On March 3 of that year, Chai Rong personally put on armor and appeared on the battlefield, Purple Mountain, this is Chai Rong's first attack target, if Chai Rong wants to completely cut off the connection between Shouzhou and the outside world and isolate Shouzhou, he must capture Purple Mountain. Zhao Kuangyin, as the vanguard of the whole army, took the lead in climbing the mountain and attacking. In just one morning, Zhao Kuangyin captured the forward camp of the Southern Tang Dynasty and the camp of Shanbei, and killed 3,000 enemies. That night, the army mutinied, and the Southern Tang general Zhu Yuan led his army to surrender. At this point, there is no suspense in this battle, the Southern Tang people don't cut it into several sections, Xu Wenzhi, Bian Hao and other Southern Tang generals were captured, and the Southern Tang people were used to retreating from the Purple Mountain, and they felt at ease after getting on their own boats, but this happened to fall into Chai Rong's strategy.

Chai Rong also has a fleet, Chai Rong ordered the right Xiaowei general Wang Huan to lead the new naval army of thousands of people, hundreds of warships, from the Min River along the Yingshui into Huai, to the south of the Purple Mountain to pursue the enemy, the history records: "Following the leadership of the cavalry to the south bank of Huai and the navy to pursue the eastward fleeing army, to the Zhenhuai army (now Huaiyuan, Anhui) to annihilate its naval army, captured hundreds of warships and grain ships. "In fact, Chai Rong personally pursued, chased for a whole day, galloped more than 100 kilometers, the emperor personally went to the battlefield, who dared not to work hard, as a result, this whole day, nearly 40,000 people were killed, drowned, and captured, only two or three days, the Shouzhou reinforcements that the Southern Tang people had prepared for nearly a year were completely wiped out, and Li Jingda only fled to Jinling from Haozhou with thousands of remnants.

Shouzhou was desperate, Liu Renzhan personally stood on Shouzhou City to witness the fall of Li Jingda, Liu Renzhan understood that the Shouzhou City he was holding was finally unable to hold, and the pain and despair made Liu Renzhan, who was already in poor health, completely ill and fell unconscious all of a sudden. I don't know anything anymore.

After beheading, Liu Renzhan was bedridden, but still insisted on commanding the battle in bed, and Zhou Shizong was moved by his loyalty and fortitude, stopped the assault, and sent a letter to politely ask General Liu to surrender. But at this time, the 58-year-old General Liu had already become a vegetative person, and the deputy envoy Sun Yu and others surrendered in the name of Liu Renzhan, and carried the paralyzed Liu Renzhan out of the city with a bed to accept the surrender. When Chai Rong saw Liu Renzhan, he immediately comforted him and named him the captain of the school and the envoy of the festival in public, which is already a high-ranking official Houlu that others can't think of in their lives, but this is an insult or a reward for Liu Renzhan. According to historical records, Liu Renzhan never woke up since he fell into a coma, and he did not accept Chai Rong's kindness and died.

But no matter what, the fall of Shouzhou City marks that the Southern Tang Dynasty's power in Jiangbei has been completely swept away, and the territory of the Central Plains has been replanned. But no one expected that Chai Rong would retire, and in the face of such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Chai Rong, who had always been wise and martial, would retreat. What's going on here?

Almost all the generals of the Later Zhou Dynasty sighed, but everyone also understood that Chai Rong was right. If Chai Rong doesn't hurry up, there will be chaos in the backyard of the coming week. Li Jing is not a very good general compared to Chai Rong, but Li Jing can become a strong enemy of Chai Rong because of his other outstanding skill, diplomacy.

Fold Li Jing compared himself to Liu Bei during the Three Kingdoms period, so where is Sun Quan? Li Jing looked around and finally found a suitable ally, the Khitan. But even if he finds it, there is still a week in between, will Chai Rong let Li Jing go over so easily? Don't worry, there is no endless road, Li Jing found a very hidden passage, took a boat directly from Jiangnan to Bohai Bay, and got off the boat from Dalian and then went to Shangdu in Khitan. In this way, the Southern Tang people used their advanced navigation technology to easily pass through the territory of the Later Zhou, and Li Jing soon reached an alliance with the Khitan and the Northern Han, turning Chai Rong into Cao Cao.

So Chai Rong had no choice but to lead the army back to the north to build a wall, and the Later Zhou people had to give up this golden opportunity to let the Southern Tang people escape another catastrophe, so that the Southern Tang people realized that their monarch still had two brushes. However, what they don't know is that Li Jing, who won the diplomatic victory, is very painful and extremely remorseful at this time, he forgot what his father taught him, and he has done wrong all these years. He forgot what his father Li Yu taught him, Li Yu, the founding emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was an extremely powerful person, first of all, if this old gentleman was alive, Chai Rong could or dared to send troops to fight the Southern Tang Dynasty did not dare to say.

This old gentleman, if there is an emperor ranking list in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, he is enough to rank in the top three, leaving Guo Wei and Liu Zhiyuan far behind. It can be said that Li Yu can't count one but can count two, and this two is the later Chai Rong. But what makes Li Yu more powerful than Chai Rong is that Li Yu is really self-made, he doesn't want Chai Rong to be like him, although he has no prestige, he has a rich family property left by Guo Wei. Li Yu's life is very miserable, he was an orphan since he was a child, his parents died in the war, Li Yu can't even solve the basic food and clothing problem, he can only enter the temple as a small monk to barely make a living. This Li Yu is a bit similar to the later Zhu Yuanzhang, the difference is that Zhu Yuanzhang was eighteen years old when he became a monk, and Li Yu was only six years old. At that time, the territory of the Southern Tang Dynasty was not called the Southern Tang Dynasty, and there was a big country called Wu on the territory of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and their head was the famous Yang Xingmi, the first person of the five generations.

