Dang Shousu had already raised one foot and was ready to run away, but at the last moment, he stayed behind and continued to besiege Zhou Guodong.

He ordered Sun Chengye to withdraw from Ningyuan County, move closer to the area of Jiuzhi Mountain, and concentrate the troops together, which is relatively safer, in case the Western Army launches a surprise attack, they can still take care of each other.

The Western Army immediately occupied Ningyuan County, and Lu Mingchen and Gao Wengui led their troops into Jiuzhi Mountain, approached to a place twenty miles away from Dang Shousu and set up camp in the village, and pressed closely.

Dang Shousu was taken aback, thinking that his judgment was wrong, and the Western Army was finally going to turn around and make a move, but Lu Mingchen and Gao Wengui stopped there after camping, monitoring Dang Shousu's troops from afar, and there was no other action, Dang Shousu hesitated again and again, and finally he was still reluctant to leave, and the siege of Zhou Guodong was about to succeed, and he was really reluctant to give up at this time.

As a result, a Chu army on the mountain, a Qinwang army under the mountain, a western army, and the three troops did not fight, did not fight, did not surrender, did not leave, and spent time staring at each other every day.

Among them, Zhou Guodong's Chu army was trapped in the mountains, and he simply didn't have any ideas, but Dang Shousu, who was in the position of sandwich biscuits, felt the most uncomfortable, he now wanted to fight, he could go, he had more choices, but he suffered from gains and losses, hesitated, wanted to take advantage of loopholes, and was worried about when the Western Army would suddenly come up, in just a few days, Dang Shousu, who had been in deep anxiety, had a lot more gray hair.

The key to such a hesitation and hesitation on the part of the Western Army is that there are contradictions among the top leaders and there is no unanimous opinion.

The base camp of the Western Army is in Yunnan, and it has been accumulating strength in recent years, and it can be called a soldier with enough food, and after supporting Zhu Cihuan, the king of Yong, it is even more vigorous, and the territory has expanded rapidly, occupying the whole province of Guizhou, most of Sichuan and Guangxi one after another, and has won several big victories one after another, and the morale of the army is high, and it is an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the victory to march to continue to expand the results of the war, but whether the next step is to go north or east, there are differences between Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo, and Liu Wenxiu.

Li Dingguo advocated going north.

And for good reason.

If the main force of the Western Army goes north from Sichuan, crosses the Qinling Mountains, and captures Hanzhong and Shaanxi, it will be as invincible as Qin Shi Huang, and then there is the capital to compete for the world, although it is said that the current Sichuan has a sharp decline in population due to long-term wars, and the grain output has been greatly reduced, but the Western Army can fight steadily and steadily, and spend a few years in Sichuan to reclaim the wasteland and fields, and at the same time train the new army in the northwest. Wait until the time is ripe and then go out of Tongguan and sweep the world.

Compared with Qin Shi Huang of that year, the Western Army also has a very big advantage, that is, Yunnan is rich in copper mines, after several years of development and construction, the output of copper mines in Yunnan has been increasing, providing a large amount of military expenses for the Western Army, over time, the output of these copper mines will turn over and go up, and then the Western Army will have money, grain, and elite soldiers, and it is not a problem to defeat the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the Longwu Imperial Court.

Sun Kewang advocated eastward expansion.

He also has a good reason.

Li Dingguo wants to emulate Qin Shi Huang, but two thousand years have passed, things have long been wrong, time has passed, the south of the Yangtze River in the pre-Qin period is mostly a wild land, but now Jiangnan is rich in the world, no matter the population of money and food are far more than the north, such as the Suzhou Mansion in the south of Zhili, the economic strength is more than a province in the north, and for example, Huguang, the base camp of the Chu army, is known as the granary of "Huguang is familiar with the world", Wang Kefan occupies thousands of miles of territory along the Yangtze River, and includes these richest provinces in the bag, That's why we have the strength to launch the Northern Expedition one after another, and press the Qing army, which is known as invincible in the world, to fight on the ground, all in all, Jiangnan is far more important than the northwest, and the western army should now advance eastward.

Before the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs and in the first two years, it was indeed devastating and unbeatable, but in the past few years, the fatigue has been exhausted and has begun to decline. Sun Kewang once heard a master say that the rise of a force or a country is like pushing a big iron ball to climb a mountain, climbing to the top of the mountain with great difficulty, once it begins to go downhill, it will become faster and faster, unstoppable, so the Manchu Qing Dynasty is also the same as other Yidi foreign tribes, although it can wreak havoc in the Central Plains for a while, but it will retreat beyond the Great Wall in a few years, so there is no need to worry.

Emperor Longwu and other forces, such as King Lu, such as Zheng Chenggong, etc., are even less worth mentioning.

Only Wang Kefan is the mortal enemy of the Western Army!

The Manchus also realized the great threat of Wang Kefan for a long time, and in the past two years, they have continued to show goodwill to the Western army, and recently Dolgon has sent a secret envoy to ask Sun Kewang for peace.

Dolgon said, I have never had the idea of replacing the Ming Dynasty in the Qing Dynasty, the reason why the Jiashen Revolution entered the customs is to avenge the Chongzhen Emperor, hang the people and cut down the crime, and crusade against Li Zicheng, a kingless and fatherless thief, only because the Chongzhen Emperor and several princes have fallen in the chaos of the army, and the artifact has no owner This is left in Beijing, since the Yongwang Zhu Cihuan inherited the orthodoxy of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing army is willing to be with it forever, and form an alliance with the Western Army to jointly crusade against the puppet Ming regime of the Tang Dynasty, and divide the world equally in the future, and rule the river......

Sun Kewang was thrilled.

