"Strange! Since Tao Qian has sent troops here, why do he have to do this trick of saluting first and then soldiering? After the messenger was taken away, Liu Ji, who had not said a word before, wondered. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Liu Miao smiled lightly: "This is not strange. I have received news that Zang Bajun has left Siwu and marched south. Tao Qian's move must be to confuse me, let me relax my vigilance, and facilitate Zang Bajun's robbery of my grain transportation channel, he probably doesn't know that I have found out Zang Bajun's whereabouts. Now that Tao Qian and Chen are in front, and Zang Ba's army is attacking my back, can Berwyn have a good way to deal with it? ”

"Doesn't the lord already have a way to deal with it?"

"Do I have a solution? Nope! ”

"Then why did the lord tell the messenger that he would occupy the lower piper?"

"I don't threaten me with Tao Qian, and I just provoke him with words. At present, it is not a good time to occupy Xiapi, our roots are still in Huainan, and only by stabilizing the foundation can we try to do anything else. ”

"What the lord said is very true. In fact, what the Lord said to the messenger was not a countermeasure. ”

"Oh, why?"

"According to the information we have obtained, Tao Qian sent a messenger to express his willingness to negotiate, in addition to the conspiracy that the lord just said, he also had another purpose, that is, to make the lord have a trace of extravagant hope for peace talks. After receiving the news that Zang Ba's army had cut off the back route, the lord may make a wrong decision because of this, and draw frontal defensive forces to defend against Zang Ba. At that time, Tao Qian could easily break through the ancestral water defense line and go straight to Xiapi, which could not only quickly expel our army, but also keep Xiapi's money and food.

The premise of Tao Qian's arrangement should be that he can see from the grain transportation that the lord has no intention of occupying Xiapi, and if Tao Qian knows that the lord also covets Xiapi at this time, he may shift his strategic goal from 'intercepting money and grain' to 'attacking Xiapi'. In this way, we simply made a passive posture of defending Picheng and fought a battle with the Xuzhou army. In Xiapi City, we are the garrison, and there is no shortage of food and grass, even if the troops are not as good as the Xuzhou army, there is a greater chance of victory, as long as Tao Qian is defeated in a battle, there is time to transport grain. After the transportation of money and grain is completed, Xia Pi will be returned to Tao Qian, so as to avoid the negative impact of seizing the state and county. ”

Liu Miao understood that Liu Ji meant that he would do what he planned and simply fought face-to-face with Tao Qian.

Liu Miao thought for a moment and said happily: "Then we will cooperate with Tao Qian to play a play, slowly transfer the troops in front to Xiapi City, and fight with them in Xiapi City, I want to see what the so-called Danyang elite soldiers are." ”

"If the lord has made up his mind to fight a big battle with the Xuzhou army, it is best to recruit some more soldiers, with our current strength in Xiapi, it is still a little difficult to defeat the Xuzhou army in a short time."

"What Berwyn said is very true, in addition to the money and grain that has already been shipped, the follow-up will be suspended, and the recruitment of civilian workers will be changed to the recruitment of soldiers, I will take time to train, and it is expected that there will be no problem in adding a few thousand more elite soldiers before the decisive battle."

"This is very good, the foundation will store money and food in Xiapi City as soon as possible and recruit soldiers."

"The side of Xiapi City will be handed over to Berwyn, and Xu Da's department will also be dispatched by Qing. These **** first trained the soldiers, built the city defense equipment, and then went to meet with Zhang Liao's troops to deal with Zang Bajun. ”

Liu Ji knew that his lord had some very mysterious and powerful abilities, such as training soldiers, creating some special equipment and items, etc., but he was very wise not to explore these secrets, and just did what he had to do. It is precisely because of this that Liu Miao did not deliberately hide it from Liu Ji, and of course he would not tell Liu Ji the secrets of the system.

