The next morning, the 300,000-strong army was like a dark cloud pressing under the walls of the outer city of Beiping. He Fu, the left deputy general, stood under the Zhengyang Gate and shouted loudly to the city tower to persuade him to surrender, as an ultimatum, declaring that if he did not surrender again, the last general would order to fire and open fire and bombard the city gate, and at that time, the entire Beiping City would fall into a sea of fire, and the imperial army would be indiscriminate, killing civilians and soldiers. If you don't want to be slaughtered, open the door and surrender.

Standing on the city tower in response were Yan Shizi Zhu Gaochi and Yan Princess Xu. Zhu Gaochi replied calmly and with a smile: Beiping is my home, and now that my father is out on errands, can the son open the door and let the robbers in? It's a joke. Princess Xu's attitude was even tougher. She looked down at the black army below, and said coldly and majestically: This city wall of Beiping was built by my father King Zhongshan and his soldiers with hard work and a spoonful of brick and mortar, which is stronger than the Great Wall, and of course it is impossible to destroy it in my hands; If you are not convinced, let the horse come over and dismantle it. There are no so-called civilians and soldiers, and no one in the whole city will welcome you, even if you can really get in, no one will surrender.

As if in response to their words, the people in the city suddenly shouted in unison, asking the imperial army to roll back to the sky, and asking Emperor Jianwen to abdicate immediately and give way to King Yan; The cry shook the earth and was resolute and decisive. He Fu saw that there was no hope of persuasion, and no longer struggled, and waved his hand to the side. A platoon of artillery at the head of the line scrambled to roar.

This was the signal for the siege to begin. The first cannon sounded, and the armies attacking from the east, west, north and south received the same order, and at the same time their respective cannons were fired, and they bombarded the gray city wall of Beiping. Within a radius of several hundred miles, there was a rumble of cannons, and for a time, the entire Beiping city wall was completely submerged in the sky-high flames and billowing smoke. The shouts of the people in the city had died down, and no human voice could be heard. The 300,000 troops outside the city were also silent, and only the artillery kept roaring deafeningly.

The cannonade stopped; The smoke quickly shattered and dissipated in the autumn wind, revealing the appearance of a city wall; The previous gray city wall has turned into a gray, black, and white mottled grimace, and large scorched black scorched black is all over the entire sixty-mile city wall, and there are raging flames everywhere, still billowing black smoke. The walls were impregnable and impregnable; Rao has experienced such a wanton and indiscriminate bombardment, but still not a single wall has collapsed, and not even a single part of the city wall has been damaged and loosened. There was not a single shadow of the defenders in sight at the head of the city, only the broken flags trembling in the wind, and the flames that were still burning and fluttering on their bodies were shaking weakly.

He Fu gave a strong order: "Attack!" ”

300,000 infantry immediately roared like a flood to the city wall and rolled away, instantly thousands of long logs were erected on the moat, the black pressure of the southern army stepped on the horizontal wood to rush across the moat, and immediately erected countless dense and high ladders, tens of thousands of soldiers one after another quickly climbed along the ladder to the city, a breathtaking and spectacular picture, like a huge anthill that was suddenly alarmed, countless ants rushed along countless paths to climb up desperately, the black pressure was crowded, and the sound of killing shook the sky, Shen Ruoyu was frightened. He had grown so big, and although he had imagined it many times, he had never seen such a real and terrifying shocking scene, far beyond his imagination.

However, the situation did not go as smoothly as it appeared at first, and it was quickly reversed. The sound of killing shook the sky and became louder and louder, and a considerable part of it began to come down from the city walls. Countless Yan soldiers appeared on the wall, shooting arrows intensively downward, row by row quickly alternated, without the slightest delay in retreating. The arrows rained down like locusts, and the soldiers of the Southern Army who were densely covered on the ladder were hit by arrows one after another, losing their center of gravity and falling down; The southern army, which was crossing the river, also fell into the river with a large number of arrows. But these could not in any way deter the warriors behind them; More Confederate soldiers rushed across the river without hesitation, climbed the ladder, and climbed up without hesitation, one after the other; More Confederate soldiers fell from the crossbar, into the river, or from the ladder, one after the other, and fell on the brethren below. The soldiers of the Southern Army who were lucky enough to climb the top of the wall were immediately cut down by the guards Yan Army. Dead bodies rained down.

