Facing this territory that originally belonged to the Great Song Dynasty, and facing this Lingqiu, which was mostly Han people, Zhou Yi did not feel strange, and he led a few close subordinates to walk in from the still messy city gate.

The appearance of this young man in official uniform, and the fact that he was not followed by the army, made the panicked people stop, stop their steps, and look at him curiously.

Zhou Yi didn't care what they thought, his time now was very precious, in fact, the first Azi army had already left Lingqiu, and there were only 20,000 people outside the city.

When you come to the seat of the county, the first thing that catches your eye is the red, white, and yellow mixed together sparse things on the ground, which is said to be the original Lingqiu County prefectural order that has been trampled into meat sauce.

Zhou Yi went in accompanied by everyone, and because there was no resistance at all, it looked very ...... inside The confusion was due to the fact that the petty officials had run away from the previous things.

Because of the urgency of time, Zhou Yi couldn't stay here for too long, so he just hurriedly took a pen and paper and wrote a notice for people to post everywhere.

Subsequently, the army entered the city, and Lingqiu County was returned to the territory of the Great Song Dynasty.

The news was drafted by Zhou Yi, and Tong Guan received all the credit and reported it to the official family.

At the same time as this war report, another war report was drafted, which was sent out from Tong Guan's hands.

After Cai Jing and Tong Guanshi opened the border policy, there were frequent wars between the Song and Western Xia, invading each other's borders, attacking cities and plundering land, and slaughtering the people. The two sides won and lost each other, and Song did not have an advantage.

In the first year of Xuanhe and March of the fifth year of Xia Yongning, Tong Guanqiang ordered Xihe to make Liu Fa attack Xia. Liu Fa led 30,000 troops. When he went to Tong'an City, he met the younger brother of the Xia Lord, Brother Cha, who led 30,000 cavalry to block Liu Fa's front army. In addition, the elite mountaineering detoured to Liu Fa's army and then attacked him.

The Song army fought and retreated. The soldiers were hungry and thirsty, and there were many dead and wounded. Liu Fa fell off a cliff and was beheaded by Xia.

In this battle, the Song army lost 100,000 soldiers before and after, but Tong Guan concealed the battle situation, but reported to the imperial court that he had won the battle.

However, this happened in the south, so let's not mention it for the time being, and let's talk about Zhou Yi's army.

Tong Guan was very satisfied with Zhou Yi's decision to attribute all his achievements to himself. Zhou Yi, who is young, knows that he is not proud of his merits, and he is a good seedling worth cultivating.

The official family is also very satisfied, this battle can capture a city without a single soldier, and it is really because Yelu Yanxi has the image of destroying the country.

Zhou Yi was even more satisfied, how easy it was to fight like this, take people over directly, and then the other party surrendered the city to the Great Song Dynasty. According to this rhythm, recovering the sixteen states of Yanyun is really a matter of the blink of an eye.

It's a pity that the attack on Lingqiu was completely unprepared, but in this way, the news of the Song army's attack soon spread throughout the Liao Kingdom. Yelu Yanxi hurriedly organized a large army for a counterattack.

This was to be expected, but it would take at least ten days and half a month for the army to reach Lingqiu. Such a long time was enough for Zhou Yi and them to rush to Ulzhou.

It was Yelu Dashi who was ordered to come to the aid of Ulzhou, who was Chinese New Year's Eve one year old today, and it was the age of the prime of life, and the Liaoxing army was the envoy.

He led an army of 100,000 men along the Great Wall all the way to Ulzhou, traveling 200 miles a day, and soon after his departure, the soldiers were already complaining that he had no choice but to control the daily march at 150 miles.

But they were still too far away from Zhou Yi's army, even if they walked fifty miles more than them in a day, when Zhou Yi arrived outside the city of Ulzhou, they were still halfway there.

On this day, the wind was beautiful, the sun was shining, the breeze was gentle, and the battle flag was fluttering. The 200,000 troops were stationed at the south gate of Ulju City, which was almost a stone's throw away.

The Ulzhou Shou is a Liao person, and his name is Shi Mo Zude. Compared with the county order of Lingqiu County, he seems to have the style of a general, and he is as tall as Yi Yingfeng, holding a special heavy sword, approving armor, and majestic.

The Khitan people of the Liao Dynasty only had two surnames, Yelu and Xiao, and Yelu's titles were Qishui County, Mingtong County and Liucheng County, and Xiao's title was Lanling County.

Before the founding of the Khitan, it was attached to the Tang Dynasty in the Central Plains, and some upper-class figures accepted the surname Li given by the Tang Dynasty. In addition, there is the surname Sun, which later entered the Khitan Xiao surname. Jin destroyed Liao, and the Khitan became the ruling nation, except for some upper-class people who were given the surname Wanyan of the country of Jin, the vast majority of Khitan people changed the surname of Yelu to Yila, and Xiao to Shimo.

