"Play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses!"

Sure enough, just as Gu Liyu expected, Li Yuntian had already thought of a countermeasure, stretched out his hand and pointed to a place called "Qingfeng Valley" in the south of Yinzhou City, and said to him and Pei Jun in an orderly manner: "This is a long valley sandwiched between two big mountains, if the Northern Yuan soldiers can be blocked here, their cavalry will not be able to give full play to their advantages, and the infantry will also be restricted." ”

"Master Hou, do you want to ambush the reinforcements of the Northern Yuan here?" Pei Jun noticed that Qingfeng Valley was located in the south of Yinzhou City, between Yinzhou City and Shenyang City, his eyes suddenly showed a stunned look, if Li Yuntian wanted to ambush here, his target would only be reinforcements sent by the Mongolian army.

"Ben Hou has received information that the Northern Yuan will increase the number of troops in Yinzhou City, and Ben Hou decided to eliminate their reinforcements here, which is not only to give the Northern Yuan a dismount but also to boost the morale of our army, and then take advantage of the situation to capture Yinzhou City!" Li Yuntian smiled slightly when he heard this, since even Pei Jun didn't expect that he would ambush the reinforcements of the Mongolian army in Qingfeng Valley, then the generals of the Mongolian army would not even think of it.

"Master Hou, when will the reinforcements from the Northern Yuan Dynasty come? What about the troops? Gu Liyu's face was immediately happy when he heard this, he knew that Li Yuntian was good at carrying out surprise attacks on the enemy, if he could achieve a great victory in Qingfeng Valley, it would undoubtedly boost the morale of the Liaodong Ming army stationed in several important military towns, the Ming Dynasty now needed a victory on the battlefield in Liaodong, and it could also deter the Northern Yuan generals, so that they did not dare to act rashly.

"Around the middle of next month, the strength of the army is not clear for the time being, but the Northern Yuan has limited troops in Liaodong, and it is already the biggest limit to be able to send 20,000 people here."

Li Yuntian shook his head, pondered for a while, then stretched out his hand and pointed to Qingfeng Valley on the map, and said to Gu Liyu and Pei Jun with a stern expression, "Ben Hou has decided to concentrate his forces to set up an ambush here at that time, and be sure to annihilate all the reinforcements of the Northern Yuan soldiers. ”

"Obey the orders of the marquis." Gu Liyu and Pei Jun knew that the situation was urgent, so they bowed their hands to Li Yuntian one after another, and bowed down to answer with a stern expression.

Li Yuntian's gaze then fell on the Qingfeng Valley on the map, his brows furrowed slightly, whether he could turn the tide of the battle in Liaodong depended on this battle.

As long as a big victory can be achieved in Qingfeng Valley, then the battle belief of the Liaodong Ming army and the Jurchen soldiers in Kaiyuan City will be greatly improved, which will be of great benefit to the attack on Yinzhou City, after all, there are more than 40,000 Mongolian soldiers in Yinzhou City, and it is difficult to defeat them with more than 20,000 Xiaowu troops alone, even if it is obtained, it will be a miserable victory, and the Liaodong Ming army and Jurchen soldiers must be needed to share the pressure.

Although there were about 23,000 people in the Xiaowu army in Kaiyuan City, including the 3,000 people brought by Li Yuntian from the Joseon Kingdom and the more than 20,000 people in the Suzaku camp, only about 14,000 people could participate in the attack on Yinzhou City.

Among them, the 3,000 musketeers of the musket battalion and the 3,000 pikemen attached to them will not participate in the siege of the city, and Li Yuntian will also leave 3,000 escorts by his side.

In this way, there is a huge difference between the strength of the siege force of the Xiaowu army and the Mongol army of Yinzhou City, which makes Li Yuntian have to reuse the soldiers of the Liaodong Ming army and the Jurchen tribes when besieging the city.

Under the supervision of Gu Liyu and Pei Jun, the soldiers of the Xiaowu Army, the Liaodong Ming Army, and the Jurchen troops in Kaiyuan City all increased their training intensity and conducted more rigorous drills in March.

