"King, there is no need to worry about the battle situation in the east, there is no new situation on the Songzhou side for the time being, but there is a place where the king needs to come up with an idea quickly." Guo Chongtao said.

Originally, in the study room of the Yunzhou Thorn Mansion, several candles were burning beep and peeling, exuding the aroma of pine oil.

Yang Wu looked at the map and asked, "Are you talking about Yang Liudu?" Although we will have to fight with the Jin army sooner or later, for now, it is not the time to use troops. ”

"What the king said is extremely true, now that the main force of the Liang army is still there, there is really no need for us to immediately turn against the Jin Kingdom. So what the minister is talking about is not Yang Liudu, but here, Yuncheng! ”

"Yuncheng? Do you mean Wang Yanzhang? Yang Wu immediately came to his senses and said: "Well, what you said is right, the reinforcements led by Wang Yanzhang have been staying in Yuncheng for many days and have not dared to come. If he waited for the news of the fall of Yunzhou to pass, he was afraid that he would lead the army to retreat. ”

Yang Wu didn't know the reason why Wang Yanzhang stayed in Yuncheng, and he didn't need to dwell on the reason.

Yuncheng is not as good as Yunzhou, but it is just a county seat, and the city wall is low and difficult to hold; What's more, there is not much grain and grass savings in Yuncheng, once it is besieged in the city by the Wu army, and the reinforcements cannot arrive in a short time, within ten days, the defenders will collapse because of the lack of food and grass.

Therefore, as long as the news that Yunzhou has fallen arrives, Wang Yanzhang will definitely lead the army to retreat.

All Yang Wu had to do now was to quickly send troops and surround him before he retreated.

He sat on the chair frowning and pondering, his fingers lightly tapped on the tabletop, and after a while, he spoke: "General Liu, you temporarily lead the Zuo Tianwu army to stay here as a deterrent, and the lonely three thousand feather forest army stays here for the time being; On the Qizhou side, you arrange for 5,000 troops to go, and if Liu Zunzhi surrenders according to the agreement, then let 5,000 people be stationed on the spot; If he is unwilling to surrender, you are responsible for destroying him. ”

"As for the Yangliu Ferry, I heard that Li Siyuan is currently building a city on the north bank of the Yellow River, and it seems that they plan to build a pontoon bridge over the Yellow River to connect the two banks of the Yellow River, as was the case with Desheng City before. Let them be busy, and send someone to monitor their movements, just ignore them. When our navy enters the Yellow River in the future, they will understand that the way they dealt with the Liang army at the beginning is completely useless for our army! ”

The soldiers of the Liang army are mainly northerners, and they are not accustomed to water, and the Liang State has never paid much attention to the water army, so they are a little weak in the face of the Jin army's pontoon bridge.

However, the Wu army is different, the Wu army has a powerful naval army that can cross the Yellow River, even if the Jin army builds a pontoon bridge, it is useless, and it is easy to be burned in the face of the naval warships that come and go like the wind.

Moreover, Li Cunqiao obviously underestimated the strength of Zhenzhou, and it was not as easy as he thought to solve the problem of Zhenzhou; Maybe Wu Guodu has completely defeated Liang Guo, and Zhenzhou still hasn't been captured.

For various reasons, Yang Wu felt relieved and did not take Li Siyuan's actions to heart.

After making arrangements for staying behind, Yang Wu immediately ordered Shi Hongyi to lead 2,000 cavalry to go first, rush to Yuncheng as quickly as possible, and besiege Wang Yanzhang's army; As for himself, he followed with the remaining 3,000 cavalry.

In his opinion, it was not necessary to launch a strong attack with infantry to deal with Wang Yanzhang, as long as he surrounded him with cavalry and tried to cut off his grain route, it would not be long before he collapsed due to lack of food and grass.

At that time, no matter whether Wang Yanzhang chose to fight to the death or choose to break through, the cavalry of the Wu army could take the opportunity to defeat him, and there was no need to use infantry at all.

This is also the reason why he left the three thousand Yulin army in Yunzhou.

After the order was issued, Wu's army quickly mobilized and began to make various preparations before the army.

Early the next morning, the five thousand cavalry left the city as fast as they could, and the sound of horses' hooves echoed in the wilderness.

Speaking of which, Yang Wu has not personally commanded the cavalry for a long time, and it seems that since he founded the country, although there have been times when he personally commanded the troops, most of the time he has been under the escort of the Yulin Army; For example, this time, the armies of all walks of life have been fighting with the Liang army for more than two months, and he has been in Xuzhou before.

