In early May, Li Mao followed the army. Also going with him was General Qin's family, Qin Bin's own uncle, who went to Youzhou to collect his father's body.

Qin Bin was already discussing his relatives, but his grandfather died in Youzhou, and the family affairs were delayed. Qin Bin's father, the general Qin Feng, should have been worried, but because there is a war going on in the north now, the generals who may join the battlefield do not have to worry about it.

Qin Feng and the remnants of the Yin Dynasty have a national enemy and family hatred, and they can't wait to immediately take the Chinese army north to avenge their father.

The Chinese army is the most elite army in Great Chu, and the armed guard battalion, the backbone battalion, the middle base battalion, the Xiaocai battalion, the guerrilla battalion, the middle collar, and the middle guard battalion in the Chinese army are all fully formed, and they are stationed outside the capital to defend the Beijing Division, and they are also the most mobile troops in Great Chu.

If there is a loss in the front or the territory is to be recovered, this Chinese army will go out to conquer.

What Li Mao took away was a mixed formation of the "guerrilla battalion" and the "armed guard battalion" in the Chinese army, and the 30,000 Chinese troops were enough to protect his safety, after all, he would not go to the battlefield.

But Li Mao never thought that as soon as they arrived in Yanzhou, Fanyang City would be broken.

"What do you say? Fanyang City is broken? ”

Li Mao looked at the soldiers who came to deliver the battle report in disbelief, and couldn't believe his ears.

"How did it break? Fan Yang still has an army of 80,000, enough for 100,000 people to eat food for five years! "As the secretary of the military department, Li Mao knows everything about the deployment of each city.

Defending a city is not like attacking a city, a city of Fanyang's size, if 80,000 people defend the city, it will not be a problem to defend the 70,000 or 80,000 people of the Shangyin Dynasty and the Jiahu people for ten years.

Moreover, Fan Yang has soldiers to supplement food and grass, but the Hu people are one less dead, and there is always a day to consume them.

General Hua was persuaded by Fan Yang Lu to take 40,000 troops out of the city to recover the lost land around Fanyang, but the Hu army somehow bypassed from the east, and there were thieves in the city to respond, and the city gate on the east side was forced, and the city of Fanyang was broken, and Fanyang's northern army resisted to the death, exterminating more than 10,000 people, and now ...... Now I don't know if I'm alive or dead. ”

The soldier was missing an ear, and the process of coming south to report the news was also thrilling.

The so-called life and death do not know, I am afraid that there is more luck than luck.

"General Hua and several deputy generals went out of the city, Fanyang City was leaderless, and when the east gate was broken, Fanyang Lu took several major clans in the north to protect themselves and surrendered first. One of the traitors who claimed to be General Yin Chaoshang received Fan Yang. The scouts of our scout battalion risked their lives to go out of the city to report the news, and General Hua is now trapped in a lonely place, and 40,000 elites have lost supplies. General Yuan, Lord Li, please recapture Fanyang! ”

Li Mao and Yuan Xi looked at each other and smiled bitterly.

Fan Yang and Lu are each other's horns, and if Fan Yang is not lost, there is still hope for Youzhou to recover. Now that the city of Fanyang is broken, Pinglu is between the north of Youzhou, which has fallen, and Fanyang, which has been occupied by the Hu people, and has become a place of death. Even if Pinglu can withstand attacks from both sides, it is in between, and even if it is held, it is not a big deal.

"Lord Li, Fan Yang City is broken, and the thieves are likely to go back to the south immediately. Juyong Pass must not be lost, now is not the time to recover Fanyang City, we should go to Juyong Pass now, shrink the defense line, and contain the people who fled south in Youzhou. "Yuan Xi is also a general, and the situation in the north is far greater than that of the dead Qin Wuyang and Hua Peng, who rashly left the city.

He estimated that Fan Yang should have a clan defection, and since Fan Yang had been lost, it was only a matter of time before Youzhou all fell. What should be done now is to hold Yanzhou and wait for the northern expedition of the king division.

