While Xia Cheng's army was dividing and winning in the hinterland of Dongyi, Qiongxi was still retreating from his first victorious but defeated retreat in his life. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

This year's autumn weather is excellent, and there is no continuous autumn rain for the time being, but the stagnation in Qiongxi's heart cannot be blown away by the autumn wind and golden sun.

There were a few blisters at the corners of his mouth, and he was in great pain when he swallowed food. He was still at the forefront of the team every day, never disobeying his orders to ride a resting ox, and trying to maintain the morale of the army.

But bad news came one after another, first the news of the destruction of 3,000 people in Mucheng, and then the news that Mucheng was breached in less than ten days. The distance between the two events was more than ten days, but the continuous eastward movement of the army of Qiongxi shortened the time to get the news, which also invisibly made the news even more shocking.

Many of the warriors of Mucheng in the army wept at night, broke their arrows and pierced their palms, swore revenge, and patrolled around the slaves of the captured tribes of the Great River, hoping to repay the slaughter with blood.

Qiongxi tried his best to calm everyone's anger, only saying that these people could be exchanged for their clansmen, which made the warriors in the army put down the butcher's knife.

The messenger knew that there would be no falsehood in this news. After meeting with Jian Chen, he expected that Jian Chen might go deep into the hinterland, and he also expected what actions might be made, but he didn't expect it to be so fast, let alone go so far.

I didn't expect that this time the people of Xia Cheng brought a great shock to their hearts, when they originally returned from the expedition and went deep into the cities of their own clan, there were songs and laughter everywhere.

Those who exchange slaves, those who prepare wine feasts, those who sing praises, those who sing epics...... That's the attitude of a winner.

Now, even though he returned from a great victory and plundered more than 10,000 slaves, he did not have the usual joy when he passed through the cities of his own people, and some of them were just the clan leaders who were trembling and asking him.

"Where's Xia Cheng?"

"Can Xia Cheng really control lightning and thunderstorms?"

"How could Xia Cheng capture Mu Cheng in ten days?"

"Did the people of Xiacheng fly here?"

"They captured 3,000 people in Mu City, but they only died a few dozen, how is this possible?"

Questions like these irritate Firmament Everyday.

These messengers didn't know how to hide their fears and sorrows, and they spread these emotions to every city of their own tribe along the way, and along with them came terrible rumors about the people of Xia City.

It's more terrible than a single failure.

Qiongxi really wanted to tell them that there was nothing to fear from the people of Xiacheng, and he also broke through the cities of the Great River in the rest of the month, but one of the leaders only said one sentence after hearing these words: "But you didn't break Xiacheng." ”

Since then, Qiongxi has not said anything like that again, regretting in his heart, if he had fought a decisive battle with the Xia army in Man, even if he won a tragic victory, at least the clan would not have panicked so far.

It's just that the so-called regret is only because the sensibility of a certain moment overcomes one's own heart. If that battle is fought, he will no longer be the leader of Dongyi, Dongyi wins and Qiongxi loses, this is not what he wants, he hopes that Qiongxi is Dongyi, and Dongyi is Qiongxi, winning and losing.

At this time, the regret and gain and loss have actually made a decision, he is not a person who has lived and died in the Gou Li race.

There were still twenty days to go before returning to Mu City, and Qiongxi didn't know what else he would hear on the way, so he had to send scouts to move forward first, telling those who sent the news to stop talking nonsense.

It was a situation that he had never encountered before, and it taught him a good lesson, and this time he learned a lot.

There are both perceptions from himself and what others have taught him.

The person who brought the news of the fall of Mucheng also told Jian Chen's advice to Qiongxi, and Qiongxi couldn't cry or laugh, but he had to admit that these words were very reasonable, and he had to do it.

It's too far away from where the people of Xia Cheng might appear, so don't worry about it for the time being. But the closer you get to your hinterland, the more you have to obey these counsels.

In particular, some places near the river where troops could be transported by boat, and some valleys where thousands of troops could be ambushed, were scattered to organize the ranks and advance slowly.

The team didn't go fast in the first place, and the closer it got to the heartland, the slower it became. In the past, it was as easy as coming home when I was close to my home, but now it is like being in enemy land.

After an autumn rain at the end of August, bad news followed.

After conquering the city of Mu, the people of Xia quickly moved east, digging the city walls with newly attached slaves and plundering a city. Later, taking advantage of the autumn wind when the draft trees were drying up, he burned the city with the smoke of fire and smoke, and attacked a small city with the method of new slaves and ants.

These two cities are not large, but they are all clan cities that Qiongxi can control, and they are not far from Qiongxi's main city.

Qiongxi felt that Chen Jian should not dare to attack his own city, because it had already gone too far, and the slightest carelessness would be the consequence of the entire army being annihilated under the city. But it was his own city, and it was too important, and he had to worry.

Under the trade-off, Qiongxi had to plan for the worst, even though he knew that the possibility of the worst plan was very small, but he didn't dare to take the risk.

Now the villages are scarce, and there are wastelands everywhere, and I don't know where the people of Xiacheng are, but if the people of Xiacheng want to ambush themselves, they only need to ambush near their own city, and that is where they want to return after all.

The more I wanted to go back, the more I had to worry about the ambush of the Xia City people, and the speed had to be even slower. By the time they arrived near the city, Xia Cheng's army had already dispersed and disappeared, and only traces of their burying pits to make food could be seen.

