On the second day of the fourth month of the fourth lunar calendar of the seventh year of Jianlong, on the same day that Han Kuangsi led the army to "recover" Changning City in Yongzhou, the second batch of 15,000 Khitan reinforcements set off from Hedongcheng, the headquarters of the Wugu enemy Lie's unified army, and rushed to Yuzhou day and night, and arrived at the foot of Rabbit Mountain, which was less than 100 miles away from Yuzhou City, and camped for the night on the evening of April 22 of the lunar calendar. In the early morning of the same day, several Han people in Ningzhou City, who volunteered to go to Yuzhou City to secretly contact the Han herdsmen, rushed back overnight and reported to Wu Peng that they were going to a qiēshun lì, and that the defense in Yuzhou City was as lax as Ningzhou, and he had managed to get in touch with several friends inside and outside Yuzhou City, and agreed that when the Zhou army arrived at the city and began to attack the city, it would be the day when they killed the Khitan defenders and greeted Wang Shi.

Wu Peng, who originally thought that it would not be difficult to take Yuzhou City, was even more confident after receiving the report of the Han people in Ningzhou, and immediately set off with his troops, and under the guidance of one of the Han people, he led his subordinates and 500 Han villagers in Ningzhou who volunteered to join the city to quickly march north, and arrived outside the city of Yuzhou in the evening. Although the sky was already a little dark, the Khitan people in the city discovered the attempt of the Han herdsmen to revolt. Second, he also hoped that the soldiers who had been on the road for a day could have a better place to rest, so just a little tidying up, Wu Peng ordered to persuade the city to surrender and prepare to attack the city.

Speaking of which, whether it is Yuzhou in front of you or Ningzhou before, although the administrative level is quite high, in fact, it is just where the Khitan nobles graze and raise horses. Not only is the city low and shabby, even the larger villages and forts in the Central Plains are not as good, but also as the military and political governor of a state, the assassin will not really come to this kind of place to take office, basically all of them are remote leaders, and then send one or two henchmen military academies or team commanders, leading dozens to more than 100 Khitan soldiers to garrison, one to defend against bandits and robbery, and the other is to take care of the grazing Han or Bohai slaves to prevent them from escaping. Therefore, even if there is no internal response, it will not take much effort for Wu Peng's department to take Yuzhou City, which is not more than a zhang high, has a circumference of less than two miles, and is actually just a dirt wall. Now with the assistance of the Han herdsmen in the city, it is even easier to capture the city of Yuzhou.

As a result, as the letter of persuasion was shot into the city, nearly a thousand Han and Bohai herdsmen slaves who had just been temporarily requisitioned into the city by the Khitan defenders to assist in the defense immediately acted under the command of several leaders, brandished the swords and spears in their hands, pulled out the bows and arrows in their hands, and attacked the Khitans who often oppressed and humiliated themselves on weekdays and always looked high. In just a moment, except for a missing Khitan commander, including the military academy leading the army, more than 100 Khitan defenders died and corpses were scattered all over the place. Subsequently, the people in the city opened the city gate and welcomed Wu Peng's troops into the city.

Almost bloodless took Yuzhou City, Wu Peng was both happy and disappointed in his heart. Happily, he won two battles and two victories, and none of his soldiers and horses were killed or injured. The loss is that these two battles were won too easily, and their fierceness was compared with the fierce battles like the twenty-seventh brother's attack on Zuzhou, and even the previous battles to capture Gaozhou, Songshan Prefecture or Linhuang City were far inferior, and they were very unenjoyable. Therefore, after resting for a night in Yuzhou City, Wu Peng made a decision that seemed very brave at the time, but was very hasty in hindsight -- to lead his headquarters and the Han people of Yiningzhou and Yuzhou to continue to march north, and under the guidance of local Han herdsmen who were familiar with the terrain, they crossed the Rabbit Mountain, entered the prairie, looked for fighters within 100 miles, and then returned to Linhuang City. I never thought that I had only set off with 2,000 men and horses for half a day, and before I arrived at Rabbit Mountain, the scout in front of me who was responsible for exploring the road met with the Khitan reinforcements who were heading south from the direction of Rabbit Mountain. Immediately afterwards, the main forces of the two sides then caught up and started a fight.