The battle raged fiercely; This was the first battle that Shen Ruoyu had witnessed in his life. He stood far away, staring dumbfounded at the entire fighting scene in front of him, where the two sides completely disregarded life and death, and his mind went blank. The real war turned out to be like this, and every cannon sound seemed to explode in his ears, and he had to tremble all over; In the sound of killing, he didn't know how many people had fallen to the ground and died, and how many people continued to rush forward desperately on the corpse of their brother. He saw countless times that each ladder was toppled by the defenders at the head of the city, and the warriors who climbed on the ladder fell to the ground one by one like tiny broken leaves. Countless more warriors were killed by arrows in mid-air, or stone-fired mines, or hacked to death the moment they touched the city—corpses scattered like snow in the night's mountains.

Fortunately, Li Jinglong did not give him a task; At least from his first experience, he couldn't do anything on the battlefield, he only frightened. He forgot to pay attention to Zhong Kexi beside him; The shy little soldier who had just entered the battlefield for the first time had only looked at it for a moment, and then turned his back and kept shaking.

The battle began at noon and continued until dark, still ragingly. The imperial army could not enter the city wall at all; The city gate was knocked open again and again by the thunder cart, and each time it was immediately blocked by the Yan soldiers. The defenders at the head of the city poured barrels of oil and rockets on the enemy troops besieging the city below, burning the city gate into a sea of fire; The soldiers of the Southern Army who attacked the city and slammed the gate still fearlessly went forward one after another. The soldiers of the Yan Army blocked the city gate with their own ** thick human wall inside the city gate, and many soldiers were crushed to death by their comrades in tears on the city gate. The southern army fought until late at night and could not attack the city wall for half a step.

In the middle of the night, He Fu finally ordered the troops to be withdrawn. Exhausted, the Confederate soldiers evacuated the devastated walls and returned to the camp to rest. company battalions of wounded soldiers; Medical officers worked through the night until dawn. All the warriors drank a large bucket of water and fell asleep like dead men.

In the city of Beiping, it is the same situation.

During the day the next day, He Fu and Wu Jie reorganized their army and continued to attack the city. Shen Ruoyu thought that after a day of fierce fighting, the southern army should be weakened and unwilling to fight again, but he never expected that the soldiers of the southern army would be more brave and fearless than the previous day, and their fighting spirit would be high, and they would attack all the nine Beiping gates on the sixty-mile strong city wall more and more violently. The Yan army is the same, the more brave it becomes, and the more tenacious it becomes. The two armies fought fiercely for a day, and neither side backed down.

The Battle of Peking continued like this; The two sides have always been in a stalemate, and each side is desperately fighting for even every centimeter of territory under their feet, and will never give up to the enemy. Seeing that the casualties are also increasing. Shen Ruoyu gradually calmed down, and the initial anxiety and panic slowly disappeared. He became accustomed to seeing the fighting scenes on the battlefield, to the sight of the wounded soldiers and blood in the camp after the truce, to hearing the deafening artillery fire day and night, the shouts of killing between the artillery fire, and the groans of the wounded soldiers in the moment when the fighting stopped. Isn't this what he is pursuing, he left Ying Tianjing's division and ran to the battlefield, isn't what he pursues is this life-and-death struggle, during which the cruelty and cold-bloodedness and human nature are annihilated, which can bury and freeze him, make him numb and sink, make him forget the tragic death of Yang Miqing, forget his wife who is alone at home, and ignore his own existence. He actually found a peaceful soul refuge on such a bloody battlefield, and Shen Ruoyu only felt endless sadness.

After six days of siege, on the twenty-fifth day of September, Li Jinglong received a battle report from the Liaodong soldiers, and Zhu Di, the king of Yan, led 50,000 elite soldiers to Yongping, and did not have a head-to-head confrontation with Wu Gao, the marquis of Jiangyin, Yang Wen, the general soldier, and Geng Xuan, the governor of the capital, but on the way there was a narrow encounter with a group of scouts from the Liaodong soldiers. Wu Gao, Marquis of Jiangyin, did not move his troops and confronted King Yan outside Yongping City. After staying in this way for a few days, Wu Gao and Yang Wen suddenly ordered a retreat, and the 100,000-strong army had no reason to lift the siege of Yongping and withdraw to the east. Zhu Di, the king of Yan, would not let go of any opportunity, and immediately pursued the troops and defeated the Liao soldiers, only this battle completely drove the Liao soldiers back to Shanhaiguan. Now, King Yan and 50,000 elite soldiers of the Yan army are resting in Yongping City.

