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In Daluo City, Jiaozhou, where the market is depressed and pedestrians are extinct, there are already irrepressible rumors in the streets and alleys.

"Is this the official army calling back?"

"This is the banner of a grass thief from Guangfu."

"How is this possible, the lineup of grass thieves will be even stronger than the official army?。。"

"The soldiers and horses who met the battle were defeated when they couldn't rush to their feet."

"The one who attacked the army outside the city at the beginning, his head was cut off and hung on a pole."

"None of the hundreds of children of the families who went out with him have returned."

"Could it be that the number of days in this Tang Dynasty is going to change, and it is so difficult to get a grass thief all the way."

"Then what should I do, do I continue to be a thief?"

Zeng Gon, the newly appointed envoy of the Jing Navy and the queen of Annan, also listened expressionlessly to the enemy situation from the horse in front of him in the gatehouse. Bad news, bad news, in addition to bad news or bad news, even the few harassing troops he sent out to the city to test the enemy's situation were beaten back by people.

Moreover, those grass thieves have a lot of crossbows and arrows like rain, and the array of troops is very clear and distinct; The area covered was full of dead and wounded, and there were few slanders. The survivors all said that they were afraid of the famous Jianghuai crossbowmen, Xuanrun crossbowmen, and western Zhejiang crossbowmen in the southeast, or the Lingnan white crossbowmen, Xichuan crossbowmen and the like; If it weren't for the advantages of water transportation on the river, I am afraid that even the people who returned to report the news would not be left behind.

However, this advantage of water transportation to and from the river may not last long, because with the arrival of the riverboats full of baggage of those grass thieves, they actually used the attached local soil regiments to form a temporary naval army. Although the army was in a hurry and did not have the ability to take the initiative to attack, it was more than enough to intercept and guard the river.

Standing on the top of the city, they can even be seen They even collected river boats, built several pontoon bridges across the Zhuluan River to mobilize people and collect materials, and also blocked the shipping and support that may come from the upstream direction in disguise. This made Zeng Gon, who always focused on integrating the forces in Jiaozhou City after seizing power, inevitably feel a little helpless and trapped in the city;

originally thought that after defeating the local alliance under the city, there was no longer a rival to the chaos in Annam in a short period of time; It was just convenient for him to sort out the interior one by one and integrate the army; In the slow recovery of the whole territory of Annan and Pingding, he reported the victory to the imperial court and sought the title of posthumous recognition, just like the Pingnan strategy that Gao Linggong did back then.

But he never thought that the process of seizing power would be easy, but it took more time and effort than he expected to gather and annex these powerful forces inside and outside Jiaozhou City, and turn them into forces that could support and operate. Among them, it is necessary not only to have the decisiveness to deal with dissidents, but also to make good use of the threat of force and the means of deterrence, and more importantly, to carry out a compromise in the exchange of interests; Not to mention that his allies are not completely on the same mind, but need to weigh and appease, and even satisfy their respective interests.

It's just that he never thought that the remnants of the wealthy clan who were eradicated by him were not willing to admit defeat, and would ask those grass thieves entrenched in Guangzhou to borrow troops in desperation; I never thought that they would actually borrow foreign aid; In his original expectation, most of the grass thieves had already headed north and there was not much strength left;

Therefore, after recovering the entire territory of Annan, he continued to attack northward along the "Tianwei Yao", so as to recover the land of Huguan and Guiguan, and even take the territory of the Guangzhou Governor's Mansion in order to obtain more soldiers and financial resources. As a result, this unexpected factor of sudden intervention made the situation suddenly turn sharply.

Although he is known as the nephew of Zeng Yuanyu, a famous minister and the envoy of Pinglu Jiedu, but in fact, among the clansmen of the famous "Pinglu Envoy", he can only be regarded as a little-known and obscure member; In his early years, he once followed Gao Biao from the expedition to Annan and became a former primary school, specializing in the responsibility of delivering good news to the imperial court, and it can be regarded as an early relationship with the local area of Jiaozhou.

