Chongde.
"Brother, the 60,000 Mingjiao army is coming from Hangzhou! The vanguard army has arrived twenty miles away."
Jiao Ting watched Sun Lei report.
"Sixty thousand troops? Send the order, retreat! Go west, toward Huzhou!"
Sun Lei nodded.
The officers and soldiers evacuated, and the Mingjiao Pioneers quickly discovered the news.
"Commander, the enemy only has 2,000 people. How about we catch up and kill them?"
Li Tianyou said excitedly.
"The enemy has gone to Huzhou. That is Zheng Biao's business and has nothing to do with us. Hurry to Xiuzhou!"
Fang Qifu shook his head and said, his mission is to capture Xiuzhou and relieve the siege of Suzhou.
The two armies just missed each other without incident.
After entering the boundary of Huzhou, Sun Lei led his army and turned south, entering Yuhang and Lin'an.
Xiuzhou.
"One hundred thousand troops!"
Wang Yuan had a worried look on his face. Soon after they captured Xiuzhou, news came that Fang Qifu, one of Fang La's right-hand men, came with a hundred thousand troops to kill.
"It's sixty thousand, it's called one hundred thousand!"
Han Shizhong corrected.
"Even an army of 60,000 is not easy to fight!"
Wang Yuan's face was full of sorrow. He only had ten thousand troops here, and it would be difficult to defeat six.
"There are only 60,000 thieves, it will be up to me when the time comes!"
Han Shizhong said nonchalantly that even if the two armies were confronting each other, he would not be afraid of 60,000 bandits with an army of 10,000, not to mention that there was still a city, so he was even more confident.
"Send the order, the crossbowmen come to the city!"
Han Shizhong looked at the soldiers and ordered that this time he would let the thieves know how powerful the official army's crossbows were.
As soon as Fang Qifu's army arrived in Xiuzhou, they began to attack Xiuzhou. He had already investigated and found that Xiuzhou only had 10,000 troops.
"kill!"
Li Tianyou commanded the army to attack the city and kill them.
"Stupid thief!"
When Han Shizhong saw the thieves carrying ladders to attack the city as soon as they arrived, he sneered and said, "You have traveled hundreds of miles without even taking a break to attack the city with crude equipment. What is the difference between this and committing suicide?"
Crossbows, stones, and logs were used to greet them. Although the Mingjiao army was not afraid of death, they were eventually killed and retreated, leaving corpses all over the ground.
"These thieves are so stupid!"
Han Shizhong shook his head.
"I didn't expect that this thief doesn't know anything about the art of war. He's far worse than those in Runzhou and Changzhou! Could it be that all Mingjiao thieves in Hangzhou are like this?"
Wang Yuan's face lit up, if the next Ming Cult thieves were like this, they would be easy to fight.
"Most of these Mingjiao people were civilians before. They joined the Mingjiao after being bewitched. They don't know anything about marching and fighting. The further you go to the rear, the less combat experience you have. Maybe the thieves will be easier to fight in the rear!"
Han Shizhong's face lit up after hearing Wang Yuan's guess, and he also had a guess.
"Report, general, there is an urgent military report!"
A soldier ran up the city wall and shouted to Wang Yuan and Han Shizhong.
Wang Yuan immediately took the military newspaper and read it. The more he read, the more information he got.
"Great, Privy Tong is here!"
Wang Yuan said with a smile.
"Privacy Tong? Isn't he in Hebei?"
Han Shizhong's expression changed. Tong Guan was the number one man in the army of the Song Dynasty.
"Your Majesty felt that the south of the Yangtze River was important. Sun Lei appeared in the north of the Yangtze River again. He was worried that the annihilation of Fang La would be hindered, so he quickly recalled Tong Xiang from the north."
Wang Yuan said with a smile.
"Then Tong Xiang wants to deal with Sun Lei?"
Han Shizhong asked.
"No, Tong Xiang also thought it was important to destroy Fang La, so he took a boat directly to Jiangnan! And he has already sent people to support us!"
Wang Yuan said with a smile.
"What about General Wang Zhen?"
Han Shizhong pointed to the north and said.
