Hearing Le Yi's suggestion, Dai Yan was very excited, and at the same time, because he himself had the memories and insights of later generations, his thinking was also greatly diverged, and he formulated a war plan against Chu and Suiyang!

In later generations, the work "On War," which laid the foundation for modern Western military theory, clearly stated that defense has great advantages over offense. If the same army is used, it is easier to defend than to attack. Because the attacker has no time to take advantage of, both the defender can take advantage of it. Timing that the attacker does not take advantage of due to miscalculation, fear, or sluggishness is in the defender's favor.

If we talk only about the concept of strategy, "On War" is far inferior to "The Art of War". After all, the most important idea of "On War" is that war is a continuation of politics. It itself is a military textbook for training generals, but it also vigorously advocates that war serves politics, and allows generals who fight wars to study politics and intervene in politics. What does this happen to a country? It must be that the whole country is controlled by the generals and a completely military-centric political strategy is formed, thus dragging the country to a point of no return!

In the case of World War I, the Kaiser and the government were in control of the situation in Germany at the beginning of the war, but soon the whole country was not decided by the Kaiser at all, but by the generals who fought the war. When generals think about problems, they will only think about military issues, not political ones. Therefore, in the later stages of World War I, there was a strategy of "unlimited submarine warfare," which was a work of military genius but politically unattainable. Such a military strategy gave the United States, which was eyeing the United States, the best excuse to intervene in World War I, which directly led to the defeat of the war!

However, Sun Tzu's Art of War is entirely the accumulation of experience accumulated in China's thousands of years of warfare. Such a war textbook does not teach others how to fight a war in detail, that is, it does not teach tactics. It is primarily a strategy book, and if you want to win the war, you must understand the strategy thoroughly!

In a military textbook like "On War," Dai Yan only wanted to learn its tactical viewpoint, and as for strategy, Dai Yan was insensitive to it. After all, he knows too well what happens to a country controlled by generals, Nazi Germany, and even militaristic Japan, can only continue to wage war under the provocation of the officers!

In order to obtain war materials such as oil, the German generals dared to instigate the mustaches to go to war on both sides to attack the Soviet Union and capture the Caucasus oil fields, thus consuming a lot of German strength! In order to seize the oil, rubber and other raw materials needed for industrialization in Southeast Asia, Japan dared to attack Pearl Harbor and declare war on the powerful United States! The final defeat of Germany and Japan shows what a terrible strategy the politics of military kidnapping is.

The power to wage war should always be in your own hands. To achieve a certain political goal, to start a war, not to start a war first, and then think about what kind of political results can be obtained! This is the idea of prudent warfare advocated in the Art of War, and even the idea of paying attention to temple calculations. And the temple calculation, that is, it is the politicians who decide the war, not the generals who decide the war! How to fight a war is a strategy; What will become when you fight, that is, the strategic goal!

In Dai Yan's opinion, the biggest goal now to deal with the Zhao clan of Chu and even Suiyang is to drag them in Xiangyi, consume their economic strength, and make them unable to fight! This is the strategic goal of this war.

He knew very well that the army that the Zhao clan and even Suiyang could mobilize now was far above Taoqiu, and it was very unrealistic to defeat them in one go! The only way to defeat your opponents is to drag them to death financially!

And in order to achieve such a strategic goal, Dai Yan chose to respond to this upcoming war by defending instead of attacking!

The classic textbook "On War" explains that defense is more advantageous than offense! Dai Yan agrees with this concept very much, and in his opinion, on an independent battlefield, the defending side has far an advantage over the attacking side. After all, the defender can occupy the favorable terrain in advance and make enough arrangements to deal with the opponent's attack!

Sun Tzu said in the Art of War: The first army is to attack and strategize, the second is to attack the enemy, the second is to attack the army, and then the city is attacked. It can be seen that attacking the opponent's well-guarded stronghold is the worst tactical choice. Relatively speaking, the best tactical choice is to defend on the battlefield!

It is not easy to establish a tight defensive position and let the opponent take the initiative to attack you. This requires attacking strategically and defending tactically. It is extremely difficult to achieve such a goal, but now Taoqiu can achieve it!

Whether it is the Chu army wanting to seize the Xiangyi industrial zone perfectly, or Suiyang hoping to calm the civil strife in one fell swoop, or even eliminating the threat of Xiangyi to Suiyang, both sides are bound to win Xiangyi!

Dai Yan grasped the other party's thoughts, and in this way, he sent all the 80,000 troops of the entire Taoqiu to the vicinity of Xiangyi. For the defense of Xiangyi, Dai Yan did not interfere in the slightest, and left all the power to the doctor of Xiangyi and the nobles in the city to be responsible. And Taoqiu's 80,000 troops were directly stationed near Xiangyi City and camped for defense!

