"Great marshal, the envoy is waiting outside the city." Outside Xuzhou City, a team of Qiqi people appeared and wanted to see Xue Yang under the banner. This made Xu Ying, who had just been patrolling the city tower, very strange, and originally planned to find an opportunity to sneak attack the Qiqi brigade outside the city, but he didn't expect the other party to send a messenger over.

Xu Ying ordered the soldiers to take this group of messengers to meet Xue Yang, and he quickly rushed back. I only heard that the purpose of the Ministry of Qi was to let Xue Yang release Liu Shizheng. This surprised Xue Yang and at the same time wanted to find out the purpose of this meeting.

"According to the messenger's will. What if I wait for Liu Shizheng to be released? Are you going to withdraw your troops? Xue Yang glanced at the envoy in a sheepskin jacket and a strange outfit and said.

"In addition, your Datang will compensate me for the cost of sending troops and send us 100,000 slaves." Seeing that Xue Yang's attitude softened, and the big tent was basically a group of young people, he immediately smiled and said: "Otherwise, after my army attacks the city, all the people in the city will be captured in the royal court and my big chief will be enslaved." Tang Yan of the envoy was not authentic enough, Xue Yang carefully condensed to roughly hear clearly, but his eyes rolled, so he said: "Such a major matter needs His Majesty the Emperor of the Imperial Court to decide, and we have no right to decide as generals." I wonder if your envoy can wait for me for a few days? How about I tell His Majesty the Emperor? ”

Seeing Xue Yang's face, the envoy thought that things could be done, and immediately nodded happily and said: "Give you ten days, if there is still no news after the ten days, my army will definitely attack the city on a large scale, and come to take the jade silk of the people by themselves." After saying that, he shook his head and shook his tail and left.

Originally, this arrogant attitude would have erupted and killed people according to the minds of these people, but the strange thing is that even a fierce general like Li Shenfu who was sitting on the side did not move, which made Xue Yang very strange. But before he could speak, Li Shenfu began to mutter: "I don't know where the big handsome has started to calculate again?" How do I think this messenger is here to ask for compensation? It's just a compensation for us. If you are sold, you have to find money. As soon as these words came out, several people present laughed.

"Brother, tonight you will secretly lead the army out of the city, in the valley on the right side of the army, tomorrow I will negotiate with the army again, we have no money, and there are only 30,000 slaves. At that time, Shenfu will take the men and horses of his headquarters to disguise themselves as slaves, and when the time comes, let Li Yang escort you to the inside of the camp. Xue Yang smiled: "Didn't they want slaves?" Let's give them 30,000 slaves, for fear he won't be able to eat and walk around. ”

Xue Yang's smile made everyone feel a chill, and several people perfected this plan, including when Li Shenfu and they would do it, how Li Yang and them would carry weapons to support, how the follow-up team would follow up, how Xu Ying's men and horses would cut off the back road, etc.

Xue Yang's side is full of strength to prepare for a pitfall, the Eastern Front Tiance Army also began the follow-up attack after the complete reception of Chaozhou, Lu Guangmu's territory around Chaozhou was almost desperate after the main force was wiped out, there was no room to fight back, most of the Tiance Army officers and soldiers almost had no room to make a move, just drove outside the city to show the banner of the other party and surrendered without a fight. So much so that at the end of August of the second year of the Apocalypse, most of the men and horses on the Eastern Front were acting as a logistics army, escorting prisoners and transporting captured materials. Even some idle hands itched to the beach to find some seafood to try.

"Okay Tiancheng, let's gather the army and set off for Guangzhou." In the past few days, the soldiers of the Tiance Army have successively pulled back the hundreds of monsters that were scattered and fled by explosives during the Chaozhou War, and selected a few people who can be domesticated from the captured Cantonese soldiers to take care of them, and inquired about it to know that this is an elephant in the south, which was bought by Liu Changlu from Qu Chengmei and trained for more than a year and waited to go to the battlefield, but he didn't expect to be broken up for the first time. At this moment, Yang Tiancheng stared at the elephant in front of him, looked left and right, and didn't have time to pay attention to Wang Houchun's words.

Wang Houchun couldn't cry or laugh, and then he went to give an order to Chai Jia and Xue Wanli to gather their men and prepare to leave for Guangzhou, and at the same time summoned Qian Ning's subordinates, and immediately marched into Yongzhou after capturing Fuzhou, and took over the Western Route Army from Yongzhou to the south to attack Daozhou and Lianzhou. At the same time, Chen Yu was asked to speed up the radicalization from Qianzhou to Shaozhou, and after eradicating Lu Yanchang, he and Qian Ning joined forces to attack northern Guangdong and other places, and oppressed Liu Yin and Liu Changlu father and son from the northern front.

