More than a month later.

Nearly two months have passed since Jieyuan returned to Beijing, but strangely, no news from Xijing has reached Hanhai City.

It's just that because Fengtong and Pucheng have already arrived in the hands of Lihua, they have closer contacts with the defenders of Yuanyou.

From the defenders of Yuanyou, Zhu Lihua got a new news, that is, Xu Chang was finally broken by Yongyunqi, and tens of thousands of rebels and Xu Chang people also fled to Quwo and Baishui counties.

Although Yongyunqi did not massacre Xuchang City under Deng Ziwen's supervision, Xuchang almost became an empty city after experiencing military disasters and the people fleeing.

Yongyunqi's 20,000-strong army suffered heavy losses in the siege battle, and after taking an empty city, the remaining 10,000 or so soldiers were unable to pursue the rebels who abandoned the city, and could only watch them flee north.

At present, the eight counties of Baili, Qiuju, Shangdang, Binshui, Yuanyou, Xuchang, Pucheng, and Fengtong in Hexi County have returned to the control of Daqin, but the four counties of Quwo, Baishui, Longmen, and Liangyuan are still in the hands of the rebels.

In the eyes of outsiders, it seems that it is only a matter of time before the entire territory of Hexi is recovered, but only Deng Ziwen and Yongyunqi and others know that although one Xuchang City has been recovered, two more Xuchang Cities have appeared in front of their eyes.

At the beginning, 20,000 soldiers and horses went north, but now there are only more than 10,000 tired soldiers and horses left, and if you want to go north to regain lost territory, it is not easy to rely on these tired soldiers.

Moreover, Yuan You also told a small gossip to Lihua, that is, the Xiaoguan Rong Army and the Lingzhou Rong Army attacked the counties of Yuanzhou from two directions.

It is said that General Wang Min sat in Yuanzhou, although the strength was not as good as the Rong army, but with the advantage of the thick walls of the city, he still confronted the Rong army in Yuanzhou and various counties.

Although this news made Zhu Lihua restless, but thinking that with Zhao Zhihai by his side and Jie Zi in the center, Yuanzhou was full of grain and grass, and it would not be easily attacked by the Rong people.

As for the fact that Jieyuan did not transfer himself to the south in the past two months, it is estimated that it is precisely because of the tight war in Wonju.

Zhu Lihua himself understands that with his own troops and horses, he can always contain some Rong soldiers and horses.

Therefore, not only did he blame Jieyuan, but he also quite understood the reality of this situation.

Through the Yuanyou garrison, Zhu Lihua also wrote to Jieyuan to inform him of his recovery of Fengtong and Pucheng.

And his next plan is to recover all the Longmen and Liangyuan east of Pucheng.

......

It seems that there was too much snow last year, and the first snow of this winter did not arrive until the wax moon, and it fell sparsely from the sky.

In the past six months, in addition to sending scouts to continuously explore the enemy situation in the east and south, he has rectified the three cities in his hands.

Due to the suddenness of the rebellion in the three cities, most of the nobles in the city did not escape like the other counties, and almost all of them died in the rebellion, so the three counties are all unowned lands.

Perhaps it was inspired by the Rong people of Lingzhou, and it happened that there was no aristocracy in the three counties, so Lihua rented all the land in the three counties to these people, and at the same time, he moved 20,000 people from Fengtong and Pucheng to Hanhai City to fill the empty population of Hanhai.

But unlike what the Rong people did, Zhu Lihua did not dare to give these lands to the people for nothing, because after all, this was still the private property of the nobles, even though those nobles had already been slaughtered.

Therefore, after discussing with Gao Yunce and others, he adopted a compromise method, that is, to lease these lands to the people for free.

Although the harvest of these lands is still 10 taxes, not 30 taxes.

But the people who were allocated the land were still ecstatic, and just one free rent had already made them feel grateful to Lu Lihua.

At the same time, Lu Lihua also adopted the same policy as the Rong people for those who joined the army, that is, those who were willing to join the army were exempted from all food taxes at home.

Therefore, in the past six months, nearly 10,000 people in the three counties have come to join the army.

Three months ago, with the merits of Lihua in recovering Fengtong and Pucheng, at the suggestion of Jieyuan, he was also officially awarded the position of captain of Hanhai, and his title was also promoted from the original doctor to the public doctor.

Therefore, Zhu Lihua will no longer be worried about the encroachment of the number of soldiers and horses under his command.

As for Gao Yunce, Liang Qingshu, Wei Yuanheng, and An Moran, the four were named two or five hundred lords.

The most unexpected thing was Wei Mu, and I don't know what way Jie Yuan thought, the Ministry of War actually sealed Wei Mu as five hundred masters, that is to say, no matter who Wei Mu was before, from then on, this cavalry general with a bit of aristocratic demeanor has a new identity.

Looking at the soldiers training in the snow, Yu Lihua became more and more confident in his recovery of Longmen and Liang Yuan.

As early as half a year ago, when he regained Fengtong and Pucheng without spending a single soldier, Zhu Lihua set his sights on Longmen and Liangyuan counties east of Pucheng.

These two counties are listed from north to south to the west of the Yellow Water.

Pucheng borders Longmen to the east, and Liangyuan to the south of Longmen, if you occupy two cities, you can completely surround Quwo and Baishui.

What's more, you can go down the Yellow River to Gyeonggi Untaek by ship, which is only 50 miles away from Xijing.

Although Lihua had never communicated with Deng Ziwen and Yongyunqi, he believed that once General Hexi went north, with his cooperation, he would be able to catch turtles in an urn against the rebels in the two counties.

