As early as when he learned that the puppet Tang thief army had entered Jingzhou, Tan Rong had already sensed something bad and saw the danger, this danger was not only that he could not eat the puppet Tang thief army in Xingquan Mansion, but it was very likely that he would fall into a siege of food shortage.

So at that time, he immediately sent Hong Lin Quandong back to Jingzhou, trying to reopen the grain route, if Hong Lin's entire department can cooperate with the Jingzhou defenders to defeat the puppet Tang puppet Tang thief army and reopen the grain route, then everything is still under control, and has a great advantage over his own side, and he is even sure to continue to eat the puppet Tang thief army in Xingquan Mansion.

However, as a qualified general, he could not pin his hopes on optimism, on the contrary, he still planned for the worst: if Honglin could not open up the grain route, then he would have to change the battle plan.

And this plan was to give up attacking Xingquan Mansion and turn north to Guizhou Zhenyuan Mansion and Huguangchen Prefecture to join the more than 10,000 Ming troops there.

There are still a large number of Ming troops in Zhenyuan Mansion and Chenzhou Mansion, as long as they go there, they can not only pick out the encirclement, but also get food.

Of course, he also needs food when he goes north, even if it is only a few days away, but he still needs to be prepared.

For this reason, the measures to save food were actually started when Hong Linquan led the army away, and at the same time, he also sent a large number of troops to search for food in various parts of Xingquan Mansion.

When the officers and soldiers fight, they will never let themselves go hungry for the sake of the people!

It's a pity that the people here in Xingquanfu have been accustomed to war in the past two years, and they know better what the virtues of the officials and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty are, so as soon as the officers and soldiers came, it was basically a situation where the whole village fled.

In addition, the time was relatively short, so even if he sent a lot of people to the surrounding villages to collect food, the effect was not great.

But even if the grain collected is not much, there is still some of it, and with the food stored in the army, some savings can barely last half a month.

Originally, this was just a means of preparation for him, but after learning a few days ago that the reconnaissance cavalry reported that Hong Lin's entire army had been intercepted under the city of Jingzhou, and that the nearly 10,000 defenders of Jingzhou had collapsed, he realized that something was wrong.

At that time, although Hong Linquan continued to attack Jingzhou City, Tan Rong, who was in Xingquan Mansion, had already judged that the grain road could not be opened at all.

Because even if Hong Lin entered Jingzhou City, it would be difficult to transport grain outside, at most he would just keep himself.

In this case, Tan Rong only took half an hour to make the choice of the whole army to retreat!

If you want to retreat, you naturally can't retreat to Jingzhou stupidly, if you retreat to Jingzhou, if you encounter the interception of the puppet Tang thief army, it won't take a few more days, as long as it is slightly intercepted for three or five days, then the whole army will collapse because of the lack of food, so the direction of his retreat is to go north, to Zhenyuan Mansion and Chenzhou Mansion.

Although this road is farther, at least there are no thieves blocking the road, and if you run faster, it is enough to run out of the current stockpile.

Based on this, Tan Rong didn't even dare to attack Xingquan Mansion in the end, and he had already retreated with the main force of his descendants on the same day, and the other troops also began to retreat the next day.

And before retreating, he also set up a maze array, and at the same time did not spread the news of the retreat, and even the other high-ranking generals did not tell them, but just let them do what they were told.

In addition, he left thousands of old and young remnants of the troops behind, pretending that the army was still there, and told the troops who stayed behind that he Tan Rong was not retreating, but was going to lead the army to attack the puppet Tang thief army in Jingzhou, and reopen the grain route.

The thousands of people left behind didn't know that Tan Rong led the troops to the east for half a day, and then went north.

There is no doubt that they were sold!

Selling these thousands of old and young disabled friendly troops, Tan Rong has no psychological burden at all, not to mention selling them to cover his retreat, and he can also save a lot of food.

After fleeing north, he ran all the way with the army, throwing whatever baggage he could, and fled all the way to the north, finally letting him escape from the sad ghost place of Xingquan Mansion.

When he connected with the Ming army of Zhenyuan Mansion and Chenzhou Mansion, he immediately launched a war report to the supervisor Zhang Yue, this time he did not give much concealment, but honestly said that he had successfully led the army to successfully break through, well, the loss in the process of breaking through was a bit large, losing four or five thousand people, and heavy ordnance, such as the Franc machine gun or something, was lost completely.

Ask Lord Zhang to allocate a batch of ordnance and food as soon as possible!

He was able to be entrusted with an important task by Zhang Yue and serve as the commander of the 50,000-strong army, which was naturally trusted by Zhang Yue, and when Zhang Yue received his letter, he had just received the battle report of Hong Linquan's disastrous defeat.

