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March of the fourth year of Qianfu.

After Wang Xianzhi's death, Huang Chao, who became the recognized leader of the anti-Tangcao army from all walks of life, did not continue to use the name of the general of Tianbu and the commander of all the heroes in the sea. He had a new name, which seemed less imposing, but more combative.

Under the city of Bozhou, Huang Chao called himself "General Cupola", and built his own year name "Wang Ba"! Although Huang Chao did not establish a dynasty, he had officially played his own era name, refused to use the era name of the Tang Dynasty, and no longer recognized the Zhengshuo of the Tang Dynasty.

Cui Anqian, who had just exterminated Wang Xianzhi, was mobilizing troops and horses to surround Huangchao from all directions, preparing to kill Huangchao in Henan in one fell swoop. Seeing that the encirclement was getting smaller and smaller, Huang Chao sent a letter of surrender to Cao Quanyan, the new commander of the Tianping Army, asking him to submit it to the imperial court on his behalf.

After the imperial court got the news, it happily agreed to Zhao'an's request, and generously appointed Huang Chao as the general of the right guard from Sanpin, and asked him to go to Yuncheng to accept the appointment and disband the army. However, this was just a bait set by the imperial court, and Tian Lingzi secretly ordered Cui Anqian to mobilize soldiers and horses in various towns to prepare to annihilate this thief army in Yunzhou in one fell swoop.

The imperial court planned to come up with a plan, but Huang Chao did not plan to really surrender to the imperial court at the beginning, and the so-called surrender was just a plan to attack the east and the west and divert the tiger from the mountain.

Just when the imperial court departments rushed to Yunzhou to set up an ambush on all sides, Huang Chao did not go to Yunzhou to surrender, but suddenly turned around, led his troops into Songzhou and Bianzhou, and then attacked Weinan and Yexian.

The eastern capital is Luoyang. In the war with the grass thieves. is an Achilles' heel of Datang. Every time the grass thieves are beaten, as long as the grass thieves point their soldiers and horses to Luoyang, they can force the officials and troops to change their encirclement and suppression plans and surrender to the eastern capital.

The imperial court never seriously considered the piece that Li Jing wrote to the Son of Heaven after his campaign in Liaodong, and Li Jing's recital to the Son of Heaven showed that Huang Chao was not capable of capturing Luoyang. Therefore, in fact, it is a good thing for grass thieves to attack Luoyang. Once the grass thieves are under the siege of the city, they will not be defeated. As long as the official army plugged the fortresses on the periphery of Luoyang, they could easily and completely besiege the grass thieves and then completely annihilate the grass thieves.

However, when Li Jing wrote this memo, he had already expected that the imperial court would never agree to his proposal, and writing this memora was just a superficial participation in the battle of the Central Plains.

In fact, as Li Jing expected, the imperial court faced Huang Chao's march to Luoyang, and it was the first time that he did not know how many times he marched to Luoyang, the imperial court still subconsciously issued an order to protect Luoyang at all costs. To this end, a series of urgent orders were issued, with Liu Jingren, the general of Zuo Shenwu, as the eastern capital to support and contain the envoys. The troops of Heyang, Xuanwu and Zhaoyi were urgently transferred to his command and stationed in Luoyang for defense.

Secondly. Cui Anqian, who recruited grass thieves for the Zhudao camp, ordered to rush to Luoyang immediately. Third, the soldiers and horses of Yicheng Town defended the four passes of Yuyuan, Yique, Heyin, and Wujiao on the periphery of Luoyang, and the Yellow Nest was located on the outskirts of Luoyang.

The imperial court desperately transferred all the soldiers and horses to protect Luoyang, and the encirclement that was originally like an iron bucket suddenly became a sieve.

Huang Chao successfully mobilized all kinds of officers and troops, and finally created the conditions for going south, he quickly seized this short opportunity, and quietly withdrew from the periphery of Luoyang with the grass army, and waved his army south.

Along the way, Huang Chao avoided the real and attacked the weak, avoiding almost all the fortified cities and military strongholds, and soon crossed the Huai River and rushed into Huainan again.

At the end of March, Huang Chao and Shang Rang led the grass army to cross the Yangtze River in the Hezhou area, and for the first time rushed into the soft belly of the Tang Empire, and directly took Xuanzhou, which was later Xuancheng, Anhui.

