In the long-term confrontation, both the Chu army and the Suiyang army consumed huge strength. For such a war of attrition, Dai Yan is extremely proud!

However, his pride began to come to an end after entering February!

The ships sailing on Surabaya began to be frequently attacked by "bandits" on the shore. Dai Yan didn't care about this kind of attack at first, in his mind, the east bank of Surabaya is an area densely populated by small countries, and there should be some "bandits" attacking, which should be a normal thing, and there is no need to be too nervous.

However, soon after, something shocked Dai Yan happened: tens of thousands of "bandits" collectively besieged the Sidong camp!

Tens of thousands of bandits besieged the Taoqiu army camp, and if no one was behind the scenes, Dai Yan would not believe it at all! After the investigation, he found out the mastermind behind the scenes, and it turned out to be the power in the hands of Qi Xiangtian Ying!

Since the king of Qi has publicly stated that he will not intervene in the Song civil war. As the prime minister of Qi State, Tian Ying naturally has to lead by example and respond to the call of King Qi. However, the fact that he did not know how to send troops to the war did not mean that he would honestly watch Dai Yan confront the Chu army and Suiyang in Xiangyi, deplete each other's strength, and thus win the long-term war!

Under the planning of his son Tian Wen and his advisor Feng Chen, Xue Yi summoned nearly 20,000 rangers from all over the country, and from the mountains and forests east of Surabaya, he summoned the same number of bandits and Yimin, a total of 40,000 troops, and began to continuously attack Taoqiu's logistics in the name of "mountain bandits"!

The logistics of Taoqiu are all on the water. The most important strongholds of Taoqiu are all on the west bank of Surabaya, and the army led by Tian Wen does not have a sufficient number of naval troops in their hands, so they cannot pose a real threat to Taoqiu's logistics line! In Feng Chen's eyes, the only loophole in Taoqiu's logistics line is in the Sidong camp!

In Feng Chen's view, the most important reason why the eastern part of the Song State could be completely controlled by the Song State was that the Song State established several cities along the west bank of Surabaya. These cities are connected by waterways to form a line, and combined with the powerful naval forces of Taoqiu, it is a perfect line of defense!

Now, Taoqiu almost perfectly occupies this line of defense, and the only gap is Pengcheng!

Because Dai Yan didn't want to lose too much strength too early, he didn't directly attack the city and occupy Pengcheng, so from the overall strategic point of view, this is naturally no problem. However, from the perspective of military defense, the entire Surabaya defense line, due to the lack of Pengcheng, which is a vital point, made Dai Yan have to establish the Sidong camp on the east bank of Surabaya, and use it as a storage and distribution center for Taoqiu's logistics materials, which is undoubtedly a live target for the opponent!

Tian Wen's army could not cross Surabaya and directly attack the cities on the west bank, so attacking the Sidong camp and taking the logistics distribution center of Taoqiu was his only choice! If Tian Wen really achieves his goal, then Taoqiu's entire logistics line, due to the lack of this crucial point, will definitely fall into a complete collapse!

Tian Wen's idea was very good, but the reality gave him a strong slap! The perfect counterattack of the Sidong battalion directly repelled Tian Wen's army!

Although there are not many people left in the Sidong camp, less than 10,000 people, the people who defend in this camp are all noble soldiers transferred from the East China Sea! These troops, in the land of the East China Sea, not only have to conquer the sea and earn a living from the sea, but more importantly, they need to fight with the local tribesmen!

Don't look at the countries composed of the Yimin now, most of them are like weak chickens, but that's only because of the once powerful Peng Clan, the Xu State was destroyed, and the entire organizational structure of the Yimin was scattered, leaving only a loose tribal alliance. The people themselves are martial and aggressive, but they are extremely strong!

Whether it was the once powerful State of Wu, or the State of Yue, which later destroyed the State of Wu, there was never a real rule over the land of Jiuyi. The only thing they can do is to collect a little local product from these people as a "tribute" to show their rule in this place!

The nobles of the East China Sea of the Song Kingdom were completely different, after they were divided into the land of the East China Sea, they immediately broke out into a fierce conflict with the Yi people! In the constant struggle against the Yimin, the more the war became, the stronger it became. Later, because they could obtain superior weapons from Taoqiu, they had a crushing advantage over the people of the East China Sea. With the courage to fight and the skillful skills to control advanced weapons, the clan soldiers led by these nobles are born warriors!

The army led by Tian Wen encountered such an army. The clan soldiers in the Sidong camp, even if the number is far less than the opponent, they dare to go out of the camp to fight each other! In addition to the entire Sidong camp, Dai Yan built it according to the standards of the city, and in some places that needed to be rushed, he directly mobilized advanced building materials such as bricks and cement from Taoqiu to build it quickly, thus establishing a truly solid camp!

In this way, the Sidong camp occupies the advantages of people and geography, even if tens of thousands of Tian Wen's troops come to besiege it, it does not cause real harm to Sidong Dacheng!

Although Tian Wen's attack on Taoqiu's logistics line was not fatal, it still had a very great psychological impact on Dai Yan. He knows very well that now the entire Taoqiu has completely become a war machine, Taoqiu is not short of money, food, or weapons, but the transportation of Taoqiu's logistics line is Taoqiu's biggest shortcoming!

