In Hanzhong Mansion in February, the temperature warmed up quickly, except for some secluded corners, the snow covering the earth and branches also disappeared. "The first month of the year is stinging, and the words are stinging. Everything is shocked, and the earthquake is thunder, so it is called stunning. It was the stinging insects who fled in shock", the birds and beasts have all recovered their stupidity, and the forces of all parties in southern Shaanxi, which were originally hindered by the cold and snow, have also begun to plan their actions - one step at a time, no matter who it is, they do not want to be at a disadvantage in the game of fighting for the initiative of the great Han Central Government.

Before and after the sting, Liu Yuyang, who was not to be outdone, sent more than 2,000 soldiers under Liu Shaozong's refusal to help, and left Hanzhong City, intending to build several military villages at the northern end of the city, in order to provide wing protection for the south Zhengcheng of Hanzhong. In the impetus for him to go out of the city, King Rui made a great effort. After Sun Xianzu fled back to Hanzhong City alone, he closed his home, avoided all guests, and looked disheartened. King Rui's original sustenance to save his daughter came to naught, and he was naturally panicked and anxious, and the princess cried day and night, so in desperation, he could only put the treasure on Liu Yuyang.

It's just that Liu Yuyang is a scribe, and he is good at government affairs, and he doesn't know anything about everything. He delegated full military authority to a few of his subordinate officers, who deceived him into ignorance and secretly turned the troops of more than 2,000 people into a miasma. Not to mention deceiving the superiors and subordinates to squeeze out a lot of oil and water, they even divided into seven or eight factions to compete for power and profit.

Originally, Liu Yuyang had relatively high expectations for this dispatch, but the facts gave him a heavy blow: the official army established three small villages south of Doushanzhai one after another, on the one hand, in order to deal with the city of Hanzhong, and on the other hand, to cut off the connection between Baocheng County and Chenggu County, which was controlled by Zhao Ying. In order to rush the work, the three small villages were established separately under the leadership of different officers, and the Zhao battalion took advantage of the failure of the three villages to be established, and attacked from the east and west, and intercepted the back road with cavalry. This officer and army, which lacked combat experience, immediately went into chaos, and several officers insisted on their own words, and for a long time they could not determine a unified method of dealing with them, resulting in the delay of the fighters, and in the end they had to take charge of their own families and break through separately. In the end, less than 1,000 officers and soldiers fled back to Hanzhong Fucheng, and the three camps under construction were also kicked by Zhao Ying.

When Liu Yuyang heard the news, he was angry and sad, and he was impeached, and his stay is still undecided. And Liu Shaozong saw that Sun Xianzu and Liu Yuyang were defeated one after another, and he was even more determined to stay in Hanzhong. After all, no matter how tempting this battle feat is, no matter how tightly King Rui urges him, and how bright and lovely the Huaqing County Lord is, it is not as important as the good head on his neck.

Just looking at the situation during this period, Zhao Ying actually had the complete initiative in Hanzhong, although a few days ago the horse survey reported, saying that the more than 10,000 thieves in the east gave up the plan to meet with Zhao Ying under the weighing, and turned to Henan, but for such a weak "friendly army", Zhao Dangshi did not care. In order to further intimidate the officials and troops of Hanzhong Prefecture, Zhao Dangshi took great care to gather tens of thousands of troops in early March, surrounded the city of Hanzhong Prefecture, and made several feints to frighten the officials and troops. Of course, it is impossible for Zhao Dangshi to really fight the idea of Hanzhong Mansion, because this city has been under martial law for a long time, and forcibly attacking it will cost too much and the chance of victory will be slim.

After gaining temporary control of the four fields of Hanzhong Prefecture, Zhao Ying began an extremely brutal plunder. The stakes are high, and the fierce battle that is coming soon is also about survival. Zhao Ying must collect enough food and materials to solve his worries and lay a solid foundation. In the case of his own difficult protection, Zhao Dangshi has no woman's benevolence, within the maximum flexibility allowed by military discipline, almost none of the rural forts within a radius of one or two hundred miles of Hanzhong Mansion can escape the plundering of Zhao Ying's soldiers and horses, but the ensuing resistance is also unprecedentedly fierce. It can be said that throughout February and early March, tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in the Zhao battalion were struggling to support the surging resistance of various villagers and regiments in the area under the control of the bomb. Fortunately, the local armed forces in these rural areas are small and scattered, and it will be more than troublesome to deal with them one after another, but it will not bring a real challenge to Zhao Ying, who has no intention of taking root and running here.