When he led his troops to Yunzhou, before he could make arrangements for the siege, Yunzhou City was broken.

This time, he left the Yulin Army and personally led the cavalry to fight for the first time in more than ten years, allowing him to find some of the feelings of leading the cavalry to gallop across the battlefield back then.

It's a pity that today's Yang Wu is not the original him after all.

Although he was a noble and the prince of King Wu, his status was not stable in that era, and he could be taken away at any time; In addition, he was only seventeen or eighteen years old at that time, and it was the time when he was full of energy.

Although Yang Wu is not old now, he is only thirty-five years old, he should be said to be in his prime, but he has been pampered for many years, but he is not as good as he was back then.

After driving more than twenty miles, he felt a little tired, and then turned to look at the other guards and those ordinary soldiers, and saw that they were still in good spirits, which made him smile bitterly.

"It seems that Jinling is a place that is easy to make people comfortable, this is really not a rumor!"

"King, do we want to take a break, you see, the soldiers are a little tired?" At this time, perhaps seeing Yang Wu's state, Cheng Xun, who was following him, came forward to ask.

He is now in his fifties, but he is still quite energetic, and he doesn't even have a single gray hair on his head.

After hearing this, Yang Wu of course knew his purpose, and immediately shook his head and said, "No need, the vanguard led by Shi Hongyi is in front, their marching speed is fast, we can't be too far away from them." ”

"And the soldiers are very fast, isn't the purpose of throwing the Yulin Army in Yunzhou to speed up the march? If we only walk twenty miles and rest, how long will it take us to get to Yunzhou? ”

Although he has a trace of comfort in his heart, he has not forgotten his ambition after all, and he has not been completely corrupted by his comfort heart, so this difficulty is still difficult for him now.

After marching forward for more than ten miles, suddenly Shi Hongyi sent someone back and said: "King, our army in front is engaged in a battle with the enemy cavalry, and the number of enemy troops is not large, only a few hundred, but they are very brave in battle. General Shi is currently deployed to engage enemy forces. ”

"Enemy cavalry?" Yang Wu was a little surprised: "Can there be infantry to follow?" ”

"King Qiqi, our army has no enemy infantry for the time being."

"No infantry?" Yang Wu became even more strange.

The Liang army was not without cavalry, although the total number was not large, but the war horses collected by various means were enough for the Liang army to form a cavalry of thousands of people.

However, these cavalry were previously mainly used along the Yellow River to confront the Jin army; Recently, after the main force of the Liang army moved south, it stands to reason that these cavalry should also be in Duan Ning's hands.

And now that he actually encountered the enemy cavalry less than twenty miles away from Shouzhang, it couldn't be the cavalry sent by Duan Ning, right?

"The army that appeared here must have come to relieve the siege of Yunzhou, Duan Ning could not send the cavalry here alone, even if he sent troops, he would definitely send a large number of infantry to follow. But our army did not receive any relevant information, so this is impossible. ”

Yang Wu didn't believe that Duan Ning had the courage to send cavalry to rescue Yunzhou alone, and if he sent a large number of infantry to follow, it would inevitably be difficult to hide from the Wu army's spies.

"Since it is not Duan Ning's troops, then it can only be Wang Yanzhang's army. However, since the front reported that no enemy infantry was found, there are two possibilities, one is that the enemy does not have infantry to follow; The other is that the enemy infantry is hidden. ”

"But it's not so easy to hide even if you want to hide it. Could it be that Wang Yanzhang rushed over with only cavalry? ”

Yang Wu didn't know the changes within the Liang army, so it was naturally difficult to think of the reason why Wang Yanzhang only led hundreds of cavalry to rush over.

However, although there were doubts in his heart, Yang Wu did not hesitate, and immediately ordered to send a thousand cavalry to reinforce Shi Hongyi, and at the same time ordered a thousand people to detour to the rear of the enemy army to cut off the enemy's retreat, and he himself took the remaining 1,000 people and then rushed to the battlefield.

"Kill!"

"Rush!"

At this time, the empty battlefield was full of shouts and killings, accompanied by the neighing of war horses and the galloping of horses' hooves, two armies composed of all cavalry fought each other in this nameless wilderness, and the whole battlefield seemed to be a piece of apocalypse, flesh and blood flying.

As Yang Wu expected, it was indeed the five hundred horsemen led by Wang Yanzhang who encountered Shi Hongyi head-on.

