Westriver County!

Gao Deru, the guard of Longquan County, who controlled the military affairs of Xihe County, did live up to Wei Xuan's expectations, leading soldiers who did not belong to him, and he was stunned to defend Lingshi County in Bird Mouse Valley!

Li Yuan's father and son went south in high spirits, and when they arrived in Lingshi County, the number of people swelled to 400,000. Although the vast majority of people are similar to watching the excitement, Li Yuan does not refuse to come.

Li Yuan originally thought that he would be able to go down to Hedong and enter the pass at the same lightning speed as Hexi; But when he arrived in Lingshi County, he found that the reason why Hexi County was not fortified was entirely because the heavy troops of Gaode Rutun County held this dangerous pass.

And Gao Deru, who thought that he was loyally following him all the way to the end, stood at the head of Lingshi City and scolded him for being bloody.

Li Yuan was furious, this guy who bowed down to himself in Taiyuan was actually a sinister villain with three swords.

"Gao Deru, dare to betray General Ben, and when General Ben breaks through the city, he will cut off your dog's head for the night!"

"I, Gao Deru, was originally a Sui minister, when did I become a minister of your Li family? If you want to talk about betrayal, it is also the Li family, which has been favored by two generations of emperors! Although the Great Sui is chaotic now, it is just a small trouble! If you have the ability, you can just come to war......" Gao Deru replied coldly.

Li Yuan was furious and ordered the siege of the city.

Lingshi County is located in the middle of the Bird Mouse Valley, a very dangerous place, is the only way for Taiyuan to go south, and it is also an important gateway to the periphery of Taiyuan, how can it be so easy to attack. As long as the troops are sent to defend steadily and steadily and consume Li Yuan's troops section by section, Li Yuan will not want to capture the Sparrow Mouse Valley even if he has hundreds of thousands of troops.

Li Yuan had no siege equipment, and no preparations.

As a result, after fighting for a long time, there was no effect, but many rabbles were killed and injured. And the soldiers of the rebel army, who had extremely high morale, looked at the tragic casualties under Jiahu Fort, and seemed to have just understood that rebellion was to kill the head, and fighting was to kill people.

As soon as that enthusiasm passed, many people immediately deserted.

That night, Li Yuan's army of 300,000 evaporated by tens of thousands. Li Yuan attacked for another day and walked tens of thousands.

Three days later, there were more than 400,000 troops, and only 200,000 remained.

"Father! That's actually a good thing. Seeing that Li Yuan was worried, Li Jiancheng hurriedly comforted: "Too many troops will increase the burden of logistics, and being redundant and not refined is not conducive to combat, and the good and bad are uneven, and it is difficult to control military discipline!" It's just that at the beginning of the uprising, it was not easy to keep it out. In addition to consuming the food of our army, those rabble will not only not play a role, but will also shake the morale of the army, and now they are gone by themselves, but they will save a lot of severance pay. ”

Pei Lin also advised Li Yuan to recruit less Hedong people and use more Guan Longjun, Li Yuan agreed, so he ordered the army to be rectified in Lingshi County, eliminating the old and weak and scoundrels, leaving the younger brother and the son to leave the father, and all those who left the army were sent rice and grain to appease.

"Wait!" The heroic Li Shimin objected: "We don't have much food, if we have food, what will we do next?" ”

"This ......" Li Yuan hesitated, the Bird Mouse Valley is more than seventy kilometers long, narrow and difficult to travel, if the food is distributed to the dismissed people, where is the food enough? Without food, the army will be in turmoil, "What should I do in Erlang's opinion?" ”

"Any strong army needs to be tempered before it can be tempered, and the meaning of the child is to train the army with war!" Li Shimin pointed to Lingshi County and said: "The defenders of Lingshi City are only more than 20,000 people at most, and they are all soldiers and civilians of the county soldiers who are not strong in combat, we can divide the 200,000 army into ten teams and take turns attacking the city day and night, so that one can save time, the second can capture the spirit stone, the third can temper the army, and the fourth can save food!" ”

"That's a lot of casualties, isn't it?" Li Jiancheng frowned.

Li Shimin said with a smile: "Those who achieve great things are not informal, and the benevolence of women will only miss big things." These people are all running for the work of the dragon, how can they do it without working hard? ”

Li Jiancheng saw that his father was moved, so he didn't say anything, and felt that the second brother's heart was too ruthless.

"Good way!" Li Yuan slapped his thigh and said, "Just do it, be fast." ”

With Li Yuan's order, the army was divided into ten, the war drums were rumbling, and he didn't care about the arrangement of troops, and took turns to attack Lingshi County.

After three days,

Liu Hongji finally jumped onto the head of Lingshi City.

More and more Tang troops also jumped onto the city, and the Lingshi defenders could no longer resist and retreated into the city one after another.

But Li Yuan also paid a heavy price, and the 200,000 troops ran and died, leaving only about 120,000 people.

"What about Gao Deru?" Li Yuan, who entered the city, asked.

"Retreat to the county government." Liu Hongji, who was covered in blood, replied.