In the next two days, Liu Miao was very busy, almost always dealing with the system, and the contribution points were also shrinking dramatically, but the harvest was not small. He trained another 4,000 elite soldiers, and the elite troops in Xia Picheng reached 9,000 people, including 4,000 Wudang Fei Army, 1,000 Xuanjia Army, 2,000 Divine Arm Archers, and 2,000 Yuan Rong Crossbow Soldiers.

The Yuanrong crossbow is a new type of troops, its advantage is that it can shoot continuously, the interval between arrows is short, but the range is shorter than that of the god arm archer, and the Yuanrong crossbow is relatively bulky, inconvenient to move, more suitable for fixed-point defense, is the elite weapon of defending the city.

【Soldier (Yuan Rong Crossbowman)

Affiliation: Liu Miao

Loyalty: 100

Force: 35

Class characteristics: Burst (use the exclusive weapon Yuan Rong crossbow, reload once can fire ten arrows in a row)]

【Soldier (Divine Arm Archer)

Affiliation: Liu Miao

Loyalty: 100

Force: 40

Class Trait: Armor Piercing (Arrows have a 5% chance to ignore enemy armor defenses)]

Liu Miao believed that with these 9,000 elite soldiers, there would be no problem at all in defending Xia Picheng, not to mention that he could continue to recruit ordinary soldiers. In addition, Liu Miao also purchased twenty catapults at a high price in the system for the purpose of defending the city. As for some other war preparation materials, such as rolling logs, stones, bows and arrows, etc., let Liu Ji prepare.

After doing these things, Liu Miao quietly left Xiapi with Hua Mulan and Yan Yun's eighteen horses, except for a few people, no one knew Liu Miao's whereabouts.

Xiapi was completely handed over to Liu Ji and Liu Bowen.

***********

Around the city of Xiapi, there are several rivers crisscrossing the city, the largest of which is undoubtedly Surabaya. Surabaya flows less than 200 miles to the south, and joins another river, Suishui, which forms a T-shaped and guards a county seat, Xiaxiang.

Xia Xiang is just a small city, but it is famous for giving birth to Xiang Yu, the overlord of Western Chu.

On this day, 5,000 soldiers and horses quietly came outside the city, and after they quickly took control of the city, they left only a few hundred people to block the gates, and the rest of the soldiers and horses all went to Surabaya.

The commander of this army was named Zang Ba, and he led his troops to march more than 200 miles secretly to arrive here, just to set up an ambush in Surabaya, control the river, and intercept Liu Miao's grain fleet.

He chose a narrow section of the river and set up many traps underwater by means of shipwrecks, wooden stakes, and hook ropes to ensure that it was difficult for ships to pass smoothly.

Everything went well, and it was all expected by Zang Ba, and the soldiers even had two days to recuperate.

Two days later, the river had long since returned to calm, and Surabaya was flowing quietly, shimmering with sparkling waves, as if nothing had happened here, and nothing unusual was visible on the surface.

However, in the dense forests on both sides of the riverbank, there were more than 4,000 soldiers crawling.

They had been in ambush since midday, and it was almost noon, but the target had not yet appeared.

Lying on the ground for nearly two hours, many of the soldiers were mentally exhausted, and some even had sweet dreams.

"Big brother, is the news accurate?" Chang Feng moved his stiff neck slightly, and asked Zang Ba, who was not moving at all.

Zang Ba frowned and said in a deep voice: "Be patient! The fleet must pass by here today, don't give me a fault. ”

Chang Feng pursed his lips and lay on the ground again.

"Quack-quack-"

After a long time, suddenly there were several wild duck cries from upstream, and Zang Ba's eyes flashed, which was the signal he had agreed in advance.

"Tell the brothers, cheer up, the goal is coming soon!"

With his orders, the generals conveyed it layer by layer.

After a slight but brief commotion, the riverbank returned to calm.

The generals on both sides of the strait looked at the water in the distance, where a number of ships were slowly approaching.