Mobilize the enemy, break the encirclement and suppression, and transfer into the south of the Yangtze River, this is simply a divine soldier, Li Jing even secretly sighed after receiving the news, Huang Chao's strategic transfer is comparable to the four crossings of Chishui in later generations.

The feudal towns of the Tang Dynasty can be roughly divided into four categories, namely, the Heshuo separatist type, the Central Plains prevention and containment type, the frontier unloading type and the southeast financial resources type. To the south of the Yangtze River, it is the place where the southeastern wealth-based feudal towns are gathered.

As the name suggests, this type of feudal town was the cash cow that the Tang Empire relied on to survive after the Anshi Rebellion. The reason why these cash cows were able to grow money for the imperial court was that in addition to the fact that the economy of the south had developed greatly and began to become rich, more importantly, they had few soldiers and low military burdens. For example, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, eastern Zhejiang and other large towns in the southeast have no more than 10,000 rated troops.

Without claws and fangs, but with a good body of meat, such a prey is certainly the best choice for hunters. At the same time, in Jiangxi, there were Wang Chongyin, Xu Tangju, and Cao Shixiong's Wang Xianzhi's old department in Xuanxi, and Huang Chao also had the idea of going south to join forces with the various divisions and unify them under the banner of his own cupola general.

When Huang Chao moved to Jiangnan, the imperial court relieved Cui Anqian of his official position as recruiting grass thieves.

For this sudden news, there are various speculations in the world. Some people think that the official army was not able to exterminate the grass thieves in the Central Plains according to the plan, so that Huang Chao ran away, so the court needed to find someone to top. Some people also think that the grass thieves withdrew from the Central Plains, the imperial court felt safe, and the birds were hidden with good bows. Some people even said that this was actually a party struggle between the DPRK and China, and Cui Anqian, who was in the background of Prime Minister Wang Duo, was not hard enough, and it was rumored that Lu Xian and Lieutenant Tian intended to promote Gao Biao to be the envoy of Jingnan Jiedu, and Cui Anqian was forced to give way to Gao Biao.

When Li Jing heard these rumors, he only smiled and said, Cui An sneaked down, those are the reasons.

At the beginning of April, Huang Chao first defeated the official army chasing from the quarry ferry in Nanling, west of Xuanzhou City, and beheaded Wang Juan, but the victory was not complete, and four or five thousand defeated soldiers fled into Xuanzhou. Huang Chao took advantage of the victory to attack Xuanzhou, Tang Xuanshe observed that Wang Ning gathered internal and external forces, desperately resisted, the "grass army" attacked fiercely, Huang Chao had to move to the east, ready to enter the rich Zhenhai, the jurisdiction is equivalent to the southern part of Jiangsu, the north of Zhejiang and Shanghai, the headquarters of Runzhou, that is, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu. and eastern Zhejiang, most of present-day Zhejiang, headquartered in Yuezhou, now Shaoxing, Zhejiang.

Huang Chao attacked Runzhou, Tian Lingzi and Lu Xian took the opportunity to urgently transfer Gao Biao as the envoy of Zhenhai Jiedu in Jingnan Jiedu, sent troops to help Runzhou, took on the important task of suppressing bandits, and also promoted Gao Biao to recruit envoys for the next step.

The grass thieves turned to the southeast, and the court breathed a sigh of relief. Although the southeast is a valuable place for the imperial court, it is at least far away from the Central Plains and Guanzhong.

At the same time that the grass thieves moved to the southeast, the Zhenguo army also fought a series of victories in the northeast. The news was conveyed to Jingshi, leaving the Son of Heaven and the princes of the court and the central government stunned and in disbelief.

In February of the fourth year of Qianfu, Li Jing led the Zhenguo army to raid the rear of the Goguryeo people from the sea, the fortress of Bo and Jiankou at the mouth of the Yalu River, and then captured Daxing City. In mid-February, Li Jing rashly led a group of soldiers and horses to the north along the Wugu River, pretending to be a grain team from the Bohai Sea, and defrauded the gate of Wugu City and entered the city.

The Wugu City, an important town with a circumference of sixteen miles, resisted for less than half a day, and was broken by Li Jing, and 5,000 defenders were killed.

Subsequently, Li Jing sent an army to continue northward and captured the mountain city of Goushan in the north, and the mountain city of Lijiabao, which was very large.

At the end of February, Li Jing completed the encirclement of 80,000 Goguryeo and Bohai allied forces in the Xiuyan area.

