At this point, more than 50,000 soldiers and horses of the Left Army, with only about 30,000 main forces, were able to withdraw safely and hurriedly disappeared into the depths of the night, finally saving their lives.

And the soldiers who stayed behind to stop the enemy had a much more tragic fate.

According to the statistics of the civil officials of the Tang Army's Supervision and Fu Division, nearly 5,000 people in the left army were slaughtered by the Tang army, and the entire battlefield was reflected by the faint moonlight that had just peeked out of the cloud curtain. There were less than 3,000 people, and they were lucky enough to become prisoners of the Tang Army and save their lives.

The continuous cheers were like rolling spring thunder, resounding through the field.

Zu Dabi, the main general of the Tang Army, who personally went into battle to kill, collected the riding knife, wiped the blood on his face, and his panting face was both proud and inexplicably regretful.

It's a pity, although in this battle, he successfully defeated Wang Deren's remaining troops, unexpectedly, he still fell into this guy's plan to lose the car and protect the commander, so that he was able to lead the main force of more than 30,000 people to retreat westward and escape, which is really a pity.

What's even more hateful is that because the night is dark and the moonlight is unknown, his own soldiers are not familiar with night fighting, so they can't go to pursue, so they can only sit back and watch Wang Deren and them flee away, which is really a pity.

Zu Dabi let out a long sigh and ordered the whole army to quickly clean up the battlefield, and at the same time, surrounded by a group of guards, he went straight all the way and entered Macheng from the east gate.

Entering the city, in Macheng, the left army had already withdrawn, and all the money, grain, and ordnance warehouses had already been moved away and were empty. At a glance, the entire city is empty and empty, like a dead city.

Zu Dabi punched his thigh hard, and the hatred in his heart was indescribable.

Damn, I knew that this was the result, and I should have beaten Wang Deren hard in the first place.

After another long sigh, he quickly told his subordinates to write a brief letter about the defeat of Wang Deren and the capture of Macheng, and immediately sent a messenger to the Tang Army's Sixth Town Camp outside Susong City, and handed it over to Liu Guoneng, the mayor of the Sixth Town.

Zu Dabi's report came late after all.

Because only one day later, Liu Guoneng received an urgent report from his sentry cavalry, saying that the enemy soldiers in the Susong area were suddenly very rare, but for some reason.

When Liu Guoneng heard the report, he was suddenly suspicious, he thought about it for a while, and personally led a group of guards out of the tent to investigate, and galloped all the way to Susong County.

Sure enough, the enemy sentry cavalry that could be seen in the past was no trace at this time, and Liu Guoneng secretly said that it was not good in his heart, so he immediately led his troops to the city of Susong County, and after carefully observing the guards on the city wall with a clairhandly mirror, his heart sank suddenly.

He found that the guards on the city wall were in an untidy posture and had wooden expressions, and many of them had no armor, but just stood on the city wall crookedly with a banner, looking lifeless.

Damn, where are the soldiers of the left army, they are all young men in the city who are temporarily pulled to make up the numbers.

It can be seen that Jin Shenghuan's gang and his nearly 100,000 soldiers have already withdrawn in the past two days. These days, they have been bluffing and making a posture of attacking, but secretly they are retreating and quietly withdrawing their troops back to Wuchang, which is completely beyond their own expectations.

Liu Guoneng sighed secretly, I really didn't expect that Lao Tzu had been fighting for a long time, and he had never seen any scenes, but now he was too cautious, and he actually fell for Jin Shenghuan's golden cicada shell plan, which is really regrettable!

He did not hesitate any longer, and then waved his army to the east, and Susong City, which was garrisoned by the young and strong people in the city, did not resist, and immediately opened the door and surrendered, but avoided a sword fight.

Entering the city, sure enough, Susong was the same as Macheng, the enemy army had already withdrawn, and only one empty city was left, which made Liu Guoneng sigh for it.

Not long after Liu Guoneng took Susong City, he received at the same time the battle report that the Ninth Town of the Tang Army had taken Jiujiang City and that Zu Dabi had captured Macheng.

Liu Guoneng sighed, regretting that he had missed the opportunity to chase down Jin Shenghuan's troops, but when he saw Huang Degong's words at the end of his letter, he didn't realize that his eyes lit up.

It turned out that Huang Degong told him in the letter that after capturing Jiujiang City, he immediately received a message from Li Xiao's flying pigeon. In the letter, Li Xiao put forward new requirements for Huang Degong's soldiers and horses in the Ninth Town.

Li Xiao asked them not to rest after capturing Jiujiang City, and immediately marched north with all their might, and did not attack Wuchang first, but instead asked the whole army to turn around and flank Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren's troops who withdrew from the eastern front together with Liu Guoneng's troops.