After he arrived at Shouzhang last night, he rested for a night, and rushed to Yunzhou early this morning, wanting to rush to Yunzhou in the afternoon, but he did not expect to encounter the cavalry of the Wu army halfway.

At first, Wang Yanzhang only encountered a dozen scout cavalry at the front, so he didn't care, he just thought that this was the rangers of the Wu army, who came to inquire about the news nearby, so he decided to grab a few scouts to find out the news.

However, it didn't take long for Wang Yanzhang to find that they had encountered not the small cavalry he expected, but the main force of the Wu army's cavalry, and he wanted to flee but it was too late.

The 2,000 cavalry soon besieged them on all sides, and what made them even more worrisome was that reinforcements from the Wu army continued to arrive behind them, completely besieging them.

Although Wang Yanzhang's cavalry was only temporarily formed, it naturally could not be compared with the Wu army's elite cavalry in terms of combat strength, but in the battle, they burst out with strong courage, and one by one soldiers were afraid to kill the Wu army under the leadership of their main general Wang Yanzhang.

However, it didn't take long for the situation to become more and more unfavorable for the Liang army as more and more Wu troops joined the battlefield.

In any case, they only had five hundred cavalry, and they faced ten times as many enemies as they were!

During the battle, the Liang cavalry soon discovered that they were surrounded by Wu troops and enemies everywhere; It didn't take long for the combat power that erupted with the fierce fighting spirit to be overwhelmed by the strength advantage of the Wu army, and one after another the cavalry of the Liang army was cut off their horses, and the situation was extremely dangerous.

"Soldiers, rush out with me!"

Wang Yanzhang soon discovered this situation, and after he picked off a Wu cavalryman, he stood high on horseback, pulling the reins of the horse in one hand and holding the spear in the other, and roared loudly.

Although he already had the idea of serving the country by dying in battle, his plan was to rush to the city of Yunzhou to surprise the army of the Wu army besieging the city, and make a final attempt to relieve the siege of Yunzhou; The current situation is a sudden encounter with the cavalry of the Wu army in the brigade, and this kind of senseless battle has no meaning except for dying in battle, which is definitely not what he wants.

At the same time, he didn't want to see his soldiers die in such a senseless battle.

"Soldiers, rush out with me!" Wang Yanzhang quickly made the decision to break through.

"Kill!"

"Rush!"

The soldiers who followed him immediately answered loudly, escorted him beside him, and began to try to break through.

On the hillside not far away, Yang Wu with a thousand cavalry did not participate in the battle, but stayed here to watch the battle.

The situation on the battlefield was extremely favorable to the Wu army, so there was no need for him to throw these thousand men into the battlefield at all.

"Is that person Wang Yanzhang? This person is really brave, and he deserves to be known as the 'Wang Iron Spear'. Looking at the black-armored and white-bearded general on the battlefield, holding a blood-stained spear, and rushing back and forth with dozens of guards behind him, Yang Wu couldn't help but admire.

"Why should the king grow the morale of others to destroy his own prestige, no matter how brave he Wang Yanzhang is, he is not besieged by our army now? And he wanted to come to the rescue of Yunzhou with 500 people, which shows that this person is just a brave man. Beside him, Cheng Xun was suddenly unhappy.

Yang Wuwan smiled and said, "The courage of the horseman? Although Lone didn't know why he only came to the rescue of Yunzhou with only 500 people, this person was by no means the courage of the horseman you said. It's a pity, it's a pity! The words could not help but express appreciation and sighs.

"Why does the king feel pity? Does the king think that our army cannot take Wang Yanzhang in this battle? Guo Chongtao, who was following the battle on the side, suddenly asked curiously.

"No, the outcome of Wang Yanzhang's battle is already doomed, our army has not only besieged him, but also blocked all the intersections, even if he has the courage of ten thousand people, it will be difficult to escape today's doom." Yang Wu shook his head and said.

As he said, although Wang Yanzhang on the battlefield at this time was still brave, no matter how he led his soldiers and horses to rush and kill, he was never able to break through the encirclement of the Wu army.

Not only that, but the guards who followed him also fell one after another, and even he himself suffered a lot of injuries, and there were blood stains everywhere on his body, although most of them were enemy blood, but there were also many blood stains left by himself.

In addition, he is almost sixty years old after all, even if he is skilled in archery and horses, and bravely crowns the three armies, his physical strength is not comparable to those young people after all.

It didn't take long for it to be obvious that Wang Yanzhang's physical strength was about to run out, or he would be exhausted soon, and at this time he was still under siege by the Wu army, and there was no sign of breaking out.