Since Zuo Liangyu pushed to the Jingzhou area, he knew that Jingzhou would become the target of the next Xingtian Army, so he sent people to Nanjing three times a day to ask for help, and at the same time built warships in the Jingzhou area, and plundered the places, and at the same time captured all the men over the age of 15 and under the age of 50 around Jingzhou into the barracks to serve as soldiers.

Zuo Liangyu can be said to be familiar with this kind of thing, and his son Zuo Mengeng is even more brutal and unkind, not only robbing men to join the army, but also beautiful young women were also ordered by him to be taken into the army as military prostitutes.

In this way, soon after Zuo Liangyu returned to Chengtianfu, he actually gathered more than 100,000 troops, known as 300,000 soldiers, in order to solve the problem of eating, drinking, and eating these soldiers and horses, Zuo Liangyu was even more in the local Dasuo, this time Dasuo place, not only for the poor, but even including the families of the powerful did not let go, first sent people to force the extortion, did not give or gave less, then immediately sent troops to attack their villages, to make up their wealth, even their wives and concubines were taken into the army for the generals to play.

Suddenly, the Jingzhou area became a hell on earth, in this regard, Zuo Liangyu did more than many rebels, and the rebels usually targeted the rich, but Zuo Liangyu treated everyone equally.

Although the Xingtian Army also relied on looting the homes of rich landlords and nobles to solve the problem of military funds, it rarely infringed on ordinary rich households and small landlords, and only chose famous large landlords and magnates from all over the country to start, and tried to kill as little as possible, so in addition to the particularly large landlords and nobles who were afraid of the Xingtian Army, the ordinary small landlords and rich households did not resist the Xingtian Army very much.

But Zuo Liangyu did this, but the entire Jingzhou surrounding area to offend all the people, many rich people after the break, then went to Wuchang to find the Huguang governor Song Yihe who had just taken office to complain, Song Yihe was originally a supervisor of the Henan military road, because of the meritorious, transferred to the Huguang Inspectorate Imperial History, now because Xiangyang was broken by the Xingtian Army, the former Huguang governor Fang Kongzhao was ordered by the emperor to resign, so he has just been promoted to the governor of Hubei.

And when Song Yihe learned the news that Zuo Liangyu was in Chengtianfu, Jingmen, and Dasuo in Jingzhou, he immediately sent someone to reprimand Zuo Liangyu, ordered him to restrain himself, and personally wrote to him, moving him with emotion and reason, and asked him not to do this, otherwise he would be angry and Jingzhou would not be protected.

But where will Zuo Liangyu listen to him now! Thinking about Yang Sichang, there is no way to take him, how can Song Yihe suppress him? In order to keep Jingzhou, Zuo Liangyu can be said to have gone crazy, and directly tore Song Yihe's letter to shreds, ignoring him at all, and Chengtianfu Inspector Li Zhensheng found Zuo Liangyu's theory, but he was also driven out by Zuo Liangyu, so Zuo Liangyu has no one to control him now.

After solving the trouble of Zhang Xianzhong, the Xingtian Army began to go south in Xiangyang on the tenth day of June, at this time, through the efforts of the whole army, the Xingtian Army collected a total of hundreds of ships on the river in the Xiangfan area, including nearly 100 large ships, hundreds of small and medium-sized boats, and Yang Kunshan, the deputy commander of the Henan Water Battalion, had already led 500 water battalion soldiers from Luoyang to Xiangyang at this time, took over the fleet here, and recruited more than 2,000 sailors in Xiangyang on the spot, and after a simple drill, took over these ships, Start heading south.

When the ship was requisitioned, it did not take the method of forcible demand, but paid the shipowner wages, and guaranteed that once the ship was damaged, the Xingtian Army would compensate for its losses, so when it was learned that the Xingtian Army was going south to attack Jingzhou, many surrounding boat people rushed to help the war after hearing the news, so in addition to the more than 2,000 sailors organized by Yang Kunshan, there were more than 2,000 boat people who went south with the ship to help the war.

In addition, after Luo Rucai and Li Xuanzhu conquered Fancheng in April, they began to recruit people to build ships in the Fancheng area for use in the south, so the addition of various ships basically solved the problem of transportation capacity.

With Xiao Tianjian's order, all the men and horses and baggage began to be loaded, and some people and horses went south along the river by land, advancing by land and water, and rushed towards Chengtianfu.

Originally, with the ability of the Xingtian Army, if Zuo Liangyu fought with the fleet of the Xingtian Army on the water, the Xingtian Army could be said to have a difficult chance of winning, and it was much more difficult to train the Navy than to train the infantry army, but Zuo Liangyu was really scared by the Xingtian Army over the years, and there were too many recruits in his army now, and it was very difficult for the limited subordinate generals to control these recruits, so although he had hundreds of warships in Jingzhou, he did not dare to take the initiative to go against the water to meet the fleet of the Xingtian Army.

Therefore, under the leadership of Yang Kunshan, the fleet of the Xingtian Army only opened the way with more than 20 patchwork warships, and actually arrived at Fengle Du, which was dozens of miles away from Chengtianfu, in Shunhanshui, and unloaded the Xingtian Army's materials, men and horses loaded with the ship in Fengle.

