"Honorable Governor of the Tang Dynasty, on behalf of the 60,000 citizens of the city, I offer my loyalty to you and your army, and I hope that you will keep your promise to ensure the safety of the lives and property of all people in the city."

Outside the east gate of Canalan, Pan Xiaogu received the water and earth from an old Persian man, which symbolized surrender, and then mounted his horse and led the army into the city, lined with Persian citizens kneeling on one knee, and when Pan Xiaogu rode by, these citizens would bow their heads and show their obedience to the conqueror.

Pan Xiaogu didn't believe that these people were genuinely obedient to him, and he turned his head to glance at the broken city gate behind him—this was the reason for the surrender of the Persians.

Shaht's first persuasion to surrender that day did not work, and the Persian officers in the city not only refused to surrender, but also had Zhao Zhonghan and Gitak and others who remained in the city taken hostage to blackmail the Five Rivers Army to retreat.

In order to increase the effect, the stone thrower fired not stone bullets, but special ammunition such as thunder bombs and poisonous smoke balls brought by Pan Xiaogu, but even so, with the power and accuracy of these stone throwers, it is impossible to break through the city gate.

The task of these trebuchets is to suppress the head of the city, and when all the enemies at the head of the city are so smoked that they can't open their eyes, Pan Xiaogu sends his own killer weapon - a commando with powder kegs on their backs.

This was the first time that the Five Rivers Army used gunpowder in actual combat, and Pan Xiaogu still vividly recalls the situation at that time.

The assault team consisted of six men, all of whom were inheritors, two of whom were the strongest warriors, each of them wearing heavy armor and carrying a wooden barrel containing twenty-five kilograms of gunpowder, and the other four were responsible for cover, two guards rushed to the front with their shields, and two swordsmen were guarding the two wings of the formation.

Taking advantage of the fact that the Persians at the head of the city were obscured by the smoke, the assault team rushed to the entrance to the city gate, where two warriors carried a heavy pickaxe in addition to a powder keg, and the other four carried a short-handled shovel. It took them less than ten minutes to dig out a large pit on the ground in front of the city gate, which was large enough to hold two powder kegs.

Of course, the Persians in the city noticed their move, but the Persians thought that the commandos wanted to dig tunnels to enter the city, so they vigilantly gathered a large number of soldiers behind the city gate, and waited for a few people who had dug a pit outside the gate to get in and give them a good look.

The Persians were disappointed by the development of events, and the commandos buried powder kegs, lit a time-delay fuse like mosquito coils, turned around and ran.

As they ran, the Persian soldiers guarding the gate were dumbfounded, and they called in the Persian officers who had been clamoring for the death of the hostages.

This Persian officer is the one who blackmailed Gitak before, and he is also the only master of the palace guard level in the city now, the Persian officer heard that these people were burying things in front of the city gate, so he came to check it out for himself, and he just came to the city gate, he heard a loud bang, and his body rose into the air with a heat wave, and then he didn't know anything.

As a result, the Persians in Cannaran obediently surrendered ...

After entering the city, Pan Xiaogu first gathered all the prisoners of war and the families of the big men in the city, concentrated and settled in a block in the east of the city, and sent the marines and their auxiliary servant troops to build barricades to isolate the entire block from the rest of the city.

The 1,000 Persian troops who surrendered and the big men in the city were escorted out of the city by the cavalry troops, and they would be placed in a temporary military camp converted from a small village in the east of the city.

Zhao Zhonghan and others, who were arrested before, were also successfully rescued, but fortunately, the Persians were afraid that killing the hostages would make both sides completely tear their faces, so they didn't kill people at the beginning, and the speed of breaking the door was too fast, so these hostages were just a little frightened, but they didn't suffer any damage, Pan Xiaogu asked in person, saying that they were the number one contributors to the capture of Canalan City, and these people quickly recovered from the fright.

The happiest was Gitak, who was personally promised to act as a trading agent for the Rivers Army, and that he would run the trade network in Persia.

This time, Pan Xiaogu did not deceive this Sogdian again, after Gitak was taken hostage before, although he was so frightened that he peed his pants, but he did not have the slightest idea of surrendering, he felt that this Sogdian merchant really wanted to take refuge, and it happened that he needed to establish an intelligence network in Persia, and it was appropriate to use this Sogdian caravan as a cover in the early stage.

After capturing Canalan City, the news of the Tang Army's invasion will inevitably spread, and the surrounding forces will inevitably increase their vigilance, Pan Xiaogu will no longer be able to attack the city and seize the land as easily as before, plus the capture of three cities in a row has reached the limit that the Five Rivers Army can control, so Pan Xiaogu intends to temporarily stop the offensive and digest the results that have been obtained with peace of mind.

First of all, the three Persian cities that have been captured, Gilholz and Rezwan are fine, they are all small cities, and the green and strong parts of the cities are forcibly conscripted into the servant army, as long as a force is arranged to garrison and implement military control.

The city of Canalan is more complicated, including the surrounding villages and towns, the population of the entire Canalan region exceeds the total population of the territory of the Pan Xiaogu system, and it cannot be subject to military control like the two small cities, and can only rely on local tribes and chambers of commerce to manage it.

So Pan Xiaogu then met with the elders and chamber of commerce leaders of Canalan one by one, and by talking to them, he looked for suitable candidates and established a 'municipal council' to govern the city.

In terms of the army, Pan Xiaogu plans to retrain the servant army units and improve their combat effectiveness, it is foreseeable that there will be fewer and fewer battles to trick up in the future, and there will be more and more battles with real swords and guns, and only 3,000 main forces will definitely not be able to survive bloody battles, so it is necessary to improve the combat effectiveness of the servant army and let them truly fulfill their obligations as 'cannon fodder'.

At the same time, the main force also needs to make some adjustments in its establishment according to the experience summed up in the previous battles, as well as replenish personnel and equipment, and various tasks are no easier than managing the three cities.

However, Pan Xiaogu had just started the work on both sides of the military and the government, when he was interrupted by a message from the territory, and he had to leave his work, so he took twenty personal guards, one person and three horses through the snowfield for hundreds of kilometers to rush back to the territory.

The engineering team that cleared the channel was attacked!