The Niutoushan camp of the Song Army, which had just been attacked overnight, was unusually quiet, and on the flagpole in front of the camp was the head of Huai Gourong and dozens of other soldiers of the Pingyuan Military Academy, and each individual's eyes and mouth were wide open, as if they were still crying out for grievances. The soldiers in the camp were busy repairing the tents of the walled camp that had been destroyed yesterday, and rarely sent one or two thousand people to challenge outside the Jinling City Gate from time to time, as in the past. In the eyes of the Tang soldiers guarding Jinling, it looked like a wounded giant beast licking its wounds, gathering strength and preparing to pounce on its prey again.

"The southern thief is too cunning, if it is a head-to-head confrontation, I will definitely kill him crying father and mother. After learning that the southern army pretended to be himself on the bridge and set fire, Zhao Tinghan, the commander of the palace, slapped the table angrily, and several generals who were directly from the imperial front class around him also echoed it.

Including Cao Bin, several other battle-hardened veterans were worried, the loss of the Dajiang pontoon bridge, the inconvenience of supplying tens of thousands of horses and horses in the Jiangnan battalion was secondary, and the army was cut into two sections by the Yangtze River was a big problem. If the southern army had the courage to fight in the field like Taiyuan or the Khitans, it would be a good time to wipe out the isolated Jiangnan army in one fell swoop.

"Cao Shuai, since the pontoon bridge over the river has been burned down, if our army still stays in the south of the Yangtze River, once the battle is lost, there are enemies on all sides, with the back of the river, the slightest carelessness is the situation of the whole army, it is better to retreat to Guangling first, and spread the word to the southeast camp Ding Deyu and King Wu Yue led the army to move closer to me, and work together to attack Jinling again. "Veteran Cai Jixun came out of the ranks.

Cao Bin locked his eyebrows and listened, he didn't think about retreating to Guangling, but when he reached his position, what he had to consider was not only the life and death of tens of thousands of soldiers, but more of the sinister turmoil in the court. As the commander of the Southwest Road Battalion, the Horse Infantry Army is deployed, and seven or eight out of ten of the elite of the forbidden army are under his command, once he retreats, I am afraid that he will not be able to escape a reputation for cowardice in the future.

"The lords and courtiers of Jiangnan have always been cowardly and avoid war, and they will never dare to take the initiative to attack our army in the southwest, and they are only worried about the inconvenience of supplies. What is even more worrying is that if the Jinling Naval Division defeats our army's Naval Division, the connection with Jiangbei is completely severed, and the 50,000-strong army hangs alone in the south of the Yangtze River, and the battle cannot continue, and there is no way to retreat, then it will be troublesome. Seeing Cao Bin's hesitation, Cao Han, the commander of the former army, suggested: "If we are still holding Niutou Mountain, when we march to the southeast of Chuanshu and march quickly to capture Changzhou and Runzhou, once we succeed, our army can be connected with Wu Yue's army and form a three-sided encirclement of Jinling." ”

"The problem is that the old guy Qian Yu, the king of Wuyue, is forbidden to slip his head, for fear that his strength will be damaged, and it may not be easy for him to rush into the army. Cai Hanqiong, the Marquis of Yu, the capital of the camp and the horse army, interjected with a worried face, his worries were not unreasonable, the last time he marched south, Wu Yuejun delayed the march, and he would never go into battle to tear up and kill before the battle was decided, and he was very active in robbing women's property after the city was defeated.

"It's better to directly send a military order to Ding Deyu and let him lead the elite of our forbidden army to march quickly. Cao Han said loudly with some impatience.

"By no means, the forbidden army that Ding Deyu brought to the southeast camp is only 5,000, and if the army rushes alone, it is very easy to be taken advantage of by the southern thieves. The commander of the Xiaowu Army instructed Dong Zun.

"This doesn't work, that doesn't work, so when can Jinling go down!" Cao Han shouted.

