Listening to the news brought by Yin Wengui, Yang Wu and the others looked stunned, and couldn't help but look at each other. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

After Yin Wengui went back, Yang Wu reluctantly said: "I didn't expect this Qu Zhang and Jia Lingwei to be so cunning, and they deliberately gained fame, it's really hateful!"

Before, they wanted to avoid Yang Xingmi and let Fan Yu secretly create some evidence, but now that Yang Xingmi has specially confessed, it is not good for them to disobey again.

Now that you have heard what your father meant, you should do whatever you have to do. Fan Yu, when you turn around, you carefully stare at Qu Zhang, Jia Lingwei and others, and collect enough evidence as soon as possible! ”

"Yes, my subordinates understand!" Fan Yu bowed in response.

After Yang Wu and the others left, a trace of worry appeared on his face.

What he didn't tell Yang Wu and the others was that although it had been half a year since he took charge of the Long Sword Capital, there were still people within the Long Sword Capital who were dissatisfied with him, an outsider.

Especially the deputy commander of Changjian Capital, after Dai Yougui left, he thought that he would take over, but he didn't expect to be snatched away by Fan Yu in the end, so he was still secretly making trouble for him during this time. This greatly weakened the power of the Long Sword Capital. made Fan Yu feel a little uneasy in his heart.

Outside Huzhou, military camps are dense.

In the camp of the Chinese army, Qian Biao sat on the top, and listened to the news sent by the secret agent from Guangling, Qian Biao couldn't help but be overjoyed, Guangling was short of food, and the reorganization of the army would take at least a month to complete, is there better news than this?

Although it is still possible that the Huainan army will come to fight him despite the fact that the integration is not completed, in that case he will have a better chance of victory.

Of course, even if the situation is now in his favor, it is not so easy to capture Huzhou.

According to the news just got, Li Tao in the city is a veteran, not only has a calm personality, but also is good at defense, Huainan asked him to serve as the assassin of Huzhou, obviously they are also prepared for taking the opportunity to attack.

"King, this is the Suzhou cannon used by the Huainan Army to break through Suzhou, and after so long research, it has finally been built!" At this time, Du Jianwei hurriedly broke in, waved a drawing in his hand, and said to Qian Biao with a happy face.

As soon as the Suzhou cannon came out, the previous various stone throwers were immediately eliminated, and Qian Biao also attached great importance to this new siege weapon, so he ordered to study it very early.

After such a long period of continuous experimentation, the craftsmen finally came up with a suitable design plan for the Suzhou cannon before this war and manufactured it.

"Have you tried it before, and how did it work? Is it better or worse than the Huainan Army? Qian Biao was overjoyed and hurriedly asked.

"It has been tested, it can launch a hundred catties of boulders, and the range is 700 steps, which is no worse than that of the Huainan Army! Now more than 60 aircraft have been manufactured in Hangzhou, and they are still being manufactured, and it will not be long before they can be transported by water! ”

In the past few days, after Qian Biao led his army to besiege Huzhou, he did not rush to attack the city.

Although he was anxious and worried that he would not be able to conquer Huzhou before the Huainan reinforcements arrived, he knew that the necessary defensive measures had to be taken.

Therefore, Qian Biao ordered to build siege equipment while letting his subordinates attack the surrounding counties, occupy the surrounding roads, and build fortifications, so as not to be directly killed by enemy reinforcements in the future and take them by surprise. In addition to doing a good job of perimeter defense, Qian Biao also set up horses around the camp and dug trenches. Qian Biao planned to wait until these defenses were in place before starting the siege, but he was very patient.

In the city of Huzhou.

When Li Tao learned that Qian Biao was not in a hurry to attack the city, but was making various preparations, instead of feeling relaxed, he said to Wang Yu, the commander of the garrison: "Qian Biao is menacing, but he is not in a hurry to attack the city, and when it is launched, it will be extremely violent, so we must be cautious." The military order given to us by the king is to let us hold on for at least a month, but I'm afraid that this month will not be easy to keep! ”

"To reassure you, it's hard to say after a long time, but it can still be done in a month. This is also fortunate that Jun Gang made a purge of the city a few days ago, otherwise Qian Biao's army was besieged outside, if there was still his inner force in the city and took the opportunity to launch, then the situation would be really dangerous. Wang Yu said with a happy face.

"You can't be careless, although there are 5,000 defenders in the city, the elite soldiers are basically selected, and the rest can't be said to be old and weak, but it's not much better."

"Yes, the subordinates will pay attention."

Although he was mentally prepared in advance, when Qian Biao launched the siege, Li Tao still felt a little frightened.

On the first day of the official siege, eighty Suzhou guns lined up outside the city, constantly bombarding the city, causing great pressure on the defenders.

Fortunately, the Huainan Army, as the first user of the Suzhou artillery, also had some experience in how to deal with this large-scale siege weapon, and knew that when the local Suzhou artillery was launched, the soldiers should be withdrawn to dodge, and then go to the city wall to defend when the enemy infantry attacked.

So for a period of time, although the city wall was constantly baptized by Suzhou artillery, the casualties of the defenders in the city were not too large.