At the same time, Li Yuntian also strengthened logistics support, sparing no effort to ensure the diet of the soldiers of the Xiaowu Army, the Liaodong Ming Army, and the Jurchen Tribes.

Compared with the Xiaowu army and the Liaodong Ming army, the diet of the Jurchen soldiers was the best, not only eating meat every day, but also drinking a certain amount of wine, which greatly appeased the feelings of the Jurchen soldiers and enabled them to calm down and devote themselves to the exercises.

Not only that, Li Yuntian also set up training awards among the Jurchen soldiers, and gave material rewards to those Jurchen soldiers who could concentrate on completing the training requirements, which also greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of the Jurchen soldiers in training.

Even so, the training intensity of the Jurchen soldiers was only half of that of the Xiaowu army with them, and when they rested, the soldiers of the Xiaowu army were still practicing enthusiastically and sweating on the colonel's field, and the intensity of their training gave the leaders of the Jurchen tribes a lot of touch:

If the Ming army in Liaodong can have half the combat effectiveness of the Xiaowu army, then why let the Mongolian army fly high in Liaodong and do whatever it wants?

One evening in early April, Li Yuntian finally waited for the news he had been waiting for for a long time, and a sturdy Mongolian young man came to see Li Yuntian, who brought information that the Mongol army had reinforced Yinzhou City.

This young Mongolian man bears a resemblance to Halbara, who is Nomin's second brother, Chaganbala, and whose name means "white tiger" in Mongolian.

Chaganbala Nian was the most flexible of Nuomin's elder brothers, so he was secretly sent by Li Yuntian to Haizhou City, the seat of Haizhou Wei, where the commander of the Mongolian army was stationed.

Haizhou City is located in the south of Liaoyang City, geographically speaking, it can be said to be located in the central area of Liaodong Prefecture, with an extremely important geographical location, to the north can threaten Liaoyang City, to the south to control Liaodong Bay, to the west to aid Shanhaiguan, to the east to attack the Korean Kingdom.

The commander of the Mongol army in Liaodong was the emperor of the Northern Yuan Dynasty, the Great Khan of Tatar - Adai, which is commonly known as Adai Khan.

However, Adai Khan could only command the Mongol soldiers of the Tatar tribe, although he was the Great Khan of the Mongols and the out-and-out emperor of the Northern Yuan Dynasty, but the Mongol soldiers of the Warat tribe obeyed the orders of the Vulat Huite general, one of the three leaders of the Warat tribe and was once named the king of Anle by the Yongle Emperor.

If you use an analogy, the leaders of the Tatar tribes can be said to be the royal princes of the Northern Yuan Dynasty, basically the descendants of the Golden Family, or those who are close to the Northern Yuan royal family, while the leaders of the Warat tribes are princes with different surnames who are relatively distant from the Northern Yuan royal family.

In order to compete for the throne of the Mongol Great Khan, there was a constant war between the royal prince of the Tatar tribe and the prince with a different surname of the Warat tribe, and the father of the largest Oirat tribe in Tatar, Ma Hamu, who had been named the king of Shunning by the Yongle Emperor, died in the hands of the Northern Yuan Taishi Arutai, and the grievances between the two sides were very complicated.

Chaganbala did not go to Haizhou City empty-handed, and Li Yuntian gave him two boxes of gold, silver and jewelry to dredge up the relationship with the Tatar and Warat generals in Haizhou City, and then extract useful information from them.

According to the information obtained by Chaganbala, the Mongol army will send 30,000 horses and horses from Haizhou City in five days to reinforce the Mongol army in Yinzhou City, of which 10,000 are Mongol soldiers and the other 20,000 are servant troops composed of Han Chinese and soldiers of other nationalities.

As the successor of the Great Yuan Empire, the Tatar army mainly came from the Tatar department, and there were a large number of Han Chinese, Khitans and other common people in the Tatar department, most of whom were slaves.

For the Han soldiers, some were the people who retreated to the grassland with the Northern Yuan, some were the border people of the Ming Dynasty who were plundered by the Northern Yuan soldiers, and some were prisoners of war of the Ming army who took refuge in the Northern Yuan.

