Chapter 223 The Cottage Flooded the Seventh Army?

The Shu army rested in Xiangyang and no longer went north for the time being, and the Wei army naturally did not dare to provoke them. And the lieutenant fled all the way, and soon fled to Fancheng to find his troops. It turned out that Xiahou Ba's retreat was to retreat to Fancheng, intending to rely on the city to delay the pace of the Shu army to the north, and wait for the imperial court to send a large army to support.

The adjutant general was overjoyed to find the organization, and he reported in detail what he had seen and heard during this period to his immediate boss Xiahou Ba. Xiahou Ba was full of emotion, and secretly congratulated himself on his good luck, because he had a bad stomach and gastroenteritis, he didn't go to the meeting, and he escaped because of a blessing in disguise.

He didn't dare to slack off, and immediately summoned the marching Sima, and asked him to follow the description of the deputy general, the prince did not know how to pretend to understand, and intervened in the military indiscriminately, so that the main generals of the various armies and Sima Yi and other senior generals of the Wei army were captured by the Shu army, and then hundreds of thousands of troops were absorbed by the Shu army, as well as Sima Yi's preferring to die under torture and would rather die than surrender into a chapter, and sent someone to report to the imperial court quickly, and at the same time asked the deputy general to immediately return to Xuchang, in case the emperor asked for details.

The final result, of course, was that Cao Pi believed the adjutant general's observations and blamed all the blame for this incident that shook the government and the opposition, or the foundation of the Wei state. Sima Yi was not guilty, but became a heroic figure and was rewarded by the Wei court.

The monarchs and ministers of Shu have worked hard for so long and done so many things, and finally got a fruitful return. Of course, such a result was also expected by the monarchs and ministers of Shu.

When the "CIA" intelligence officers lurking in Xuchang sent back to Xiangyang the Wei court's opinion on how to deal with the matter, the Shu army had been resting in Xiangyang for a full month. In this month, the Shu army trained its soldiers and horses diligently, stockpiled supplies, and intensively prepared for a new round of the Northern Expedition.

After occupying Xiangyang, the next target of the Shu army must be Fancheng, Fancheng was originally garrisoned by Zhu Ling with 20,000 horses, and now Xiahou Ba fled with 50,000 people, so Fancheng has a total of 70,000 Wei troops.

70,000 horses are defending the city, and with the current firepower of the Hong army, it is not impossible to capture it, but it will definitely take a lot of time.

Now that the Wei army also has some firearms, if the city is stormed, it will be difficult for the Shu army to achieve its goal by only a small number of casualties as it did in the past.

Wei was still very large, and there were still many cities waiting for him and the Hong army to conquer, and Liu Hou didn't want his troops to kill and wound a large number of soldiers every time they attacked a city. Therefore, during the days when the large army was resting, he was always looking for a way to capture Fancheng with less trouble and fewer casualties.

During this period, Guan Xing once proposed that he could follow the example of his father Guan Gong back then, dig up the Xiangjiang River (Han River), artificially create a flood, flood the Seventh Army again, besiege Fancheng with floods again, and wait for the defenders inside to be tortured by the flood from time to time, and then take the opportunity to attack the city and seize the city in one fell swoop. In that case, it would be easy to capture Fancheng.

However, Liu Hou vetoed this plan, he believed that digging the river embankment and artificially creating a large-scale flood would inevitably cause many people to suffer, and as he had always adhered to Liu Bei's Renhou style, it was naturally impossible for him to do such a large-scale danger to the people.

The three stinkers knew that Liu's # father and son had always played the card of benevolence and righteousness, so they didn't persuade Liu Hou much. However, Sima Yi was quite in favor of this plan, and he thought that those who achieved great things were not informal, and it was worth sacrificing some people in order to kill 70,000 Wei troops and occupy a city.

This made Liu Hou have a new understanding of his character, especially when he just surrendered, he spared no effort to make plans to deal with his homeland, on the other hand, Buqi, he was always unwilling to make a strategy to deal with Eastern Wu, only in this Northern Expedition to Wei, he was willing to contribute, and in contrast, the character of the two was judged.

This understanding further strengthened Liu Hou's understanding of Sima Yi's "use his talents to prevent him from backlashing". For Sima Yi's persuasion, Liu Hou resolutely refused, although he always liked to use the most trouble-free method and the smallest price to achieve victory, but the gentleman did something and did not do something, and he resolutely refused to do this kind of thing that hurts the heavens.

Sima Yi persuaded several times to no avail, and on this day, he finally thought of a good idea, so he came to Liu Hou again, wanting to continue to do Liu Hou's ideological work. At this time, Liu Hou was planning to take Zhou Xue to the city for a tour, but when he saw Sima Yi, a pestering guy, he was annoying him again, so he had no choice but to invite him to accompany him and let him make a large light bulb of tens of thousands of watts.

Zhou Xue originally stayed in the rear of Jingzhou, and after the Shu army entered Xiangyang City, she set off to the north and came to Xiangyang City to work for the army, of course, there was only one object of her "comfort", that is, the little emperor Liu Hou. After living in the palace in Xiangyang for a few days, Zhou Xue was bored, so Liu Hou planned to take her to visit this famous city.

Xiangyang City is the seat of Xiangyang County, located in the middle reaches of the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, is the central city of Hubei, Henan, Chongqing and Shaanxi, with a history of more than 2,800 years, it has been an important economic and military place in the past dynasties, and is known as the "place where soldiers must fight", which shows the importance of its geographical location.

The high wall of Xiangyang City is thick, majestic and magnificent, and it is surrounded by water on three sides and one side is against the mountain, the terrain is easy to defend and difficult to attack, so it is valued by the soldiers of all dynasties. The city was built in the Han Dynasty, with a circumference of 7 kilometers, and military facilities such as the female wall of the battlement and the arrow tower perforation on the city wall are readily available.

A moat surrounds the city, silently guarding the city, the moat is 250 meters wide at its widest point, and it is not easy to fill such a wide moat, so those who want to fill the moat to attack the city are doomed to pay a terrible price. Because of this, Xiangyang City can be called "the first city in China", and there is a saying of "Xiangyang of iron" since ancient times.

There are six gates in Xiangyang City, namely the Great and Small North Gate, the Long Gate, the East Gate, the West Gate and the South Gate. There is an urn city outside each gate of Xiangyang City, which is also called Tunbing City.

The city with such a favorable geographical location should have been densely populated and full of merchants from the north and south, but because of the war, this historic city has become sparsely populated. The population here refers to ordinary people, and there are many people in Xiangyang City now, but most of them are soldiers or baggage teams that transport supplies to soldiers.

The people have fled a lot because of the war for many years, especially the last time Liu Hou led the troops to the Northern Expedition, bombarded the city with "Ketyusha", "Ketyusha" is called rocket artillery, it is really a big firework, their accuracy is too poor, so many rockets flew into the houses, accidentally injured many people.

Where have ordinary people seen this kind of big killing weapon like heavenly punishment and thunder, those survivors were frightened half to death by seeing the explosion picture, they passed on ten to hundred, and it was a false rumor, and soon the people of the whole city knew that there was an old Taoist named Zuo Ci in the Shu army, this old Taoist is said to be a half-immortal body, can summon the thunder male and lightning mother, chop the enemy to death, and collapse the city.

Under such terrifying rumors, almost half of the people in the bustling city of Xiangyang ran away, so much so that when Liu Hou took Zhou Xue and Sima Yi out to visit, he found that this legendary city was sparsely populated.