When he received the news that the Song army had captured Lingqiu and was marching towards Ulzhou, he was directly stunned, which was completely inconsistent with the Song army's style of doing things. Not to mention the capture of Lingqiu, it is the act of taking the initiative to send troops, and it is not like what the Song army can do.

But the successive battle reports made him have to believe that this was a fact, and the 200,000 troops of the Song army were about to come to Ulzhou. Shi Mo Zude immediately dispatched troops, and Ulju City entered a state of readiness.

He stood on the top of the city wall, and through the low wall, he saw a large area of Song army pressed by the black pressure below, 200,000, which is not a small number, and there are only 30,000 Liao troops in the entire Ulzhou City, which is still because of the high level of Ulzhou. In a place like Lingqiu County, although it is a large county, the standing army is only 10,000. If it was not decided to use troops against the Song, these soldiers, coupled with the defensive capabilities of the city walls, would have been enough to support the arrival of reinforcements.

Zhou Yi sat on his bloody horse, raised his head to look at the dense army on the city wall, and couldn't help but feel a little stunned in his heart, this is the real sense of the war he is facing.

But now we can't be afraid, we can't retreat, we can't even delay time, Zhou Yi knows that there are troops coming from afar.

Zhou Yi ordered, the whole army marched!

The 200,000 troops, moving in unison, came to the place below the city, which happened to be the farthest distance that the trebuchets on the city walls could shoot.

At such a long distance, the shouting could not be heard, and in fact, Zhou Yi couldn't even see the people on the city wall clearly. It can be seen that the shouting towards the city wall in the TV series is completely nonsense, and when you walk to the opposite wall of the city wall and you can hear it, you will have already been killed with one arrow.

Zhou Yi's combat philosophy has always been to accomplish long things at the lowest cost, and for the sake of this concept, he can give up all necessary and unnecessary integrity -- in his concept, the war can be won, and it doesn't matter how to fight.

He returned to the tent, he had no experience in siege warfare, although he had ideas, but he felt that it was better to ask Tong Guan and the others for their opinions.

Yi Yingfeng advocated a direct and forcible attack, and his reason was that we, 200,000 people, were we still afraid of these defenders?

He had the same opinion as Huang Peng, and he felt that the longer the time dragged on, the more detrimental it would be to the Song army, so he should attack immediately.

And Huang Jiawei thought that he should plan and then act, everyone was fighting, Zhou Yi and Tong Guan did not say a word. When everyone was almost arguing, Tong Guan asked, "Hengzhi, what do you think?" ”

Zhou Yi said: "They occupy the advantage of the city, this is their biggest dependence, if there is no city wall to block, or even as long as there is no city gate, then we can easily attack the city." ”

What everyone thinks in their hearts is, isn't this nonsense?

Tong Guan said solemnly: "Let's talk about the point." ”

"I mean we can find a way to open the gates so we can rush in." Zhou Yi said.

Everyone cheered up, and Huang Jiawei said: "How to get it open?" ”

Zhou Yi said: "I'll try it tomorrow night." ”

"Why not tonight?" Tong Guan asked, time is life, and if you act one day earlier, you may encounter reinforcements one day later, and you may avoid many conflicts.

"I just have an idea, I need a day to prepare, and they are guarding the city during the day, so they can only move at night." Zhou Yi said.

Tong Guan nodded and said, "As soon as possible, I would love to see how you attack the city." ”

So the meeting was dismissed, and Zhou Yi ordered all the saltpeter in the army to be sent to his room. This order made everyone very strange, saltpeter will definitely be equipped in the army as a healing medicine, but now no one is injured, and everyone doesn't know what Zhou Yi wants so much saltpeter for. But now Zhou Yi is a strategic envoy, and Tong Guan doesn't care, so everyone has to be ordered to get all the hundreds of catties of saltpeter into Zhou Yi's tent.

Zhou Yi asked people to grind all these saltpeters into powder, and by finding charcoal, they were all ground into powder and mixed with saltpeter powder.

Now everyone understands what he is going to do, gunpowder has been used in warfare in the last years of the Tang Dynasty, but it has not been used on a large scale, so now Zhou Yi is no stranger to making this thing.

In one day, Zhou Yi had already made more than a dozen explosive bags, all of which weighed dozens of pounds and were packed in special iron buckets, which were specially designed to ensure the power of the explosion.

By the evening of the same day, Zhou Yi had already made ten such things, in fact, before the invention of nitroglycerin, the safety of this kind of earth gunpowder was not high, but there was no way, Zhou Yi would only make such things.

The 10 fastest runners in the army were selected to unknowingly place the explosives at the gates of Ulju and detonate them tonight.

Zhou Yi actually made a lead on these explosive packets, but he didn't dare to guarantee the effect of this lead, so he also designed several ignition systems for each explosive pack, such as a cotton thread stained with oil, and a very flammable paper ball wrapped around the periphery of the explosive pack. The only requirement for this is to be able to detonate the explosive pack.

At the height of the night, the selected ten men set out in the darkness of the night, carrying explosives packs from the nearby woods or the edge of the mountain pack, and approached the walls of Ulju. (To be continued......)