In early August, the weather in Huaixi finally cooled down and was no longer so hot.

After entering August, there is no new flood peak in the upper reaches of the Huai River, and this year's extremely severe flood control situation can be regarded as a slight relief, and in more than a month, we will be able to enter the new autumn grain harvest season.

Tangyi's 8,000 advance troops and horses assembled in Huoqiu, in early July, some of the elite had already traveled north through Yingshui and arrived in Wanqiu, and in the early days, they could still evacuate the soldiers and civilians from Bianjing City on a small scale, but in mid-to-late July, the Weizhou rebels and Mengwu's scouts entered the southern area of Bianjing and wandered directly on both flanks of the Chenbian Post Road.

At present, the biggest combat task of the advance army is to entangle with the enemy scouts and horses to prevent the enemy from organizing large-scale men and horses to destroy the Chenbian Post Road.

The 30,000 elites requisitioned from the first, second, and fourth towns and the 20,000 auxiliary troops requisitioned from the fourth town to form the main force of the reinforcement army have been assembled in the camp on the south bank of Jiaoshan Gorge for half a month.

In addition to building the Jiaoshan Gorge pontoon bridge and repairing the post road in Xia Cai County on the north bank, it is mainly waiting for the last boot in Xiangbei to land.

According to the news obtained by Tangyi, Li Zhihe did not enter Xiangcheng with Lu Qingxia and others, so he directly took his step-room Su Hongyu and his son Li Zhi and others to Liangzhou by boat.

In the next few days, the king of Xiang was established, the defense of the northern capital of Xiangbei was abolished, and Jingxiang Xingshangshu Province was all handled by Lu Qingxia, Zhou Yuan, Chai Jian and others.

On the basis of the main force of the previous Three Towns Forbidden Army, the Xiangbei Army merged the local state soldiers and adjusted them into three marching camp armies.

The main force of the original Zuo Longqi Army moved into Liangzhou with Li Zhihe, and placed the Liangzhou camp army, Li Zhihe led the camp capital and led the Liangzhou Assassin History, and the scale of soldiers and horses was maintained at about 15,000 people, responsible for the military and political affairs of Liangzhou and the new Jinzhou.

With the elite of the Zuowu Guard, the Suizhou state soldiers were merged, and the 10,000 Suizhou marching camp army was formed, and the number of weeks led the battalion manager and the Suizhou Assassin History, responsible for the western foot of Dahongshan and the blockade of the mountain pass at the western foot of Huaiyang Mountain, Pingjing, Wusheng and other cantonment affairs.

At this time, the Zuo Shenwu Army was the mainstay, merging the elite of the Zuowu Guard Army, the elite of the Zuo Longque Army and the elite of Deng Junying's three states, totaling 35,000 men and horses, and placing the Xiangzhou marching camp army, which can be said to be the main force of the Jingxiang rebels.

At this point, Li Zhihe retired to Liangzhou, and Chai Jiancheng came to the fore as the No. 1 leader of the Jingxiang rebels.

In addition, Lu Qingxia mainly took the guards who fled west, recruited a strong and 3,000-strong guard army from Xiangzhou, and took Xu An, the former commander of the Weaving Bureau, as the capital to guard the center of Shangshutai; With the Weaving Bureau guards and Xiangzhou state soldiers, the Xiangzhou Navy with a scale of 5,000 men and horses was placed, with Zhong Yanhu as the commander.

The Jingxiang rebels had a total of 68,000 men and horses, and at first glance it seemed that they were also numerous, and they could barely spread out their stalls, and there was no sign of shrinking from the periphery of Yingsui Deng Sanzhou to the vicinity of Xiangcheng.

And Hexiang Deng Jun followed the seven states of Yingjinliang, even if under the rule of Li Zhihe in the past three or four years, farming recovered quickly, but the total number of people was only 900,000, and maintaining such a large number of soldiers and horses can be said to be the limit, and Tangyi did not have to worry about their ability to kill from the mountain pass at the western foot of Huaiyang Mountain and threaten the western flank of Tangyi for the time being.

Of course, it can also be seen from the fact that the Suizhou Xingying Army only has 10,000 soldiers and horses, and Lu Qingxia will not be in a hurry to expand from the northeast flank to Tangyi at this time, and they are mainly thinking about holding this flank according to the dangerous terrain of the mountain pass at the western foot of Huaiyang Mountain and the western foot of Dahong Mountain.

And the severe test they are currently facing is the rebel army that has arrived in Huangzhou.

Jinling to Huangzhou, Jingzhou as the assembly place, with the right Wu Xiang Army, the right Wu Wei Army as the main force, and from Jiangxi, Hunan Prefecture to recruit soldiers and horses, planning to gather a total of up to 60,000 soldiers, 30,000 soldiers and civilians to recruit the army, into the Jingxiang rebels, has now been officially passed on to the world, the Ministry of War, the deputy envoy Zhou Bingwu as the envoy, Zhao Zhen, Zhang Ji two as the deputy envoy.

The book of war often says that "all the fighters are in harmony with the right and win with the odd", Jinling gathered 90,000 horses, and there were only four channels for the soldiers to come to the city in the early stage: one is the water army along the Han River to the north, one is the horse infantry army along the east bank of the Han River, the north attack on Yingzhou City between the Han River and Dahong Mountain, and the other is to attack Jingmen, the gateway of Xiangnan by land from Jingzhou, these three channels can be combined into one, which can be said to be the main direction of attack of the army.

