On the fifth day of August in the 60th year of Kangxi, under the deliberate abandonment of the Fu Han army, the Qing army conquered Xinyang Prefecture, but this does not mean that the battle of the Qing army is easy to fight, and it still needs to face a very important challenge, that is, the three passes of Yiyang.

At the junction of Henan and Hubei provinces, the Dabie Mountains are traversed, and the terrain has always been extremely steep, and there are also three key passes on the Dabie Mountains, namely Wusheng Pass, Jiuli Pass, and Pingjing Pass, which have always been the places where soldiers must fight. On both sides of the three passes, the mountains and mountains are steep, and they are continuous, like a thousand-mile barrier.

As the so-called "Chusai three passes, Yunfeng is in the lookout, what year is Rongmadi, there are traces of the past." But Kangxi now has to face these three passes, especially Pingjing Pass, which makes Kangxi feel quite a headache.

However, this pass is the key to entering Huguang, if it cannot be overcome, it can only choose to take a long detour from Xinye to attack Xiangyang, in order to achieve the goal of controlling Hubei, but Xiangyang City is strong and difficult to overcome, plus this detour takes a long time, but it is not chosen by Kangxi, so even if he knows that this pass is strong, he can only fight hard.

However, although Kangxi Dun had 100,000 soldiers under the pass, it was difficult to conquer it for many days, in addition to the danger of the pass, the people guarding this pass now are also extraordinary, it is Ning Zuyi, the commander of the first division of the garrison, and the two regiments under his command.

There are not many chess pieces that the Fu Han army can lay out in the chess game of Huguang, and the current guard of the border is the expanded garrison division, of which the most critical three passes of Xinyang and Yiyang are the garrison division.

As a child of the Ning family, Ning Zuyi joined the Fu Han army at the beginning of the anti-Qing Dynasty, and his own character is very resolute, especially good at defending, and he has also made great contributions in previous battles, so his prestige in the army is also very high, and he can be called the leader of the Ning family, second only to Ning Yu and Ning Zhongyi.

Ning Zhongyuan also attached great importance to Ning Zuyi, so he handed over the three passes of Xinyang Prefecture and Yiyang, which were related to the entire Hubei war situation, to Ning Zuyi and his first garrison division, the purpose was to use the geographical advantage to hold the attack of Kangxi's 100,000 army, and to buy more time for the Fuhan army, so as to prepare for the decisive battle of Huguang.

When Ning Yu was still fighting in Jiangxi, Ning Zuyi had already officially fought with Kangxi, and the strength of the first garrison division was not as good as the main division, whether it was the quality of the personnel, or the weapons and equipment, compared with the Qing army, there were not too many advantages, especially with 8,000 and 100,000, and there were no hidden worries within the Fu Han army.

Even Cheng Yuanzhi, the old master of the Cheng family, said that even if the main division of the south is not transferred back, another garrison division should be dispatched, otherwise if the imperial army led by Kangxi conquers Xinyang Prefecture and Yiyang Sanguan, then it will go straight to Xiaogan County along the line of Guangshui and Huayuan, which is really no danger to defend!

What is Xiaogan County? To say that it is the ancestral home of the Ning family, it is the key point of the current Fu Han army. Because the Hanyang Gun Workshop at this time has not really been established, a large part of the weapons are still produced from the Gun Workshop in Xiaogan County, and if it is occupied by Kangxi, it is something that Ning Zhongyuan can't think of.

Because of this crucialness, the suggestions within the Fu Han Army to strengthen the garrison here have never stopped, but Ning Zhongyuan directly handed over the matter to Ning Zuyi, which is not only a great trust, but also can be said to entrust the life and death of the entire Fu Han Army to this middle-aged man.

Ning Zuyi has been thinking about how to deal with the southward movement of Kangxi's army since he led the army to defend Xinyang Prefecture, and has gone deep into Xinyang Prefecture and Yiyang Sanguan dozens of times, interpreting Ningyu's fortress tactics more flexibly, he did not put all the fortresses on the front line of Xinyang Prefecture, but only arranged three cement fortresses in Xinyang, and the rest were strengthening the three passes of Yiyang.

After Kangxi went south, Ning Zuyi commanded the troops to fight in the cement fortress of Xinyang, and did not defend these three fortresses too much, but used these three fortresses to consume the energy and morale of the Qing army. Every time the Qing army suffered heavy losses, they chose to evacuate, so after these battles, not only did they take a lot of advantage, but they did not suffer too many losses.

When Ning Yu was on the front line in Jiangxi, he was also very concerned about the movements here, and when the Wuchang side reported Ning Zuyi's actions to Ning Yu, Ning Yu was even surprised, he really couldn't imagine that this honest and distant uncle had such skills, and it can be said that he carried out the strategic thinking of resisting and consuming the enemy's vital forces to the extreme.

What surprised Ning Yu the most was that Ning Zuyi's every evacuation was very good, not only with the help of the geographical advantages to set up ambushes along the way, but also transferred all the people and materials along the way in advance.

Therefore, after nearly a month of war, Kangxi did not take any advantage, for more than a month, except for taking Xinyang Prefecture, there was no other achievement, as for the casualties of the Qing army, it was also extremely heavy, which made Kangxi's actions more cautious.

It's just that in the face of Pingjing Pass, even the general cannon has no way to take it. Kangxi convened the generals many times, but there was no good way to use human lives to consume them every day, and the war seemed to be out of Kangxi's control from the beginning, but he couldn't help but fight, so he had to fight.

Under the Pingjing Pass, the soldiers of the green battalion of the Qing soldiers gathered in formation to prepare for the siege of the city, and from time to time bullets flew over their heads and fell into the formation of the Qing soldiers behind them, plowing out waves of blood. These people were all transferred from the original green camps in Henan, Shandong, and Shanxi, so they have always done all this tiring and hard work.

The Qing army's general artillery and other large and small artillery guns constantly roared, firing projectiles one after another, gnawing large and small pits on the thick pass city wall, except for the occasional bullets that happened to fall on the city's head, nothing else could have any impact on the Fu Han army.

On the high platform at the far end of the battlefield three miles away, a huge regimental dragon flag fluttered in the wind, and a full 50,000 soldiers of the Eight Banners were dressed in colorful cotton armor, arranged into a huge phalanx, it can be said that in addition to the front of the Northwest Army, these Eight Banners soldiers are basically the most elite part of the current Qing court.

Most of these Eight Banners soldiers are forbidden brigade Eight Banners soldiers, and they are also the core strength of the entire Eight Banners in the capital, although their combat effectiveness has declined, but they are very well equipped, just like the Eight Banners Forward Battalion, the number of bird guns equipped with them accounts for almost half of the entire army. They and the Eight Banners stationed outside constitute the entire strength of the Eight Banners, and they can be called the hearts and minds of the Eight Banners.

Now that the Eight Banners of the Forbidden Brigade have basically been brought out, it can also be seen that Kangxi's determination at this time is that he wants to eliminate Chu Yi at all costs, and only after completing this step, Kangxi can rest assured that he can deal with the White Lotus Sect and Zhu Yigui.