I didn't think it when I talked eagerly with Yang Wu before, but after the two of them broke down at this time, and the scene became tense, Li Cunqiao found that the momentum exuded by the veteran opposite was even stronger than Li Shaorong beside him, so he asked a little curiously.

"This is the governor of the military army of Nazuo Town, and the general Zhou Ben of Shu Guogong is also." Yang Wu opened his mouth to introduce.

"Old man Zhou Ben, I have seen His Royal Highness the King of Jin!" Zhou Ben held a spear in his hand and saluted Li Cunqiao on his horse.

Li Cunmiao was a little surprised: "I don't think Your Excellency turned out to be General Zhou who commanded the Battle of Ivory Pond, but it is disrespectful." ”

There are many famous generals in Wu, if it is in terms of command ability, Li Shenfu should be ranked first; However, Li Shenfu died early after all, and did not experience the major wars of the later large-scale expansion of the Wu State, so his prestige in the world would naturally be discounted.

What's more, Li Cunmiao originally liked those brave generals more, so in his opinion, the most powerful generals in Wu should be Zhou Ben, Wang Maozhang and others; Among them, Wang Maozhang was famous for the Battle of Qingzhou with 7,000 troops breaking the Liang Army, and Zhou Ben proved his ability in the Battle of Ivory Pond.

At this time, I heard that the old general in front of me was Zhou Ben, and even Li Cunqiao was a little surprised.

He nodded at Zhou Ben, then looked at Yang Wu and said, "Your Highness, it seems that we can only divide ourselves on the battlefield." After speaking, he turned his horse's head and motioned for Li Shaorong to return to the battle.

Seeing this, Yang Wu also returned to the formation with Zhou Ben.

After returning to his own military formation, Li Shaorong couldn't help but ask in a low voice: "King, why did King Wu refuse when he proposed to exchange Yunzhou for Weizhou before?" The last general felt that Yunzhou was lonely in the south of the river, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, and it was not easy to defend; And Weizhou is close to our core, if Yunzhou is exchanged for Weizhou, the two families will keep peace with the Yellow River as the boundary, which is a good thing for us! ”

"A good thing? If Gu really agrees, I'm afraid that it won't be long before Gu dies without a place to be buried! Li Cunqiao sneered.

It's not that he can't see the problem that Yunzhou is not conducive to defense, but he understands better that at this time, the Jin State cannot stop fighting with the Wu State, let alone retreat at all, once it retreats, the Jin State will be finished.

The reasons for this are very complicated, but Li Cunqiao can feel it very clearly.

First of all, the system of the Jin State is a continuation of the Tang Dynasty's feudal system of feudal towns, and its territories are basically divided into large and small feudal towns; Although because of Li Cunmiao's own prestige and the cohesion of the Jin State, as well as the pressure to jointly fight against foreign enemies, these festivals were able to enforce orders and prohibitions and obey the orders of the King of Jin.

But if there is a truce with the state of Wu, the two families are at peace, and the external pressure is eliminated, will these jiedu envoys always obey the orders of the king of Jin?

The second point is still the problem of the festival, the Jin army is different from the Wu army, the main means of the Wu army to maintain the combat effectiveness of the army is rich rewards, which requires strong financial resources as a backing; The Jin State did not have such strong financial resources, but it also had its own way, that is, to canonize the envoy or assassinate the history.

Among those meritorious generals, the meritorious ones will be canonized as festival envoys, and the meritorious ones with small merits can also serve as a place to assassinate the history, so as to obtain their own territory, this kind of temptation. It is difficult for people to resist the strong people who are confused, which encourages the Jin army to fight hard, in the hope that one day they will have a territory of their own.

But after so many years of conquest, the existing territory of the Jin State has basically been canonized, if it keeps peace with the Wu State and does not expand the land to the outside world, it will not be long before the Jin State has no land to seal; Without enough land as a reward, the Jin army will lose the motivation to fight, and the middle and low-level officers who have no hope of promotion may rise up in rebellion.

As for the third reason, after so many years of conquest in the Jin Kingdom, the people in various places were in distress, coupled with the local assassins or the envoys of the festival to extort violently, which made the burden of the people extremely heavy; Now the Jin state is in the midst of external expansion, and successive victories have to some extent concealed these internal contradictions.

Once the conquest is stopped and there is no external pressure, these internal contradictions will erupt, and there will be no need for the Wu State to launch an attack at that time, and perhaps the Jin State will collapse internally.

In short, the system of the Jin State was completely based on external expansion, and only continuous external expansion could ensure that the country had sufficient cohesion and cover up all kinds of internal contradictions; Once the external expansion of the Jin state stopped, then its internal contradictions would erupt and the state would become weak.