In March, "there were thieves in Lintao, Gongchang, and Hanzhong", Hong Chengchou judged the situation and thought that "Lin, Gong is urgent", and transferred Zuo Guangxian, Cao Bianjiao, Ma Ke and Zu Dabi, who had not long entered Shaanxi, to these two places to suppress thieves, and Hanzhong was besieged by Zhao Dangshi, and the situation was also urgent. After thinking about it again and again, Hong Chengchou finally decided to completely let go of Li Zicheng, who had been chased by him for more than half a year, and personally went to southern Shaanxi to supervise the battle.

Lai Yingjian, He Renlong, and Kong Quanbin in Guanzhong were all masters who took a step with a whip, and it was not until Hong Chengchou was really coming that he was busy mobilizing the army. They will march from Yixian and Baoji, and cooperate with the actions of the main forces such as Zuo Guangxian and Cao Bianjiao in the west to go south to Hanzhong.

It can be said that this time, Hong Chengchou made up his mind to no longer care about Li Zicheng, who was living in fear, but first relieved the siege of Hanzhong and helped the uncle of the current saint escape from the predicament.

Since Zhao Dangshi obeyed Li Zi as the "king of Chuang" and became a "general", the relationship between the two sides has become very close, and since a "alliance" relationship has been reached, then the two sides will naturally take each other into account in the entire strategy.

The current situation is that Hong Chengchou has given up on Li Zicheng and intends to concentrate on exterminating Zhao Dangshi, who has been quite arrogant recently. Whether it is Li Zicheng or Zhao Dangshi, they all know the truth of cold lips and teeth. If Hong Chengchou is allowed to concentrate the main force of the Shaanxi official army in southern Shaanxi, then the fate of Zhao Ying can be imagined. After discussing with the generals, Li Zicheng felt that he needed to jump out and make some moves at the right time to attract the attention of the officers and soldiers again.

This idea was questioned by many generals who broke into the camp, who thought that they had been in a state of panic for more than half a year, and they had finally survived the Hong Barbarian today, and they could get some respite, and they should not be burned again anyway. However, the generals in the battalion, who only had a little long-term vision, did not think so. As Tian Jianxiu said, he tried to show Zhao Ying's role in responding to the camp in northern Shaanxi in southern Shaanxi, and once Zhao Ying's vitality was greatly damaged, Hong Chengchou turned the gun again, and he was fully capable of forcing the camp into a dead end as before. However, once the camp was reopened in northern Shaanxi, it was impossible for Hong Chengchou, whose duty was to guard the three sides, to sit idly by, and the situation at that time could only be that he took some of the officers and troops transferred to southern Shaanxi and rushed to northern Shaanxi to fight the fire. The temperament of the officials and soldiers in Shaanxi, Li Zicheng and others, who have dealt with them for many years, know best, Hong Chengchou is still good to say, once he is not there, then he can grind for a while, anyway, he will not be able to reap any benefits in the end - "Shaanxi soldiers have been short of pay for a long time, and Hong Chengchou has nothing to do with weakness", which is evident from the three departments of He, He, and Kong, who had not advanced in Guanzhong before.

Hong Chengchou focused on southern Shaanxi, which was naturally beyond the reach of northern Shaanxi. In dealing with the remaining part of the officers and soldiers who were passive and sluggish, Li Zicheng still had confidence. Hong Chengchou lost personal control of the situation in northern Shaanxi, and at that time he would inevitably fall into the dilemma of not being able to take care of each other—he could neither devote all his main forces to the campaign to annihilate the Zhao camp, nor could he restrain Li Zicheng, who was crisscrossing northern Shaanxi. In this way, this can not only support the Zhao camp, but also not put the camp in a dangerous situation.

Li Zicheng has a very strong execution, and in early April, he successfully ambushed and annihilated a group of officers and troops retreating south in Jinniuchuan, and at the same time sent people to contact the scorpion block Tuoyangkun who had been so miserable that he begged to surrender under the personal pursuit of Hong Chengchou. Tuoyangkun actually doesn't think that according to Li Zicheng's current strength, he is qualified to inherit King Chuang, but he himself is now defeated by the remnants of the army, and his demise is only in the mist, no one can ask for it, and only Li Zicheng's camp can help from far and near, so he is helpless, and he also recognizes Li Zicheng's status, and hopes that Li Zicheng will respond.

Tuoyangkun and Li Zicheng are good fighters, once they connect their heads, both sides are like drinking a sip of life-saving water, and they are suddenly reborn. They quickly planned an operation, and shortly after the Battle of Jinniuchuan, Hong Chengchou felt that the situation in northern Shaanxi did not seem to be so easy to deal with, so he temporarily dispatched Wang Chengen, He Renlong, Sun Shoufa and other troops who were expected to go south to the north to continue to pursue and kill Li Zicheng. Tuoyangkun from Qinzhou, Huizhou fraud defeat, has been retreating into Pingliang, Fengxiang around, He Renlong chased very urgently, did not notice for a while, in Liulin fell into the ambush of the soldiers and horses who had been waiting for a long time, defeated, the official Ding Taiming was killed. This is not the first time He Renlong has been ambushed by Li Zicheng, and he was dismissed from his post because of this, and the edict "kill the thief to redeem himself". After Li Zicheng and Tuoyangkun gained power, they hid back in the mountains around the steps and Chengcheng, set up an ambush according to the danger, and started a maneuver with the officers and troops who followed up.

