Li Yu stuffed gunpowder into the coffin of the Taiping army in later generations, and wrote a text with the method of breaking the city in the tunnel to pass it on to Li Shangdan, so that he could break the city in this way.

Li Shangdan was overjoyed and shouted: "Your Highness still has a plan!" In order to prevent being detected by the Silla people, two tunnels were dug on the southeast and north sides of Shangzhou City at the same time, and the remaining 200 gunpowder bags were all dismantled and compacted in the solid wood coffins found, and after the tunnels were dug, they picked a tunnel that had not been discovered by the Silla army and carried it into the city wall to blow up the city wall.

Li Yu led the main force to garrison in Shahuo Town for more than half a month, and sent out to attack the troops under the jurisdiction of Shangzhou to win one after another, and returned to the camp with a lot of captured money and grain, waiting for the news that Li Shangdan had broken through Shangzhou.

Since the start of the war in midsummer, now in autumn, from Xin'er's letter, the first snow has fallen in Liaodong, although the snow is not big, but it reminds the world that winter is coming.

Fortunately, Li Yu's grain was almost entirely dependent on shipping, and the northeast wind blowing in winter was conducive to the southward movement of sea ships, and there was no need to attack Goguryeo like the previous Emperor Taizong, because the heavy snow in Liaodong was not conducive to the transportation of grain and regretted the withdrawal of troops.

But it was not Li Yu's style to wait in Shahuo Town, and during this half month, he sent scouts out to reconnoiter the terrain and troop deployment of the remaining small half of Silla's territory, so as to make a decision calmly.

As the news from the scouts continued to reach Li Yu's case, Li Yu's expression became more and more excited, and the merit of destroying the country was beckoning to him.

According to the scout's report, there were only 10,000 defenders left in Jincheng, the capital of Silla, half of whom were newly recruited recruits, and there were only 20,000 defenders in the three counties of Yichang, Daecheng and Shangcheng around Jincheng, of which 60% were also young and strong people who had just been recruited.

As for the defenders of the counties that went south along the Huangshan River from Shangzhou to the south, they were 100 percent armed forty or fifty thousand peasants, a pure rabble.

Even for the sake of this rabble, Silla was about to exhaust the country's people, and the countryside relied on hungry old and weak women and children to harvest grain, and the food that was returned to the family would be requisitioned by the government as military rations within a few days. As a result, Silla was in the midst of the autumn harvest, but there was a bizarre situation of starvation.

As for Silla's elite troops, there are only four left, in addition to the more than 10,000 troops in Jinseong and its surroundings, the largest group of 30,000 troops trapped in Sangju cannot be released, in addition to the remaining more than 10,000 soldiers and horses in the northern part of Baekje and more than 10,000 elite soldiers who are pinned down by the Yellow Sea Fleet on the south coast.

What pleased Li Yu was that seeing that the broken ship of Silla was about to sink, many Silla magnates and local tycoons had recently sent letters expressing their willingness to join the Tang Dynasty, and the mountains, rivers, landforms, and checkpoints along the way to Jincheng were garrisoned.

Li Yu couldn't help but suspect that he knew even better about the situation of the remaining land of Silla than Kim Famin, who sat on the throne of Jinseong.

The Silla garrisons in the counties along the way from Shahuo Town to Jincheng were all rabble that had just been recruited, and Li Yu wondered if he should leave Li Shangdan to continue the siege of Shangzhou and lead the main force south.

At this time, the news of the failure of the recapture of Shangzhou came, as well as Li Shangdan's request for additional troops.

Li Shangdan used Li Yu's proposal to blast a coffin filled with gunpowder to blast down a section of the city wall that was three zhang long. After the initial panic, the defenders of the city, under the command of Jin Yuxin, gathered heavy troops to fight to the death in the gap.

The two sides fought fiercely for more than three hours in the gap of the collapsed city wall, with more than 10,000 dead and wounded, and the fallen corpses were piled up almost as high as the city wall, and the bright red blood water was like rain from the corpses to a flowing stream.

Li Shangdan saw that he could not overcome the attack for a long time, and sent all the elite White Tiger Guards under his command to it, but they failed to repel the Silla army at the gap.