In addition, Li Cunqiao also knows that he has absolute confidence in the ability to lead troops to fight and is not inferior to Yang Wu, the king of Wu, but if he is better than the ability to govern the country, he is too far behind Yang Wu.

If there is a truce with Wu, it will leave enough time for Wu to digest the Central Plains that it has just obtained, and then Wu's strength will become stronger, while the Jin State will become weak because of internal contradictions.

It was precisely because he was aware of these problems that Li Cunqiao would rather risk a decisive battle with Wu Jun than agree to Yang Wu's seemingly good proposal; What's more, Li Cunmiao's personality also determined that it was impossible for him to withdraw from the army at this time.

After sending Li Shaorong away, Li Cunqiao sent an order to Shi Jingjiao, asking him to lead a thousand men out of battle to challenge the Wu army.

On the other side, Yang Wu saw that the other party sent troops to challenge, and the general who led the troops waved the "stone" character general flag, and his heart moved.

"A general surnamed Shi? Among the many generals of the Jin Kingdom, there are not many people with the surname Shi, and there is only one of them who is valued by the King of Jin, is this person Shi Jingjiao? ”

He thought for a moment, "If this person is really Shi Jingjiao, then isn't Liu Zhiyuan, who established the Later Han Dynasty, also in the army in front of him?" If I send troops to wipe out all this army today, won't I wipe out two generations of dynasties in one fell swoop? ”

But then he smiled bitterly, after his chaotic entry, the current situation in the world has long deviated from the original direction, the current Wu State has unified most of the areas south of the Yellow River except for Shuzhong and Longyou, while the Jin State is currently blocked north of the Yellow River.

It is difficult to determine how the situation will develop in the future, let alone whether Shi Jingjiao and Liu Zhiyuan have a chance to build a country.

"I just don't know what Guo Wei, the founder of the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties, is doing at this time?" With such a question, Yang Wu looked at the generals and said, "The Jin army takes the initiative to challenge, we can't let them underestimate it." Who wants to lead their troops to meet the enemy for a while? ”

"The king, the last general is willing to lead the troops into battle!" As soon as the words fell, a rough voice came, making Yang Wu turn his eyes to the man, only to find that it was an unknown general, standing behind Li Chengding.

"The king, this is Zhang Lang, the deputy commander under the command of the minister, who is brave, and the minister thinks that he can make him fight." Perhaps seeing Yang Wu's question, Li Chengding hurriedly stood up and explained.

"Okay, General Zhang will lead the troops into battle, if he can achieve victory, he can remove the word 'deputy' in front of the title." Yang Wu nodded.

The other party dispatched only 1,000 people, and of course the Wu army could not invest more troops on the side, so as not to be underestimated by the other party.

What's more, for Yang Wu, he also wanted to see which side of the Wu army and the Jin army with the same strength could win in a head-on collision, whether the battle-hardened Jin army was superior, or the Jianghuai land, which had been strictly selected and trained, could prevail.

"Please rest assured, the king will return victorious!" Zhang Lang said with a resolute face.

Yang Wu nodded, didn't say much, but thought in his heart: "Shi Jingjiao can establish the Later Jin Dynasty in history, whether he uses the power of the Khitan people or not, at least he still has some ability; What's more, he is leading the most elite army in the Jin army, and his strength must be very strong.

And the Zhang Lang in front of him is not famous, but he is afraid that the possibility of losing is greater. ”

Although he is not optimistic about Zhang Lang, Yang Wu does not plan to change people, after all, it is just a thousand-level battle, even if he loses, it doesn't matter much, if he loses this time, he can win it back next time.

"Knock knock......" As the drums of war sounded, the armies of both sides began to move forward, and the distance gradually shortened.

Shi Jingjiao's command originally had both cavalry and infantry, but this time it was a thousand infantry, and the cavalry stayed in the rear to suppress the formation; Therefore, the infantry on the side of Wu is also in the front, and the cavalry is in the rear.

If you really want to count it, this battle is the real head-to-head battle between the Jin army and the Wu army, the Jin army has been fighting in the east and west for so many years, defeating the Khitan in the north and Houliang in the south, and also eliminated Liu Shouguang, the king of Yan, during the period, and the record can be described as brilliant.

The Wu army's side also had a brilliant record, with large and small feudal towns in the south being flattened one after another, and in the last six months, the Later Liang Dynasty was completely wiped out, expanding its power to the entire south of the Yellow River.