Li Zicheng's efforts in the north, Zhao Dangshi in the south did not notice it at the first time. Because no matter how hard Li Zicheng tries, the current strength is there, and Hong Chengchou's general policy of going all out to the south will not be shaken. Just this month, Zhao Dangshi received an urgent report that Hong Chengchou had personally supervised the army and leveled the remnants of Gongchang Mansion, and now he has entered Luoyang one after another.

Luoyang County already belongs to the Hanzhong Prefecture, and is less than 200 miles away from the southeast of the county, among which there is only the Feixian Ridge in the Lingzun Mountain, which is a dangerous place, that is to say, Hao Shaoqi and Hui Dengxiang, who are stationed in the county, are already at the forefront of the entire war.

This was something that Zhao Dangshi hadn't thought of before. He thought that Hong Chengchou would choose to go down to Hanzhong from the Qinling Mountains, in that case, Baocheng County would most likely become an outpost, and the soldiers and horses of Chu County and Chenggu County, which were distributed on the left and right, could support him at the same time. But Hong Chengchou is worthy of the old man, from less than ten days, from the north of Shaanxi into Gongchang, and quickly assembled the soldiers and horses to Luoyang, in this way, the front of the Zhao camp has been invisibly stretched a lot, in the far end of the Chenggu County is in the embarrassing situation that is likely to be out of touch with the main battlefield, and at the same time the Hanzhong Fucheng nailed in the middle has also caused serious hidden dangers to the smooth flow of the front of the Zhao camp, it can be said that before the formal handover, the war without gunpowder has begun. At this point, Zhao Dangshi, who had only reacted for a long time, had already lost the upper hand against such a warlike and resourceful hand as Shang Hong Chengchou.

At the same time, to Zhao Dangshi's surprise, Hong Chengchou obviously took Zu Dabi into account, he knew Zu Dabi's personality of not listening to dispatches, so in order to prevent Zu Dabi's possible light army from adventuring, he adopted indirect means and made a request to Zu Dabi, who had arrived in Guanzhong early and was preparing to go south, to support Gongchang Mansion. For Zu Dabi, where to suppress thieves is not to suppress thieves? He temporarily gave up the decision to go south alone, and instead entered Gongchang to fight with Zuo Guangxian and others, until this time he entered Luoyang with Hong Chengchou, which made Zhao Dangshi pre-set the plan to attack the ancestral army alone first. These two points alone had a direct impact on the battle plan laid out by Zhao Ying early in the morning.

However, it is not too late to make amends, and many officers and troops in northern Shaanxi are mobilized, after all, it takes time, and Hong Chengchou can quickly mobilize the army to affect the deployment of Zhao Ying. Zhao Ying also has the opportunity to make strategic adjustments in a timely manner according to the actual situation.

It's just that before the adjustment can be made, another bad news comes from the south. It turned out that in order to avoid dragging his feet in logistics, Hou Liangzhu first allocated 1,000 people to the front and went out of the mountain pass first, in order to echo Hong Chengchou and other troops. When Hu Jiusi heard the news, he immediately sent Yang San to lead his troops to block the attack. But the heavens did not fulfill people's wishes, Yang San's strength was really weak, three or four thousand people in the northern Sichuan Huai Shuyan and a thousand Hou family army fought for only two quarters of an hour, then they were depressed and dispersed, more than 100 people were killed, Yang San abandoned his horse and fled over the mountain. This is not counting, in the middle of the month, Sichuan from northern Sichuan to the east of central Sichuan, as many as seven prefectures and counties earthquakes, rocks collapsed, blocking the road, Hu Jiusi originally wanted to mobilize tens of thousands of people to "do a big deal" once, in the face of this sudden situation can only give up, now sent people to Zhao Ying, hoping that Zhao Ying sent a force of troops to the south to cooperate, in order to achieve the goal of controlling the mountain pass and preventing the main force of the Sichuan army from Sichuan.

This pile, one thing after another flew into Zhao Dangshi's tent like snowflakes.

"Therefore, the heavens will descend on people, and they must first suffer their minds, strain their muscles and bones, starve their bodies and skins, empty their bodies, and act chaotically, so they are tempted to endure and benefit what they cannot." Zhao Dangshi looked at the endless stream of soldiers outside the tent, and said so.