In his letter to Huang Degong, Li Xiao clearly stated that now that Jiujiang has fallen, Zuo Liangyu in Wuchang City has become a frightened bird, as long as he doesn't want to lose his nest Wuchang, then the only thing he can do now is to shrink his troops, give up the eastern front, and then go all out to surrender Wuchang.

Therefore, he asked the soldiers and horses of the Ninth Town of the Tang Army to attack with all their might, hoping that when Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren retreated halfway, they would intercept them on the road, and join forces with the soldiers and horses of the Sixth Town of the Tang Army to completely eliminate them.

When Liu Guoneng saw this, a rare smile suddenly appeared on his originally frustrated face, and his eyes were also full of brilliance.

He immediately issued an order, leaving only the artillery unit and some auxiliary troops with limited mobility to defend the city, so that the soldiers and horses of the whole town, including Zu Dabi's C Battalion, would immediately go west, and they must stop the retreating soldiers and horses of Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren as soon as possible.

Liu Guoneng knew how to really encircle and annihilate all the 100,000 soldiers and horses of Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren's troops outside Wuchang City as Li Xiao had conceived, then the battle to attack Wuchang in the future would be easy. Even more optimistically, Zuo Liangyu is very likely to surrender without a fight under the huge pressure of the Tang army's presence in the city.

A race against time, a tense and grand hunt, is about to begin.

At the time when Liu Guoneng commanded the soldiers and horses of the sixth town of the Tang Army and was marching westward, Huang Degong, the mayor of the ninth town of the Tang Army, was commanding a total of four battalions of soldiers and horses under the army, divided into two routes, water and land, and marched together all the way to the upstream Huangzhou Mansion to outflank it.

When Huang Degong received Li Xiao's letter, he immediately began to attack north according to his plan. He only left his own soldiers and horses of the Ninth Town C Battalion to garrison Jiujiang City, and the rest of the Ninth Battalion A and B 2nd Battalion, as well as the supporting Tang Army's 8th Town A and B 2nd Battalion, respectively marched north from land and water.

Among them, the Tang Army's ninth town mayor Huang Dequan's troops attacked by water, and Liu Zehan, the mayor of the Tang Army's eighth town, led his troops to attack by land.

Two days later, Jin Shenghuan led more than 60,000 soldiers and horses under him, retreated all the way west, crossed Huangmei, Guangji, and Qishui, and finally came to the Ba River outside the city of Huangzhou Prefecture.

Looking at the sparkling Ba River in front of him, and seeing the blurred outline of the Huangzhou Mansion in the distance, Jin Shenghuan felt a little comforted in his heart.

Damn, in this scorching summer, he and his subordinates, like lost dogs, fled all the way to the west, and ran without sleep for two days, and this man and horse were exhausted. Fortunately, when the morale of the whole army was almost at the bottom, he and his more than 65,000 soldiers and horses finally arrived at the Huangzhou Mansion, which was very close to Wuchang.

"Brothers, quit the hard work, the whole army will work harder, advance quickly, cross the Ba River, go straight to Huangzhou Mansion, rest in the local area for half a day, and then return to Wuchang."

Jin Shenghuan wiped a handful of sweat and mud stains on his face, and shouted loudly at the scattered and languishing soldiers of the banners, giving them the most practical encouragement to the exhausted.

The entire army let out a low cheer, which was regarded as a perfunctory response to the commander-in-chief.

More than 65,000 soldiers and horses, mighty and mighty, all the way to the wooden bridge on the Ba River. What everyone didn't expect was that just as the whole army was advancing and preparing to cross the river, they suddenly heard a faint commotion from a distance to the west of the Yellow River Mansion.

The face of the main general Jin Shenghuan changed in an instant.

He knew that the Huangzhou capital city was located at the junction of the Ba River and the Yangtze River, and that these large noises came from the east of the Huangzhou capital city, which could only show one thing, that is, the troops of the Tang Army had finally arrived from the Yangtze River.

Jin Shenghuan's prediction was correct, just when their troops had just marched from Qishui to the Ba River, Huang Degong, the mayor of the ninth town of the Tang Army, personally led two battalions of soldiers and horses from the waterway to land and disembark from the east bank of the Yangtze River in Huangzhou Mansion.

At the same time, the two battalions of soldiers and horses that set off from the land route were forcing into Qishui County from behind, which meant to outflank Jin Shenghuan's retreat, and prepared to work together with the two battalions of soldiers and horses on the waterway to flank Jin Shenghuan's troops and wipe them all out on the Jianghan Plain from Xishui to the Ba River.

Jin Shenghuan quickly saw that on the horizon east of Huangzhou Mansion, a faint black line gushed out in the distance, and once the black line appeared, it immediately became thicker and thicker, longer and longer, and gradually, like magic, countless flags and soldiers and horses were conjured up in it, and they were shouting towards Huangzhou Mansion.