Li Yuntian knew very well that Adai Khan sent these servant troops to Yinzhou City in order to let them serve as cannon fodder for the attack on the original city, and it was obvious that the servant army would take on the heavy responsibility of attacking the city, and the result would be heavy casualties.

Not only that, Chaganbala also unexpectedly got the news that the leader of the Waravirat tribe, Tuhuan, had the intention of establishing the great-grandson of the Northern Yuan Emperor Timur, the emperor of the Northern Yuan Dynasty, Tokhtobuhua, as the Great Khan of the Mongols, and then replaced Adai Khan to inherit the throne of the Northern Yuan Empire.

Obviously, Tuhuan wanted to blackmail the Son of Heaven to order the princes to control the political situation of the Northern Yuan Empire with the blood of the golden family, which was undoubtedly good news for Li Yuntian.

Although Li Yuntian hopes that the Tatars and Warat will fight, but he can't pin his hopes on this, with the current situation, the alliance between the Tatars and Warat is still very stable, at least before the battle with the Ming Dynasty is stable, the two sides will not make any big mess, otherwise their early planning will be in vain, whether it is the Northern Yuan Taishi Arutai or the leader of the Warat Velat tribe, Tuhuan does not want to see this scene happen.

However, this matter also has good news for Li Yuntian, since the matter of Tuhuan wanting to support Tokhtar Buhua as the Mongolian Great Khan has been investigated by Chaganbala, it has definitely reached the ears of Arutai, which will make the relationship between Arutai and Tuhuan worse, and it can be used to make a fuss in the future.

In addition to the intelligence of the Mongol army, Chaganbala also met with Ming prisoners of war who had been escorted by the Arutai faction in Haizhou City, and these prisoners of war were from Emperor Xuande's Northern Expeditionary Army, including Xingping Hou Zhao Yong and Yongping Bo Yang Wei.

Zhao Yong was the vanguard officer of Emperor Xuande's Northern Expedition, while Yang Wei was the grain officer, and the two were seriously wounded in the battle of the Yuma River, so they became prisoners of the Mongol army, and were the highest-ranking Ming officials captured by the Mongol army.

Arutai's target was Emperor Xuande and the accompanying civil and military officials, but under the desperate resistance of the Xiaowu army, the Mongolian army pursued all the way and failed to intercept Emperor Xuande, so they had to watch them cross the Outer Great Wall and enter the territory of Shanxi Xingdusi.

After Zhao Yong and Yang Wei came to Haizhou City, they were paraded through the streets, and Adai Khan wanted to let the people in Haizhou City know that Emperor Xuande's Northern Expedition was defeated by the Mongol army, so that the people would obediently submit to the Northern Yuan.

The people of Haizhou City originally did not believe in the defeat of Emperor Xuande, thinking that it was a rumor spread by the Mongolian army in order to confuse the people's hearts, in their impression that the Northern Yuan Dynasty was chased and beaten by the Ming Dynasty, without the slightest power to fight back, the great achievements of the Yongle Emperor's five expeditions to Mobei are still vivid, who would have thought that the dignified Ming Xiongshi would be defeated?

However, when they saw Zhao Yong and Yang Wei and others, the people's mood changed, looking at the dejected Ming army captives, they were greatly shocked, and vaguely realized that Emperor Xuande might have really been defeated, which caused great panic among the people of Haizhou City, and no one wanted to return to the difficult era of the Northern Yuan rule.

For Li Yuntian, the Battle of Qingfeng Valley was an excellent opportunity to save Zhao Yong and Yang Wei and others, Zhao Yong and Yang Wei and other Ming prisoners of war would definitely go to Yinzhou City with the reinforcements of the Mongol army, and then be escorted to Kaiyuan City to persuade them to surrender, he could take advantage of the situation to save them in Qingfeng Valley.

With Chaganbala returning to Kaiyuan City, the contest between Li Yuntian and the Northern Yuan in Liaodong officially kicked off, and the Liaodong war situation was very important to the Ming Dynasty, containing more than 100,000 troops of the Northern Yuan.