gave up his troops in Yuzhang and withdrew his troops back to Jiangzhou, but he could not make further moves in Jiangzhou.

Although there was no further news coming, the Huinan Army could be wiped out or surrender at any time, and even if the news of the loss of Yuling Pass had already crossed the sea, Lin Jian would not be surprised.