After arranging these, Yang Tiancheng walked in leisurely and said with a smile: "Look at what this is?" After that, he handed over a piece of paper and said, "This is the basic common sense about this elephant sent by the emperor." ”

"How does the emperor know so much?" Wang Houchun hurriedly read the information sent by Li Xuanqing after learning that they had defeated Liu Changlu's war elephant troops, and frowned: "The emperor means that we will also form a war elephant army?" I just asked, this big guy needs too much food and grass for a day, and he can only survive in the south, which is a bit more than worth the loss. ”

Yang Tiancheng waved his hand and said: "The emperor means that let's explore it, after all, this elephant is a specialty of the south, maybe it will be useful in the future, as for the formation of troops, we will talk about it later." These elephants are handed over to the logistics department, although they eat a lot, but the carrying capacity is also large, and they are like walking on the ground over the mountains. ”

After the two of them discussed, the more than 100 elephants were handed over to the logistics department for transportation materials, but at this time, the most troublesome place for the logistics department was actually not the southeast, but the southwest region where Xue Yang was located. The terrain in the southwest region is complicated, and the speed of logistics material transportation is too slow, so it has caught up with a commander who does not play cards according to common sense, and almost half of the energy of the logistics department is planning the material dispatch in the southwest region. However, at this time, most of Xue Yang's troops were stationed in Xuzhou, and finally the logistics department had some time to transfer the backlog of materials.

The logistics department did not understand that these elephants could not live in high latitudes, and after September, they also sent these big guys to transport materials from the Yangtze River to the southwest, but they fell ill on the way and most of them died.

However, at this time, Xue Yang, who was on the front line in Xuzhou, officially sent a note to the Qiqi people after the arrangements were made, proposing to escort 30,000 prisoners in advance to express his sincerity, and the follow-up manpower and material costs would be followed after the imperial court replied. Thirty thousand captives, dressed in various costumes, were pressed out of the city and headed for the camp. This scene also made the Qiqi people who were watching along the way breathe a sigh of relief, these slaves knew at a glance that they were prisoners of the Tiance Army, no wonder they would give them out as gifts, which was obviously to save food. Therefore, after Li Yang escorted the slaves into the camp of Qiqi, the Qiqi people immediately stopped Li Yang and prevented him from leading the army in.

"This is the food that my marshal gave free of charge as the rations of these slaves for the past ten days." Hundreds of large boxes behind Li Yang were dragged out by war horses.

"Alright then, let the slaves move all these things. Thank you, Marshal. As soon as he heard that it was food, the face of the receiving general was obviously much better, and he waved his hand to let the slaves near the camp gate turn around and come back to transport the things back.

"General, I have a gift for you." Li Yang glanced at the general, took out a Tang knife from his horse, handed it over, and said with a smile: "This is a stainless steel war knife made by my skilled craftsmen in the Tang Dynasty, and I will give it to the general as a meeting gift." Li Yang stretched out his hand and flicked the blade of the knife, and the crisp sound of the steel war knife made the general laugh, walked over and nodded: "Your Tang Dynasty is really a rich place, I like it." Thank you-" I saw a long rainbow suddenly flash in the air, a huge head rose to the sky, and before the last sentence was finished, Li Yang stabbed him headed.

"Brothers, kill me." This change made the soldiers at the gate of the camp stunned, and before they could come back to their senses, they were rushed in by Li Yang's Tiance army. Li Yang's actions also made Li Shenfu and others, who had already entered the camp, instantly attack, those big boxes loaded with rations were actually the weapons of the soldiers of the Tiance Army, after this chaos, Li Shenfu led the men to create chaos while grabbing weapons to occupy the nearby camp to counterattack, and Li Yang led the army to break in.

"Immediately send an order to the whole army to attack the camp of the Qiang." Xue Yang, who was on the tower of Xuzhou City, saw the signal coming from afar, and immediately led the main force out of the city to attack, and at the same time sent a signal to send a signal to Xu Ying, who was in ambush, to immediately join the attack sequence. Xu Ying's attack target was the back road of the Qi people, cutting off the other party's retreat path.

The chaos of the camp also made the other party's commander prepare to deal with the attack of the Tiance army, and at this time, the people naturally knew that the Tiance army was fooling themselves in the past few days, so the hateful commander of the army led the army to counterattack almost without thinking. But at this time, Li Shenfu had already gained a firm foothold in the camp, and the counterattack of the soldiers of the Tiance Army made it impossible for the commander of the Qiqi Army to mobilize more troops to the camp gate for a while, so he could only watch Li Yang's men and horses burst in and join forces with Li Shenfu.