Li Yuan gritted his teeth, "Slaughtered the spirit stone for me!" ”

Liu Hongji, who was red-eyed, and the others immediately turned around and walked out, "The general has an order, slaughter the Spirit Stone City, and the chickens and dogs will not be left!" ”

When Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin rushed to stop it, the order had already been issued, and there were evil 'righteous troops' everywhere. The two brothers looked at each other and smiled bitterly: the slaughter order has begun, and the next towns will definitely resist to the death, and the battle will become difficult to fight!

On that day, more than 20,000 soldiers and civilians in Lingshi City were slaughtered, and no chickens and dogs were left.

As expected by the Li brothers, when the army moved south, it encountered stubborn resistance at Fort Jiahu! After four days of stalemate, the Tang army paid the price of more than 30,000 men before taking it. This time, Li Yuan, who had learned a lesson, didn't dare to slaughter the city again!

But bigger trouble arose.

Because they delayed too much time and gave Da Sui time to calmly deploy defenses, the terrain of Huoyi County in front of them was difficult and dangerous, choking the only way to go south! The defenders are no longer ordinary government soldiers and county soldiers, but 20,000 forbidden soldiers led by Song Laosheng, a veteran general on the battlefield.

Li Shimin thinks that although Song Laosheng is trusted and reused by the acting king, it is not that he has military merits, but because he is Wei Xuan's protégé, he relied on his qualifications to survive! Now that Wei Xuan is old, Qu Tutong threatens his position again, so he must be eager to make meritorious contributions to prove himself.

Li Yuan adopted Li Shimin's opinion, took advantage of Song Laosheng's earnest characteristics of meritorious service, and used himself as a bait to lead 7,000 elite soldiers to persuade him to surrender. However, he ordered Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin to set up an ambush in the middle of the way, as long as Song Laosheng was lured out of the city, they would wait for an opportunity to seize the city.

Song Laosheng was really fooled, he saw that it was Li Yuan himself who surrendered, he was overjoyed, and on the surface he promised to surrender, but in fact, he reorganized the army and killed Li Yuan.

Li Yuan was so frightened that he turned around and fled, seven thousand troops escorted him to the north, Song Laosheng was willing to give up, led a large army to pursue, his strength was far inferior to Li Yuan, only this kind of opportunity can make it possible to defeat the strong with the weak, but this kind of opportunity is only once, and if it is lost, there will be no more.

So under the city of Huoyi, Song Laosheng and Li Yuan fought, and the 20,000 troops brought by Song Laosheng were all experienced Great Sui forbidden soldiers, who had been on the battlefield for a long time, and under the leadership of Song Laosheng, Li Yuan, who was killed, complained bitterly and retreated again and again.

The brothers Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin, who were lurking in the woods, let go of Song Laosheng's army and went straight to Huoyi.

Song Laosheng chased and killed for less than ten miles, and a soldier shouted in horror: "General Song, Huoyi County City Tower is on fire." ”

As soon as Song Laosheng turned around, he really saw the fire of the Beicheng Tower and the thick smoke billowing into the sky, and he realized that he had been fooled.

20,000 Sui troops turned around and rushed towards the city, at this time Li Yuan personally led the army to arrive, waved troops to cover the killing, Song Laosheng saw that the army could not enter the city, he couldn't help but be furious, and shouted: "The three armies line up, and the rebels fight to the death!" ”

The two armies launched a bloody battle in the north of Huoyi County, the Sui army was finally outnumbered and defeated, the whole army was annihilated, Song Laosheng was surrounded by hundreds of people led by Liu Hongji, Song Laosheng swore not to surrender, exhausted and died in battle.

Huoyi, an important town in Hedong that was relied on as an iron wall, was lost in less than half a day because of Wei Xuan's improper employment.

Li Yuan pocketed the remnants of Huoyi, and the army became 120,000 horses, for those soldiers who didn't want to fight, Li Yuan sealed him five rank and scattered officials, let him go home and quickly accepted the military hearts of these people, even those soldiers who left the army and returned to Guanzhong also said that Li Yuan was benevolent and righteous.

Facts have proved that the means of pacification benefited Li Yuan more than the slaughter of the city, because of his "benevolence and righteousness", he was like a bamboo in his next march, all the way to Linfen County, Longquan County, Jiang County, Wencheng County, and Shangdang County and Changping County only obtained one, because Xue Wanshu and Yang Shanhui, who heard the news, entered the country first and captured the strategic places of the two groups.

So far, except for Hedong County and Hanoi County, which were heavily guarded by troops, most of the remaining counties south of Taiyuan were occupied by Li Yuan's army.

In mid-December of the thirteenth year of the Great Cause, Li Yuan sent Li Jiancheng and Li Xiaogong to lead the troops to fight with Xue Wanshu and Yang Shanhui respectively, while Liu Hongji marched from Jiang County to Hanoi and confronted Pei Renji in Hanoi County; He led an army of 150,000 to attack Hedong County.

At this time, Qu Tutong led 40,000 to Hedong City, and saw that Yang Qing, the king of Xun, led 10,000 Xiaoguo troops to settle in and recruited 20,000 soldiers, Qu Tutong's confidence suddenly increased. While arming defenses, he sent people to explain the battle situation to Xijing.