It's a pity that his 200,000 Dingbei Army has only tens of thousands of people left in Youzhou because of internal and external troubles. In addition to Hua Peng, who was trapped in the place of death, there were only 40,000 Dingbei Army soldiers left in Pingluli.

When Yuan Xi thought of this, he couldn't help but burst into tears.

Before Li Mao came, he and many veterans had repeatedly deduced Li Rui's sand table. The loss of Fan Yang is one of the directions of deduction. If Fan Yang is lost, he can only retreat to Yanzhou, firmly hold the Fallen Horse Pass and Juyong Pass, and then take Zhuo County and Huaishuo in Yanzhou as the foundation, advance to the north, and recover Youzhou.

Yanzhou is small, but Juyong Pass is the first to stop, and if you control this pass, you can block the army going south.

It's just that since the rebels of the Yin Dynasty raised the banner to rebel, traitors and assassins have emerged in an endless stream from all over the country, and the remnants of the Yin Dynasty have been dormant for so many years, and they have been laid out in various parts of the north.

Thinking about it this way, the remnants of the Yin Dynasty and the descendants of the King of Qiyang opened mines, raised horses, minted private money, sold illegal salt, and even emptied the silver in Zhangjiagong, all for the rebellion in February last year.

They even rushed to the spring ploughing time, just to make the people in the north have no grain to plant, and after a year, the people who fled to the south in Youzhou are all ruined people and need relief from the imperial court. Those who remain in the north will not survive, and will defect to the thieves to live.

This anti-thief team is vicious and cunning, and it is really hateful.

"How many of you have arrived in Yanzhou? Can you go back to Fan Yang to report the news? Li Mao looked at the scout who was missing an ear, and felt a little unbearable, but he still had to ask.

"There are also four people, all of whom are brothers who are proficient in the terrain of Youzhou. What does Li Guogong command, mark it and listen to the order! Although the soldier had one of his ears off and was only wrapped in strips of cloth, he didn't care.

Since ancient times, Yan Zhao has been a generous and sad person, and it is indeed true.

"This official wants you to send an order to General Hua, who is trapped outside Fanyang City, to let him retreat to Pinglu City in the west and hold out until our northern expedition." Li Mao squinted, and an idea came to his mind.

"The thief will not appear outside Fanyang City for no reason, there must be some shortcut to the north in the east of Fanyang. The clans in Fanyang City live in Fanyang, and perhaps they were the ones who told the thief the secret. This official needs a team of scouts to sneak back to the vicinity of Fan Yang, and carefully find out how this group of thieves came to Fan Yang City, if we can follow the road and return, it will be Fan Yang who is surrounded on three sides. ”

"The mark will not be dishonored! It's just that...... There were only four of us...... "The scout was in trouble."

"The guerrilla battalion is willing to go!" The guerrilla battalion General Lang came out and volunteered to take over the matter. "Many of the soldiers of the guerrilla battalion who went north with the army this time are originally from Youzhou, and the general can send dozens of people and these four scouts to the north in disguise."

"That's great!" Li Mao was overjoyed, and then made a long bow to this earless scout.

"Please be careful."

The soldier was moved to tears, and immediately followed the guerrilla battalion out of the tent after receiving the military order.

Li Mao hurriedly wrote two war reports, ordering the cavalry in the army to be sent back to the capital immediately, Yuan Xi was analyzing the situation with the Lang General of the Chinese Army's Wuwei Battalion, and suddenly saw Li Mao clapping his palms and said solemnly:

"The situation is urgent, General Yuan, we have to work hard these days."

"Order the Chinese army, prepare to pull."

Yanzhou, Zhuo County.

Zhuo County is at the junction of Youzhou and Yanzhou, known as Zhuo County in ancient times, which is a medium-sized city in the north and the county of Yanzhou Zhang.

In the past, Zhuo County was very prosperous, but later Fan Yang rose and was in the key place, so it replaced the gateway to the north of Zhuo County, and the status of Zhuo County was not as important as Fan Yang.

But even so, Zhuo County is still a prosperous county in the north.