Sun Kewang didn't believe the nonsense of rowing the river and ruling the river, but he was about to fight Wang Kefan, and Dolgon took the initiative to run at this juncture to help him, and of course he was welcome.

But he was very cautious and silent, and only sent a few henchmen to secretly promote the progress of the peace talks, after all, the eight kings Zhang Xianzhong had just died a few years ago, and his old man died in the hands of the Qing army, and the Western army regarded the Manchus as mortal enemies, eager to kill them, and suddenly they had to become allies again, and the officers and men of the three armies would definitely not be able to accept it.

Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo have different opinions, Liu Wenxiu is sandwiched in the middle, it is inevitable that there will be mud everywhere, what the eldest brother said is right, and what the second brother said is also reasonable, but in his heart, he is still biased towards Li Dingguo.

Unlike Sun Kewang, who is both civil and military, and has great ambitions, Liu Wenxiu is a pure soldier, and will only consider the problem from a military point of view, unless the situation is forced, he is unwilling to fight an uncertain battle, in his opinion, the comprehensive strength of the Chu army is very strong, and the Western army is still inferior, in the previous few small-scale conflicts, the Western army did not take advantage, the battle fought by the Western army generals Gao Chengen and Zhou Guodong in Lingchuan, more than 4,000 elite Western army troops held on to the city, waiting for work, but the whole army was defeated in less than an hour, The impression left on Liu Wenxiu is too deep, if calculated according to this ratio, more than 100,000 soldiers of the Western Army can only deal with the main force of the 350,000 Chu Army, how can this battle be fought?

rashly started a war with the Chu army, there is really no chance of victory.

Once a full-scale war starts, it will be a life-and-death battle related to the fortunes of the country, and it is easy to say that everything is easy to say if it is defeated, and the current good situation will be ruined, and all the hard work of the past few years will be in vain, and it will be difficult to have a chance to turn the tables in the future.

Avoiding the real and making the virtual is the best policy.

Between the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Chu Army and the Longwu Army, the Longwu Army was undoubtedly the weakest one, so Liu Wenxiu presided over the war against the Longwu Army, personally led the army to capture Guilin, Liuzhou and other places, occupied most of Guangxi, and then wanted to attack Guangdong, but after Emperor Longwu was snatched away by the Chu army, the situation suddenly became complicated.

Liu Wenxiu led tens of thousands of troops to chase to Daozhou and wanted to intercept Emperor Longwu, but Liu Fangliang, Dang Shousu and He Zhen were too useless and were successfully broken through by the Chu army, and the western army was in a dilemma for a while. Since Emperor Longwu fell into the hands of the Chu army, even if Guangdong and other places were dissatisfied, they certainly did not have the courage to stand up on their own, and most of them would bow to Wang Kefan because of the situation, so that if the Western Army continued to march to Guangdong, the Chu Army would definitely not sit idly by, because Hunan was just stuck in the waist between Guangdong and Guangxi, and once the lone Western Army was cut off, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Without solving the problem of the Chu army and capturing Hunan, it will not be possible to continue to advance eastward.

Whether it was a fight or a peace, Liu Wenxiu couldn't make up his mind for a while, and he didn't know who Emperor Longwu would eventually fall into and whether he was snatched back by Liu Fangliang and He Zhen, so he stopped at the front line of Daozhou and Ningyuan, and while waiting for the situation to become clearer, he quickly passed the book and discussed the next strategic direction with Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo.

Li Dingguo quickly replied to the letter, suggesting that Liu Wenxiu stop at Daozhou, and in the long run, the western army had already taken a lot of advantage in this battle, and as long as the current front was maintained, it could be satisfied, and after digesting and consolidating the newly occupied territory such as Guangxi, the main force of the western army could go north.

Sun Kewang advocated taking advantage of the victory to invade Hunan, Liu Wenxiu first took Yongzhou and Chenzhou, and he and Li Dingguo sent troops from Xiangxi at the same time to launch a full-scale war against the Chu army.

Liu Wenxiu is more and more in a dilemma, the contradiction between these two righteous brothers is too deep, and there are differences of opinion everywhere, if it weren't for the great stakes, I really don't want to fight with them like this, and now since I still can't reach an agreement, I have to continue to wait and see, continue to argue.

As a result, the performance of the Western Army was very strange, tens of thousands of troops stared at the party and kept their troops still, but they made the party and the party so inexplicable and highly nervous.

In fact, in the eyes of Liu Wenxiu and the generals of the Western Army, he didn't take the more than 10,000 people of Dang Shousu seriously at all, if he really wanted to kill him, it would be as simple as crushing an ant to death, whether he resisted or escaped, he couldn't escape the catastrophe, of course, if Dang Shousu saw the opportunity and ran away, Liu Wenxiu didn't bother to chase him, the left and right were just an ant-like existence, and it was not worth the effort.

Dang Shousu considered the problem too complicated, what drove the tiger and devoured the wolf, what sat on the mountain to watch the tiger fight, what mantis caught the cicada and the yellow finch was behind, just like a little mouse circling around the mouse trap, obviously feeling dangerous, but reluctant to get close to the bait,

"Zhou Guodong, this guy can really starve!"

Several days have passed in a blink of an eye, Zhou Guodong's horses and livestock are estimated to have been killed, even if they are not killed, they should all starve to death, now that the weather has warmed, the horse meat will soon rot, it stands to reason that the Chu army has run out of food, but so far, no Chu soldiers have defected down the mountain, and every morning and evening when eating, the smoke can also rise on the top of the mountain on time.

"Zhou Guodong, what are you eating?"

Dang Shousu sent the most capable scouts to secretly go up the mountain to reconnoitre.