The Xia army suddenly attacked Zhuojun, which was vital to the Sui Empire, and as the news spread rapidly, it immediately shocked tens of millions of people throughout the Sui Empire.

Because Wang Yong and Wang Ze were fighting and attacking north of the river, most of the ordinary people in Hebei knew that the Xia army had always been strict in military discipline and would not appear to kill good people and take risks, so they were relatively good and not panicked, but each village took care of itself to strengthen the wall to prevent the rebellious army and bandits from causing trouble.

In addition to the ordinary people, the Futu sect, the wealthy families, and the Xianbei nobles in the entire Hebei immediately panicked when they learned that the army sent by the son of Wang Yong, who had destroyed the Buddha in Sanqi that year, had reappeared in the land of Hebei, and even attacked Zhuo County, and even the emperor Yang Jian almost fell into their hands.

At the beginning, because Wang Yong wantonly killed the Futu Sect and the Xianbei family in Sanqi, it dealt a devastating blow to the Futu Sect and Xianbei Haoqiang in Sanqi, causing other families in other places to hate the Xia Kingdom and be particularly afraid of the arrival of the Xia army.

Therefore, while the Sui army of various counties in Hebei went north to defend against the southern invasion of the Xia Kingdom, there were also a large number of convoys composed of wealthy families from various counties in Hebei Province who continued to flee to the west of Taihang Mountain and south of the Great River to these safer places.

In their opinion, with the strong combat effectiveness of the Xia army, the entire north of the river and east of the Taihang Mountain will become the battlefield of the Xia army and the Sui army.

If the Xia army of Zhuojun could not be expelled in time, not only would the more than one million Sui troops on the Liaodong front line fall into a dangerous situation, but even the Xia army could approach the eastern capital Luoyang from Zhuojun south at any time.

Yang Jian, who had just fled back to Chang'an in such a dangerous situation, was worried about such a dangerous situation, at this time the Sui Empire still had more than 40 million people, and if necessary, it could continue to recruit a million troops, and the large granaries accumulated by the Sui Empire in various places could also fully meet the needs of the new conscripted army.

However, what the Sui Empire needed most at this time was not more troops, nor a huge amount of grain and grass, but a lack of firm confidence in victory, if the Sui army, which claimed to be a three-million-strong army, was completely defeated in this battle, then the confidence of all the subjects of the Sui Empire would be completely lost.

Because a large number of young people were recruited in this battle, especially in Guanzhong, nearly half of the young people participated in the army and left, so the atmosphere in Guanzhong was very depressing at this time, almost all the people were worried about their children, and the performance of the Guanlong Xianbei military aristocratic group made Yang Jian even more worried.

The conscription of the new army was not smooth, and the people of many counties and counties would even prefer to flee with their families rather than join the army, which is in stark contrast to the phenomenon of the people enthusiastically joining the army before the war, and only 200,000 government soldiers were recruited in the month after Yang Jian fled back to Chang'an.

Although there are not many of these troops, with the tens of thousands of guards originally left behind in Daxing City, they can finally ensure the safety of Guanzhong temporarily.

What made Yang Jian feel a little comforted was that the Futu sect in the Sui Empire spared no effort to support him, not only sending a large number of monks and soldiers to join the Sui army, but even volunteering to take out a huge amount of money, grain, cloth, medicinal materials, military funds, etc., which made Yang Jian, who had always admired the Futu sect, feel very pleased.

Yang Jian didn't know that the Futu Sect had always been only in and out, only what he got from others, but he never gave it.

This time, the Futu Sect of the Sui Empire was able to voluntarily take out so much money, food, and military funds to support himself, not to repay his strong support for the Futu Sect, but to be afraid that the Futu Sect would completely expel him after the Xia Kingdom entered the Central Plains.

Over the years, the Futu Sect has not sent monks to preach within the Xia Kingdom, trying to open up a new sect foundation, but because of the Xia Kingdom's dislike of the Futu Sect and the strong position of the Haotian Daomen, the monks who were quietly sent were either expelled from the Xia Kingdom or disappeared inexplicably.

Therefore, on this major issue related to the future inheritance of the Futu Sect, the Futu Sect, which has always been extremely stingy, also rarely took out so many materials to support Yang Jian, which made Yang Jian, who did not know the inside story, very moved.

He didn't know that if Xia Guo was willing to accept the Futu Sect and was willing to support the spread of the sect in Xia Guo, I am afraid that these Futu Sects would have already rushed to hug Xia Guo's thighs, and the fact that Wang Yong destroyed the Buddha in Sanqi forty years ago was not a big deal at all.

It's just that although Yang Jian has received so much help from the Futu Sect one after another, all this cannot solve the huge dilemma that the Sui army is facing on the battlefield in Liaodong.

Although the Liaodong battlefield experienced a major defeat and the loss of nearly 200,000 troops in successive months of fighting, the number of Sui army's horse infantry and Turkic cavalry still combined was still one million, not to mention more than 600,000 young and strong people drawn from the Sui Empire.

As for the other 400,000 people, they were either captured by the Xia army that attacked Zhuo County, or they remained in the counties of Hebei, and another 120,000 had died tragically in various places along the way after months of hard work.

After the transportation line of heavy grain and grass from the Central Plains to Liaodong was cut off, the daily consumption of more than 1.6 million young and strong people on the front line was an incomparably huge amount, and the cavalry of the coalition army led by Yang Jun and Dali Yehu not only had to eat, but the amount of food for the war horses was more than three times that of the soldiers.