So instead of blaming Tan Rong for fleeing with the army, he was deeply gratified, can this not be gratifying, if Tan Rong hadn't retreated decisively a few days in advance, I'm afraid that he would have been completely surrounded in Xingquan Mansion by now.

Although the army is now lost, about 30,000 people have been saved.

Tan Rong ran away, and he successfully picked out the encirclement of Xingquan Mansion with the main force, which means that the entire territory of Xingquan Mansion was once again recovered by the Tang Dynasty.

And the next stage of the war is very likely to start in the area of Zhenyuan Mansion and Chenzhou Mansion.

At the same time, there is also an important front, that is, in the Jingzhou area, the Fourth Army has not yet taken Jingzhou, Chen Keqiao learned that the siege of Xingquanfu has been lifted, after the Ming army fled north, after a little hesitation, it is to give up the plan to continue to forcibly attack Jingzhou.

Instead, a small number of troops were left to monitor the Ming army in Jingzhou City, while the main force began to advance westward and northward to attack the city.

If someone with a heart sees this deployment of Chen Keqiao, then they will find that this is another tactic of encircling the point to send reinforcements, giving up the strong city of Jingzhou, and trying to attack the Huguang reinforcements from the hinterland of Huguang, so as to give full play to the field combat ability that they are best at!

And now, it's time to see if the Ming army will be fooled!

It's a pity that Zhang Yue was more decisive and resolute than Chen Keqiao imagined, he just sent an envoy to Jingzhou City to tell the defenders in the city, saying that the Governor was raising soldiers and horses to rescue Jingzhou, and the defenders had to hold on no matter what, and at the same time secretly ordered a few henchmen to secretly order that once the city was broken, the food in Jingzhou City must not be left to the puppet Tang thief army, and it must all be burned!

But in fact, Zhang Yue has already begun to deploy troops to prepare to build a second line of defense to intercept the puppet Tang thief army to the north, and send troops to rescue Jingzhou, what are you kidding, there are still nearly 10,000 puppet Tang thief troops wandering there, no matter how stupid he Zhang Yue is, he knows that these thieves are waiting for him to send reinforcements to the door.

In this case, if he didn't gather 350,000 people, he couldn't expect to rescue Jingzhou, but for a while, he couldn't raise so many troops in the southwest direction of Huguang.

The huge Huguang is not only a front in the southwest, but due west is the western part of Huguang, the southern part of Huguang and the Shaozhou Mansion in Guangdong due south, but they are all front lines, and there are troops everywhere who need to use troops, how can he send troops to rescue Jingzhou!

Some time ago, he had already received the news that the soldiers of the puppet Tang thief army had already appeared under the city of Shaozhou, and as for Yingde and Qingyuan in the south, they had already been completely lost.

In terms of strategic position, ten Jingzhou is not as good as one Shaozhou!

Fortunately, it is now the rainy season, and the guns of the puppet Tang thief army are mostly unusable, and Shaozhou is originally an important military pass, the city is tall and thick, and the number of troops is barely some, so it was not broken by one attack like other cities in the central and western parts of Guangdong.

Of course, more importantly, now the puppet Tang thief army in Guangdong has been dragged in Guangzhou, and the puppet Tang thief army that ran to Shaozhou Mansion is only a few thousand, and there are not many real thieves.

Otherwise, Shaozhou would have been lost a long time ago.

Zhang Yue, who is in Changsha, has now begun to listen to Song Zhiwen's advice, it is not advisable to counterattack the puppet Tang thief army, and now the best way is to defend the city and trap the puppet Tang thief army in Guizhou and Guangzhou, and after the war becomes protracted, the puppet Tang thief army will collapse sooner or later!

Because the Ming Dynasty has so many territories, the population and various resources are incomparable to the puppet Tang thief army.

In order to raise military funds to suppress the puppet Tang thief army, and the puppet Tang thief army is indeed too terrifying, the imperial court has already allocated more than 1.5 million taels of silver for the military expenses of the thieves, and this is just the beginning.

Well, what's interesting is that of the more than 1.5 million military spending, the treasury only paid 300,000 taels, and the remaining 1.2 million yuan was transferred by Emperor Zhengde from the inner treasury!

In other words, Emperor Zhengde is using his own private money to support the army in the war, and as for the treasury, after taking out the 300,000, he can already starve the rats to death.

And what's even more interesting is that this more than one million taels of silver is only a figure taken out by the imperial court, but it definitely does not mean that it is a figure that Zhang Yue can get, let alone a figure that many soldiers can get.

In fact, this sum of money has not left the capital division, and it is already at least 300,000 taels of silver!

As the silver gradually went south, it became less and less, and by the time it reached Zhang Yue's hands, there were actually less than 700,000 left.

You will ask where the silver has gone? Nonsense, this still needs to be asked, naturally it is to run into the pockets of the adults themselves, otherwise how do people feed a family, and dozens of wives are under a lot of pressure!