Qian Biao was not in a hurry about this, but took this as a good opportunity to train recruits.

He sent Du Jianwei and Cheng Ji's 20,000 new troops to attack the city in turn, so that the soldiers could experience actual combat and see blood.

Of course, the training of the new army has achieved certain results, but it has also delayed some time. Therefore, when the two new armies had some actual combat experience, Qian Biao began to gradually increase the siege of the city, preparing to consume the defenders in the city step by step, and wait until the defenders were exhausted before launching a final general attack and attacking the city in one fell swoop.

Outside the city of Shezhou.

Compared with Qian Biao's army, although the Jiangxi army had 60,000 people, twice the strength of Qian Biao, it behaved very clumsily in this attack on Shezhou.

From the beginning, this army was divided into two by Zhong Chuan, commanded by his two sons, Zhong Kuangshi and Zhong Yangui.

In order to prevent the two from blindly commanding when they first arrived at the barracks without understanding military affairs, Zhong Chuan arranged a general in the army for the two of them to help them make decisions on military affairs. Among them, the deputy general assigned to Zhong Kuangshi is named Liu Chu, who is a rare general in the Jiangxi army; And the deputy general assigned to Zhong Yangui is named Peng Yanzhang, who is calm.

Zhong Chuan, as a hero who has been in Jiangxi for 30 years, still thinks very clearly when arranging deputy generals for his two sons, and the eldest son Zhong Kuangshi has a weak personality, so he arranges a brave general as a deputy; The second son, Zhong Yangui, had a rebellious personality, so he arranged for a calm general to assist him.

However, what Zhong Chuan didn't expect was that before the two brothers set off with their army, although they had sworn in front of Zhong Chuan that they would cooperate sincerely, they forgot about their oath after entering Shezhou and began to fight each other in all aspects.

As soon as he entered the territory of Shezhou, Zhong Kuangshi, at the instigation of Liu Chu, left Zhong Yangui behind and led the army alone, wanting to rush to the city of Shezhou as soon as possible.

As a result, Chen Zhixin, the assassin of Shezhou, seized the opportunity and launched a sudden attack thirty miles away from the city, defeating Zhong Kuangshi, who was in front of him.

Fortunately, Zhong Kuang's troops had 30,000 troops after all, while the Huainan army that raided them only had a few thousand troops, and after the success of the raid, they failed to continue to expand the results and retreated to Shezhou. Therefore, although he suffered a major defeat, after the war, Zhong Kuangshi still had more than 26,000 troops after gathering troops.

After this defeat, the two brothers finally knew that fighting was not child's play and began to be cautious. So the two of them walked slowly all the way, and it took more than two days to rush to the city of Shezhou and begin to besiege the city.

After the siege, Peng Yanzhang suggested that he should first divide his troops to capture the county towns around Shezhou, completely surround Shezhou, cut off the reinforcements of the Huainan army, and then attack the city.

This was originally a very reasonable suggestion, and Liu Chu also agreed, but the Zhong Kuangshi brothers objected, they thought that the surrounding counties were useless, and it was better to attack the city as soon as possible; As for the Huainan reinforcements, even if there are, they will go to the rescue of Huzhou first.

Of course, more importantly, the two brothers were reluctant to divide their troops to capture the surrounding counties, and they were worried that the other party would take advantage of their division of troops to defeat Shezhou first.

Therefore, in order to capture Shezhou faster than the other side, the two did not care about the fatigue of the army rushing for days, and began to build siege equipment on the second day after arriving at Shezhou City, and launched a siege battle on the third day.

At this time, Chen Zhixin in the city never held out, allowing the Jiangxi army to attack the city.

After a few days, Zhong Kuangshi's vigilance gradually decreased, and they became unscrupulous again when they attacked the city. As a result, one day when the Jiangxi army was attacking the city, Chen Zhixin suddenly led the army out of the city, and caught the Jiangxi army by surprise, not only killing and injuring a large number of Jiangxi soldiers, but also taking the opportunity to burn their siege equipment.

As a result, the Jiangxi army was depressed and could only temporarily stop the siege and rest first.

In late September, Guangling.

As Luo Zhixiang mentioned, after the deregulation of grain prices, although food prices skyrocketed a lot at first, then as many grain merchants began to supply grain, their prices also began to stabilize and began to decline.

Soon after, Zhou Yin used thunderous means to take down several profiteers who were still unwilling to sell grain, and directly executed them on charges of hoarding and deliberately inflating grain prices, and all their family property was confiscated, and 50,000 stone of grain was found from their warehouse.

As soon as the news came out, not only did the grain prices in Guangling fall in response, but the remaining grain merchants saw that the situation was not good, and they were frightened, and they also sold and hoarded grain one after another, causing the grain prices to fall further sharply, and even much lower than the usual market price.

The Jiedu envoy took the opportunity to purchase a large amount of grain, plus the 50,000 stone of grain obtained from the raid, and the granary of Guangling was quickly filled, and the grain needed for the army to go out was ready, and the army could be sent out to relieve the siege when the time was ripe.