When the battle situation in Jinju Jieju fell into calm, the Huainan battle situation, which had been calm for a few days, restarted the bee smoke.

At noon on 10 October, 120 large and small ships, together with 9,000 Great Zhou naval troops, formed a mighty water attack team, and finally reached Xiaoyukou in the upper reaches of Haozhou.

However, their journey to the east was far less smooth than originally thought.

Since the Zhou army crossed the Huai River in the south, Guo Tingwei, the assassin of Haozhou, has not relaxed the defense of the waterway, along the south bank of the Huai River, from time to time to build a water village, under the river surface randomly smashed the headless barrage pile, or scuttled a few broken boats in the shallows, so that the huge fleet encountered small situations continuously, and the speed of eastward advance is getting slower and slower. At night, the torches on the south bank fell one after another, the whistling sound came and went, and from time to time there were also Nantang water ghosts secretly going into the water to scuttle boats, making the huge fleet feel a little windy for a while.

The generals who commanded the naval army, Shi Detong and Zhan Yi, made Wei Chang so angry that he jumped to his feet, but he didn't dare to advance, so he had to relax his pace and slowly move eastward.

Now the army arrived at the small mouth is a convex into the Huai River rocky riverbank, the Huai River to the end of the sudden narrowing of about a third, rushing down the Huai River water hit the bank of the small mouth, had to rush to the left side of the river, the river water is like a angry child, the grievance of anger erupted, the river water agitated, the water speed up to the downstream of the river.

Guo Tingwei naturally did not give up such a natural defensive point, and sent 2,000 soldiers to garrison the riverbank. Xi Kui, the deputy general who led the troops, camped at the foot of the hill and placed six trebuchets on the top of the mountain, which were within the range of trebuchets from the river to the north bank of the Huai River, and suddenly blocked the fleet of the great Zhou Dong.

After a brief discussion, Shi Detong and Wei Chang had to order the navy to temporarily stop and send scouts ashore to contact the infantry on the southern front.

The march of the southern front was similar to that of the naval army of the northern front.

At first, the general of the camp and the inner temple knew that Li Chongjin led 20,000 infantry, and Wu Shengjiedu made Hou Zhang and Zhao Kuangyin lead another 30,000 troops.

The first small city that the army faced was Changfeng County, and when tens of thousands of troops came over, the local officials were very conscious, tied themselves to each other, and took the lead in running outside the city to surrender, declaring that as long as the commander of the army promised not to hurt the people, the whole city was willing to surrender.

Because of Lin Feng's stern warning, coupled with the strict order of the commander Li Gu, it was one of the iron rules of the Eastern Expeditionary Army not to disturb the people for no reason, and several generals agreed to this condition. The opposing sides kindly handed over the city, leaving the Zhou army with 1,000 soldiers to guard Changfeng, and the army continued to advance eastward.

After easily taking Dingyuan County, the united army began to divide its troops, Li Chongjin led his troops diagonally to Haozhou in the north, and Hou Zhang and Zhao Kuangyin attacked Chuzhou in the southwest.

However, both sides immediately felt the pressure to move forward.

On the road from Dingyuan to Haozhou, the road was dug up for a while, and there were big trees and debris on the road for a while, and from time to time, there were also a small group of Southern Tang soldiers on the side of the road, and the momentum of a sneak attack at any time, the advance of the army had to slow down.

On the way from Dingyuan to Chuzhou, there were groups of Southern Tang cavalry roaring from time to time, and when they arrived, they shot two arrows at most, and immediately turned around and left without waiting for the Zhou soldiers to attack. If the Zhou army did not chase, they would not stop harassing. If you pursue, you will run away with your horse, and you have twice ambushed the pursuers, so that the Zhou army does not dare to chase a few cavalry. This is also a helpless thing, the cavalry of the large army suffered serious losses in the battle of Zhengyangdu, and now there are not so many cavalry available.

Zhao Kuangyin, who served as the vanguard, led a hundred cavalry to attack several times, but he did not catch up, so he no longer entangled with these annoying gadflies, and led the army to advance steadily.

On the evening of 10 October, Li Chongjin's army encountered a scout sent by Shi Detong, a naval army on the northern front, and learned about the current situation of the naval army, and immediately dispatched 5,000 infantry troops to kill Xiaoyukou obliquely.

Almost at the same time, Zhao Kuangyin led the vanguard army to kill under the Qingliu Pass, and found that the Qingliu Pass had become a hedgehog city at this time - the mountain road along the way was dug every 100 meters, and a stone wall was erected behind the ditch, and there was a garrison behind the wall; Watchtowers were erected on all the nearby hills, and troops were stationed; The stones in the mountain stream on the left side of the pass were transported to the edge of the road, and a small half of them were empty, and a high camp was erected on the hill to the right of the pass, overlooking and guarding the pass.

Zhao Kuangyin ran to a high place to observe carefully, and found that the roads behind the five stone walls and under the Qingliu Pass were all destroyed, and they were completely closed, and sighed secretly in his heart, so he had to set up camp five hundred meters in front of the first trench, and sent people back to the Wusheng Festival to envoy Hou Zhang, and sent his subordinates to the nearby villages to urgently find guides.

At the same time as the battle at Qingliuguan was suspended, the battle in Haozhou took the lead in urgently opening at Xiaoyukou.

On the morning of October 11, the infantry of the 5,000 Zhou Army united with the naval army, one west and one south attacked at the same time, and Xi Kui, the deputy general of the Southern Tang Dynasty, did not panic at all, and divided 1,000 people to resist to the death on the south bank by relying on the stone wall, and another 500 people guarded the prominent water village on the river bank, and another 500 people were stationed in the camp, ready to support the two battles at any time.

Because of the limitation of the river, the Great Zhou Navy could only send up to six ships to attack at the same time, and also had to guard against the trebuchet attack on the top of the mountain, which did not go very well.

Fang Cheng, the deputy general of the Zhou army who led the army on the shore, was a ruthless character, and directly sent three hundred guards and elites carrying broadswords as a supervising team, and the remaining soldiers were all divided into five groups, and continued to attack without interruption.

The bank of the Xiaoyukou River is not a very dangerous place, the mountain is only 200 meters high, and there are only three stone walls under the mountain, each about two meters high, and two lanes are quickly broken through.

When facing the backmost stone wall, Fang Cheng sent someone to ask the generals of the navy for his life, asking for both land and water to break through the land and water defense line in one fell swoop. Shi Detong and Wei Chang no longer hesitated, and divided four groups of 24 large and small ships to continuously attack the river bank, and at the same time assigned the rest of the ships to rush downstream in a scattered formation, no longer caring about the flying stones on their heads.

Seeing that the enemy army was ruthless, Xi Kui, the deputy general of the Southern Tang Dynasty, immediately made a decision, ordered the barracks to be set on fire first, and the whole army retreated up the mountain in batches, and burned the trebuchet in the defensive process of retreating along the mountain, and then took nearly a thousand remaining soldiers to slide to the Huai River in the east with ropes and trees, and before the arrival of the Great Zhou naval army, he drove a small warship down quickly, and went straight to Dajiakou (now Bengbu, Anhui) ten miles downstream.

The Zhou army, which had successfully taken Xiaoyukou, still advanced by land and water, closely following Xi Kui and them to Dayukou, and found that they were facing a small Lukou defensive position that had been magnified several times.