After issuing the edict of Chen, Yang Jian proclaimed to the world, respectively appointed Yang Guang, King of Jin, Yang Jun, King of Qin, and Yang Su, Duke of Qinghe County, as Marshal of Chen in the east, middle and west, and the three-way army and horses were controlled by Yang Guang, King of Jin.

On the day the order was issued, a fierce water battle first broke out in the area from Jiangling to Jiujiang in the middle reaches of the river.

Although Yang Jun, the king of Qin, was appointed as the marching marshal of the Chen Middle Route Army as he wished, he felt that the rebellion of Hou Liang had occurred under his rule, and let go of Xiao Rushui, a key criminal of Southern Chen, who had already been caught, and was ashamed to be in the same column as Yang Guang, Yang Su and others, so he secretly thought about fighting for Chen's first merit and making up for his previous mistakes.

Therefore, before he was summoned to Beijing to accept the canonization of the marshal of the middle route army, Yang Jun instructed Wang Shiji, the head of the march under his command, that without waiting for him to return to Jiangling after receiving the canonization, he could take the initiative to find fighters to fight against the Nanchen army on the south bank of the river, and he must defeat it to strengthen his prestige.

The winter is cold, and the surface of the river in early October is shrouded in a faint layer of fog, and people standing on the bow of the ship are blown by the cold wind, and it is difficult to endure the bone-chilling cold.

It was in such an early morning that a small fleet of twenty golden-winged warships, under the personal leadership of Zhou Luoyu, the general of Nan Chen, quietly pulled anchor from the port outside Jiujiang City and set off for the north of the river.

Because he had suffered from the attacks of a small group of troops of the Sui Dynasty in the past few days, he had been squeezed out of Jiujiang by General Jiang in collusion with Shi Wenqing half a year ago to assist Chen Shushen, the king of Shiling, in leading the army against the Sui Dynasty army in Jiangbei, and Zhou Luoyu, the general of the Southern Chen, was ready to personally lead a naval army to launch a surprise attack on the Sui Dynasty troops stationed on the other side of the river, in retaliation for their attack on the territory of Nanchen some time ago.

The Golden-Winged Warship was the main warship of the Southern Chen army for the defense of the middle and lower reaches of the Great River, and each warship could carry 200 soldiers, which was similar to the carrying weight of the Qinglong warship built by Yang Su in Xinzhou.

In the battle of the medieval naval army, one side dispatched twenty golden-winged warships and nearly 4,000 sergeants at a time, which was already a big battle, and since Zhou Luoyu went to Jiujiang to assist in unifying the army, except for nearly a year ago, he led 3,000 sailors to the river to meet Xiao Yan and led the crowd to surrender to Chen, and had a close battle with the Sui Dynasty naval army that came to stop him in a hurry, he, a famous general of the Southern Chen Xuan Dynasty, has never been cheapened by the Sui Dynasty army.

Seriously speaking, this cannot be blamed on Zhou Luoyu himself, but should be attributed to the improper use of personnel by the Southern Chen Imperial Court under the control of Jiang Zong, Shi Wenqing and other traitorous ministers. Originally, among the four famous generals of Emperor Xuan's dynasty, he and Xiao Maha were the first two who were famous for their skill in horse and land warfare, and Ren Zhong and Lu Guangda were the real generals of the navy. Even if Qi Xin, the general of Houliang who later defected to Nanchen, was transferred to Jiujiang to unify the army, it would always be better than Zhou Luoyu, a powerful general on horseback.

In order to make up for the shortcomings of his water warfare, Zhou Luoyu led the army to the expedition this time, and specially transferred Chen Ji, the chief governor of the naval army, from the naval army stationed in Jiujiang as the vanguard, and led three golden-winged warships to sail at the forefront of the entire battle sequence.

When Nan Chen, the vanguard of the navy, was about to sail to the middle of the river, more than a dozen grasshopper boats suddenly burst out of an oasis in the southwest of the river, and sailed straight to the front of the three golden-winged warships like sharp arrows.