Seeing such a situation, it was really as he expected, Jin Shenghuan's face changed greatly, and cold sweat trickled down his forehead.

"Quick! The whole army crossed the river as soon as possible, quickly entered the Huangzhou Mansion, and then held on to the city and fought to the death with the Tang army! In a barely silent tone, Jin Shenghuan shouted an order to his soldiers who were running towards the wooden bridge.

"Order!"

A group of soldiers under his command, hearing the Lord's order, the originally loose and slack team, in order to save their lives, suddenly rushed to the narrow wooden bridge as if they had been beaten with chicken blood. For a time, the entrance to the narrow wooden bridge was crowded by enemy troops, and the order was chaotic.

The enemy army was in chaos, and the Tang army, which was rushing wildly, was like a tiger descending from the mountain, rushing straight towards the Huangzhou capital city in the distance.

At the forefront were more than 3,000 Tang cavalry, who rushed straight to the east gate of Huangzhou Mansion as if they were racing all the way, frightening the defenders of Huangzhou Mansion City, and quickly pulled up the suspension bridge, closed the gate tightly, and no longer dared to wait for the soldiers and horses of Jin Shenghuan's troops in the east to enter the city.

Jin Shenghuan saw this scene from the clairvoyant mirror, and the hatred in his heart, how can he say it.

Now that the Huangzhou Mansion is closed for fear of the enemy, his idea of retreating into Huangzhou City is completely shattered.

In today's plan, only after the whole army crosses the river, Fu and the Tang army will fight a big battle under the Huangzhou capital, and after defeating the Tang army that has landed and attacked, can we carry out the next step.

It's just that now these subordinates have low morale and no order, will they be the opponents of these sudden Tang Army?

Jin Shenghuan's heart is completely bottomless.

He could only hope that these Tang troops who came from afar would be as tired and slack as his own soldiers, so that he could win with his superiority in strength.

The wish is beautiful, but the reality is cruel.

Not long after, the Tang army, which had come ashore from the riverside, had already rushed to the outside of Huangzhou City, densely packed with spearmen and shield soldiers, as well as a large number of auxiliary soldiers, surrounded the entire Huangzhou Mansion City tightly, as if it was impermeable.

Once the Tang army completed the encirclement of the Huangzhou capital, the cavalry, musketeers, and heavy armored infantry formed a dense battle formation with orderly movements, and marched quickly towards the wooden bridge over the Naba River.

Seeing that the situation was changing so quickly, and the Tang Army's position was so pressing, Jin Shenghuan's face turned into a trembling pale.

After a long time in battle, he can of course see that in fact, the intention of the Tang army is obvious, that is, to surround Huangzhou City, and the next step is to make every effort to eliminate his own soldiers who are desperately squeezing across the bridge. For the Tang Army, the best way is to give himself a half-crossing attack.

If the Tang army can succeed in doing this, it will be a fatal blow to the army under Jin Shengheng, which has low morale and no fighting spirit.

And how could the Tang Army's momentum and orderliness be as languishing as its own soldiers, how ridiculous it was to have his previous fantasies.

Seeing that in the vanguard of his own army, nearly 2,000 people had hurriedly squeezed across the wooden bridge, and the combined battle formation of the Tang army was getting closer and closer, and the cold sweat on Jin Shenghuan's face was rolling down like beans.

No more.

It is no longer possible to continue crossing the bridge.

The Tang army has already attacked, and forcing the bridge in such a chaotic manner will only make his own subordinates really become the targets of the Tang army's half-crossing.

It's a must-lose.

No, we can't let that happen!

Jin Shenghuan didn't have time to think about it, and immediately ordered loudly to the herald beside him: "Quickly sound Jin, order the whole army to retreat, and form a formation by the river on the spot to fight against the Tang army!" ”

"Order!"

Soon, the sound of gold was loud, and the sharp and piercing sound of metal knocking, like the cry of an old crow, hovered in the ears of every soldier of the Left Army, and an incredible expression appeared on the face of every Left Army.

What's going on?

Why did you suddenly have to retreat at this critical time to cross the river?

This, this is simply a terrible joke.

In particular, the more than 2,000 soldiers of the Left Army who had already crossed the pontoon bridge, who had finally squeezed across the bridge, had expressions of relief on their faces, but now everyone's faces were full of consternation.

Depend on! What a fucking bad luck.

I knew that I was going to retreat back now, Lao Tzu was desperate for Liu in front, and finally took the lead in crossing the narrow bridge that was crowded with my heart, and now I have to retreat back again.

However, no matter how much they scolded Jin Shenghuan, the chief general who gave the order to retreat, they could only obediently retreat according to the order.

For a time, on the entire wooden bridge, the left army lost its retreat, pushed forward and pushed back, and the situation suddenly became even more chaotic.

At this moment, the battle formation of the Tang army was already getting closer and closer. （）