From Dong'an County in the east of Nanqingzhou (near Ju County in later generations), more than 90 miles to the north along Shushui is the watershed of the two rivers of Shushui and Weihe formed by the confluence of the two mountain ranges of Wulian Mountain and Yishan, and it is also the nearest and most convenient road from North Xuzhou to the hinterland of Sanqi.

Along the winding Shushui, there is only a narrow and turbulent river of less than ten zhang left, or a wider stream is more suitable, and the road that was originally built along the Shushui River is relatively smooth has gradually become a narrow road that can only accommodate two war horses.

The road was only seven or eight feet wide, and it was repeated through the winding and rugged valleys, which were even more difficult to pass because of the heavy snowfall in the mountains these days, and the snow in the mountains was much higher than in the plains.

At this time, the mountainous area of central and southern Shandong has not been as devastated as after the population explosion in later generations, and it has been destroyed by indiscriminate felling and mining of ores and stones.

Primeval forests, which have never been cut down and destroyed for hundreds of years, cover every hill as far as people can see, although all the trees have lost their leaves in winter, and you can't see the dark green that is full of extreme green in summer; But the dense branches still hide the already narrow road.

On the riverbank beside the road and in the clearing in the mountain forest, you can see all kinds of footprints from time to time, which is a variety of animals that do not hibernate in the mountains and forests to feed, if you have nothing to do, it is a good time to hunt.

When Shushui finally turned into countless streams and disappeared at the confluence of the Yishan Mountains and the Wulian Mountains, the terrain became more and more dangerous, and between the two peaks of the two mountain ranges, the most dangerous terrain, a stone city wall with a height of five or six zhang towered.

The city wall is only more than 100 meters long but has more than two zhang wide, and the city wall is extremely strong, all of them are built with large stones mined in the nearby mountains, and then they are leveled up with a little bit of saving, except for the iron-clad city gate that is one zhang wide and one foot thick, it can be regarded as the weakness of the city, so that people can no longer find other weaknesses.

This Guancheng was not built by Wang Yong's side, nor was it built by the Northern Qi Dynasty before, as early as the Warring States Period, because this was the border between Qi and Chu, when Qi first built a Guancheng here.

During the chaos of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms before the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Southern Dynasty built this Guancheng again in order to defend the Southern Yan in Qingzhou in the north, and when Cheng Chong attacked Southern Qingzhou, he felt that such a dangerous place would not be used to waste him, so he repaired this Guancheng despite the opposition of others.

The town with a number of about 2,000 people behind this gate is called Guanshuai Town, so this gate is called Guanshuai Pass, and there were hundreds of soldiers defending here before.

Guanshuai is a mountain plain with a small area, although the surrounding mountains and forests are all mountains, but because of the water source conserved by the surrounding mountains and forests, there are many small streams flowing here to a tributary of the upper reaches of the Weihe River, and it is also very convenient for cultivation and irrigation.

Speaking of which, this town also once had its own glorious history, in 656 BC, the first princely overlord of the Spring and Autumn Period, Qi Huan Gong, launched a large-scale "righteous army", and the princes of the alliance crusaded against the Chu state that did not pay tribute to the king of Zhou, including the then Ju state (Dong'an County in the Northern Qi Dynasty, now Ju County) and many other vassal states participated in this war.

The war was interrupted and dragged on until 654 BC, when the Duke of Qi Huan ordered "Guan Zhong to take command" to continue the crusade against the Chu State, because Guan Zhong chose this geographical key point of "90 miles from Zhucheng in the north, 90 miles from Ju in the south, and 90 miles from Yishui in the west".

Since then, this place, which still belonged to the Ju State at that time, had a name "Guan Shuai", and became the rear of the Qi State in its crusade against the Chu State at that time.

In the past year or so, because of the rapid development of the land of Sanqi, especially the encouragement of commerce and trade after Lu Wen was appointed as the assassin of Nanqingzhou, countless business travelers who traveled to and from the land of Nanchen and Sanqi stopped here, gradually turning this originally poor town into a rich place.

