Li Jing said goodbye and retired, only Yang Yuanqing was left in the big tent, he walked to the tent door with his hands behind his back, pondered for a long time, Li Yuan marched towards Jingxiang, he could not be indifferent, but he did not want to show his worries in front of Li Jing.

He was not thinking about how much strength Xiao Mo could keep, but the change in Li Yuan's strategic intentions, from Hongnong County to Jingxiang, was obviously intended to give up chasing the Central Plains and develop to the south.

It should be said that Li Yuan has a very strategic vision, and after many years of banditry and war, the Central Plains has been depleted by a population of thousands of miles, and the society has suffered heavy losses, and it is difficult to recover its vitality without ten years.

On the contrary, the south benefited from Yang Guang's special protection and was not affected by too much war, and the strength of Xiao Mi, Lin Shihong, Shen Faxing, Li Zitong and others was weak, and a little stronger, it was Jianghuai Du Fuwei, but it was difficult to be the opponent of the Tang army.

Guanlong has always been the main source of troops of the Sui army, and its own government soldiers are strong, coupled with the Battle of Goryeo and the Yangzhou Rebellion, a large number of soldiers fled back to Guanlong, so that the Tang army has an extremely good source of soldiers.

More importantly, the nobles of Guanlong have a lot of money and grain savings, and the wealth of the world is ten, and five points are in Guanlong.

Human, wealth, and material plus the will of the people are the fundamental reason why the Tang army was able to quickly defeat all kinds of forces in history, and it was by no means Li Shimin's personal heroic talent, now because of their own existence, suppressed the development of the Tang army, they could not march into the Central Plains, but could only turn to the south to develop, although they could not be compared with the Tang Dynasty in history, but the strength should not be underestimated, and if they wanted to unify the world, the biggest enemy was still the Tang Dynasty.

If Li Yuanzhen gets the south, it will definitely greatly improve the strength of the Tang Dynasty, and it will be very unfavorable to himself, which makes Yang Yuanqing feel worried.

Yang Yuanqing thought of himself again, in fact, he knew very well in his heart that although he defeated the Tang Dynasty several times, it was because of the foundation laid by Fengzhou.

If you add the strength of the six counties in Guanbei in Fengzhou, his total strength is less than 200,000, and the Youzhou army is still reorganized in Taiyuan, and it has not been officially formed.

Despite this, he still had an army of nearly 200,000 troops, and if it were not for the large amount of grain accumulated in Fengzhou in the past few years, he would not have been able to bear such a huge burden of troops by relying only on Hedong and Fengzhou.

Unless he also followed the path of Liu Wuzhou-Wei Dao'er and fished with all his might, then he would not want to defeat the Tang Dynasty, and in the end he could only go to the road of destruction.

Among the 200,000 troops, his real elite army is only about 80,000, and the rest are the surrendered troops of Liu Wuzhou and Song Jingang, as well as some newly recruited troops, which have been reorganized for less than half a year.

Although he has 80,000 elite soldiers, this is only the strength of time, his strength is actually not strong, and more importantly, Hebei is an easy to attack and difficult to govern, which requires a lot of his energy.

This time against Dou Jiande's 300,000 troops, the Sui army used 140,000 troops, in fact, if only from the perspective of war, his 80,000 elites are enough to defeat Dou Jiande's 300,000 army.

However, 80,000 elite soldiers could not control Hebei, and Dou Jiande's army itself was formed by the accumulation of hundreds of large and small forces.

Historically, the Anshi Rebellion was such a consequence, and the imperial court was unable to control Hebei, which led to the death of An Lushan and Shi Siming, and his generals established themselves one after another, forming a situation of feudal town separation.

Hebei is the gathering place of the descendants of the border army of the six towns, the people are fierce, difficult to control, and the people have a lot of Northern Qi relics, and they are not convinced by the Sui Dynasty, which is far from being as easy to govern as Hedong, and Yang Yuanqing has to consider this hidden danger.

Although Hebei is difficult to govern, he still has to fight Hebei, not take the land of Yan Zhao, only rely on the three Jin, how can he fight for the world? Back then, Cao Cao also took Hebei first, so as to prevent the trouble of the back.

"Report to the Chief, the scout has urgent information!"

The sound of the report interrupted Yang Yuanqing's train of thought, and his thoughts returned to his eyes, and he nodded: "Order him to come in and report!" ”

After a while, the scout walked quickly into the big tent and knelt down on one knee to report: "Chief Qiqi, the lowly position is Zhang Ju, the commander of the Second Scout Regiment, who is in charge of the intelligence collection of the Zhangnan County, and now I have discovered an urgent information. ”

"What information?"

"The brothers led the lowly brothers to find in Zhangnan County -- a fleet of boats, about more than 100 boats, loaded with supplies, escorted by the army, covered with tarpaulins, I don't know what it was, but the lowly priest found an anomaly on the river where the ships passed."

The scout looked behind him, and one of his soldiers stepped forward to place the clay pot on the table, and the scout reported: "This is a little river water that the lowly has collected from the river behind the boat, and there is a layer of black grease floating on it, as if it were fire oil." ”

"Kerose?"