The two brothers, Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi, who helped the coffin and returned to their hometown, are now sitting in the lobby of the Zhuoxian County Office, staring coldly at the people in the hall.

In the hall of the lobby, there are kneeling in the old clan of a cadre, Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi are all neatly armed with swords and soldiers behind the two brothers, and outside the hall are the clansmen of the Zhang family and the squires of the Zhang family in Zhuo County, the elders, and the officials of the Zhishi.

Soon after Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi returned to their hometown, they realized that something was wrong with Zhuo County.

First, the elders of the clan kept urging them to quickly remove his father's coffin and go to a feng shui treasure place outside Zhuo County for burial, and then Zhang Ning found that the clan elders and some strangers often gathered, and sometimes even the officials of Zhuo County participated.

The two brothers, Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi, knew what their grandfather did. His mother was even worried that the two brothers would be implicated in the future, so she placed a lot of sacrificial fields in the clan early, just in case she could escape bad luck, at least there was a foundation for survival.

They quickly thought of the remnants of the Yin Dynasty. Yanzhou is the place where the Zhang clan arose, and his grandfather had been missing for so many years, since he was not in the capital, he must have planned in a safe place.

What safer place could be than your hometown?

It stands to reason that Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi have left the clan, and they should no longer care about the affairs of the clan. Whether they rebel or cause chaos, they are all self-defeating, and it is useless to persuade them.

But more unwitting Zhang clan people are innocent. These people may just be ordinary children of the Zhang family, or they may be the unappreciated side branches of the Zhang family, but no matter what, they are always the bloodline of the Zhang family.

The sins created by their grandfathers should be solved by their brothers, and they should not be allowed to continue to do evil and endanger the people of Zhuoxian County.

Therefore, the two brothers Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi pretended to move out of the city and went to a place in the southeast of Zhuo County to find a place with good feng shui, but in fact they secretly sneaked back to Zhuo County, found the old and young people who had funded or used to be very close to Zhuo County in the past, and asked them to investigate the matter together.

As they thought, most of the Zhang family didn't know what the elders of the Lu Dao clan were going to do.

When many young people were governors, they only knew that they were the people of Great Chu, and they didn't know how prosperous the Yin Dynasty was, let alone how prominent their families were in the Yin Dynasty.

For them, Zhang Ning, who did a book, and Zhang Zhi, a general on the border of the Western Regions, were their role models, although these two people left the clan because of the murder of their relatives, but they could not erase their prestige among the young people of the Zhang family.

In addition, the Cui family bought a lot of sacrificial fields in his hometown, and the production of these sacrificial fields and the silver exchanged for grain were used to help the old and young women and children, widows and widows in the tribe, and they formed a lot of good fate, and these old and weak women and children were willing to do their best for the Zhang brothers, so they were willing to help them.

The Zhang Ning brothers inquired for more than half a year, and finally knew what the elders of the Zhang family and the county officials in Zhuo County were going to do.

They are ready to be the internal response of the thief.

These people gradually replaced the guards at the city gate with their own people, and also controlled the townships around Zhuo County, hiding many suspicious people.

For the results of this investigation, the clansmen and squires on Zhang Ning's side were frightened, and Zhang Zhi was even more furious, calling these clan elders "old thieves".

Dragging a family into the water is crazy!

Didn't they think that after opening the door and stealing, the children of the Zhang family could only admit this result, and they could not surrender with several clans in the north of Youzhou?

Since there is an internal response, someone must attack the city. Although Fanyang City is a large number of people, and Pinglu in the north is used as a buffer, it will never be easily broken, but Zhang Zhi, who is well-versed in military affairs, still sends his family to monitor the northern provinces day and night in case there are strange troops moving south.

Zhang Ning used the relationship between the former officials and the Shangshu, carefully selected some local officials who would never have problems, wrote several letters, and spread them to several surrounding counties, asking them to thoroughly investigate the spies in the city to prevent the thieves from making trouble, and borrowed a lot of village warriors, they took the young and strong people in the clan to attack them unprepared, and tied up the clan elders who participated in the rebellion and most of the officials in Zhuo County.