"General, the cavalry of the Men has come out." Li Shenfu, who killed the enemy on the front line, was startled by the shouts of the guards around him, where did the cavalry troops come from in the southwest region, but then reacted and laughed: "Just these short-legged ones are also called cavalry, let the brothers rush up, let them see how our infantry hangs their cavalry."

Although Li Shenfu's speed was fast enough, Xue Yang, who was following up behind, also discovered this anomaly at this time, and rushed over with a move in his right hand The third battalion rushed over, this group of infantry with terrifying speed was the first to come, and intercepted the cavalry of the Qiqi people in front of Li Shenfu, and the two sides fought in a mess in the camp of Qiqi, although the Qiqi troops were strong, but they could not effectively mobilize their troops in the face of the chaotic scene, but the Tiance Army gradually relied on the strong combat power to suppress the other party after the three-way people and horses converged.

At this time, Xu Ying, the fourth road, had also ignited the fire of war in the rear, because his road was not an encounter, the explosive bag was fired by the ballista and fell into the camp with a loud bang, the rumbling explosion shattered the last hope of the people, and after the rear army was scattered like a headless fly, the mountain battalion began to drive the rebels to rush against the camp of the Chinese army, and the entire camp was completely chaotic, and there was no way to recover it. In desperation, the commander ordered all the soldiers and horses to find their own way to retreat.

Although this order allowed the commander of the Tiance Army to avoid being captured by the Tiance army, but it completely buried more than 100,000 of the army of the Qin, this battle was fought from the morning to the afternoon of the next day, the 100,000 people of the West Route Army of the Tiance Army attacked in a big way, defeated the main army of the Qiqi more than 100,000, captured nearly 50,000 people, and seized countless grain and grass materials, completely eliminated the living force of the Qiqi, and laid a solid foundation for the official start of the next southwest campaign.

After taking the main force of Qiqi, Xu Ying led the forward troops with the mountain battalion as the main force to pursue the remnants of Qiqi day and night. Xue Yang, on the other hand, gathered the rest of the horses, rested in Xuzhou for a while, waited for the supply of the logistics department, handed over all the prisoners, and led the main force to quickly move south, and the troops pointed directly at Guizhou. So far, the main energy of the three people has been concentrated in Guangzhou.

The news of Xue Yang's big break was quickly transmitted to the headquarters, Hangzhou, and the General Staff along with the military newspaper. After receiving the battle report, Li Xuanqing secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and hurriedly asked the General Staff to order the logistics department to give priority to all the money, grain, and materials captured in the Southwest Campaign to the Western Route Army, and not to transport them back, so as to reduce the logistical pressure of the Western Route Army, and instructed Yang Tiancheng's command of the Eastern Front Army to pay attention to receiving more funds from the Western Route Army to ensure the combat strength of the Western Route Army.

At this time, Yang Tiancheng and Wang Houchun, after receiving Xue Yang's battle report, were relieved to transfer the entire army of the Eastern Front to the front line in Guangzhou to cooperate with Chen Yu's main corps from Lianzhou to the south.

At the beginning of September of the second year of the Apocalypse, the Qian Ning Army exterminated Lu Guangchou in the Fuzhou area and killed him, and the prominent part of the northern part of the Lingnan Domain Alliance was completely taken. This also made the eastern and western lines of the southern Tiance Army completely integrated. Immediately afterwards, Chen Yu's main army also wiped out Lu Yanchang near Lianzhou, so that this alliance to deal with the southern expedition of the Tiance army was left with Liu Yin's father and son in Guangzhou and several feudal towns in the southwest, and the unification of the south was finally a foregone conclusion.

After all the combat missions on the Eastern Front were over, Chen Yu led the main army to the south in the rain on the ninth day of the ninth month of September to join up with Chai Jia, besiege Duanzhou, and carry out the peripheral battle to capture Guangzhou. After resting, Qian Ning's troops attacked and advanced along the route of Lianzhou, Yongzhou, and Daozhou, and walked side by side with Xue Yang's road, and the two cooperated with each other. This also minimized the pressure on Xue Wanli on the Eastern Front, allowing him to concentrate on preparing for the siege mission.

On September 15 of the second year of the Apocalypse, Liu Yin, the envoy of the Lingnan Jiedu, died, and Liu Changlu claimed that the envoy of the Jiedu would take control of the military and political power of Guangzhou. Subsequently, he sent people to contact Qu Chengmei's Jing Navy to go north and join forces with the Guangdong Army to flank the Tiance Army. The naval division of the Jing Navy then went north to the mouth of the Pearl River to cover the attack of the Cantonese army on the Tiance army.

However, just when Wang Houchun was preparing to mobilize the navy to the south to participate in the war, a big storm disrupted the deployment of the offensive and defensive sides, and almost caused heavy losses for the two armies for a while. The battle was also dragged on by the storm for a month before it was resumed.