From noon, Lin Feng didn't eat, move or speak, just sat next to the corpses of the five brothers, grief in his heart, and repeatedly blamed himself: If he didn't come to the Northern Han Dynasty, if he didn't take the initiative to drown in the muddy waters of Jinzhou City, these five brothers would definitely not die in Jinzhou City.

During this period, Wei San and Lin Renzhao came up to comfort Lin Feng successively, but they couldn't make the sad look on Lin Feng's face be reduced in the slightest, and at the end of the day, Wei San had to order Chen Fei and the other four children to accompany Lin Feng by his side, and the brothers took turns to eat, take care of the injured brothers, and help clean up the battlefield.

In the middle, Hua Feng, who dragged an injured left leg, came over to return the knife, Lin Feng didn't raise his head, just waved his hand, and Chen Fei directly persuaded Hua Feng to leave first.

It wasn't until the evening that Lin Feng finally recovered from his addiction, looked up and got up, and instructed Chen Fei to call the brothers to pack up the firewood, and prepare to cremate the five brothers before returning to their homeland with the ashes to bury them.

When the roaring fire lit from a small flame, to the flames soaring to the sky, and then gradually extinguished, Lin Feng stood in front of the fire with his head down, without saying a word, and his expressionless face gradually disappeared into complete darkness.

At that time, Lin Feng rushed to the Jiedu Embassy Mansion in Jinzhou City with a group of brothers and met Liu Chengjun.

Liu Chengjun first expressed his grief at the sacrifice of the five special soldiers, and then respectfully led Lin Feng to an independent courtyard, Lin Feng and the more than 100 good horses they brought back from the Liao State have all been sent here, not only the goods they brought from the Liao State are readily available, but the Northern Han Dynasty has also prepared a lot of goods to show their gratitude to Lin Feng and the Tang Dynasty.

Lin Feng didn't look at the property at all, and turned his head to ask Liu Chengjun about the casualties in the siege, only then did he learn that as many as 2,400 Northern Han soldiers died in this battle, and 1,000 were injured, a loss of about 30%; Of the three hundred selected raid elites, only ninety-two remained; More than 3,000 opponents were killed and wounded, nearly 2,000 opponents were captured, and only a few escaped from the south gate on horseback.

Lin Feng dismissed everyone, pulled Liu Chengjun to a hut, and went face-to-face. After a long time, Liu Chengjun clutched a few pieces of paper tightly in his hand and left with a serious face.

Beginning on 5 February, in addition to setting aside 1,500 soldiers to escort nearly 2,000 Hou Zhou prisoners, and tens of thousands of people began to build city walls, prepare defensive materials, and dig defensive positions outside the city, the remaining nearly 6,000 Northern Han soldiers cooperated with the 1,000 soldiers who arrived by warship and started a frantic sweep by land and water.

The army first went all the way to the north, starting from the small county of Hongdong, and the procedure was the same: first shoot into the city, ask the other party to open the city and surrender immediately, and all the soldiers and civilians can avoid death, if they resist, the slaughter of the city is not negotiable.

Under heavy pressure, the Hongdong and Lingshi guards immediately led the crowd to surrender, avoiding a disaster of destroying the city; The guards of Jiexiu and Huoyi hesitated for a longer time, and were drummed down by the impatient Northern Han soldiers, and 500 Houzhou soldiers in each of the two cities were slaughtered, all the grain, grass, and money were looted, and all the people were escorted to Jinju and became a member of the excavation army outside the city.

On 6 February, young and middle-aged men from all over the country who had been plundered and concentrated finally arrived at Jinju City and transported truckloads of grain and grass into the granary in the city, completing the hard work of transporting grain and grass. At this time, the Northern Han generals who escorted them declared that as long as they helped to complete the excavation of the position outside the city as soon as possible, they could let their family live.

Nearly 4,000 young adults saw that their families were safe, so they stopped commotion, and under the coercion of steel knives, they reluctantly began another kind of coolie life.