As for the people who were transferred to defend the city, they were killed on the spot, and they were never allowed to spread any news.

"What are you left to do with such people who are familiar with foreign enemies, kill them!" Zhang Zhi didn't understand why his brother wanted to tie these people up in the lobby and let many people come to see them.

Zhang Ning deliberately let these people come to see today's scene. First, the old people in the clan are connected to foreign enemies, this matter is by no means temporary, there must be many people swaying from side to side, and now it is just time to kill chickens and monkeys and scare their courage; Second, he is now worried, privately detaining officials, and tying up the clan elders, it is inevitable that some people will criticize him, and the interrogation at this time is also to stabilize the people's hearts.

In addition, there are some other calculations that will not be revealed until later.

"As the people of Great Chu, you are quite favored by the emperor, and you enjoy relief in times of disaster, and there are hundreds of thousands of troops in the north to guard the bitter cold land, so that you can live and work in peace and contentment. Now you are willing to fall, communicate with foreign enemies, and put the safety of the people of Zhuo County at risk, which is really a serious crime! ”

Zhang Ning has been an official for more than 20 years, with a demeanor that is not angry and self-assured, and there is a decisive brother who takes the family to suppress the scene in the back, as soon as these words came out, many small officials below immediately trembled like fallen leaves in the autumn wind.

Hearing Zhang Ning's words, many clansmen immediately scolded.

Rebellion is condemned by the clan, but it doesn't matter if you participate in it or not.

These clan elders were all chess pieces left by Zhang Tingyan, and they had been planning with the people from the north for a long time before they could make perfect deployments, but they didn't expect that they would fall short in just a few months.

These people are as dead as ashes, and they do not argue, they just look like they are listening and respecting.

After Zhang Ning interrogated these people and convicted them one by one, the family general took them into custody and put them in the county jail to prevent outsiders from contacting.

That night, sure enough, someone went out to report the news, and these people were naturally the fish that Zhang Ning didn't catch. They were caught by Zhang Ning's family members who secretly guarded the four gates, and waited for two days, no one went to rob the prison, and no one went out of the city again, Zhang Ning should definitely have no more internal thieves, even if there are internal thieves, they can't get out of the city, and they can't set off big waves.

On the second day after Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi cleaned up the traitors in Zhuo County and arranged for the local government soldiers in Zhuo County to replace the thieves to guard the city gate, the home guards of the northern main road came back quickly to report the news.

At this time, it was already midnight, Zhang Ning and Zhang Zhi got up immediately after getting the news, and they didn't have time to put on their robes, so they immediately rushed to the hall to see Zhang Zhi's general.

The general warned that an army of about 20,000 had appeared in the north, and was heading towards Zhuoxian, and would arrive at the city at noon tomorrow.

"What? From the north? can be seen clearly, is it the remnants of the Dingbei Army who fled in Youzhou? Zhang Zhi felt dizzy.

Is Fan Yang broken? Why are there armies coming south?

"It's not a soldier of Great Chu. The last general faintly saw a lot of Hu people. "The general was born as a guerrilla cavalry in the army, with excellent eyesight and good at concealing his figure, and the horse he rode was a BMW from Liangzhou, which was much faster than the horse of the thief, so he galloped back to Zhuoxian that night.

Zhang Ning was slightly relieved when he heard that there were about 20,000.

Although Zhuo County is not as good as Fan Yang, the scale of the city is still there, and if it is 20,000 soldiers, it can still be defended for a while. It's just that I don't know what the situation in the north of Ludao is now, if Fanyang City is broken, then these 20,000 rebels are the first army to spy on them, and I am afraid that there will be an endless stream of siege troops coming in the future.

Zhang Zhijiu was in the army, and he was worried about how many Han people would suffer after the destruction of Fanyang City.

When the rebels rebelled, there were only seventy or eighty thousand soldiers, and most of them were of different races, but when they captured Youzhou, there were immediately countless soldiers. Those young men who were captured and captured to fight would be driven to the front line, often starving for days, and only when they went into battle to kill people would they receive food. If they are unwilling to turn against each other on the front lines, the Overseers will be killed on the spot, often like livestock.