Li Yu is very beautiful, Yang Xingmi couldn't bear to attack him, so he accepted Li Yu as his righteous son, but the sons of Mr. Yang Xingmi seemed to have some foresight and hated Li Yu very much. History also proves that Yang Xingmi's sons are really the ones who should have killed Li Yu at that time, so that they would not have the lonely life they had later. But there was no way, Yang Xingmi still followed the advice of his sons and handed over the child to his subordinate general Xu Wen to raise, and since then Li Yu has changed his name and surname to Xu Zhihe.

Xu Zhihe is talented and intelligent, serving Xu Wen as his father, and Xu Wen's wife Li also takes good care of Xu Zhihe because of the same surname. Xu Zhihe once traveled with Xu Wen, Xu Wen drove Xu Zhihe away with a cane because of his bad mood, and when he got home, Xu Zhihe greeted him at the door. Xu Wen was surprised and said, "Why are you in this place!" Xu Zhihe replied: "As a son of man, how can he abandon his parents, and his father is angry and returns to his mother, as the common feeling of a son." Xu Wen loved Xu Zhihe even more because of this.

When Xu Zhihe grew up, he was seven feet long, his forehead was long, he was short and short, his voice was like a bell, he liked to read, and he was good at riding and shooting.

Briefly speaking, this Xu Zhihe was able to fight habitually, first helping his adoptive father Xu Wen to seize the military and political power of Wu State, and later after Xu Wen's death, he himself won the military and political power of Wu State. Then the yellow robe was added, the dynasty was changed, and his surname Li, which had been glorious for two or three hundred years, was restored, and then regardless of whether the parties agreed or not, he claimed to be a descendant of Li Shimin, the heavenly khan, and renamed the country Tang. In history, in order to distinguish it from the Tang Dynasty of Li Cunqiao, who coexisted at that time, he was called the Southern Tang Dynasty.

It should be noted that although Li Yu has come all the way from the road of power, there is not much blood on his hands, he is deeply grateful to his adoptive father Xu Wen, and he also treats his adoptive father's sons as much as possible, even the princes and grandsons of Wu have not been killed, of course, the last emperor of Wu must be killed.

Li Yu's merits are different from other emperors in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, he is not good at war, on the contrary, he is very rational, when he was alive, the Southern Tang Dynasty has become the most powerful monarch in the south, and his ministers have persuaded him to unify the south as soon as possible, and then the Northern Expedition and finally unify the country. But Li Yu didn't have this idea, just smiled slightly, and spent his whole life recuperating, waiting for the opportunity. Because of this, Li Yu was ridiculed by the minister Feng Yansi as "Tian Sheweng". In 942 (the sixth year of the Shengyuan Dynasty), Wu Yue suffered a natural disaster, and the ministers of the Southern Tang Dynasty advised Li Yu to take the opportunity to send troops to destroy Wu Yue. Li Yu resolutely refused, believing that the people in the country needed to recuperate and should not go to war, and sent envoys to comfort Wu Yue and sent many gifts.

When Li Yu was dying, he warned his son: "You remember, if you use troops in the Central Plains, the surrounding countries will not dare to act rashly, but if you take action against the surrounding countries, the big countries in the Central Plains will inevitably send troops south, and you will inevitably be attacked on all sides at that time." So don't take the small countries around you as a big problem, try to maintain friendly relations with the surrounding countries, and then, when you seek an opportunity to go north to win with the Central Plains Dynasty, the surrounding small countries will also help you, at least there will be no chaos in the rear. As for the big countries of the Central Plains, no matter who wins or loses, they are the sworn enemies of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and the Northern Expedition has always been difficult, so you can't be in a hurry, as long as the north continues to be chaotic, there will definitely be opportunities, and at that time, the Central Plains can be decided. It's just that when the opportunity comes, you must be prepared for anything. So Li Yu left Li Jing a huge military reserve before he died, just Dechang Palace, there are seven million money, Zhao Kuangyin has not been able to save such a large amount of wealth in his life, but Li Yu is very simple, dressed very plainly, uses an iron basin, only wears linen clothes in the palace, and Li Yu's palace has not been expanded until his death, at most only some bonsai have been added.

But Li Yu's son Li Jing didn't want him at all, since Li Jing succeeded to the throne, he began to be extravagant, how luxurious it is, let's not talk about it first, and when Li Yu succeeds to the throne, we will say it in detail, in a word, Li Yu's death is reasonable, there is no sympathy at all, who said that he can be a good emperor if he can make a few poems. Song Huizong, Zhao Jiqin, chess, calligraphy and painting are all refined, and they are not beaten by the Jurchens. What's more, Li Yu also killed heroes and trusted treacherous evil. Let's continue to talk about Li Jing, this Li Jing sent troops from all sides and successively destroyed Chu and Fujian. The country increased from 28 states to 35 states, and for a time the military was powerful and the countries looked sideways, but unfortunately, these newly acquired lands soon became a heavy burden, and the rebellion was endless for a few years, and Li Jing continued to send troops to suppress it, and the result became a vicious circle. Soon, when the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Li Yu had been looking forward to for a lifetime appeared, the Southern Tang Dynasty was no longer able to march north.

So, what exactly is this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? What happened to Chai Rong to build the wall to the north? We'll talk about that next time.