At the beginning of the encounter, Wu Peng was secretly excited that he had finally met the Khitan soldiers and horses who dared to fight with him. But as the time of this encounter became longer and longer, and more and more Khitan soldiers and horses rushed over, Wu Peng finally realized that something was wrong. On the one hand, the Khitan army that fought with him was only afraid of no less than 10,000 people, and it was extremely fierce, and its ability to fight alone was even stronger than the "security army" under his command. On the other hand, due to the suddenness of the incident, the soldiers and horses of the two sides were entangled at this time, and in order to prevent accidental injuries, the soldiers of the third company of the "Ranger Battalion" could not help but shrink their hands and feet when shooting, which greatly reduced their superiority in firepower. In the end, after paying nearly 200 casualties, Wu Peng decided to temporarily retreat and return to Yuzhou City to defend the city, in order to give full play to his superiority in firepower and make up for his inferiority in numbers.

It was never easy to organize a retreat from a close-range encounter, although Wu Peng ignored the fact that there were still some of his own soldiers there, and very iron-blooded bombarded the line of contact between the two sides with mortars, successfully forcing the Khitan army back a stone's throw away, and the third company of the "Ranger Battalion" was responsible for covering the broken rear and suppressing the enemy with firepower. However, the Zhou army and the local Han people still could not completely get rid of the pursuit of the Khitan army, and they only withdrew into Yuzhou City on the front foot, and the Khitan army quickly surrounded the city with the back foot, so that Wu Peng did not have time to send people to Linhuang City to ask for help. Later, he had to send several groups of death squads to forcibly break through the siege and deliver letters, which caused many unnecessary casualties while weakening his own defense force in disguise.

Although his own rescue operation encountered many difficulties because he failed to send messengers as soon as possible, Wu Peng actually had a chance to turn the corner at the beginning of entering the city. Because after being held by the city and giving full play to the advantage of firepower to repel three successive attacks of his own side and losing nearly 1,000 men, Xiao Tuyu, the commander of the Wugu enemy Lietong Army, who led this support army, had the intention of continuing to surround this useless and abandoned small city with a small number of troops in the initial period of siege. After all, the purpose of his expedition this time was to support the defenders of Linhuang Mansion and protect the Taizu Mausoleum, and it was worth the loss to spend too much time and troops for the small city in front of him - even since receiving the holy order, Xiao Tuyu has always thought that reinforcing Linhuang Mansion again is definitely not the best choice at this stage.

In Xiao Tuyu's view, more than a month has passed from the time the Shangjing Left-behind Mansion issued the alarm of the invasion of the Zhou army to the time when the emperor Xià in the "Spring Bowl" sent an order to the Northwest Road Recruitment Division and the Wugu Enemy Lie Commander Army Division to continue to send troops to reinforce and ensure that the Taizu Mausoleum was kept, and then to the arrival of the army in Yuzhou by himself. And it was ten days ago that he received a letter of help from Hedong City, and the Zuzhou guard general Yelusha reported that the fate of Han Kuangsi's 50,000 troops left in Beijing was unknown, Linhuang City was lost, and Zuzhou was surrounded by 40,000 troops of the Zhou army. For such a long time, Han Kuangsi, who has long been gone, is afraid that even Zuzhou will be out of danger when he receives the relevant news. In this case, he led the army to Linhuang Mansion, and it is estimated that not only will he not be able to recapture Zuzhou or Linhuang Mansion, but he will also send the 15,000 men and horses that the Northwest Road Recruitment Division and the Wugu Enemy Lie Command Army Division have managed to put together into the pockets that the Zhou army has already laid out. It's a pity that the holy decree is the holy decree, no matter how unwilling Xiao Tuyu is, he can only respect the decree and take his soldiers to "moths to the fire".