This put even greater logistical pressure on the Sui army, and after the Xia army cut off their logistics, the grain stored in the Sui army's camp was only enough for ten days.

Originally, the grain stored in the camp of the army must be able to last for a month's consumption, but because the number of the Sui Empire's army was too large, coupled with the poor internal transportation of the Sui Empire, even if millions of people desperately transported it, it was only the food that was accumulated for ten days.

Faced with such a serious problem, Yang Guang, the king of Jin, as the commander-in-chief of the front line, was not unaware of the seriousness of the problem, and even his father Yang Jian specially sent someone to send him a letter to let him act at the opportunity, obviously to let himself secretly escape when the situation was unfavorable.

However, Yang Guang was not willing to do this, this battle was related to the battle of the national fortune of the entire Sui Empire, especially after seeing the strong combat effectiveness of the Xia army, he was even more unwilling to retreat, if he escaped, the more than one million troops and more than 600,000 people would become the spoils of the Xia Kingdom.

After receiving Yang Jian's secret letter, Yang Guang pondered for a long time and ordered the messenger to be killed to keep it secret, and then after some discussion with several generals such as Yang Siren, Tudiji, Yang Jun, and Mai Tiecane, he decided that since the retreat was also pursued and defeated by the Xia army, it was better to attack with all his might.

This time, Yang Guang took out almost all of the Sui army's family resources, and the gunpowder weapons that he was reluctant to use in large quantities were also moved out without money, and all the crossbow arrows and iron armor were taken out and distributed to the forward battalion.

The veteran Mai Tiezhu led 10,000 Mo sword soldiers to take the lead in the front army, and soon crossed the thick ice of the Liao River, but in front of them were tens of thousands of soldiers of the forward battalion, most of whom were soldiers who had committed capital crimes or had a great enmity with the Xia army.

Behind the forward battalion were more than 10,000 sword and shield soldiers and 10,000 crossbowmen, and the huge heavy shield as high as more than one person could not be picked up without a certain amount of physical strength, and it was enough to resist the newly assembled muskets of the Xia army within fifty paces, which was the conclusion that the Sui army had gone through countless experiments over the past few months.

Behind the sword and shield soldiers and crossbowmen was the Mo sword soldiers led by Mai Tiecan, and they were also the main force of the first batch of attacks, the forward battalion was to consume the firepower of the Xia army for them, and the sword and shield soldiers were to cover the crossbowmen to suppress the close fire of the Xia army.

Behind the Mo Dao soldiers were the huge ordnance made by the craftsmen in the Sui Empire's camp day and night, whether it was bed crossbows, trebuchets, goose carts, well bars or other siege weapons, the Sui army would not lack such craftsmen.

Just after Mai Tiecane attacked Liaoshui, the Sui army launched a full-scale offensive almost simultaneously on the territory hundreds of miles wide.

To the surprise of the Xia army, the Sui army on the opposite side also suddenly launched a large number of rockets before the attack, which made the Xia army, which had always maintained the uniqueness of gunpowder weapons, very uncomfortable.

In fact, the Zheng rocket equipped by the Xia army really does not have much magic, the Sui army did not have it in the past because the gunpowder manufactured is not suitable, and now although the Sui army does not have yellow gunpowder, the rockets filled with a large amount of black powder are also powerful.

During the months of fighting with the Xia army, the Sui army also obtained a lot of rockets that the Xia army did not fully explode, so it is also possible to imitate this as well.

In addition, the Xia Army's Thunderbolt Sui Army also made a lot, this weapon from the Northern Qi period had been given up for a period of time because of the failure of imitation, but after the Northern Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Northern Qi Dynasty, the Northern Qi Daomen who successfully developed this weapon once dedicated the way of making the thunderbolt to Emperor Wu of Zhou.

After the establishment of the Sui Empire, it also obtained the production method of thunderbolt soon after, and the Sui army had not used it before because the materials were rare and reluctant to use, and this time they were all taken out by Yang Guang.

In the face of the Sui army's desperate attack, as well as the use of a large number of gunpowder weapons, the Xia army was suddenly caught off guard, and at this time, the Sui army took advantage of this rare opportunity to attack rapidly, and the Xia army had to retreat one after another, and actually retreated fifty miles from Liaoshui in one day.

If the armies of other countries retreated for fifty miles in a day, they would have collapsed, but because of the huge number of horses and various advanced means of transportation, the Xia army could still organize a defensive line after retreating fifty miles in a row.

This time, Yang Guang completely delegated military command to a few generals, and he was only used as a prop to boost morale, and even rushed to the battlefield to cheer for the soldiers without waiting for the army to win completely, and the Sui army, whose morale was greatly boosted, was even more courageous.

On the second day, Yang Guang finally got a good news, because the Xia army had too many troops before, the Xia army's defense line of only 300,000 people could not withstand the offensive of the Sui army, and retreated one after another, and now the king of Xia had no time to retreat, and was actually surrounded by his own army in Liaodong City.

After getting this amazing news, Yang Guang immediately became excited, if he could conquer Liaodong City in one fell swoop and then coerce the Son of Heaven to order the princes, wouldn't it not only be able to ensure the safety of his own grain and grass, but even use such a shield to conquer the counties of Xia Kingdom one after another?

Thinking of this, Yang Guang first ordered Yang Jun to lead the cavalry coalition army to desperately block Han Zigao's troops who were trying to go south, and the other 200,000 Sui troops continued to attack in the direction of Xuanyu County to contain the fleeing Xia army, and he himself concentrated more than 500,000 troops with infinite spirit to besiege Liaodong City.