At the end of July, Zhou Bingwu was ordered to arrive at Jingling City, which was more than 130 miles south of Yingzhou City, to supervise the battle.

Jingling belonged to Fuzhou in the previous dynasty, the Great Chu opened the country, Fuzhou was deserted, abandoned but not placed, Jingling belonged to Yingzhou.

Jingling north to Dahong Mountain, southwest is Hanshui, east of Huang'e, located in the north of the Jianghan Plain, is also close to Yingzhou City nearest a city, to knock along the two wings of the Han River to knock on the Xiangying River Valley and the gateway of the Nanyang Basin, Zhou Bingwu in Jingling to gather soldiers and horses, grain and ordnance, the most convenient.

In order to facilitate the war, Jinling also re-established Fuzhou, and reclassified the three counties of Jingling, which originally belonged to Yingzhou, Jianli, which belonged to Jingzhou, and Chuyang, which belonged to Ezhou, into Fuzhou, and took Jingling as the state rule.

Although Fuzhou only has jurisdiction over three counties, the three counties are the heartland of the Jianghan Plain, with a total population of nearly 300,000.

In order to show his "loyalty" to the new emperor, Zhang Pan, who had been stationed in Jingzhou for many years, immediately dispatched troops to Jingmen after receiving the edict of rebellion, and in early August, he cleared the remnants of the rebels on the southern flank of Jingmen, and camped the forward camp 30 miles away from the south side of Jingmen City.

In addition to the passage along the Hanshui Road, the Zhaojun Army also had a passage to attack the Jingxiang rebels.

That is from Huangzhou City along the southwest foot of Huaiyang Mountain Yunshui River Valley north, from the eastern foot of Dahong Mountain to attack Suiyang, Suijing, Wusheng and other passes.

Jinling also sent troops to attack Pingjing, Wusheng and other passes, but Han Qian expressed his position very early on that Tangyi would use the main force of soldiers and horses for the Hehuai war in autumn and winter, leaving only one brigade of elite troops under the command of Zhou Yi in the west flank, and at most he could only contain the rebels in Pingjing and Wusheng from Luoshan and Yiyang.

At this moment, it was finally the time for the Tangyi Army to officially send troops to Hehuai.

In addition to Kong Xirong's advance army, which advanced northward along Yingshui as a partial division, the main force of 50,000 horses and horses of the reinforcement army assembled near Jiaoshan Gorge will directly cross the Huai River under the command of Tiancheng as the main general and Wen Bo and Lin Haizheng as deputy generals, and go north from the plain area on the east bank of Yingshui.

Although there are whirlpool rivers connecting from Haozhou to the north of Haozhou, passing through the whirlpool to the city of Xuyang and then going northwest to the city of Bozhou, after Xu Mingzhen controlled the city of Qiao, he set up a large number of obstacles along the Whirlpool River by means of hidden piles, iron cables, and shipwrecks to prevent the Tangyi naval warships from entering.

At this time, the Zuolou Naval Army also assembled a certain number of elite naval troops and warships in the upper reaches of the whirlpool, which made it difficult for the Tangyi Naval Army to play in this Hehuai war.

At present, Yang Qin is responsible for leading the Tangyi Navy to stay on the front line of Jiaoshan and Linhuai, and wait until the Ma Bu Army conquers the city west of the Vortex River and clears the obstacles in the Vortex River, and then it is possible to go north.

Of course, this is still the smoothest situation of the war.

And Xu Mingzhen ordered the seizure of the Liang Dynasty officials appointed by Bianjing in the nineteen counties of Qiao, Bo, Song, and Su before the end of June, and all of them were replaced by the generals of the Shouzhou Army to control the counties.

The Xu family, unlike the Wen family, has nothing to do with hatred.

When Wen Bo was trapped in Luoshan City, there were less than 10,000 soldiers and horses left under his lineage, and Han Qian could even tolerate Wen Bo directly leading these 10,000 elites to merge into the Tangyi army, and he was not worried that this would cause a noisy situation.

And Wen Bo and the Wen family don't need to be worried, every day they are worried that Han Qian will poison him at any time to cut his military power.

After that, the Right Shenwu Army was dismantled and reorganized, and the children of the Wen family and the old generals were able to better integrate into Tangyi, and they gradually progressed on this basis.

Xu Mingzhen led the Shouzhou army to retreat to the north bank of the Huai River, with a total of more than 200,000 soldiers and horses, and if necessary, 70,000 or 80,000 elite soldiers and horses could be formed.

And Xu Mingzhen is willing, or does he have the courage to disband these 70,000 or 80,000 soldiers and horses and completely accept the reorganization of Tangyi, so he will take more than 100 families to live in East Lake, waiting for Han Qian to give him a broad-minded disposal?

When Emperor Zhu Yu of Liang surrendered Xu Mingzhen, he had to seal him a Huo Guogong and Huainan Jiedu envoy, and led 100,000 soldiers and horses to guard Huaixi, Han Qian had no conditions to make peace with Xu Mingzhen, how could he dare to directly threaten the flank of Chen Bianyi Road in Xu Mingzhen's department, and dare to send more than 50,000 troops from the extremely thin Chen Bianyi Road to reinforce Bianjing?

The Tangyi army also had only one choice, that is, to gather the main force of troops and horses, cross the Huai River from the front of Xu Mingzhen and other places to attack north.

Either Xu Mingzhen's department will be annihilated, or Xu Mingzhen's department will be expelled to the east bank of the vortex river until the passage connecting the two water systems of Yingjing is opened......