However, just as Xiao Tuyu was about to give the order to divide the troops, the sudden appearance of a person made him change his mind. And it was no one else who appeared in front of him, it was when Wu Pengli was supposed to join forces to seize Yuzhou City, because of diarrhea and squatting in the latrine, he was lucky enough to avoid the attack of the Han people in the city, and he hid in the latrine for a night, taking advantage of the opportunity that Wu Peng led the army to continue to march north, and the city was more chaotic The Khitan team commander who was originally going to flee to Sihe Dongcheng, the enemy of Wugu. What he told Xiao Tuyu was an important piece of news that he inadvertently heard from the chatting between two Zhou soldiers who came to facilitate him while hiding in the latrine--the general of the Zhou army who led the army to attack Ningzhou and Yuzhou this time was not an extraordinary person, but the thirty-first among the famous "Qingyuan" brothers, the brother of Wang Kunjun, the first powerful minister of the Zhou State, the founding man of the Zhou State, the general of the Right Weiwei, the deputy Marquis of the Sibu Army in front of the palace, and the Marquis of Yu of the Left Route Army of the Northern Expedition.

When he first heard the news, Xiao Tuyu didn't believe it. Because in his opinion, a senior military general of the Zhou State with such a noble identity as Wu Peng would never lead such a small number of soldiers and horses and fight so far away from the main battlefields of both sides for the sake of such two small cities.

However, suspicion is suspicion, Xiao Tuyu, who was originally unwilling to lead the army to Linhuang Mansion to die, did not give up the possibility that there were really Zhou Junxun's noble ministers in Yuzhou City. Especially considering that if he could really surround, capture, or kill a high-ranking official of Zhou Guoxun, he could find a suitable excuse for himself to postpone reinforcements of Linhuang Mansion, so that he would have enough time to send enough people to find out the news from Linhuang Mansion, so that he could delay or even suspend this death operation as much as possible - if Linhuang City, Zuzhou City, and Taizu's Mausoleum had already been captured by the Zhou army, it would be pointless to go to reinforcements by himself, and then he would have a reason to collect his troops and return to "protect" the grassland tribes. What's more, if you can catch Wu Peng alive and send him to Changchun Prefecture, while bringing a large reward to yourself, you can also give the imperial court an extra bargaining chip against the Zhou army, and bring a chance to turn the situation around this war in which you are at a disadvantage. Therefore, Xiao Tuyu still put aside the idea of dividing the troops for the time being, and instead ordered his subordinates to torture and interrogate the Zhou army and local townspeople captured in the previous encounters and pursuit battles, and must ask the identity of the main general of the Zhou army from these mouths.

First, although the Khitan army captured was basically a local soldier, it was not a single Zhou soldier, and the dozen or so Zhou soldiers who were captured were not all loyal and unyielding tough guys. Second, Wu Peng did not deliberately conceal his identity when he was resting in Ningzhou and Yuzhou, and many local villagers who accompanied the army had a general understanding of his status in the Zhou army and the Great Zhou court. Therefore, after some severe torture, many confessions corroborated each other, and it was naturally no difficulty to conclude that the coach of his own team who came to report the news did not talk nonsense.

After learning that the Khitan team coach who reported the news was true, Xiao Tuyu's eyes lit up, and he knew that his opportunity to avoid death and even be promoted to the rank of knight had arrived. Therefore, he immediately ordered the 15,000 soldiers and horses under his command to be divided into three teams, led by three generals, and launched a round attack on Yuzhou City day and night in the form of one team resting, one team guarding, and one team attacking the city. At the same time, he also passed down the commander's order, stating that anyone who can capture the opponent's main general alive will be promoted to three levels and rewarded with thousands of dollars.

As the saying goes, "there must be brave men under the heavy reward", with Xiao Tuyu's huge red order, the entire Khitan army immediately boiled, and the Khitan soldiers who were eager to increase their official rank and promote to the knighthood and pursue yellow and white things stared at their blood-red eyes, as if the immortal rune was in their bodies, and rushed towards the not tall Yuzhou city wall one after another.