"Perhaps let General Wang Zhen continue to hold Sun Lei back. The city of Yangzhou is tall and the moat leads directly to the Yangtze River. There is nothing the thieves can do!"
Wang Yuan said.
"Ignore Sun Lei!"
Han Shizhong didn't understand. Is this a bit too arrogant?
Sun Lei, who was hiding outside Lin'an City, also learned the same news, and also knew that Tong Guan had brought Xin Keshi, Yang Weizhong, Li Ming, Yi Jing, Zhe Kecun and others this time.
"We only brought 30,000 soldiers and horses! It seems that Tong Guan still wants to regain Yanyun. The main army stayed in Hebei."
Sun Lei looked at the letter in his hand and said.
"Hebei soldiers and horses have been sparse for a long time. Isn't Tong Guan trying to buy time to train?"
Lin Chong said.
"Troop training is for sure. Tong Guan is probably calling the border generals useless in his heart."
Sun Lei nodded and said, the reason why he is not worried about Cangzhou is because the Hebei Army is too stretched and is only a little better than the people of the Ming Cult in front of him.
"But Tong Guan may have other purposes for coming to Jiangnan, especially money. Tong Guan has great ambitions. Now he has no shortage of soldiers and horses, but money and food are a big problem. Even if he gets part of Lu Junyi's family property, it will be a drop in the bucket. This Jiangnan Wealth, Tong Guanke also knows."
Sun Lei said, Tong Guan is now the second person under one person and above ten thousand people. He is the real number two figure in the Song Dynasty. Tong Guan doesn't care about his contribution to annihilating Fang La. Now Tong Guan only has Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures in his eyes. Recover Yanyun and others. You can be crowned king! Became the first eunuch to be crowned king.
"Brother, when Tong Guan comes, should we retreat first?"
Fei Bao looked at Sun Lei and said, Tong Guan arrived and the situation became more complicated.
"Fang La hasn't been killed yet, so don't leave in a hurry! The muddier the water, the easier it is to fish! I believe Fang La has also learned the news now, let's see what he does!"
Sun Lei said with a smile that Tong Guan's arrival would actually have little impact. Fang La's defeat was already determined. He just wanted to speed up the process and end the chaos in Jiangnan as soon as possible.
Xiuzhou.
The siege of the city continued. Fang Qifu continued to attack for several days, and the closest army had already attacked the city wall.
But the officers and soldiers defended resolutely. Relying on the advantage of their armor, they fought bloody battles on the city wall for a long time and finally defended the city.
"Damn, it's just a little bit worse!"
Fang Qifu shouted angrily, his army had suffered nearly 20,000 casualties in the past few days, but he still failed to capture Xiuzhou.
"General, the enemy's reinforcements are coming soon! There are ten thousand people."
Li Tianyou hurried over and said.
"Retreat first!"
Fang Qifu said bitterly.
On Xiuzhou City, Wang Yuan breathed a sigh of relief when he looked at the retreating enemies. Although the enemy's combat power was low, they could not withstand large numbers of people and were not afraid of death. After several days of attacks, they had exhausted all their arrows.
Han Shizhong ignored this and directed his soldiers to clean the battlefield, destroy the ordnance left by the enemy, and reinforce the city walls destroyed by the enemy.
North of Xiuzhou.
Xin Xingzong and Liu Guangshi were marching with the army.
"If I had known that these people from the Mingjiao were so easy to fight, I would have come back a long time ago!"
Xin Xingzong laughed and said that he had killed several waves of Mingjiao troops along the way.
"Is Sun Lei really that difficult to beat?"
Liu Guangshi looked at Xin Xingzong and asked in confusion. Sun Lei was very famous now, but he had never really seen him.
"It's not that difficult to fight. I'd rather fight the Xixia people!"
Xin Xingzong said with a wry smile, he didn't want to say that, but the news that they were defeated by Sun Lei had already spread, and denying it at this time would be sophistry.
"Are they more difficult to deal with than the Xixia people?"
Liu Guangshi asked with interest. The more he did this, the more interested he became in Sun Lei.
"When Fang La is defeated, lead the troops to Jiangbei to meet Sun Lei!"
Liu Guangshi calculated in his mind that this time he was going on the expedition with his father Liu Yanqing, and he was just a subordinate general in the army.
