In Lin Fan's opinion, the results of the battalions in suppressing bandits in the past month are still good. The largest and most active hills in Shenzhou were basically leveled out during this military exercise.

As for the rest of the fish that slipped through the net, they were all small bandits with a small number of people.

These people had already been frightened, and when they saw that the officials and soldiers had not yet shown signs of stopping, they hurriedly made a turtle with a shrunken head, for fear of being targeted by the officials and soldiers, and then killed themselves on the top of the mountain and served themselves to the pot.

In this way, under the deterrence of the official army, the banditry in Shenzhou was immediately reduced. The bandits and bandits who were lucky enough to escape also did not dare to show their heads for the time being, and a rare calm was restored in the countryside.

With very few casualties, the officers and soldiers were able to quell the bandits raging in Shenzhou, so Lin Fan was quite satisfied with the performance of the battalions during this time.

In fact, this is also a matter of course, if the official army has an absolute advantage in armor and armament and numbers, in order to eliminate several bandits and bandits who are not in the climate, they have to pay the same or greater casualties, Lin Fan has to ask if he and the military attaches are too incompetent?

In fact, for the officers and troops led by Lin Fan, the most difficult thing in this battle has never been how to win, but how to find those bandits.

It's good that there are a lot of strong thieves, at least there is a cottage, and the monk can't run the temple, and there is a way to deal with this kind of bandit, and this is also the easiest to solve.

The difficult thing is those small ones, many small groups of thieves are a few people together, and they enter the mountain as soon as their brains are hot, and three or five people dare to call themselves the king of the mountain when they occupy a broken temple.

How dare this kind of small group of bandits fight with the brigade of officers and soldiers. As soon as the officers and soldiers came, they would drill into the forest before the attack began, and scatter as birds and beasts.

And trying to find them in the dense mountains and forests is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack, which requires huge manpower and material resources. The officers and soldiers apparently did not have time to waste there, and after searching for them to no avail, they had to retreat.

And often as soon as the front foot of the officers and soldiers leaves, they come back and continue to harm the party.

For these thieves, if the officers and soldiers come again, they can just leave, anyway, the officers and soldiers can't always be stationed here, and sooner or later they have to withdraw.

They're like a bunch of slippery loaches that can always find a way to slip through your fingers, and that's what makes them the hardest to deal with.

Just when Lin Fan planned to comb through the mountains of Shenzhou once and for all, he finally received the first official order since the battalions were trained into the army.

Lin Fan, who received the order, asked the battalions that were still searching for the fish that had slipped through the net outside to quickly return to the camp and enter a state of readiness.

The retreat of the officers and soldiers relieved the small fish and shrimp who were trembling under the water. While they were crying out for joy in their hearts, they were also secretly praying that the evil stars would never notice them again.

And Lin Fan really didn't want to notice these small fish and shrimp at this time, he set his eyes farther north.

A lot of things have happened to Lin Fan in the past six months, and at the same time, there has been a big protracted battle in Zhongyuan Dao. And this war is finally coming to an end.

Zhou Chang, the governor of Zhongyuan Province, led his official army and besieged Chen Xinglong's Xingwang army in a small area centered on Chenzhou.

After a long war of attrition, the decline of the Xingwang army became more and more obvious.

Until now, defeat after defeat

Xingwang's army could only retreat in Chenzhou and several nearby cities, and it was already at the last moment of the end of the crossbow.

Zhou Chang, as a generation of famous generals, naturally would not fail to see that the defeat of the thief army had been revealed, not to mention that all this happened under his planning.

However, Zhou Chang did not relax, he ordered the Central Plains Provincial Army to step up the offensive against the Xingwang Army, and constantly compressed the activity area of the Xingwang Army.

The official army approached Chenzhou, the base camp of the Xingwang army, step by step, and in Zhou Chang's view, it was not far from the final decisive battle between the two sides.

And Chen Xinglong, the leader of the rebel army, also knew that the situation was irreparable, and the defeat of the Xingwang army was decided.

In fact, from the moment Chen Xinglong decided to set the capital of Chenzhou and divide the hundred officials, many people expected these things to happen today.

The reason why thieves are so difficult to exterminate is that they are extremely mobile. Today is still in Zhongyuan Road, maybe tomorrow will be Hedong Road, the day after tomorrow will be Longxi.

This kind of large-scale and rapid march without direction made it difficult for the officers and soldiers to predict their aims. In addition, the lack of cooperation between the officers and troops in various localities will not be able to make targeted arrangements for the rogue army. All you can do is bite their tails and eat ash behind their butts.

This move not only made the officers and soldiers busy fighting fires everywhere and exhausted.

It is also convenient for the thief army to collect food and conscription on the spot wherever they go, coercing the homeless and poor people to join them, and there is really no way to rob the people to feed themselves.

In contrast, the official army is not so convenient, although the official army has not done less to rob the people, and even the killing of good people has not been done.