Li Jinglong was furious when he received the report, and cursed Wu Gaopifu again and again, without any plans, and even the least loyalty and courage of the soldiers were gone, so it was easy for the anti-king to reverse some of his disadvantages. Of course he didn't know, even Shen Ruoliao didn't know that when King Yan was still in Beiping, in order to mobilize his soldiers to set out with him to rescue Yongping, he once said something like this:

"Jinglong is fierce and discouraged, and he will not dare to come when he hears that I am here, so he will not go to the aid of Yongping and his teacher. Wu Gao is cowardly and does not let him fight, I must go, and then fight back against Jinglong. The fortified city is in front, and the army is behind, and it will be captured. ”

Now, it turns out that King Yan's judgment is at least right in Wu Gao's sentence. Of course, no one on the Southern side knew about it; If Li Jinglong knew, he didn't know if he would be ashamed, for the generals in his army, he was a big general who didn't know as much as King Yan as an enemy.

Li Jinglong ordered the siege army to suspend the attack, but he only firmly besieged Beiping, he did not believe that a lonely city could not run out of ammunition and food. The general himself took 200,000 southern troops to wait for the return of the Yan army in Zhengcunba, intending to give the Yan army a head-on blow to the long-distance laborers.

Who would have thought that after the general made such an arrangement, two days later, news was sent that King Yan actually led 50,000 elite soldiers to set off from Yongping again, and did not return to Beiping, but marched along the northeast direction, and did not know what to do.

Every move is unexpected by the other party, and this is where King Yan's genius lies. Shen Ruoyu looked at the map, and King Yan headed northeast of Yongping, and the destination could only be Daning. Daning is the fief of Zhu Quan, King of Ning, what is he doing there? King Yan raised troops for three months, won every step, and went south step by step, and suddenly, the army of the Northern Expedition of the imperial court came to the city of Beiping, but King Yan left Beiping and ran to Daning in the northeast. It's completely irrelevant, what the hell is he trying to do?

For several days in a row, Shen Ruoliao had been thinking hard about the true purpose of King Yan leading his troops to relieve the siege of Yongping. At this moment, he seemed to have some understanding, from the very beginning, the ultimate goal of King Yan was not to rescue Yongping, but to lead the army north to Daning. All he had left to ask was: What to do in Daning? What does Daning have?

Except for Zhu Quan, the seventeenth brother of King Yan, His Royal Highness the Prince who is known as a wise man and a good resource, what else? Nope. Therefore, King Yan must have gone to arrest King Ning, and he wanted to turn King Ning into his assistant and his own adviser. It's obvious.

The problem is that Zhu Quan, the king of Ning, who used to "bring 80,000 armor and 6,000 leather cars", has lost his glory since he was cut off by Zhu Yunwen and three guards, and he can't give anything to King Yan except for a super smart head of King Ning; And King Ning's head must be connected to King Ning's body, but King Ning's body has to follow Daning's army. It is necessary to know that the Daning Capital Division is located in the northeast frontier and has always been a military stronghold, so there are heavy troops guarding it all the year round, and there are more than 20 guards such as Xingzhou and Yingzhou under its jurisdiction, all of which are elite troops; In particular, Duoyan, Taining, and Fuyu - the world-famous Duoyan Sanwei are all Mongolian cavalry under the command of the generals of the Yuan Dynasty, and they are extremely brave and good at fighting. Daning's army, there is no second army in the world that can stop it; If the army doesn't say a word, King Ning himself will be useless no matter how willing he is, and King Yan will not be able to do anything. What's more, the army simply will not agree, and the imperial court has always firmly controlled Daning's military power in its own hands.

Shen Ruoyu looked at the map, and suddenly, he remembered what Daning had; He understood everything.

If King Yan takes the entire Daning's military horses and Zhu Quan, the king of Ning, together with the pot, this world will be equivalent to being in his pocket. And with King Yan's mind, he would definitely be able to come up with a way to snatch the entire Daning army intact.

What kind of chess is this, and what kind of foresight the chess player has that is difficult for ordinary people to achieve. Zhu Di, the king of Yan, was not carried away by the victory in the three months since he started his army, and continued to march south to the Beijing division; On the contrary, after several battles, he clearly realized that his troops were far from enough, and it was very likely that he would be wiped out under the impact of the 500,000 Northern Expeditionary Army of the imperial court. Therefore, King Yan wants to expand his military strength for himself. Recruiting new recruits is always the least efficient approach; The shrewd King Yan chose to rob and snatched the best and bravest troops of the entire Ming Empire from the imperial court into his own hands. Relying on the mountains to eat the mountains, relying on the water to eat the water; Shen Ruoliao learned to rely on the sky to eat the sky in the capital, and Zhu Di, the king of Yan in the midst of the predicament, was extraordinarily courageous, and walked out of a move that was enough to make him proud of for the rest of his life - it was this move that finally laid the foundation for the results of everything that followed.

