***

Under the city of Yuezhou, a sound of gold sounded, and the left army retreated like a tide again, leaving only corpses and blood stains all over the ground.

Jin Shenghuan attacked tens of thousands of horses for two days, but the city of Yuezhou was still impregnable, and the left army couldn't even touch the head of the city, and left more than a thousand corpses under the city.

The men and horses sent to sweep the strategic strongholds on the outskirts were attacked by Su Jin's cavalry again, and they lost more than 1,000 people.

At this time, Jin Shenghuan received another news that Ling Zhan, who was originally going to Jingzhou to pursue the Great Western Army, had led an army of 10,000 to turn back, interspersed eastward through Huarong Road, and was ready to rob his own back road.

Tens of thousands of left troops have losses, no progress, and the danger of being flanked from front to rear, and the morale of the army is inevitably a little unstable;

However, at night, there will be bursts of singing around the camp, all of which are accents in the Xiangyang area, some are as lingering and sympathetic as a lover's whisper, some are as sentimental as a loving mother calling for a child, and some are as heartbreaking as a child's night cry

Listening to such a song, tens of thousands of left troops were aroused by a strong sense of homesickness, since more than a year ago by Zuo Liangyu was driven as a soldier, everyone retreated to Wuchang, went to Jiujiang, to Anqing, there was no stability, everyone from good people to bandits, looting and killing everywhere, almost lost their nature.

On such a night, I suddenly heard the songs of my hometown, remembered the stable life in my hometown, thought of my gray-haired mother, remembered my former lovers, and thought of my weak children.

This made the morale of the left army extremely low, and Jin Shenghuan knew that if it continued like this, the army would definitely have no fighting spirit and would collapse without a fight, so he sent a large number of people to expel the "singers" outside the camp.

But the problem is that there are fewer people to go out, and the singers are everywhere; There are too many people dispatched, and they can't make a living by themselves.

Just when Jin Shenghuan had a headache, an incident in Henan reached Wuchang, which made Zuo Liangyu, who was preparing to increase his troops in Yuezhou, hesitate.

Here's the thing. After Li Zicheng's main force moved to Shaanxi, the troops left behind in Henan were relatively weak, and the six or seven men and horses of the Red Lady did not know Weishenme, and they moved to the Kaifeng area, making the Dashun army in the area from Xiangyang to Luoyang even weaker.

At this time, there were two landlords in the Runing area, one named Liu Hongqi and the other named Shen Wandeng, who each organized hundreds of landlords to defeat the Dashun army that stayed in Ruyang and Luoning counties, and occupied Ruyang and Luoning City.

Because the Dashun Army has always attacked the gentry and landlords in various places too harshly. The gentry and landlords in various localities were naturally extremely hostile to the Dashun regime.

Liu Hongqi and Shen Wandeng easily overthrew the rule of the Dashun regime in Ruyang and Luoning, like a torch thrown into a haystack, and the fire ignited in an instant gave hope to the oppressed gentry and landlords everywhere.

So they organized one after another to launch a fierce counterattack against the Dashun regime, and in a short period of time, the sparks showed a trend of burning the prairies, and Yiyang, Yichuan, Xin'an, Mianchi and other counties were subverted by the landlords' armed forces.

The Ming army in the vicinity of Yunyang also took the opportunity to counterattack, attacking the city and plundering the land, and the rule of the Dashun regime in Henan became precarious for a while.

At this time, Li Zicheng was dividing his troops in Guanzhong, sweeping away the remnants of the Ming army in northern Shaanxi, Hexi, and Hanzhong. The rebellion against Henan was beyond the reach of the whip for a while.

Zheng Siwei, the general of the Dashun Army who stayed in Xiangyang, just took advantage of Zhang Xianzhong's abandonment of Jingzhou to go west to Bashu, and Zuo Liangyu and Qin Mu were busy fighting Yuezhou, and sent his deputy general Meng Changgeng to seize Jingzhou. The situation intensified, and seeing that even Luoyang was already in danger, Zheng Siwei had to quickly dispatch troops to the north to suppress it.

As a result, half of the defenders of Xiangyang were siphoned off. Just over 10,000 remained. After Zuo Liangyu received this news, he wavered from the idea of continuing to increase his troops in Yueyang to find Qin Mu desperately.

From a strategic point of view, there is no Xiangyang. Wuchang can't hold it, which is also one of the reasons why Zuo Liangyu didn't even dare to stay in Wuchang after Li Zicheng captured Xiangyang, and retreated to Jiujiang and Anqing in one go.

Moreover, most of the soldiers under Zuo Liangyu are from Xiangyang, and everyone has been out for more than a year, and they all want to go back to Xiangyang.

And now is the best time to recapture Xiangyang, the generals and soldiers in the army have asked Zuo Liangyu to move north, Zuo Liangyu himself is also very excited, coupled with the unfavorable situation in Yuezhou, it also made him realize that it is difficult to defeat Qin Mu and occupy Huguang.