Seeing the heavy losses of his soldiers and horses, the generals asked to temporarily withdraw their troops and fight again in the coming day, and Li Shangdan had no choice but to order the withdrawal of the army. However, in this battle, as the main force of the attack, Silla surrendered to Dongyi and the New Second Army to lose more than half, the White Tiger Guard lost more than 300 soldiers, and the remaining soldiers and horses were less than 15,000, and there were at least 20,000 Silla troops in Shangju City plus more than 10,000 people who were held hostage to defend the city.

Li Shangdan felt that his troops were insufficient, so he had to ask Li Yu for more troops and horses.

As for the gap in Shangzhou City that was blown up, after the Tang army retreated, the Silla army quickly organized manpower to plug the gap with earth and stones overnight, so that Li Shangdan had no chance to take advantage of it.

Li Yu did not expect the current stalemate in Shangzhou City, and the generals were even more surprised that the Silla army, which had been defeated in every battle since the beginning of the war, had defended Shangzhou City like an iron bucket.

The general proposed that Li Shangdan's failure to conquer Shangzhou was due to the lack of his troops, and that (his strength had never exceeded 30,000) should be assembled at the moment to storm Shangzhou, and he would be able to overcome it in one battle.

Xue Jun disagreed, and said: "Li Shangdan has been attacking Shangzhou for more than half a month, and he has not been able to overcome repeated attacks, not only because of his lack of troops. The city wall of Shangju is tall and strong, the defenders are as high as 30,000 people, all of whom are the elite of Silla, and the soldiers and civilians in the city are defending together, and the defender Kim Yuxin is a battle-hardened general. If you want to break this city, it will not be possible to do it in a short time. It is necessary to besiege the city with heavy troops for a long time and seek fighters to break the city. ”

However, besieging the city for a long time was not a good strategy, Xue Jun's proposal caused controversy among the generals, Chen Xuan, Li Wenbai and other combat-conservative generals held supportive opinions, and Zhang Shi, Li Yesi and other generals believed that they should be credited with a battle, and gathered the whole army to attack Shangzhou with the overwhelming momentum of Mount Tai.

Xue Ne proposed another plan, scouting to detect that the Silla defenders in the counties south of Shangzhou were all rabble that had just been recruited, why not continue to besiege Shangzhou with partial divisions, and the main force would go down the Huangshan River, take all the counties along the way, and then attack east to become a lonely city of Jincheng.

As soon as this plan came out, the generals looked sideways, which was exactly what Li Yu thought. However, Chen Xuan proposed that this strategy was too risky, in case the partial division besieging Shangzhou was defeated by Jin Yuxin, and the Silla elite soldiers in Shangzhou City could cut off the retreat of our army, and our army went south and failed to break through Jincheng, then it would become a lone army with no reinforcements outside and no grain and grass inside, repeating the defeat of the Ninth Army of the former Sui Yuwen attacking Goguryeo, the army of 300,000 people was only more than 2,000 people left when they returned from crossing the Liaoshui.

Li Yu smiled and didn't care, if the war was unfavorable as Chen Xuan said, the whole army could break through along the Huangshan River south, and the Yellow Sea Fleet could just support it. If Nuo is to attack Jincheng and not resist, then he can go east to Yichang County in the east of Jincheng, and the troops will be stationed here, and the grain, grass and ordnance can be continuously sent by the Yellow Sea Fleet, how can it repeat the defeat of Yuwenshu?

Thinking of this, Li Yu made up his mind and said: "Since this king's gunpowder pit city breaking method has failed to break through Shangzhou, it seems that Shangzhou City does not need to think about it in a short time. If you don't go to Shangzhou, then go to Kejin City! ”

"The order was to transfer 20,000 Silla troops to supplement the Dongyi and Pingxin Second Armies, and the Beihai Iron Cavalry Left Guard led by Qin Jingqian was placed under the command of Li Shangdan. So that Li Shangdan did not need to rush to conquer Shangzhou City, and adopted a long-term siege strategy, digging deep trenches outside the city and erecting spikes to completely encircle Shangzhou. Nuo let one of the Silla troops in Sangju City get out of the city alive and dispose of the army law. Three days later, the rest of the armies followed the king south along the Huangshan River and attacked Jincheng. The Yellow Sea Fleet marched north along the Yellow Mountain River, attacking if it could, and if it could not, it must contain more than 10,000 troops and horses on the south coast of Silla so that it could not go north to rescue ......."