Sorrow is as silent and calm in my heart as dusk in the silent forest.

– Rabindranath Tagore (Indian poet, philosopher, and Indian nationalist)

After Aggis led his army at the third bridge and defeated the visiting cavalry of the White Banner, the battle on the Xingyue River was temporarily over, and before the official counterattack on Langxiang Province, Bai Feng gave the defenders of the three bridges the task of ensuring that the bridges were not lost.

Agis, the newly promoted lieutenant general and acting commander of the Lance Legion, was transferred back from the defenders of the third bridge by Bai Feng, and was succeeded by Eumenes, the centurion of another group of Spartan heavy infantry.

According to Agis, Eumenes' performance in battle was not inferior to him, and if Eumenes had been the battle commander at that time, it would not have been him Agis who had grown into a system general, but the brave and useless Eumenes.

As for Aloyous and Appius, who led their troops to the battlefield later, their achievements in defensive battles were far from those of the two Spartan heavy infantry, and it was undoubtedly very inappropriate for them to succeed them as commanders of the defenders.

The good news of Nurhachi's death by poisoning did make everyone, including Bai Feng, cheer with excitement for a long time, but after calming down, everyone had to admit that Nurhachi's death did not have much impact on the current situation in Langxiang Province.

The independence of the upper three banners and the lower five banners, and the disagreement between Nurhachi and Shulhaqi, Murhaqi, and other lower five banner owners, such as Beyler, were originally the embodiment of the disadvantages of the lower five banners, but now they have become the advantages of the lower five banners not being affected by Nurha's naked death.

After determining that Nurhachi was dead, Bai Feng seized the time to organize the various armies, and at the same time sent Adrien and his battlefield ghosts to Langxiang Province to actively investigate the deployment and troop data of the Five Banners to prepare for a counterattack on Langxiang Province.

At the same time, Bai Feng, who was very interested in who would succeed the Jianzhou Jurchen Khan after Nurhachi's death and how the internal struggle in the Shangsanqi were, asked Ames to use the power of the secret guard to help him find out the information of the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Ames's secret guard was the largest intelligence organization in the empire that existed for the Heavenly Dragon Empire, even without Bai Feng's deliberate advice, Ames had to keep an eye on the situation of the Jianzhou Jurchens, not to mention that Bai Feng also made a request for this.

Since the day when Bai Feng asked Ames, the information about the internal struggle for the Khan throne among the Jianzhou Jurchens has been delivered to Bai Feng on time every day;

Although Bai Feng knew that Dolgon would grow up sooner or later, he was still disappointed in Dolgon's failure in competition;

He also didn't want to think about who could sit on the throne of Khan besides himself, who else would be more beneficial to him than his eldest brother after sitting on the position of Khan;

Dai Shan was the first to go out, and it was not out of Bai Feng's expectations, Huang Taiji's smooth ascension to the throne is also a reasonable thing, who made the three Dolgon brothers too young and their foundation too shallow, this is their fate, and it is also Huang Taiji's luck.

The only thing that shocked Bai Feng was that Dolgon, who had missed the Khan position, was not left behind by the clever Huang Taiji, but quickly took his own strength and went south into the territory of Langxiang Province, preparing to join forces with Shulhaqi and Murhaqi.

The three Dolgon brothers' Yellow Banner is the strongest banner of the Eight Banners with 80,000 cavalry, plus the 20,000 taels of Blue Banner cavalry of Dudu Nikan, and the Jurchen cavalry that is about to enter the province of Langxiang will reach an astonishing 100,000!

This means that the Jianzhou Jurchen army in Langxiang Province will suddenly increase from 100,000 cavalry in the Lower Five Banners to 200,000 cavalry in the Eighth Banner, while the battle plan formulated by Bai Feng and others before calculated 100,000 cavalry when counting the enemy's strength.

Bai Feng, who had transferred the Spartan Legion to act as the main force for a frontal confrontation, was confident that he would command the 300,000 troops under his command and defeat or even annihilate the 100,000 cavalry of the Five Banners of the Jianzhou Jurchens in one fell swoop; this was based on the judgment of the overall strength of the two sides and the combat effectiveness of the army, not Bai Feng's conjecture.

However, after learning that 100,000 new Jurchen cavalry were about to arrive in Langxiang Province, and that 20,000 of them were the most elite Zhenghuang Banner cavalry in the entire Jianzhou Jurchen, Bai Feng immediately realized that with the strength of the army under his command, it was simply not enough to fight against the 200,000 Eight Banner cavalry.

If Bai Feng was only defending the bridge and had the Xingyue River moat in hand, he could guarantee that the Jurchen cavalry on the north bank of the Xingyue River would not be pushed further south, but Bai Feng accepted the task of not blocking the Jurchen cavalry from continuing to move south, but leading the army north to recover Langxiang Province.

The chaotic situation of the Jianzhou Jurchens due to Nurha's naked death not only affected the honor and disgrace of the various Jurchen tribes in Jianzhou, but also affected the choice of advance and retreat of the army under Bai Feng's command; in the face of such unfavorable changes, Bai Feng would definitely not launch a counteroffensive according to the original plan.

When Bai Feng informed his generals of what had happened inside the Jianzhou Jurchens, all the generals agreed that they should not react against the counterattack on Langxiang Province at this time, and Louis and Di Maria, who were old and serious, also advised Bai Feng to immediately send additional troops to reinforce the bridge defenders.

Although Bai Feng didn't think that Shulhazy, Murhaqi, Dolgon and the others would choose to continue to go south at such a time of internal instability, he had to prevent possible accidents, after all, the number of defenders stationed on the three bridges was indeed less.

As a result, the troops under the command of Wen Ke and the troops under the command of Goto Kiji were split into three units by Bai Feng, and then sent to the three bridges to reinforce the defenders, because these two people were all elite long-range strike forces, and they were the most suitable troops to defend the bridges.

On the last day of March, Gapitus, who had been racing all the way, finally arrived at the headquarters of the White Peak's army, and after Gapitus personally took over the position of commander of the Lance Legion, the deputy general of the legion, Agis, who had been also the acting commander of the legion, was much more relaxed.

After the affairs of each legion were worried about their respective corps commanders, Bai Feng wrote a report on the information on the changes in the Jurchen forces in the Jianzhou of Langxiang Province and the lack of his own troops, and sent someone to the imperial capital military headquarters as soon as possible.

In his report, Bai Feng made his attitude very clear: judging from the current number of soldiers under his command and the combat effectiveness of each legion, he has no possibility of leading the army to recover Langxiang Province, so he will only sit in Besansong Province in a short time.

If the military headquarters of the imperial capital did not agree with their own way of guarding, then they had to send more reinforcements to themselves, otherwise they would send someone to replace their commander-in-chief; Bai Feng, who did not want to make senseless sacrifices, did not give the military department a third choice at all.

Of course, the reason why Bai Feng dared to express such a tough attitude to the Imperial Military Department was because he had tough qualifications and strength, and on the other hand, because Ames told Bai Feng about a recent boiling scandal in the imperial capital.

This political scandal closely related to Duke Cullen not only put Duke Cullen in a dilemma that he might lose the trust of Charlemagne at any time, but also made Duke Cullen's grandson, Prince William, almost completely disqualified from competing for the heir to the throne!