Seeing the generals shouting and fighting, Cao Bin didn't feel a little big, all because of his lack of qualifications and prestige, these fierce generals would be so arrogant, if Fu Yanqing, Shi Shouxin, Wang Xianqi and other important ministers were promoted, these people may only be angry, obediently obey the boss's arrangement, thinking of this, Cao Bin couldn't help but say in a deep voice: "What the generals said is reasonable, I have made up my mind, this army continues to attack Jinling, let Ding Deyu urge King Wu Yue to speed up the march, capture Changzhou, Runzhou and join our army." After speaking, he turned his head to Tian Qinzuo, the supervisor of the left wing of the camp, and said: "The supply of the army, and the connection with Jiangbei are now all up to the water division, General Tian should be cautious, and must not take advantage of the loopholes in the south. ”

Cao Bin, who has always been gentle and elegant, released cruel words even more powerfully, and around Tian Qinzuo, who has always humiliated his colleagues, he couldn't help but snort at this time, bowed his head and said: "Tian Qinzuo takes the order." ”

When the Song army camp was in a tense military discussion, Wu Yingying's house was in turmoil, the officers and elite soldiers of the Shenwei Army practiced every day some time ago and were worse than death, after this big victory, Wu Yingying specially allowed the whole army to take a day off without training, and bought a large amount of wine and food from the restaurant next to it to reward the soldiers, and specially invited a lot of Hu Han singers and dancers to the camp to work the army. Let these soldiers who rarely see women sit around and win loudly, and the excess energy accumulated on weekdays can be fully vented.

At first, these singers and dancers couldn't push the warmth of the Yamen, and they said goodbye to their sisters and lovers in tears, and entered the barracks tremblingly, just like sheep in the mouth of a tiger. Later, I found out that these soldiers were different from other places in the past, although the mouth was lively, and there were a few flamboyant tongues and thin words, but there was no easy way to rub oil or even bullying and humiliation, so I gradually put my heart at ease, and I was more grateful for the performance, especially a few orchids, with a hot body, and the corners of the eyes and eyebrows were full of affection, which was really a thousand styles, which made all the military men who watched the performance addicted.

The current Shenwei front and rear armies and pro-soldier battalions each have a battalion, and after the front and rear armies are arranged to stop, Wu Yingying concentrates on training his own soldiers. After the pro-military camp was expanded to 500 people, Wu Yingying simply bought a large area behind the mansion to build a military camp. Thanks to the devil's training on weekdays, in the last competition, 17 of Wu Yingying's personal soldiers successfully won the position of centurion. This gave Wu Yingying a new idea, and he was ready to turn his pro-military camp into an organization similar to a teaching team, so he not only had intensive military training, but also arranged for a few old gentlemen to teach illiterate soldiers to read and write.

In the morning and evening lectures, Wu Yingying personally instilled some basic values in these pro-soldiers, such as equality for all, natural human rights, freedom by birth, and the law of the jungle. On the one hand, Wu Yingying was very strategic and deliberately connected with some of the views of the people of this era, on the other hand, after five generations of war, Confucianism declined, scholars and scholars swept away, and the minds of ordinary people were indeed in a state of near vacuum, which made religions such as Buddhism and Taoism very popular at this time.

For these military men, the most acceptable was the social Darwinism of the jungle, and those with a little ambition found that the idea of equality was very suitable for them to climb up from the bottom, and after Wu Yingying approved it, they also became preachers who were enthusiastic about this idea. The most difficult thing for ordinary soldiers to accept is that they are born with human rights, born free and other concepts with a strong belief as the background, and the honest captain Guo Nian will ask Wu Yingying: "The common people are born to do whatever they want, so isn't it okay to kill people and set fires to do anything, no matter where the yamen is?" On the contrary, the 100 young Sogdian children sent by Kangqu Dagan were the most accepting of the latter two ideas after listening to Wu Yingxing's teachings, and regarded Wu Yingying as a first-class figure of Mu Hu (Zoroastrian priest) or even a prophet, and redoubled their deference to him.

Just when Wu Yingying was squeezing cross-legged among the soldiers, listening to music, eating meat and drinking wine together, and his interest was high, suddenly there was a noise in the direction of the gate. Wu Yingying didn't care at first, but then the noise became louder and louder, Fang stood up, stretched out his hand to let a few soldiers around him who wanted to follow him continue to have fun, and walked to the gate alone, but saw Zhang Shun and Guan Tong, who had followed Mai Lisi two months ago, were begging the soldiers guarding the door with a bitter face: "Third Brother Sun, my young lady and the commander are friends, how about you give her a convenient place to let her go in and meet the commander?"