After Zuo Liangyu urgently collected the general and discussed with the staff, he made a strategic plan to abandon Huguang and seize the opportunity to seize Jingzhou, Wuchang, De'an, and Xiangyang;

As soon as the strategic policy was decided, he could not wait, he still had 80,000 troops in Wuchang, so he decided to leave 10,000 horses to guard Wuchang, and he personally led 70,000 troops north to attack Xiangyang. At the same time, Jin Shenghuan was ordered to withdraw to Wuchang as soon as possible, and then divide his troops to attack Jingzhou in the west.

In order to achieve the effect of surprise, Zuo Liangyu ordered the news to be tightly sealed, so as not to detect his actions in advance for Qin Mu and Zheng Siwei. He also used a trick to lead the army north to attack Xiangyang, saying that he wanted to increase his troops in Yueyang.

I don't know if his tricks can be concealed from Zheng Siwei, but he was immediately detected by the secret agents of the Singles Family, and the accurate news spread to Yuezhou;

Ma Yongzhen didn't have time to report to Qin Mu, and immediately made new adjustments to the battle situation, Ling Zhan seemed to be too late to intersperse behind Jin Shenghuan, Ma Yongzhen immediately ordered him to turn around and go west, waiting for the opportunity to seize Jingzhou. The army in the city and Su Jin's cavalry quietly prepared to chase and kill Jin Shenghuan.

That night, Jin Shenghuan sent 10,000 horses to attack the city overnight to cover up his withdrawal of troops, but in the middle of the night, when his tens of thousands of troops had just pulled out of the camp and walked out of two miles, Su Jin's 10,000 cavalry appeared under the city of Yuezhou like ghosts and launched a surprise attack on the 10,000 left troops who were attacking the city.

Ma Yongzhen waved his army out of Yuezhou City at the same time, and the 10,000 left troops were left at the bottom, and they were not happy in their hearts, and then they were attacked by Su Jin and Ma Yongzhen inside and outside, and they collapsed in an instant, and they rushed to flee north.

Ma Yongzhen and Su Jin led the army in hot pursuit, expelling the 10,000 defeated soldiers and rushing towards Jin Shenghuan's army, night fighting was Qin Mujun's strong point, because they often drank pine needle water and conducted night combat training.

Most of the other armies suffer from night blindness and are not used to night battles, and Jin Shenghuan's tens of thousands of horses are no exception, in order to cover up their actions, tens of thousands of people withdrew in the dark, and they did not dare to use torches, and the movement of the black lights was extremely slow.

Jin Shenghuan was shocked, and hurriedly ordered the army to lay out a battle formation on the spot, but in a panic, the first thing to usher in was not the attack of the Qin army, but the rout of the mountains, under the fierce slashing of Ma Yongzhen and Su Jin, 10,000 rout soldiers saw their own men and horses, just like a child waiting to be fed saw his mother, and immediately came to a "throw embrace". Ma Yongzhen and Su Jin led the army to follow the rout into the Jin Shenghuan array, and the tens of thousands of left troops in panic were immediately overwhelmed.

During the day, Jin Shenghuan still belonged to the attacking side, no one expected the situation to take a sharp turn in an instant, at this moment, there is no suspense in this battle, if Jin Shenghuan does not withdraw the army, or withdraws the army during the day, although he has to face the dilemma of chasing and killing the Qin army, but there may still be a battle, and he will definitely not fall into this kind of ending, but he just wants to play tricks, and he wants to withdraw unconsciously in the middle of the night, which can really be described as smart but mistaken by cleverness.

Ma Yongzhen, who detected the news in advance, made him lose all his underwear. From midnight to dawn, after a pursuit, half of the nearly 60,000 left troops surrendered, and some escaped, leaving less than 8,000 men and horses around Jin Shenghuan.

But their nightmare was far from over, Ma Yongzhen's infantry temporarily stopped to clean up the battlefield and take prisoners, but Su Jin's 10,000 cavalry clung to Jin Shenghuan.

The strange thing is that Su Jin didn't seem to intend to eat Jin Shenghuan's eight thousand remnants in one fell swoop, just biting in the back, constantly attacking, taking a small bite and retreating, Jin Shenghuan was a little lucky at first, but soon he was desperate;

Because he found himself a living creature that was brought back by the lioness to feed the child, the lioness did not bite herself to death immediately, but only used him for the lion cub to practice the skill of biting the prey, so that the lion cub could grow up faster.

Su Jin did pay attention to this, Qin Mu attached great importance to his cavalry, and now Jin Shenghuan's 8,000 remnants of the army were panicked like lost dogs, which was a good opportunity for actual combat training;

Su Jin was willing to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and 10,000 cavalry drove 8,000 remnants, and from time to time sent a thousand men and horses to attack, just like a lion cub practicing to bite its prey

(To be continued......)