Shen Ruoyu immediately rushed out of his tent and rushed to Li Jinglong's big tent. The generals under the command of the general are all there, and everyone seems to be discussing something. Li Jinglong was a little surprised when he saw him rushing in, and asked:

"It's so late, what do you have to say?"

Shen Ruoyu said: "General, you can't let King Yan enter Daning!" Please immediately order the Daning guards to guard against the Yan army and prepare to attack; In addition, is it better to send 100,000 of our army to respond, besiege the Yan army, and be sure to besiege the Yan army outside Daning City? ”

Li Jinglong looked at him attentively for a while, and said with a smile:

"Lord Overseer, before you came, I was discussing this matter with all the generals here, and we have already decided not to send troops to pursue, and King Yan will go wherever he likes, whatever he wants. Our army is still in accordance with the original deployment, 200,000 are stationed at Zhengcunba to calm the brake, and the remaining 300,000 should also rest, starting tomorrow morning, continue to attack the city, and do not stop for a day. ”

Shen Ruoyu said: "But...... King Yan must not enter Daning! ”

"Why?" Li Jinglong asked quietly.

Shen Ruoyu hesitated for a moment and said, "Because-Daning has three guards." ”

"I don't understand this," Li Jinglong smiled, "In my opinion, it is precisely because Daning has Duoyan Sanwei, so I can do whatever Yan Wang wants to do there, but I expect that he can't do anything, I'm afraid he won't even be able to enter Daning City at all." ”

Shen Ruoyu said: "General, everyone in the world knows that Duoyan Sanwei is powerful; Because of this, he can't be taken away by King Yan! King Yan went to Daning to rob Duoyan Sanwei, and his intention was obvious. ”

Li Jinglong glanced at the generals with a smile and asked:

"Just now, whose opinion coincided with the Lord Warden? I remember someone raising this concern as well? ”

Chen Hui looked at Sheng Yong and said softly: "It was proposed by the last general and General Sheng." ”

Li Jinglong nodded and said, "Not bad; The two generals were very thoughtful, and we must strictly prevent the plot against the king to steal Duoyan Sanwei from succeeding. I have already sent letters to Liu Zhen, the governor of Daning, Chen Heng, and Bu Wan, the commander of the capital, and the three of them have already written back to me and agreed to join forces. Liu Zhen, Chen Heng and Bu Wan were leading an army of 100,000 to garrison Songting Pass at this moment, holding the passage of the Yan army to Daning. Not only will the anti-king not be able to enter Daning, but he will also be annihilated on the spot by the Daning army and horses that have been prepared for a long time. Therefore, the Lord of the Overseers does not have to worry about the anti-king being able to get Duoyan Sanwei at all. ”

Shen Ruoyu breathed a sigh of relief and said, "It turns out that the general has been prepared for a long time; It's too much to worry about. ”

The siege continued to be brutal, with no progress except for the death of a large number of soldiers. It seems to be winter and October. The weather quickly cooled down. In the early winter, Beiping is no longer as quiet as Shen Ruoliao remembered in the past, and there is a war everywhere. The artillery fire strangely made Beiping colder and colder, and the firelight that filled the city could not give people the slightest warmth; The soldiers besieging the city have crossed thicker and thicker, especially the soldiers from the south, who can't stand the strong north wind every morning and evening, and they shrink their hands and feet with their swords and guns, and keep heating their hands.

Shen Ruoyu was just watching the battle every day, imagining what it was like to be in the city; In such an extraordinary period, the hoarding of grain in the whole Beiping City should have been hoarded and gathered together, and it was uniformly distributed to the people of the city by the Yanwang Mansion, and each person was rationed every day to ensure that everyone had food to eat and everyone could fight. In this case, there will definitely be no more industry and commerce in the city, the Hongjia Hotel must have closed, and there may be no more business in Bada Hutong. The girl in Huiyinglou may be sitting with Lu Jiang at this time, or even with Princess Yan and the county lords, doing the same work regardless of whether they are high or low, and making winter military clothes and military shoes for the soldiers of the Yan army.