At this time, many warships and merchant ships built a bridge on the Fen River west of Jiexiu, and the main infantry army of the Northern Han Dynasty crossed the Fen River on the bridge, gathered 8,000 reinforcements from China, and began to sweep Xizhou (now Xi County, Shanxi), Cizhou (now Ji County, Shanxi), and Jiangzhou (now Xinjiang, Shanxi) from north to south.

The army met resistance at its first stop in Hefen. Because of its proximity to the border of the Northern Han Dynasty, the total number of defenders in Xizhou exceeded 2,000, and even if the leader of the city faced the siege of seven or eight times the enemy army, he closed the city gate and vowed not to surrender.

Liu Chengjun, who was recruited by the Northern Han Dynasty, did not entangle, and sent 2,000 soldiers to guard Xizhou outside the city, and sent nearly 10,000 troops to the south to Ci and Jiangzhou, where the garrisons did not exceed 800 people, and immediately opened the city gate to surrender.

Liu Chengjun sent 1,000 soldiers to defend Jiangzhou and Cizhou respectively, and then sent a large army to go deep into the city and the countryside, and escorted all the soldiers and people of the two states to the outside of Xizhou. Under the threat of steel knives and horse whips, everyone worked together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and dug a large trench five meters wide and three meters deep around the two arrows outside Xizhou City, and all the dug loess built a one-and-a-half-meter-high earthen wall on the outside of the trench, preparing to completely besiege Xizhou City.

On 10 February, Liu Chengjun led 11,000 cavalry, escorted a total of nearly 30,000 prisoners and people across the Fen River, returned to Jinju City, and immediately threw all his troops and manpower into the "excavation operation" outside the city, and the entire Jinzhou City became a very lively super construction site.

On 14 February, when Wang Yan, the defeated envoy of Jinzhou Jiedu, led 2,000 Later Zhou soldiers borrowed from Jiezhou (present-day Yuncheng, Shanxi) as the vanguard army and rushed to Jinju along the straight road to Jinzhou City, he was blocked by crowds of refugees.

Wang Yan dismounted and stopped a few refugees and asked, only to learn that all the people in the four prefectures of Jin, Jiang, Ci, and Xi had been driven out of their homes by the Northern Han army, and each of them was only given three days of dry food, requiring them to leave the border of Jinzhou within two days, otherwise they would be killed.

Wang Yan looked at the refugees from Sizhou who stretched the entire road and estimated to be no less than 100,000 people, and a sense of ominousness rose in his heart: Liu Chengjun, this kid is so ruthless, this is a desperate plan, is it possible that they want to defend Jinzhou to the death? !

When Wang Yan led the troops to drive the refugees away from the entire avenue and rode horses to the city of Jinzhou, he found that he had not seen him for more than ten days, and the city had already completed the transformation of the city: simple arrow towers were erected on the city wall, and layers of cold water were poured on the city wall, and the "ice armor" of different thicknesses was frozen in the cold wind; What's even more chilling is that eight circles of nearly two-meter-high circular earthen walls have been built under the entire Jinju Castle from the inside to the outside, protecting the entire Jinju tightly. Each earthen wall is fifty meters apart, and directly below the earthen wall is a deep trench about five meters wide and four meters deep, and behind each earthen wall, there are Northern Han soldiers patrolling and defending, and the outermost earthen wall is almost all Northern Han soldiers.

Where is this still a city, it is a fortress of war armed to the extreme! Not to mention the 2,000 soldiers he brought, I'm afraid that another 20,000 soldiers won't be able to shake this fortified city in the slightest!

Wang Yan, who was completely out of recruitment, had to lead his troops back five miles to camp, and once again wrote to the saint Guo Wei to plead guilty, and asked for urgent dispatch of troops to support.

Just when Wang Yan was looking at the city and sighing, Lin Feng had already led his camouflage team to the city of Zezhou (now Jincheng, Shanxi).