Apparently they had only made a false shot, but in fact the army had already retreated along the banks of the river, taking advantage of the fact that Firmament was worried about the city to bypass a possible battle, and also had the opportunity to transport a large amount of slave supplies away.

The people of Xiacheng are very sober, and they don't dare to win a decisive battle with Qiongxi in their own land, let alone face more than 10,000 Dongyi warriors who are extremely angry in the land of Dongyi.

The ambush may be won in one fell swoop, completely turning the Great River Tribes into an offensive to hide the contradictions of the Great River Tribes, and completely capture Dongyi within three years. But once it fails, it will be wiped out by the whole army stuck in the hinterland of Dongyi. The people of Xia Cheng also did not dare to gamble, and they did not dare to finish their work in one battle.

When approaching the city and looking at those familiar mountains and forests, the sky was both happy and worried. I am happy that I finally brought the army back and forced the other party to retreat; The worry is that after this battle, Xia Cheng's strength has increased a few points, and the enemies he will face will be even more terrifying in the future. As long as Xia Cheng is still around, it is impossible for him to attack the Great River Tribes on a large scale, and unless there is civil strife on the other side, he will always have to worry about the recurrence of this autumn nightmare.

Qiongxi also understood that even if he captured more than 10,000 slaves, his prestige would still be there, and even if the cities were worried about Xia Cheng, his prestige would be even higher.

Within three years from now on, the initiative to attack will completely change hands, and he can only defend with all his might, and there will be no possibility of taking the initiative to conquer westward.

At a certain moment, Qiongxi even pinned his hopes on the possibility of civil strife in the Great River after the peace, but then he suppressed this thought, he did not want to put his fate in the hands of others, let alone put his victory on the expectation of civil strife in his opponent, which was the weak person he hated.

Along the way, he listened to the stories of Xia Cheng told by those who were familiar with Xia Cheng who were captured, no longer the magical ox plough and ploughshares, but the details of how Xia Cheng came out of the mountains and stood on both sides of the river.

From the beginning of the collegiate political affairs of the thirteen clans in Xiacheng, the private land taxation system made the clan leaders lose their authority, the clan leaders and clan relatives were rewarded to make them separate from the clan and the lower strata of the clan so that the clan lost cohesion, and then to the Yuxia split that finally turned his face, he listened to it with relish, and did not let go of every detail.

The person who spoke just told the story he knew, he didn't stand so high, he didn't think so far, but Qiongxi understood a lot of things that the storyteller himself didn't understand.

The enemy will always find out what to learn before the allies, and they will know that they may be able to learn something from Summer City to bring some changes to their own city, which they didn't have a chance to have, but now they have a chance.

Vaguely, Qiongxi seemed to understand something--this is indeed a bad thing now, but it has come to this point, and it may not be good if you accept it.

This trance-like understanding comes from a message.

There were many relatives who had been plundered near their own city, and they passed on the news in a panicked and uneasy tone: the people of Xiacheng were stationed by the river three hundred miles to the west, hoping that the two sides would exchange relatives there. It was also suggested that the two sides should make an oath not to attack each other or even exchange goods for three years, and in order to ensure that the oath could be carried out, they could keep the sages and nobles within the captured clan as hostages.

Qiongxi breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Xia Cheng had also reached the point where he had to rest, and it was clear that this exchange was not so simple, and it was not a mythical legend of a hero saving his relatives who had been reduced to slavery, but a tacit and dirty deal to achieve each other's goals.

He felt that he had guessed the other person's thoughts, so the mood became happy.

At this point, there is no point in sorrow, and only by following the trend can we win in the future.

He put the captured slaves into his own city, and sent a large number of messengers to inform the various cities of Dongyi in the name of the clan leader, so that those cities that did not know the strength of the Xia Cheng people all knew the news that the Xia Cheng people had broken through the three cities and plundered the three cities into slaves.

Along with these deliberate messages, as well as his requisition orders in the name of the chiefs of the tribes, he asked each clan to send people as a mobile force to defend the Xia City people, and took out a third of the warriors from his own army to enrich the ranks, and was responsible for the defense of the surrounding cities.

He himself took the remaining seven thousand men full of anger and marched towards the agreed place. He was not afraid of the Xia Cheng army in the field against the enemy, but he was only afraid of the maneuver speed of the Xia Cheng people, so that he had no chance to fight the enemy in the field at all.

In any case, the long war of thirty-five years of Huali did not make Qiongxi lose confidence, he firmly believed that even if his 7,000 men could not break through the defense of the Xia Cheng people, the Xia Cheng people would not be able to eat him, and once the nearby cities were stalemate, they would surround the Xia Cheng people and leave them with no way out. More firmly believe in his own judgment, the leader on the other side is definitely as ambitious as himself.

The news of this era was originally very slow, but with the news that Qiongxi deliberately called people to spread and requisition, the entire Dongyi knew about the terrible events that happened in this autumn: the summer city of the Great River Tribes, with the power of one city, penetrated into the hinterland of Dongyi, and broke three cities in a row in more than one month, plundering tens of thousands of people.

In the autumn of the thirty-fifth year of the Chinese calendar, Dongyi was shaken, and all the departments were shocked, and by the end of the summer of next year, the name of Xia Cheng spread to the coast of the East China Sea.