Sure enough, Dai Yan's approach immediately made it difficult for the Suiyang army to ride a tiger. Although Suiyang has more than 100,000 troops, such an army, compared to Taoqiu's army, does not occupy an absolute advantage, they are not absolutely sure to defeat Taoqiu, and they dare not start a war wantonly!

As for the Chu army on the other side of Xiangyi, it was even more embarrassing. Taoqiu's sailors were extremely powerful, and as soon as they entered Suishui, they immediately suppressed Suiyang's sailors to the point that they were powerless to fight back. Without the assistance of the Suiyang Water Division, the Chu army would not dare to pass through Suishui at will, after all, the water division of Taoqiu was so powerful, and the Chu army crossing the river could be attacked at any time!

Just such a Taoqiu water division, horizontal in the center of Suishui, made it completely impossible for hundreds of thousands of Chu troops to interfere in the Song civil war!

Whether it is the Chu army or the Suiyang army, they are all worried about the deployment of Taoqiu's army! As soon as Taoqiu's sailors acted, Taoqiu achieved the goal of strategically attacking and tactically defending!

Because they didn't dare to put themselves in danger, Zhao Hua, the commander of the Chu army, and Hua Rong, the commander of the Taoqiu army, could only let their subordinates communicate with each other on both sides of the Suishui River by boat. After carefully analyzing the deployment of the Taoqiu army, the two sides had to make an extremely helpless decision: the Chu army and the Suiyang army were divided into two sides and attacked the cities along the Suishui coast respectively!

The Suiyang army, led by Hua Rong, attacked Xiangyi on the north bank of Suishui. And the Chu army led by Zhao Hua attacked the Fuli Fortress on the south bank of Suishui!

In the minds of these two sides, the army led by himself is so powerful, each side has more than 100,000 troops, it should be a very simple matter to capture a city, right? But things soon made them desperate!

When Xiangyi and Fu Lisai were surrounded respectively, Dai Yan had no intention of sending troops at all, but only relied on the strength of these two cities themselves to defend. He wanted to find out how strong the defense of the city with the full support of the entire Taoqiu was!

Tao Qiu's full support, that is, let Xiangyi and Fu Li, do not have to worry about logistics problems at all! Since both of these cities are close to Suishui, they can get the logistics from the Taoqiu Sailor perfectly, so they don't need to worry about food, weapons, and equipment!

When Suiyang's army attacked Xiangyi, on top of the four walls of Xiangyi, there were bed crossbows every five meters. In some key places, there are armies armed with crossbows as constant vigilance, and in key places, repeaters are deployed!

As soon as Suiyang's army was ready to attack, before they could go under the city wall, they were attacked by an overwhelming array of crossbow arrows on the city wall! These crossbow arrows, some long and some short, strong and some weak, as soon as Fang launched an attack, it made the attacking army desperate!

With such a powerful long-range crossbow attack, even if the Suiyang army held a wooden shield in their hands as a defense, they did not dare to approach the city wall at all. Because the wooden shield could not defend the entire body, the closer the soldiers were, the more the weakness of the snipers on the upper floors of Xiangyi City was exposed. Under this huge weakness, the slightest negligence on the part of the soldiers will be killed by crossbow arrows!

Almost no Suiyang soldiers were able to walk completely under the Xiangyi City Tower! There are even fewer Suiyang troops who can launch an attack on Xiangyi City.

And on the other side of the riverbank, the Chu army that attacked Fuli faced the same situation as Xiangyi!

If you can't even get close to the walls, how can you conquer the city?

However, they were also extremely unwilling to let the Chu army and the Suiyang army all retreat. And with their current situation, they are not allowed to retreat at all! After all, their strength is far stronger than that of the Taoqiu army, if they haven't really fought a big battle with the Taoqiu army, they start to retreat, wouldn't this make Taoqiu "surrender without a fight"?

After these discussions, they began to abandon the attack on the city and instead confront the Taoqiu army!

When the armies of the three parties began to confront each other, Dai Yan was extremely happy! He knew that the Zhao clan and Suiyang had already begun to fall into their own rhythm and play a war of attrition with the Taoqiu army! With Taoqiu's strong economic strength, the last thing Taoqiu's army is afraid of is to play a war of attrition with its opponent!

Although the battle line from Taoqiu to Xiangyi was extremely long, relying on the powerful sailors and merchant fleet, the logistics of the Taoqiu army were still extremely strong! The soldiers on the front line, and even the defenders and soldiers in Xiangyi and Fuli City, have never experienced a shortage of food or equipment. These two cities, even because they are on the front line, and there are a large number of materials in Taoqiu as a transshipment, there is an extremely abnormal war prosperity!

Such a war of attrition lasted from January to February. In the month-long confrontation, Chu Jun and Suiyang can be regarded as truly knowing Taoqiu's tenacity! They knew that they would never be able to defeat Taoqiu with such consumption alone. If you want to break the game, you must find a new breakthrough!

After the negotiation between the two sides, their killer moves against Tao Qiu began to appear!