Yang Yuanqing was stunned, he looked into the can, and it seemed that there was a layer of oil floating on the surface, and he stretched out his finger to scoop it out of the can, and his fingers were stained with a layer of black greasy, and he came to his eyes to take a closer look, and smelled it again, and sure enough, it was fire oil.

This made Yang Yuanqing gasp - a cold breath, where did Dou Jiande get the oil from? Could it be that the Tang Dynasty supported them? He only knew that the Tang Dynasty had supported Luo Yi and was intercepted by himself.

But whether it was the support of the Tang Dynasty or not, at least Dou Jiande already had the oil of fire, and he immediately asked: "Where is the fleet now?" ”

"The humble duty galloped with three war horses and rushed to the camp -- day and night, but the speed of the ship was not fast, and the humble post estimated that the fleet should not be even in Dongguang County."

There is a voyage of about 350 miles from Zhangnan County to Leshou County, and according to the description of the scouts, there should be about 250 miles, Yang Yuanqing asked again: "How many troops are guarding?" ”

"Back to the chief manager, there are about twenty people on each ship, and there are more than two thousand guards."

Yang Yuanqing pondered for a moment, and immediately ordered: "Quickly go find General Pei Xingyan to see me!" ”

After a while, Pei Xingyan walked into the big tent quickly, knelt down on one knee and saluted, "The last general, Pei Xingyan, see the chief manager!" ”

"General Pei, the scouts found that a fleet of ships is departing from Zhangnan County and is heading in the direction of Leshou County, there are more than 2,000 garrisons on board, I suspect that there is a large amount of fire oil on board, I will give you 3,000 cavalry, you must destroy this fleet for me."

"The last general obeys!"

Yang Yuanqing said to the scout again: "You can take General Pei to find this fleet, and if the matter is successful, I will have a heavy reward." ”

Yang Yuanqing stood in front of the sand table, staring at the Yongji River, and couldn't help but say to himself, "Where did Dou Jiande's oil come from?" ”

……

Dou Jiande's capital was in Leshou County, but his hometown of Zhangnan County was also an important foundation nest for him, and he had a garrison of 30,000 troops in Zhangnan County, where a large amount of supplies were stored.

Originally, there was no direct waterway from Zhangnan County to Leshou County, so it was difficult to take the Yongji Canal to transport water to Yinggao County, and then switch to land transportation.

However, at the beginning of last year, Dou Jiande ordered the excavation of a canal from Yinggao County to Leshou County, which could not be compared with the Yongji Canal, but could also carry medium-sized boats of 500 stones, making water transportation very convenient.

Before dawn, a cavalry of 3,000 men was galloping on the official road on the west bank of the Yongji Canal, and the belt from Leshou County to Zhangnan County was the center of Dou Jiande's rule, and the population situation was better than that of other counties.

From time to time you can see villages on the plains in the distance, white cooking smoke curling up over the villages, large wheat fields full of green wheat seedlings, and you can constantly see farmers busy in the fields, they raise their heads in amazement, and watch the Sui army gallop in front of them.

The 3,000 cavalry led by Pei Xingyan set out yesterday afternoon, each with two horses, and after galloping for an afternoon and a night, they had galloped for nearly 200 miles.

Seeing that the men and horses were exhausted, Pei Xingyan looked around, and found that there were dense woods inside and outside, so he commanded: "Go to the woods and rest for an hour!" ”

The cavalry left Antao, ran up the field, and ran towards the woods, and in a moment the three thousand cavalry rushed to the woods, and the soldiers dismounted one after another, many of them fell to the ground from exhaustion, and their horses were so tired that they snorted.

The soldiers were still fighting their spirits, feeding the horses water and forage, Pei Xingyan was drinking water and eating dry food slowly, and the scout Zhang Ju told him that the fleet should be nearby, so Pei Xingyan decided to wait here for news of the scouts first.

After only half an hour's rest, several cavalry galloped from the south, and when they saw the Sui army resting in the woods, they turned their horses and rushed towards this side.

The head scout is Xiao Yannian, he was transferred to Pei Xingyan half a month ago, as the scout brigade commander, quite popular with Pei Xingyan, Xiao Yannian turned over and dismounted, - the road trotted to Pei Xingyan's side, knelt down on one knee and reported, "General Qiyu, the Xia army's fleet is twenty miles away." ”

Pei Xingyan was overjoyed, and immediately stood up and ordered: "Order all the soldiers to go into the woods immediately to take refuge......"

The soldiers stood up one after another, led their horses and hid in the woods, which covered more than a hundred acres, enough to hide their three thousand men.

……

About ten miles away, a convoy of 120 300-stone flat-bottomed tugboats was slowly heading north, and now their position was ten miles north of the East Ray, where they had just changed their wigglers.

Because the fleet is going against the current, there is no power itself, it needs to rely on the slender man pull, there are hundreds of slender men on both sides of the strait to pull the fleet slowly, this fleet is Dou Jiande's military transport team, mainly responsible for transporting materials between Zhangnan County and Leshou County.

This time, they transported a large number of important military products, including 2,000 barrels of fire oil, which were not given by Li Yuan to Dou Jiande, but by Li Mi.

In order to support Dou Jiande and the Sui army in the battle, he recently sent a ship to send 2,000 barrels of oil.

By this time, the soldiers on board had seen a dense forest in the distance.