Once these people kill the red eye, they will forget their home and country, forget their shame, forget their own position, and only know how to kill and die. And for the thieves who are short of soldiers, those who survive can become regular soldiers, and those who die are just cannon fodder.

"Brother, are we now?" Zhang Zhi was full of energy, eager to do a big job.

Do these thieves think that Zhuoxian is already in the bag?

Look at him and let them come and go!

"Prepare to defend the city." Zhang Ning's personality is much more stable than Zhang Zhi, "Go and inform the whole county immediately, the brave and strong people in the township will go to the city wall to defend the city." Then send some people to the surrounding villages to report door-to-door, and tell them to retreat into the city before noon tomorrow, and be sure to hurry, and don't bring the burdensome things at home. ”

Zhang Ning had never fought a war and had no say in the war.

Zhang Zhi, who was the governor of Liangzhou, took his family and generals out of the house overnight, beat gongs and drums to wake up the people of the county, and asked them to prepare boiling oil and water, dismantle the stone pavilion rockery of the big household to obtain big stones, and prepare bows and arrows, weapons, and armor, and the whole county mobilized to prepare to meet the enemy.

Zhang Ning went back to the room and took out the letter given by Li Mao, thought about it, gritted his teeth, and began to write a letter to Jingzhong.

If you cause trouble for Li Mao, then you can't help it. Now that the situation is urgent, Zhuoxian is the only key after Fan Yang, and behind him is Juyong Pass, which is going south, so there must be no mistakes.

He picked up the pen and personally wrote down the original story, but did not write about the old family members and foreign enemies, but only said that he found that there was an anti-thief force in the north, and there was no garrison in Zhuo County, but he was willing to desperately defend the city and asked for support from Beijing and surrounding important towns.

He has already made up his mind that no matter whether Zhuo County is broken or not, these old officials of Zhuo County will "defend the city and die".

At least die well and not affect the family.

They should thank him.

Zhang Ning instructed his cronies to send the letter and his name to a post station fifty miles away, and explained in detail how to talk to the post man in the post station, how to explain the current situation, how to match the code, and so on.

The cronie knew that the matter was very important, so he took his things and left immediately. Zhang Ning went back to the house to change into a sackcloth and a plain crown, took his family out of the house, and ordered a few credible juniors in the family to go to various counties to deliver letters, and asked for rescue by the way.

On the second day, the Chinese army, which had already reached the middle of Yanzhou, suddenly encountered an oncoming post officer on the post road.

It stands to reason that when encountering a trip by the Chinese army, even the post officer has to wait for the army to pass first, but this post officer has a colorful flag behind him, riding the best horse, and a roll of yellow dust rolls away, and he has arrived in front of him in an instant.

The post officer on the horse waved the colored flag on the horse and shouted: "Eight hundred miles in an emergency!" The gold medal is given, the obstructor dies, and the rebel dies! It was the military newspaper officer who was in an eight-hundred-mile hurry.

There is no military station here, the young general led by the team frowned when he heard the words of the people, and wanted to send troops to intercept it, but Li Mao, who was not far away, found that the post officer's colored flag was inlaid with bright yellow, which was the group of post officers used by the emperor, and hurriedly asked the Chinese army to give way and asked this post officer to pass first.

This post officer is not stupid, when he saw a Great Chu army appear in Yanzhou, he knew that Lu Dao should be the Chinese army going north, his horse was extremely fast, and the horse galloped to the ground, but when he saw the figure flickering, he jumped and dismounted.

The post officer was about a foot away from the Chinese army, and shouted at the army:

"Fanyang City is broken, Zhuo County is besieged, dare to ask if it is General Yuan who comes, but Yuan Xi, the general of Zhenbei?"

The author has something to say: Little Theater:

Author (ask the post officer): I heard that when the 800 miles were urgent, eating, drinking, and Lazar were all on the horse, and they entered every post and went out after changing horses, right?

Postman: ...... You come here and smell it?

Author:...... Forget it.

The above is the truth that the post officer is a foot away from the Chinese army.