It was only because he was willing to work hard in the battle formation, and he was tired of suffering more than ten wounds, that he was gradually able to come out; After pacifying Annan, he was recommended by Gao Biao to the command of Zhang Zimian, the general of Zuo Weiwei, the assassin envoy of Yingzhou and the deputy envoy of the east, and won a place with the right general;

In the end, he was able to participate in the decisive battle of Wang Xianzhi in the east of Shenzhou and the pursuit of Huangmei; Although he did not get the first merit of beheading the king thief, he also attacked and captured a thief chief Liu Yanquan with his own hands, and forced to land more than 3,000 remnants; It is to accumulate merit as a general of the Wuwei Zhonglang and the left wing of the loyal army.

But the good times did not last long, and the benefactor and Shangguan Zhang Zimian in the prime of life soon became falsely accused of the party dispute between the DPRK and China because of his high merits, and was convicted on the grounds of embezzling the gains of the rebels.

As the right-hand man under his command, Zeng Gon was not spared and was quickly chased and dismissed; But later, under the door of Zeng Yuanyu, the uncle of the distant clan, he was able to keep the title of Wuwei Zhonglang General, but since then he has no chance to lead the troops and can only serve as a façade in the tooth tent. This time he begged Annan, who had fallen into the thief realm, to try to recover, and it was also the biggest adventure of his life and the desperate speculation of his future.

As his uncle, Zeng Yuanyu only gave him a stack of blank farewells and a thousand horses of silk as his capital, and promised that after the matter was completed, he would operate on the imperial court side and pursue him as the assassin of Jiaozhou and the envoy of Annan; In contrast, it was another envoy Cui Anqian who gave more help in private, not only privately giving food, armor soldiers and strong men, but also acquiescing to him in Shu to continue to raise what he needed with his own remains.

But he couldn't help but want more, such as leaving this Jinghai Festival to become a more justifiable Jinghai Festival envoy, and even serving as the protector of Annan.

Although the Jinghai Jiedu envoy is only a small military town that has not been established for a long time, it is also a Jiedu envoy who specializes in life and death to seize the opening of the government and build a government, compared with the observation and strategy of Jingnan, Jiangxi and other places in the inland where the authority is somewhat discounted, but it is the genus of the unscrupulous feudal town; Theoretically, as long as the local financial resources allow, they can recruit as many self-recruited soldiers as possible and appoint their own officials.

Coupled with the routine authority of the Annam Metropolitan Protector to conquer the four yi, it can be said that it is more like a feudal town than most feudal towns in the country. Or it is also to take the west and east of Lingxi.

However, the fall of An Youquan's department completely disappointed his hopes; You must know that this army of soldiers and horses that was finally put together, but he used it to sweep the surrounding areas of Jiaozhou and deter the barbarians, and he happened to be sitting in Jiaozhou City to clean up the follow-up situation and integrate resources, but he didn't want to be destroyed in the hands of those grass thieves in one day.

Although there are still tens of thousands of horses available in the city, most of them are native soldiers whom he has annexed and whose hearts have not yet been fully subordinated; The rest of them were nearly 3,000 soldiers and regimental training collected from various places, and there were motley armed forces forcibly incorporated by large families and wealthy merchants in the city; In fact, there are less than 1,000 core people who really belong to his direct control, and only a small part of them are Shu soldiers he brought all the way, and most of them are old men who surrendered on the spot;

Originally, in the city, there were 3,000 remaining battalion soldiers under the name of the Jinghai Jiedu envoy, and 2,000 soldiers gathered in the place; But because after the defeat of An Youquan, a general who was close to him, he basically lost everything; Therefore, under the light control, he would rather send those soil groups that showed signs of instability to be consumed in batches in the name of testing the thief's strength, but he could never let this point of core force used to suppress the situation be damaged and lost in the slightest.

Although he could still forcibly recruit several times as many young men from the city in the name of defending the territory, it was okay to drive them to assist in defending the city under the supervision of swords and guns, but it was too much to expect them to go out of the city and fight the thieves without chaos.