At the beginning of March, Goguryeo King Gao Degui gathered a total of 50,000 soldiers and horses from Goguryeo and Bohai Buyeo to go south, preparing to tear open the encirclement of the Tang army and rescue 80,000 trapped soldiers and horses. The two sides engaged in a fierce battle in the Qianshan Mountains east of Anshi.

Zhao Li led the Flying Bear Army, Zeng Yuanyu led the Shenjie Army, firmly guarded the military orders conveyed by Li Jing, held the city, and did not fight with the field. Relying on the defense line given by Anshi City, Qianshan City, Chengzishan City, Xiaojiaogou Mountain City, and Moyun Mountain City, Zhao Li Zeng Yuanyu fought fiercely with 10,000 elite soldiers and 20,000 unity troops for more than a month. Gao Dexin and Da Weiying lost nearly 20,000 soldiers and horses, but failed to break through Zhao Li's defense.

In mid-March, the Liaohe estuary naval army transported 3,000 cavalry directly behind Gao Dexin, landed near Liaodong City, attacked Gao Degui's rear grain route, and threatened Liaodong City. Gao Degui did not have enough food and grass, and he was worried about Liaodong City, so he was forced to withdraw his army.

At the same time, the commander of the navy, Pei You, Megan, and Julie led the naval fleet, as well as Zhang Chengzong's leopard cavalry, 20,000 unity troops and village soldiers, a total of 30,000 soldiers and horses, to raid Pyongyang and capture the city of Pyongyang. Subsequently, Zhang Chengzong led the leopard cavalry to quickly attack, and within a month, swept away the Goguryeo south of the Yalu River and controlled Zhucheng.

At the end of February, Liu Shouqian also began to lead the Eagle Yang Army into the territory of Bohai, dividing the whole army into five divisions, each of which was one road, and entered the Yalu Mansion and Nanhai Mansion in the Bohai Sea. According to Li Jing's order, the task of the Yingyang Army was to conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines, and it was not allowed to attack the fortified city and fight head-on. The order Li Jing gave them was the 16-character policy, the enemy advances and I retreat, the enemy is stationed and disturbs me, the enemy retreats and I pursue, and the enemy is tired and I fight.

By the beginning of April, the 80,000 Goguryeo and Bohai soldiers and horses in the mountain city of Niangniang and the Whistle River had only half a month's worth of grain and grass left. The Zhenguo army surrounded them, but they were not in a hurry to attack, but only held the defensive line. As time passed, the situation became more and more unfavorable for them.

Goguryeo and Bohai failed to rescue from the south from the direction of Anshi, and the Bohai people also tried to relieve the siege from the east, but the Zhenguo army held on to Bo Shan City and Black Bone City. Although these two cities of Goguryeo were lost quickly, they were as solid as a stone in the hands of the Zhenguo army. And after the Eagle Yang Army entered the territory of the Bohai Sea, it burned and destroyed everywhere, came and went without a trace, and the Bohai people were anxious, although these Tang troops did not dare to attack the city, but such a wandering battle made the Yalu Mansion and the Nanhai Mansion five states unpeaceful, and even the people in Xijing and Nanjing were terrified.

Seeing that no reinforcements arrived, the Goguryeo and Bohai navies, who were running out of food, launched a breakthrough to the northeast of Shanchenggou Shancheng and Lijiabao Shancheng.

80,000 soldiers and horses abandoned more than 20 mountain cities such as Niangniang City, Mountain City and Whistle River, and broke through to the northeast. From the seventh day of April to the fifteenth day of April, the Goguryeo and Bohai allied forces dropped a full 30,000 corpses, and broke through the eighteen defense lines established by Li Jing within 30 miles of the front line of Lijiapu, but there were still 12 lines of defense from Lijiapu City.

At this time, the coalition army ran out of food and grass, and began to slaughter horses to satisfy hunger.

On April 16, Zeng Yuanyu and Li Liang led 10,000 troops to kill from Anshi City, and Guo Zhenshan, Gai Yu, and Jingxiang led 10,000 troops to kill from Jian'an City.

On 18 April, the last time the coalition army broke through, the Zhenguo army fought fiercely with it for a day and night, completely defeating the coalition army, annihilating nearly 30,000 coalition troops and capturing more than 20,000 prisoners in the first battle. Many swords, guns, horses, etc. were captured, and the entire Liaodong Peninsula was completely recovered by the Zhenguo army. (To be continued......)