Chen Ji hurriedly ordered the three warships of the previous side to open the battle situation in the shape of "Pin" to meet the enemy, and ordered the archery to force the opponent to prevent the opponent's warships from getting too close, and at the same time, issued a warning to the main fleet led by Zhou Luoyu behind, indicating that the enemy might meet the enemy near the center of the river.

Arrows rained down on the three golden-winged warships, shooting at the dozen or so grasshopper boats that were approaching one after another. What made these archers on the Nanchen warship strange was that the dozen or so grasshopper boats that were approaching were driving as if no one was maneuvering, and they slammed straight into the Nanchen warship without any reduction in the speed of the sharp arrows that were shooting like flying locusts.

Just when the dozen or so grasshopper boats collided with a golden-winged warship in the center and in front of them, dozens of torches were suddenly lit in the oasis in the center of the river, and then countless sharp arrows with flames in the reeds shot directly at the grasshopper boat. It turned out that there were piles of hay piled up on these dozen grasshopper boats, and a rocket flew down on these grasshopper boats, which immediately ignited the haystacks on the boat, and the flames rose up immediately, and with the help of the northwest wind, they quickly spread to the golden-winged warship in front of the center.

Chen Ji took a golden-winged warship a little far away from the oasis, and saw that the number of rockets fired from the oasis in the middle of the river was not much, unlike a large group of Sui Dynasty troops who set up an ambush here.

However, in the heart of the river, the Sui army camp on the north bank of the river sounded a crisp gong sound when it was neutral, and then I saw dozens of main warships of the Sui army sailing out of the water army camp.

Although Chen Ji led two golden-winged warships to reach the oasis in Jiangxin first, and fired arrows into the reeds one after another, eliminating more than 100 scout troops of the Sui army ambushed in the oasis, they were cut off from the main force led by Zhou Luoyu by the Sui warships that quickly sailed towards Jiangxin to meet the battle, and became a lone army.

Since Yang Jun asked Wang Shiji, the commander of the Sui army's navy and the head of the march, to take the initiative to seek an opportunity to start a war with Nanchen and fight for Chen's first merit, Wang Shiji immediately ordered all the generals on duty to stay on the warships in the naval camp overnight, and pushed a small group of naval scouts forward and ambushed them in the reefs and oases near the center of the river, so as to discover the dispatch of the warships in the Nanchenshui military camp on the opposite bank in time and find out the fighters to annihilate the enemy.

Today, although none of the scout troops of the Sui Dynasty navy ambushed in the oasis in the center of the river were spared and all of them were killed, they successfully ignited a golden-winged warship with more than a dozen grasshopper boats piled up with hay, and sent a warning signal to the naval army camp with the rising firelight, so that the main warships of the Sui army quickly sailed out of the camp to meet the battle, cutting off the connection between the vanguard warships of the Nanchen fleet and the main force.

Zhou Luoyu, the commander of Nan Chen, saw the fire rising on the river, and then saw dozens of main warships of the Sui army on the north bank of the river rushing out several times that were already on the side to meet the battle, knowing that this sneak attack this morning was difficult to handle, and was about to send orders to retreat, but he got a report from his subordinates, saying that one of the three warships led by Chen Ji, the vanguard general of the party, was set on fire by the other party's design, and the other two had moved away from the main force and were divided and surrounded by the Sui warships that came out of the camp to meet the battle.

The first time he led the army to fight, it was just a matter of returning in vain, such as losing the three golden-winged warships in vain, this person, as the head of the four famous generals in the Southern Chen Dynasty, Zhou Luoyu could not afford to lose.

Therefore, Zhou Luoyu no longer cared about the fact that the number of warships facing the enemy's main camp was far more than his own, and he hurriedly ordered the whole army to change the formation and plunge straight into the southwest direction, intending to rescue Chen Ji from the siege. 10