In this way, the two armies with great momentum and high morale fought together, and suddenly the entire battlefield was filled with shouts of killing, and everywhere in the eyes was swords, swords and swords, people fought hard and blood was splashed everywhere.

"I have heard for a long time that the Jin army is brave and good at fighting, and now when I see it, it is really worthy of its name!" Zhou Ben did not shy away from admiring the strength of the enemy army.

"General Zhou, don't be busy raising the momentum of others, the performance of our army is not bad; The enemy army is so desperate to rush and kill, if it cannot break the enemy in one fell swoop, when the morale is exhausted, it will be defeated by our army. Li Chengding said with a smile.

From the current situation, it is not clear which side has the advantage, and the Wu army is more known for its tenacity, relying on good training to ensure the strictness of the formation and the maintenance of morale; On the Jin side, the Jin army is full of wildness, and the soldiers up and down are desperately striving to be the first, not afraid of death.

It's hard to say which of these two types of armies is stronger, but at least on the current battlefield, the momentum of the Jin army is indeed superior to that of the Wu army.

"So the most important thing is whether the Jin army will destroy our army's formation in one fell swoop with the courage of blood and energy, or whether our army will splice and resist the enemy's onslaught and wait until the time of counterattack comes." Zhou Ben nodded in agreement.

The two of them talked briefly, but their eyes were fixed on the battlefield ahead, trying to judge the development of the situation from the changes in the scene.

After a quarter of an hour, Li Chengding suddenly said: "The enemy's offensive momentum is weakening, and it seems that our army is going to win." ”

As he said, at the beginning, the Wu army was mainly defensive, but the Jin army launched a fierce attack, constantly impacting the formation of the Wu army.

And at this time, it was obvious that the speed at which the Jin army's banner was advancing in the Wu army's formation had been reduced to a very slow degree, and it could even be said that it had stopped.

This means that the Jin army has encountered great resistance, and the blood and courage in them are gradually declining.

As long as the Wu army can continue to hold on, it should be them who will win.

Zhou Ben said: "Is our army going to win?" The old man doesn't think so, in the old man's opinion, our army has already lost this battle. What does the king think? He turned to Yang Wu and asked.

Yang Wu nodded and said, "Yes, Gu also thinks that if there is no accident, the possibility of our army losing is very high." ”

He pointed to the battlefield and sighed: "Although the offensive momentum of the enemy army is weakening, the problem is that the morale of our army is also weakening. And you see over there, our army's formation is already a little chaotic, if Zhang Lang can't make adjustments in time, the enemy only needs to take advantage of the situation to attack, and our army will be defeated. ”

"This ......" Li Chengding was a little surprised: "King, although there is some confusion in our army, it is not obvious, and Zhang Lang is also good at fighting, and he will definitely be able to respond in time; Does the king think that the enemy will be able to find the loopholes in our army before they can respond? ”

As the so-called bystanders are clear, they are people who watch the battle from a distance, but they can see the situation of the two sides more clearly and know where there are loopholes; But does the enemy general who is engaged in a fierce battle in the middle of the battle also have the ability to seize this not-so-obvious fighter in time? At least Li Chengding is skeptical.

It's a pity that he still underestimated the enemy generals, and just when his words fell, he saw that the Jin army immediately responded and launched a fierce attack on the loopholes in the Wu army, which immediately caused chaos in the Wu army's formation.

Fortunately, Zhang Lang was able to get Li Chengding's praise, he was indeed not incompetent, he saw that the formation was in danger of collapsing, and immediately ordered to shrink his forces and reorganize the formation.

After his adjustment, although the Wu army suffered a lot of losses, it at least regained its position and was not completely defeated by the enemy.

Not only that, Zhang Lang also took advantage of the loophole that appeared when the Jin army advanced too violently and launched a counterattack, causing large casualties to the Jin army.

After a battle, both sides had considerable losses, and the soldiers were exhausted, so both sides withdrew their troops and prepared to return to the battle.

Judging from the casualties in this battle, the Jin army can be regarded as the victorious side, and in the end, the 1,000 Wu army suffered at least 300 casualties; The casualties on the Jin side were estimated at less than two hundred.

Yang Wu was mentally prepared for this result, not to mention the ability of the generals on both sides, that is, the strength of the two armies, Yang Wu also felt that maybe the Jin army might be better.

After all, the Wu army has mainly relied on training over the years, and the real large-scale actual combat is the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains; The Jin army is different, the Jin army has been fighting for so many years, and how rich is the actual combat experience; In addition, the northerners are taller and stronger, which is of course more advantageous in the era of cold weapon warfare.

So for this result, Yang Wu was not surprised.