Anyway, the heads of thieves and ordinary people are the same, and the officials and masters of the military department who review military merits can't see it, or they don't bother to care about it at all.

But after all, the officials and soldiers represent the imperial court, and at least face is still needed.

There is still some restraint in these things, everyone knows that this kind of thing is disgraceful, and it has to be covered up.

Among the generals responsible for encirclement and suppression, there are smart ones who directly blame the thieves for this kind of thing, and they don't lack this black pot anyway.

And because the thieves are too scattered, they often fight in small groups of people, which makes it even more difficult to restrain everyone due to the already loose military discipline.

The thieves do so much of this that when it happens, they don't know if it's themselves or if some of them do it. can only eat coptis dumbly, and I can't say the bitterness.

The officials and soldiers could not ignore the plunder like the thieves, which made it very likely that if the food and salaries of the imperial court could not arrive in time, or if the local government was unwilling to cooperate, the supply capacity of the officials and soldiers would probably not be as good as those of the thieves.

However, the combat power of the imperial court officials and troops was still much higher than that of the army composed of these displaced people. In any case, the Rogue Army is just a group of ordinary people with weapons, and it is difficult to compete head-on with formally trained officers and soldiers.

However, the mobility and dispersion of the thieves made it difficult for the officers and soldiers to complete the battle.

So there is such a scene, that is, the officers and soldiers keep winning battles, but the thieves seem to never be finished, and if they kill this batch today, a new batch will emerge tomorrow.

Sometimes a great battle has passed, and the thieves are lying in ambush all over the field, and only a remnant of the defeated army is left to escape. But as long as their leader doesn't

Die, change places, and soon be able to pull up a team of tens of thousands of men and horses to continue to fight against the court.

The officers and soldiers were so tired of suppressing bandits that they vomited blood, and this was just such a result. If the thieves run in front, the officers and soldiers can only chase after them all the time. The army of thieves has been defeated again and again, and has revived, again and again.

But things don't stay the same forever, and when the outcasts grow to a certain extent, the money and food collected on the march is no longer enough to feed so many people.

Chen Xinglong was faced with such a choice at that time, there were hundreds of thousands of people under his command, and if he wanted to ensure that these people lived, he must have his own chassis.

But once the thieves settle down in one place and take root, they lose the flexibility they rely on the most, and the officials and troops can encircle and attack them in a targeted manner.

When the imperial court still has the strength to control the situation, if you want to fight the power of the whole country with a corner of the land, the official army can slowly grind you to death in the continuous war of attrition. If this goes on for a long time, Chen Xinglong's failure will become inevitable.

Chen Xinglong also understood that it was not feasible to be trapped in an isolated city, and after discussing countermeasures with his staff and subordinates for several days, he decided to leave.

As for the territory of Chenzhou, since you can't ask for it, it's a big deal.

The eldest husband can afford to take it and put it down, I, Chen Xinglong, were not chased around by the officials and soldiers before, but now I am back to the past. I can go from scratch to this point, who can say that I will not be able to lay a bigger ground and create a bigger foundation in the future.

It's just that the official army has now surrounded Chenzhou, and it is not so easy to leave.

Chen Xinglong and his staff studied the map for a long time, and found that the east, west, and north were all elite troops under Zhou Chang's command, and no matter where they were, they were not a bone to gnaw on.

If you break through from these directions, you may not only not be able to gnaw down the bones, but you will also have to lose a few teeth.

In the end, they still set their sights on the south, where the official army was the weakest.

Compared with the northern provinces, the south has experienced less war, and the combat strength of the army is not as good as that of the north.

In particular, one Zhang Feng'er turned Huainan Province upside down, and almost defeated half of Huainan Province, which made Chen Xinglong look down on the combat strength of the Huainan Province army.

Although Zhang Feng'er was defeated in the end, it was because he gathered almost all the troops of Huainan Province, and Shi Qiuming, the governor of Huainan Province, personally went out to suppress Zhang Feng'er. This kind of performance of the Huainan Provincial Army is difficult for Chen Xinglong to look up to them.

The persimmon has to be pinched softly, but your soft persimmon has blocked my way forward, don't bully you and bully anyone.

As a result, the Xingwang army began to assemble and infiltrate Huainan Province on a large scale, intending to open up the road to the south.

In particular, Gwangju, which was the closest to it, quickly couldn't hold on under the attack of the thief army, and hurriedly asked for help from the governor of Huainan Province, Yamen.

And the order Lin Fan received was to rush to the aid of Gwangju and intercept the thief army going south, and at the same time cooperate with the Central Plains Provincial Army to fight and besiege Chen Xinglong.

At the same time, Shi Qiuming also asked him to cooperate with the soldiers and horses of the Central Plains Province to blockade Chenzhou, so as to create conditions for the Central Plains Provincial officials and troops to annihilate the Xingwang army in one fell swoop.

The military order was like a mountain, and Lin Fan, who received the order, did not waste too much time, and soon led the army to Gwangju.

A few days later, the army entered the border of Gwangju and joined the Gwangju army.