Now, especially after the change of offensive and defensive situation, he does not have enough confidence and confidence that those dissident voices and opponents in the city who have been suppressed will not take advantage of this to rebound and take the opportunity to cause chaos. After all, compared to those grass thieves who came with relatively sufficient preparations, all he could really prove was those hundreds of relatives;

And for most of the families in the city who sit and watch the situation before and after, once they lose enough strength as a evidence, the righteousness of the court he upholds is also like that. However, the upper echelons of the Metropolitan Protectorate who were eradicated by him with a quick knife have various intertwined origins in the local area.

Although those people are powerless to confront him head-on for the time being, they are secretly using all kinds of methods to defy the yin and the yin, and to prevaricate and procrastinate in the dark; The taste of cutting meat with all kinds of blunt knives makes people feel bitter and indescribable; Unless he can make up his mind to do another great reckoning that cuts off dissidents. Otherwise, he had no doubt that as long as he had the opportunity, this generation would not hesitate to betray himself to those grass thieves.

"Do you really want to borrow troops from the Western Plains?"

A voice like a bell sounded beside him, but it was Li Zhan, the former Guiguan Jingluo, and now the deputy capital of Annan and the envoy of Yingtiandu.

"This is the next choice to quench your thirst."

Xiyuan is the Tang Dynasty's collective name for the left and right rivers in Guangxi in later generations. Since the imperial court set up the prefecture, county, and mountain in Lingnan, the hereditary official position of the local chief is called the local official.

Among them, Ningming, Longzhou, Chongzuo, Fusui and other places in the Zuojiang area are Huangtong land, and Tianzhi and Jingxi places in the Youjiang River are Nongtong land (once made my Song Guangnan Road restless, and the Nong Zhigao rebellion that achieved Di Qing's fame came from here), in addition to Jin's and Wei's, Zhou's and most of them have their own side; These Tu clans are collectively known as the Xiyuan Barbarians, along with many other large and small tribes.

And this Xiyuan Barbarian is not a good person, because of the relationship between Nanzhao and the Tang Dynasty, they invade each other all the year round and plunder from time to time; It is also the biggest unstable factor in the sphere of influence of the Protectorate of Annam for a long time, sometimes rebelled and attached to wartime; At the beginning, the Southern Zhaoman was able to invade Annan and fall into Jiaozhou, which was also the starting point of these Western Plains barbarian tribes taking advantage of the situation to make a rebellion.

Although the current Xiyuan Barbarian has been liquidated once by Gao Yu, who recovered Jiaozhou, more than ten years ago, most of them have been able to stop because of this slump; But it still can't stand the entire Jiaozhou and even Song Ping City, where there are bitter and bitter people who have been slaughtered and mutilated by the soldiers of Yinnan.

Once the news of the help of the Xiyuan Barbarian leaked, after he used the name of the imperial court to pull the tiger's skin as a banner, he could easily become the finger of the thousand people and shake the foundation that had not been established for a long time. Even the local soldiers under their command will largely turn their backs.

But even if he drank a dove to quench his thirst, he had to swallow this bitter wine; If he didn't borrow this hand, he would basically have no future under the domestic and external difficulties; Whether to bury the bones in this hot and humid southern wilderness, or to achieve fame in the imperial court, it depends on the last fight.

I can only believe that the grass thieves on the Guangfu side have also done their best to send such a warlike army, if they are all destroyed here, not only will the place have no strength to resist; Maybe in the future, the recovery of Lingdong and Lingxi will achieve twice the result with half the effort; Therefore, even if you pay some unavoidable price now, it is helpless.

After sending off Li Zhan, who was a little unhappy, he was so encouraged and determined that he stamped a letter with the silver seal of the capital protection that he had not yet covered. Then he commanded to the left and right who had been summoned:

"Send more men to keep an eye on the big families in the city. Be wary of its movements. ”

"You can encourage the city to tell you that you will be rewarded with two or three out of ten of your family assets."

"And it will be widely proclaimed in the streets, and the grass thieves will plagiarize fiercely wherever they pass."

"The big families also raided their families, and the people of Li Shu were not spared. Both men and women were taken captive and enslaved in the army, and the villages were scorched. ”

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