Because the town is remote, far away from the Central Plains, where the war is most intense, and because of the business travel, it gradually becomes rich, like a paradise.

But where can I find a real place of peace in troubled times, and now with the attack of the Qi army, the town has also been covered with a layer of haze, as if it is now snowing in haze weather.

Guan Shuai Guan was on a flat land two miles away from the city, Dugu Yongye frowned and looked at the extremely strong Guan Cheng in front of him, he had been blocked here for ten days.

In these ten days, thousands of Northern Qi soldiers fell under this fortified fortress, according to the intelligence, there were only more than 500 soldiers guarding the city, it was said that it should be a strand down, but the tenacious will of the defenders in the city greatly shocked him, and the fortification of the city was also greatly beyond his expectations.

The key is that the city wall is built according to the mountain, in addition to the height of the city wall, from the city wall to the south is a downhill of hundreds of meters, there is a height difference of thirty or forty meters.

In this way, if the soldiers of the Qi army want to attack this fortress, they must first climb a long slope of hundreds of meters, and they will climb the slope with a ladder, and after the soldiers are panting and run to the top of the slope, they will also shoot with the bows and crossbows of the defenders of the city and then attack the city wall as high as five or six zhang.

By this time, the attacking soldiers had already exhausted a lot of physical strength, and when they followed the ladder to attack the city wall, they could no longer fight against the recuperated defenders, and because the city wall was too high, it could not withstand too many soldiers to climb at a time, so it could not form a sufficient attack density. Home

From the beginning to the present, Dugu Yongye can only rely on the large number of troops under his command to use wheel warfare to oppress the defenders.

Since Dugu Yongye adopted the strategy of Meng Lingtong, the former chief secretary of Qufu, he decided to give up his plan to recover Dongtaishan County and Lanling County, but personally led the cavalry to attack quickly, first using a plan to seize Pingyi, the key place leading from Qufu to Northern Xuzhou, and then going down the river to take Northern Xuzhou.

When Dugu Yongye led tens of thousands of elite cavalry to suddenly arrive at the city of Xuzhou in the north, Ba Shi, who had been only focusing on the army of Murong Yan in Picheng, two hundred miles to the south, did not come back to his senses, and regarded these troops as cavalry under Wang Yong.

When Ba Shi knew about these cavalry, the cavalry led by the Northern Qi general Dugu Yongye immediately panicked, while closing the city and defending himself, and at the same time sent urgent distress letters to Nan Chen in the south and Wang Yong in the north, but Dugu Yongye led tens of thousands of cavalry to block the surrounding area of Northern Xuzhou tightly, where would he be given a chance.

In less than a day, all the more than 20 messengers sent out by Ba Shi were intercepted by Dugu Yongye's department, and when the next morning, Dugu Yongye ordered soldiers to throw hundreds of heads into the city of North Xuzhou, Ba Shi's heart was cold.

Although the Northern Xuzhou is located in the mountains, but from the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Southern Qi confrontation period here is the military town of the Northern Wei Dynasty, although the local people are mostly to the Southern Dynasty, there have been many large-scale people fleeing south, but because of the extension of the Northern Dynasty's reign, there are naturally people in the city who are interested in the Northern Qi court.

At this time, because of hundreds of years of war, people have long lost the concept of the country, especially the big families, Haoqiang, etc., are only family-oriented, in order to be among the top nobles to participate in the game of political power distribution, it is the dream of every big family.

If you can get the appreciation of the Northern Qi court through Dugu Yongye, it seems to be a good way to get in, so some people in the city are moved, and since Ba Shi seized the power of Northern Xuzhou, he has not done anything less to bully others, so that these Haoqiang who are ready to throw themselves into Northern Qi have more reasons to do it.

Wait until the night of the same day, a few Haoqiang quietly sent people to the outside of the city to contact Dugu Yongye, this time I really want to sleep on the pillow, with the help of the city should be Dugu Yongye very smoothly seized the city of North Xuzhou, not to mention, but also Ba Shi over the years as a battle of nearly 30,000 soldiers all under his command.