With Taoqiu's developed water transportation industry, navigation industry, and Taoqiu's powerful naval force, although Taoqiu's logistics and transportation are shortcomings, compared with the Chu army and the Suiyang army, this shortcoming is an absolute advantage! And Dai Yan's hope of defeating his opponent is to use his relatively advantageous shortcomings to defeat the opponent's weaker shortcomings!

Now that Tian Ying is sneaking in behind, although this will not have much impact on Taoqiu's logistics and transportation, it will make Taoqiu's shortcomings fragile!

And after Tian Ying made a move, Dai Yan received another news that shocked him incomparably: the Huaishui Division of Chu State made a big move, intending to invade Fuling Lake!

Fuling Lake is the place where Huaishui and Surabaya meet. In today's era, although the Yellow River has flooded from time to time, it has not yet reached the terrifying point of "the Yellow River seizing Huai" in later generations! Therefore, at this time, Hongze Lake at the confluence of Surabaya and Huaishui was not formed, but a small lake community called Fuling Lake was formed here.

The route from Taoqiu to the land of the East China Sea is to first reach Surabaya from Heshui, then from Surabaya to Fuling Lake, and then turn to Huaishui through Fuling Lake, and then flow into the sea from Huaishui to the east, and the south shore of the estuary is Yancheng, the core city of the East China Sea.

Fuling Lake is a crucial point on the whole route!

The Chu army's Huaishui Naval Division's invasion of Fuling Lake posed a threat to Taoqiu's route to the East China Sea, not to mention, if it was allowed to go north into Surabaya, or even enter Suishui, then Taoqiu's current plan to split the Chu army and Suiyang in half in Xiangyi would be completely bankrupt! By that time, more than 200,000 troops had gathered, even if Taoqiu had a unique advantage in logistics, then under such strong military pressure, Taoqiu was left with only one way to lose!

This kind of news made Dai Yan no longer have the mood to fight against his opponent before and win the war through long-term attrition. He knew very well in his heart that now was the time to fight hard!

Dai Yan began an all-out investigation to explore the specific strength of the Huaishui Water Division. With the strength of Taoqiu merchants all over the world today, Dai Yan quickly figured out the strength of the sailors sent on the expedition this time: there were more than 60 warships in total, and hundreds of merchant ships accompanying him!

Hearing such news, Dai Yan breathed a sigh of relief. With such water strength, it is a crushing situation to deal with ordinary water bandits and even small country sailors, but it is still far from enough for the water power of Shangtaoqiu!

However, the sailors of Taoqiu now have to ensure that the long logistical defense line of the entire Taoqiu army is not disturbed, and at the same time, they must also suppress the forces of the Suiyang sailors in Danshui and Suishui respectively, and there are really not many sailors who can be pumped out now. Dai Yan gritted his teeth, took some risks, and transferred fifteen warships from Danshui and Suishui respectively to form a fleet of thirty sailors as the main force to fight against the Chu army!

At the same time, in order to occupy an overwhelming advantage in water power, Dai Yan adopted the method of "borrowing teachers to help suppress" to deal with the challenge of the Huaishui Division of Chu State!

His borrowing of teachers to help suppress is to lure the convoy of Taoqiu merchants with high money and even some trade monopoly rights in Taoqiu, the whaling ships in Yancheng, and even the gradually rising pirates to fight for Taoqiu!

Convoys, whaling ships and even pirate ships are all extremely aggressive warships. In order to deal with the vast number of small ships, Dai Yan requisitioned thousands of small merchant ships to fight with him by buying!

In short, it is to gather all the water forces that can be gathered to confront the Chu Army's Huaishui Water Division!

In such an official + non-governmental, two-pronged approach, Dai Yan soon concentrated a powerful naval force of 100 offensive warships and 1,000 merchant ships in Xiapi. In order to gather such a force, the money in Dai Yan's hands is also being consumed at an unprecedented speed!

Only then did Dai Yan understand that once a war began, no matter how powerful the finances were, they would not be enough to consume! The saying of later generations that "when the cannon goes off, there are ten thousand taels of gold" is definitely not a lie!

The 500 million bonds issued by Dai Yan were immediately exhausted after confronting them with their opponents and even summoning water forces! As a last resort, Dai Yan once again issued 500 million war bonds in Taoqiu!

Although the war is unfavorable now, the issuance of bonds has not been affected in the slightest! After all, most of the war bonds issued from Taoqiu before became the wealth of the Taoqiu people after they were operated by the war machine. And this time, in order to be able to get money at a faster speed, Dai Yan ordered Tian Buli, who was in Taoqiu to preside over the rear affairs, to directly raise the bond interest rate, from 33.3% to 100%, that is, the effect of doubling the investment can be achieved in one year!

The issuance of bonds at this interest rate is not only of interest to the Taoqiu people, but even the nobles of the Wei State around Taoqiu, and even the monarchs of the surrounding small countries such as the Wei State and the Lu State have begun to be moved. They bought Taoqiu's war bonds, staking their fortunes on them in the hope of a good return!

After purchasing Taoqiu's bonds, the nobles around Taoqiu began to be more and more eager for Taoqiu's victory. They even began to provide food to Taoqiu at a relatively low price, and even provided Taoqiu with more obscure information to help Taoqiu in the war!

This approach made Dai Yan have to sigh: money (interests) are really omnipotent!