Sheyang Lake is the largest lake on the Jiangbei Plain today. After the Song army captured Huaiyin, this quiet lake has now broken the calm and become noisy.

"General, there are fireworks rising ahead, which is our distress signal!" Wu Yi, the commander of the Song Army's naval division, was standing on the deck of a building ship, leading the warships in the naval division, driving on this lake, and suddenly received a report from his subordinates.

"Immediately go to the rescue!" For the water station that has now fallen into a white heat, Wu Yi made a decision without the slightest hesitation.

When the huge building ship arrived near the ship's distress site, Wu Yi saw three wheeled ships and six sailing ships engaged in a fierce water battle, with the ships of both sides firing arrows at each other to attack. However, as soon as the towering building appeared on the ship, the two warring sides immediately noticed the sight.

The fleet of wheeled ships immediately became extremely excited when they saw the ship, and they immediately began to shoot the crossbows on the ships towards each other without any money. And the fleet of sailboats, as soon as they saw this huge building ship, immediately abandoned their opponents and fled directly into the distance.

Wu Yi was not surprised at all by such a scene. Although the building ship is huge, it does not have an advantage in speed. He hoisted several flags on the ship, and immediately from the rear flotilla, two long and narrow ships sailed out, and at an extremely alarming speed, they headed for the distant warband!

This kind of narrow battleship is the Mengchong battleship, the main force of the Song Army's naval division, and it is specially used to impact the enemy's fleet formation in water battles. It can travel several times faster on the water, and it is now used to pursue the enemy's fleeing fleet, which is perfectly suitable!

In just ten minutes, the Mengchong battleship far behind caught up with the opponent, and the sailors on board immediately began to issue flags to warn the surrounding ships, and after the opponent refused, the battleship immediately launched an attack on the opponent!

From the bow of the battleship, several arrows with ropes were first fired from the bed crossbow and hit the planks of the enemy ship. Subsequently, the Mengchong battleship immediately began to rely on this layer of contact to shorten the distance between the two sides. Not to be outdone, the ship seized by the bed crossbow immediately sent a vigorous sailor to the board to cut the rope.

However, with these delays, the Mengchong battleship quickly approached the enemy ship. Then, from the side close to the opposing ship, it erected a huge slapstick! The lower end of the racket is made of hard paulownia wood, and the upper end of the racket is connected to a conical iron block, and from a distance, the whole rack looks like a huge machete!

Under the captain's order, the lever that was raised using the principle of lever was quickly slapped down, and it hit the enemy ship's hold directly, immediately turning the originally fragile cabin into two halves! When the lever was raised again, there was even blood on the top of the conical iron block!

Fang Cai's slap rod slashed into the cabin, and it actually hit someone, which is an extremely rare thing! That unlucky guy is probably already in half at this time, the sailors on the battleship thought silently.

In the water battle, the sailors will not have the idea of sympathizing with each other, and the raised clap lever is also under the manipulation of the sailors, and it is slapped down fiercely again!

This time, instead of hitting the cabin, the lever hit the bow of the ship, and with its swift blow, it immediately cut a large hole in the bow, and the ship immediately began to lose its balance!

The sailors who were hiding in the cabin also had to go to the deck, either to launch a counterattack against the Song warship, or to find the sampan and escape on their own. And the soldiers on the battleship immediately began to attack the opposing ship by shooting arrows! Soon, the sailors on the opposing ship were shot and killed one by one by the Song soldiers, and such a ship that took the initiative to fight the Song army soon lost its combat effectiveness.

It is not surprising that a battleship can overturn a sailing ship with two strokes, whether it is the sailors on the board or the soldiers on the battleship. In the multi-day battle, they have already seen the strong strength of professional sailors!

The Song warships used the same method, attacking the remaining sailing ships one by one. Except for one sailing ship, which saw the opportunity early and immediately sailed to the nearest shore, and all the sailors fled, all the sailors on the other ships were killed or captured by the Song army's sailors.

Seeing that he had defeated the enemy in front of him, Wu Yi immediately asked the captains of the three water steamers to come to him and asked them, "Are you the righteous soldiers of Yancheng who helped our army clear the ditch?" There should be very few Chu ships in Sheyang Lake now, where did these six ships come from? ”

When the three captains saw Wu Yi's question, they immediately replied respectfully: "General Qiyu, we are all ships of the Yancheng Haidong Merchants. We waited three days ago to take over the task of transporting military rations to help Wang Shi transport grain, but when we entered and sailed near the west bank of Sheyang Lake, these six Chu ships suddenly appeared, intending to plunder our ships, but fortunately, the general arrived and wiped them all out! ”

"Ships from the West Bank? It seems that it should be a small number of Chu army's fish that have slipped through the net, so there is no need to worry. Go down, and General Ben will continue to patrol the neighborhood to see if there are any more fish that have slipped through the net! When Wu Yi heard that the Chu army came from the west bank of Sheyang Lake, he didn't care at all.