Although the combat effectiveness of these soldiers is far inferior to that of the Qi army led by Dugu Yongye, and even inferior to some of the recruits of Wang Yong's army who have just participated in several battles; However, for some ordinary battles such as guarding the city, escorting baggage, etc., it can still be done, so that Dugu Yongye has nearly 80,000 soldiers.

After occupying North Xuzhou, Dugu Yongye did not stop, and immediately ordered his general Dugu Sheng to lead 10,000 town troops and 10,000 former North Xuzhou soldiers to guard North Xuzhou and the surrounding counties, while Dugu Yongye himself led 10,000 cavalry as the vanguard and quickly galloped towards South Qingzhou.

Since Cheng Chong captured Southern Qingzhou last winter, this has always been the southernmost part of Wang Yong's forces, but because it was on the verge of Nanchen before, and there was a relatively powerful Ba clan to cut off Northern Xuzhou from attacking Northern Qi, so although it is not as comfortable as Qingzhou and Gwangju, it can be regarded as a happy land.

During the siege of the Northern Qi Dynasty last year, because of the Southern Chen Northern Expedition and the occupation of the three counties of Haizhou by the righteous people of Haizhou, the Huaisi region in the south continued to be in turmoil, and the people of the prefectures and counties fled one after another, and the land of Sanqi under the rule of Wang Yong was relatively stable, so two or three hundred thousand people fled into the land of Sanqi through Nanqingzhou.

At that time, many people thought that Nanqingzhou was also good, and it was not far from their hometown, so they stayed here and settled down.

After Wang Yong carried out the military and political reorganization in April, Lu Wen, the military advisor of the original cottage, asked for an order to come to Nanqingzhou as the assassin history, although Lu Wen's talent is worse than Yang Ku, Pu Yangxun and others, and not as good as Liu Xin's ability, but as a state assassin history is still qualified.

Besides, at this time, the state was actually about the same as the county of the Han Dynasty, and the area was not large, and under the hard work of Lu Wen, Nanqingzhou, which was located in the mountains and was barren and poor, gradually became full of vitality.

Because there are many mountains and few places in Nanqingzhou, Lu Wen began to encourage commerce, so merchants from all over the north and south will follow the rich land of Sanqi and the rich Nanchen along the Yishui from Nanqingzhou to the continuous trade and trade of Nanqingzhou, and before Dugu Yongye conquered, Nanqingzhou was already considered a medium-sized state and county in the land of Sanqi.

Lu Wen is a good hand at developing people's livelihood as a military advisor who used to be a cottage, and he also knows a lot about marching and fighting, but after more than half a year of comfort, he forgot to be vigilant, and when Dugu Yongye came to Nanqingzhou, Lu Wen was taking more than a dozen entourages to inspect the transformation of farmland in the countryside under Nanqingzhou.

At that time, Lu Wen was still thinking that although there were many mountains in Nanqingzhou and few lands, there were many streams in the mountains, as long as some gentle slopes suitable for cultivation in Nanqingzhou were renovated, the grain prices in Nanqingzhou would not be as high as before after the spring wheat harvest next year.

When Lu Wen got the news that the Northern Qi army was coming, the city of Southern Qingzhou had been surrounded by Dugu Yongye and could no longer enter the city, and the soldiers and civilians in the city were panicked; Although the defenders of Nanqingzhou managed to repel the three attacks of the Qi army, when the soldiers and civilians in the city learned the news of the county guard's absence, their morale had already been depressed.

In ancient times, the morale of the war was the heaviest, when the morale was not there, it was inevitable that the city would be lost, and after seizing Nanqingzhou, the Qi army pointed to Dong'an County, which was smaller in the city, and Dong'an County only had a thousand defenders, but these defenders did not have the courage of the defenders of Nanqingzhou and directly gave up the city and fled, but because they were afraid of Wang Yong's military law, these people simply fled to the nearby mountains as bandits.

At this time, as long as Dugu Yongye further captures Jiaozhou, which is still empty, then the flat land on both sides of the Weihe River downstream from Jiaozhou is all his horse farm, but Dugu Yongye never expected to be blocked in front of the Guan Shuai Pass in front of him.