At the same time, the cavalry by land, and several war battalions also arrived in the north of Chengtianfu one after another, along the way they also captured Yicheng County, the soldiers swept away some hostile forces on both sides of the Han River along the way, and defeated Qian Zhongxuan, the general soldier of Huguang who sat in Yicheng County, and killed Qian Zhongxuan on the spot, and more than 3,000 officers and soldiers under his command were basically wiped out, and most of them turned into the people of the Xingtian Army.

Zuo Liangyu had already learned the news that the Xingtian army was going south along the Han River, and sent his subordinate Liu Guoneng to lead 30,000 horses to garrison Chengtianfu, while his son Zuo Mengeng led 50,000 horses to garrison Jingmen, and he himself personally led 70,000 troops to garrison Jingzhou, in order to form a corner to prevent the Xingtian army from going south to Jingzhou.

And this time Xiao Tianjian went south along the water, the number of soldiers and horses led by him was actually not much, the main battle strength was only a reorganized division of the Guards Division, with seven combat battalions and two cavalry battalions, two heavy artillery battalions, and the main battle strength was only about 15,000 people, in addition to 10,000 new auxiliary soldiers, three reserve battalions, plus the strength of the water battalion was less than 10,000, and the total strength was slightly stronger at 30,000.

And Luo Li's second division has now left Zaoyang to kill Suizhou, while Li Xuanzhu's third division has suffered relatively large losses in Xiangyang and has to stay in the Xiangfan area, so it did not go south with the army.

In terms of troops, Xiao Tianjian's troops are obviously incomparable with Zuo Liangyu, but Xiao Tianjian does not think that he is at a disadvantage, but Zuo Liangyu is completely in a passive defensive position.

When Xiao Tianjian arrived in the territory of Chengtianfu, Liu Guoneng was already like a frightened bird, shrinking his main forces around the city of Chengtianfu, leaving only a small number of troops, trying to delay the offensive pace of the Xingtian Army.

It's a pity that his approach couldn't delay the Xingtian Army at all, and under the fierce attack of Liu Yaoben and others, it took only two days to basically wipe out the officials and troops north of Chengtianfu.

Now the quality of the officers and soldiers under Zuo Liangyu's command is no longer comparable with the Xingtian Army, but the Xingtian Army has become a regular army, and the officers and soldiers under Zuo Liangyu have become a peasant army. Instead, they helped the Xingtian Army to attack and kill the officers who oppressed them.

Therefore, after Xiao Tianjian arrived at Chengtian Mansion, he quickly cleared out Liu Guoneng's stragglers on the periphery of Chengtian Mansion and surrounded Chengtian Mansion.

Although Liu Guoneng tried to send his naval army to fight and go to the Fengle area to burn the fleet of the Xingtian Army and the grain stored in the area of Fengle Town, but the commander of the water camp, Yang Kunshan, led his troops to intercept the fleet he sent on the Han River, and after a battle to the death, defeated the naval army under his command.

On the shore, there are soldiers constantly firing cannons and guns at the official and military ships on the river to support the water camp, under the attack of the two departments, Liu Guineng's naval army was defeated and fled, and dozens of boats sent were destroyed on the spot, more than a dozen were captured in surrender, and the rest went south like a lost dog, and even Chengtianfu did not stop, so they fled to Jingzhou.

Liu Guoneng saw that the thief army was strong, and he was powerless to prevent them from capturing Chengtianfu, so he hurriedly sent people to Zuo Liangyu and Zuo Mengeng for help, Zuo Liangyu sent troops to immediately set off from Jingzhou, trying to gallop to help Chengtianfu, but the 10,000 soldiers and horses sent mutinied on the road, and the lord was killed by his subordinates, and thousands of officers and soldiers turned against each other on the spot, and rushed to the Xingtian army, and in a blink of an eye, they became auxiliary soldiers under Xiao Tianjian, helping Xiao Tianjian surround Chengtianfu.

After Zuo Mengeng heard the news, he led 20,000 soldiers and horses from Jingmen to fight, and also tried to gallop to Chengtianfu, but just after reaching the area of Lengshui Town, he was blocked by Situ Liang's cavalry.

The attack on Chengtianfu began on June 20, Liu Guoneng sent a team of supervisors to supervise the battle in various departments, and built a lot of trenches and earthen walls outside the city in an attempt to prevent the Xingtian army from approaching the city wall, while he personally sat in the city and commanded.

After the start of the war, Xiao Tianjian ordered Liu Yaoben and several other generals to lead the assault troops with the war battalion as the main force from several directions to carry out a centripetal attack on Chengtianfu, and at the same time mobilize auxiliaries to follow the war battalion to help the battle, and in addition, two heavy artillery battalions were deployed on both sides of the northeast of Chengtianfu to open the way for the army with heavy artillery.

In just two days, the defensive measures arranged by Liu Guoneng outside the city were basically completely conquered by the Xingtian army, and a large number of officers and soldiers surrendered to the Xingtian army on the spot, and then began to help the Xingtian army fill trenches, pave roads, and build weapons, and surrounded the city of Chengtianfu like an iron bucket.