A few days ago, when the main force of the Song army passed through the northern section of Hangou and entered Sheyang Lake, it was immediately sniped by the Chu army's naval division. Relying on the strength of the naval division itself, coupled with the help of the previous sea ship in the East China Sea, the Song army defeated the Chu army's naval division in Sheyang Lake, thus driving the Chu army to the southern section of Hangou.

However, the Song army wanted to continue to advance, but it was also powerless. As an artificially dug canal, Hangou is not as wide as a natural river and cannot support too many boats to enter. The Chu army's sailors erected iron chains in the northern section of the ditch and completely blocked the ditch, making the Song army's sailors extremely uncomfortable.

And the Song Army's naval division could not continue to advance, which made the Song Southern Expeditionary Army, which had always followed the simultaneous advance of land and water, unable to continue to advance. After all, without the logistics provided by the waterway, the combat power of the infantry cannot be guaranteed, and there is even a danger of capsizing!

Therefore, after discussion, the commander in control of the Song army decided to completely control Sheyang Lake with naval divisions, and after the back road was completely unblocked, the Song army would rely on the infantry and the clan soldiers brought by the nobles of the East China Sea to attack the opponent by land.

It's a pity that Sheyang Lake is too huge, and its east side is fine, and most of it is in the hands of the nobles of the East China Sea. However, to the east, it was partly controlled by the Yimin and partly controlled by the nobles of the Chu State. The nobles of Chu were ordered by Guangling, and from time to time they also looted the lone Song ships on Sheyang Lake.

The Song army had no choice but to adopt the method of drawing wages from the bottom of the kettle, directly letting the nobles of the East China Sea reach the west bank of Sheyang Lake, destroying all the settlements of the Yi people and the Chu people, and burning all the shipyards that could build ships one by one. Under such harsh measures, the situation of Sheyang Lake was much better, and the logistics of the Song army finally began to become stable again.

In order to prevent the remnants of the Chu army from plundering Sheyang Lake, the Song Army's naval division had to patrol around Sheyang Lake under the premise that there was no major task at present, not only protecting the Song army's logistics line, but also responsible for killing all the Chu army ships!

With such a steady and steady approach, all the strongholds of the Chu army in Sheyang Lake were finally cleaned up. And at this time, the Chu army guarding the ditch has nothing to worry about!

With the water surface of Hangou that is only a few tens of meters wide, the Song army can shoot arrows onto the boat on both sides of the ditch, and after Sheyang Lake settles down, it is meaningless for the Chu army to guard Hangou again.

As a result, the Song army began to resume the method of marching by land and water, and the army directly passed through Sheyang Lake and the southern section of Hangou to reach the city of Guangling.

This is already the third Chu army city attacked by the Song army. Now the Song army has become more and more proficient in siege, and they all have unique routines: whenever the Song army is about to capture a city, it must first turn it into a lonely city, and then rely on the powerful siege weapons of the Song army, and then with the consumption of a small number of soldiers, the city will be quickly broken by surrounding three and missing one!

Although Guangling was carefully repaired by the Chu army, the city was not comparable to Duliang and Huaiyin, but on the north bank of the river, the sailors of the Chu army could no longer play a role, and a lonely city, even if it was strong, could not resist for long.

Zhaoli, who is in Jinling, obviously understands this. The fall of Duliang and Huaiyin before, although the Song army also paid a certain price, but thousands of casualties could not make the Song army of more than 100,000 people hurt their muscles and bones. On the contrary, although the Chu army did not suffer many casualties after the city was destroyed, nearly 10,000 troops were captured by the Song army after each city fell.

This was a great blow to the morale of the Chu army! And in Zhao Slip's view, if the army dies in battle, it is better to say, at least it can consume more strength of the Song army, but the large number of troops defending the city was captured, but the Chu army and the Song army were also at a disadvantage in the war of attrition!

The consumption of the defending side is not comparable to the consumption of the attacking side, which is simply incomprehensible!

After thinking about it again, he still decided to withdraw the defenders of Guangling to Yunyang on the south bank of the Great River, and strongly advocated keeping the land south of the Yangtze River. If the Song army set foot on the south of the Yangtze River, then he could rely on local battles to fight a decisive battle with the Song army!

For Zhao Hua, he was extremely unwilling to be at a disadvantage in the field battle between the Chu army and the Song army on the south bank of Suishui during the Song Civil War a few years ago! For this reason, he has been training the army desperately for several years, in order to achieve victory in the field battle with the Song army!

Therefore, when the Song army arrived at the city of Guangling, the officials at the head of the city immediately hung up the white flag and asked for surrender, and the Song army took this important town in the north of the Chu State without much effort. At this time, in the entire Guangling City, there was no longer a single figure of a Chu army soldier, and in the entire Jiangbei, there was no longer a single Chu army warship!

It only took a month, and the Song army even controlled the three cities of the Kechu army, and controlled the lower reaches of the Huaishui and even the entire ditch in their hands! And the territory of the Song Kingdom also began to extend from the Surabaya basin to the Yangtze River basin!