Every once in a while, the scouts would report the situation of the two counties, so Yu Lihua knew that although the two county towns only had a total of 5,000 soldiers and horses, they accepted the command of the Quwo and Baishui rebels, and there were 20,000 horses in those two counties, and they were also soldiers and horses who had been fighting with the Great Qin army for almost a year, so naturally they were not comparable to the rabble led by Niu Yong at the beginning.

For most of the past six months, neither Ji Lin's Rong army nor the rebels in the south have taken the initiative to attack him, or even harass him, but Zhu Lihua understands that it is not that the rebels are afraid of themselves, but that they do not take themselves seriously at all.

At the moment, they are focusing on what they think is more important.

For example, Xu Changcheng.

When the more than 10,000 remnants led by Yongyunqi were thinking about whether to go north to pursue the rebels, the rebels, who had been resting for almost three months, went south and surrounded Xu Changcheng to death.

In less than three months, the defenders and siegers of the city switched roles, but Yongyunqi obviously did not have the same perseverance as the rebels when they defended the city, and after less than a week, he abandoned Xuchang City with 8,000 soldiers and horses, and withdrew Baili and Qiujiao overnight.

From then on, Yongyunqi did not dare to go north, and the rebels were happy to be free and no longer marched south, and the two armies confronted each other.

And from the Yuanyou defenders, Zhu Lihua also learned about the situation in Lingzhou in the past six months.

Wonju unexpectedly ushered in a big victory.

It is no wonder that Wang Min is known as the spirit fox, and he has some of his own skills under the fame.

After holding on to the counties for several months, Wang Min personally commanded and staged a plan to change the stars in the court.

He first deliberately showed weakness, put on a posture that he was about to give up Chaona, and transferred the soldiers of Chaona back to Wonju one after another, and the defenders of Chaona were reduced from 8,000 to 3,000.

The Rong army naturally would not give up such a good opportunity, so they ordered 30,000 troops, led by Ming Lu, and immediately killed Chaona.

On the second day of the siege, Minglu's descendants came to support the Qin army that saved the dynasty.

After hearing the news, Minglu also smiled and said to the generals beside him: "It seems that my plan to encircle the point and send reinforcements is about to succeed." ”

It turned out that Ming Lu was also suspicious of the Qin army's sudden abandonment of Chaona, so he deliberately kept an eye on it and did not go all out to attack Chaona County.

Seeing that the Qin army was found behind the army on the second day, Ming Lu had a feeling that things were like gods, and this feeling became more and more obvious in the patting of the generals around him.

Minglu ordered everyone to abandon the siege and attack the Qin army that came to them.

Sure enough, the 10,000 Qin troops that came to the army were crushed as soon as they fought each other, and after the Rong army chased and killed for thirty miles, the whole army actually beheaded more than 3,000 heads, just as Ming Lu was triumphantly preparing to kill back to the court, but he found that his army had entered the ambush set by Wang Min.

When Minglu's head was kicked away by Wang Min, he would never have dreamed that the Yuanzhou garrison would dare to lead the soldiers and horses to set up an ambush surrounded by an army of sixty or seventy thousand, and even dare to use thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of people in a city as bait to lure the soldiers to attack.

Moreover, he also resolutely gave up the life and death of his 10,000 soldiers, and played an unpredictable drama of feint defeat and leading the enemy into depth at the cost of the lives of his soldiers.

On the fifteenth day of the winter month of the year 590 of the Great Zhou calendar, Wang Min's army ambushed 30,000 Rong soldiers, won a great victory, and killed 127 generals under the commander of the Rong chieftain Ming Lu and the rebel captain Wang Jia, beheaded 13,000 Rong people and 18,000 rebels.

When the good news of the victory reached Xijing, all the officials in the Xuanwu Palace were overjoyed and celebrated, and even the Duke of Qin forgot about the confrontation with Zhao Zhihai, and the palace announced that Wang Min was the deputy general of Yuanzhou and the fifth doctor of Shangjue.

But unlike everyone in the Xuanwu Palace, the new Sima Jieyuan looked worried.

What he thought of was almost the same as what Zhao Zhihai thought.

After Zhao Zhihai got the victory report, he was really happy for Wang Min for a while.

But then he thought of a major event that was likely to happen, so he immediately wrote to Wang Min, telling him to stick to the city in the future, not to go out of the city to fight easily, and if there was any change, he would lead the troops and horses out of Yuanzhou as soon as possible.

Because, Wang Min's victory has already made the Rong people Shan Yu notice.

As expected by Zhao Zhihai, after Wang Min won a great victory and Ming Lu died, Rong Ren Shan Yu Xiao Jinxing asked Zhezhe to lead 40,000 soldiers and horses Chen Yuhaiwu and Yushan on the front line, and he personally led the rest of Qin Lan's soldiers and horses to Yuanzhou.

At the same time, he also ordered all the soldiers and horses in Lingzhou to go to Qingshui and Qingyang.

In this way, counting the 20,000 soldiers and horses who will come from Xiao Pass after receiving the order, Xiao Jinxing has 140,000 soldiers and horses under his command to be mobilized.

Just when the spring flowers bloom and the soldiers and horses gather, Xiao Jinxing will launch an all-out blow to Yuanzhou and completely smash to death this spirit fox Wang Min, who has never entered his eyes.

This time he was completely angry, since the army went east out of Qin Lan and entered Daqin, he was invincible all the way, so this defeat in Yuanzhou made him feel a little angry for the first time.