The world's storms converged on the two Liaos.
When Gu Jiantang, Secretary of the Ministry of War, officially led the army to Jizhou, outside Hengshui City, which was located at the forefront of Jibei, the wisps of wolf smoke belonging to Beimang's cavalry were already approaching Chichi.
As the saying goes, a sad army will win. Although they lost the military god Tuoba Bodhisattva, Beimang fought particularly fiercely this time.
They divided their troops into two groups. The east group mainly attacked the two Liaos, while the west group was well prepared to guard the borders of Longyao and Gusai prefectures with Beiliang. It was obvious that even if Beiliang took advantage of him, he still wanted to get some pieces of meat from Liangliao.
The reason for making such a dangerous-looking arrangement was mainly due to a wise man who had been away from Beimang for more than 20 years.
The grand master of the Chess, Sword, and Yue Mansion—the Taiping Order.
This old man chose to leave Beimang and travel alone in the Central Plains because he was stimulated by Empress Murong's words: "If you think you can be on par with heaven and earth, then become the emperor's master."
It took him twenty years to almost measure the land of Liyang inch by inch, and he was familiar with everything there, including its customs, customs, court system, civil and military conflicts, party disputes, and so on.
Then he returned to Beimang and spent seven days talking to Empress Murong about everything from the right time, place, and people, to the geography of the Central Plains, the people, the military, and customs, and the border wars between the two dynasties; from how to eliminate the hidden dangers in Beimang to win the hearts of the people. In the future, how to destroy Northern Liang, occupy Western Shu, and swallow up the Southern imperial edict, direct troops to Tai'an City, and pacify the world; and how to manage and stabilize the country after unifying the world.
Everything in the world, no matter how big or small, was told by the Taiping Order for seven days and seven nights.
After seven days of speaking full of knowledge, Empress Murong held his hand and said calmly: "I would like to worship you as the emperor's teacher."
This time Beimang's overall strategy was formulated in compliance with the Taiping Order.
Although this old Confucian scholar is not good at leading troops, he can see many things that the generals in charge cannot.
For example, everyone knows that on the east and west fronts of Liyang, Beiliang is good at attacking, and Liang Liao is good at defending. Therefore, in the past, Beimang had never put its main offensive force on the two Liao defense lines, because that would give the Beiliang army the risk of taking the opportunity to sneak attack on the royal court.
From a purely military perspective, this is indeed true.
However, after gaining an in-depth understanding of Liyang's politics and people's livelihood and the mainstream ideology of the court, Taiping Ling discovered that things were not that simple.
Does Li Yang have the strength to destroy Beimang?
He believes that it existed twenty years ago.
At that time, Liyang had just completed the unification of the Central Plains. Although he was exhausted, if he took advantage of the victory over the eight kingdoms and marched north, he still had a good chance of winning, because at that time, Empress Murong had just come to power, and the Northern Mang Dynasty was unstable. period.
But the problem was that Emperor Liyang had been wary of Xu Xiao for a long time. He was afraid that the Northern Liang cavalry would eat wolves with tigers and annihilate Beimang, and then take advantage of the situation to fight against Liyang's north and south, so he issued a secret edict to force Xu Xiao under the good situation. Xiao retreated and signed a contract with Beimang. This created a situation where the three parties in Liyang and Liangmang coexisted.
So after twenty years of development, after absorbing the ideas and technologies brought by many Central Plains scholars from Hongjia Beiben, Beimang has been completely reborn compared to twenty years ago.
Whether Li Yang can destroy Beimang with all his strength is debatable, but it is impossible for Beiliang, which only occupies the resources of three states and has 300,000 troops, to really destroy Beimang Royal Court, which occupies half of the world. .
And the most important point is, is Liyang Zhao willing to resist the main offensive of Beimang on the eastern front to create opportunities for the Beiliang army to make contributions?
You know, Tai'an, the capital of Liyang, is right behind Liang Liao. Once the defense line is broken, there will be almost no obstacle to the Beimang Iron Cavalry knocking off Tai'an City!
If both sides really choose to put all their efforts at that time, and Beimang abandons the defense of the royal court and goes south to attack Tai'an City with all his strength, what will Emperor Liyang do?
Going into battle in person to defend Tai'an City to buy time for the Northern Liang Army to attack the Royal Court?
dream!
Based on what the Taiping Order had seen in the Central Plains over the past twenty years, he felt that the war could only develop in two directions.
First, if Beiliang breaks through Beimang's defense line first, and Beimang has not yet broken through the two Liaos at that time, then Emperor Liyang may secretly send people to discuss and directly send Beimang's army back to encircle and suppress Beiliang's army.
Second, if both sides breach each other's defense lines at the same time, Emperor Liyang will never gamble on the combat effectiveness and loyalty of the Northern Liang Army at the expense of his own safety, because they have a guilty conscience. So by then, the most likely possibility is that Emperor Liyang issued several imperial edicts to ask the Northern Liang army to withdraw King Qin.
So no matter how you calculate it, Beimang will not suffer any loss if he fights like this.
He just decided that Beiliang and Liyang were at odds with each other and were suspicious of each other. Especially for Liyang, they would rather everyone suffer a loss than be willing to suffer a loss themselves and let Beiliang take advantage.
But in fact, the war situation this time exceeded everyone's expectations from the beginning.
In the Taiping Order's analysis, they were still quite wary of the combat effectiveness of the Northern Liang Army, and it was only because Li Yang was holding them back that they dared to formulate such a bold plan.
However, this time it was Beiliang who took action first.
After receiving the imperial edict from Tai'an City, the King of Beiliang did not send troops to the north as promised to encircle Wei and rescue Zhao. Instead, he also chose the Chen Bing border to confront Beimang's army, and then led his most elite Snow Dragon The cavalry marched south brazenly and marched into Xishu!
At the same time, the Western Regions also dispatched monk soldiers to help. The two sides joined forces and it was an overwhelming force. While Beimang and Liyang were still pulling each other's hair outside Hengshui City in Jibei, Western Shu, including Nanzhao further south, had been completely occupied by the Beiliang army.
That's not all. Western Chu Cao Changqing was promoted to a Confucian sage in a high-profile manner at the Western Barrier Site, and then declared the restoration of the country in the name of Princess Jiang Si of Western Chu! Another Confucian sage Xuanyuan Jingcheng who also lived in Guangling Road expressed support for this on behalf of Zhulushan.
For hundreds of years, although Confucianism has flourished, it is extremely difficult for a top master to reach the saint level due to various reasons.
Two events have suddenly occurred in the past two years, which should have been a great joy for all the Confucian scholars in the world to celebrate, but now they are not happy at all.
Compared with Buddhism and Taoism, Confucianism pays more attention to learning and excellence leads to officialdom. Therefore, Confucianism has always had the closest relationship with the court.
In other words, Confucian students basically serve as officials in court.
But it happened that their two Confucian sages were rebelling...
This had a strong impact on the thinking of many Confucian students.
Could it be that this is the reason why Confucianism has been unable to produce saints for hundreds of years?
There is no future for working for the imperial court. Only by establishing one's own business can one break through the shackles?
The appeal of saints is quite terrifying, especially when the two remaining saints of Confucianism chose to take sides, which even directly led to the split of Confucianism!
A considerable number of Confucian students actually chose to abandon their official positions and went directly to Cao Changqing and Xuanyuan Jingcheng.
This series of changes made the emperor of Tai'an City, Zhao Dun, so angry that he vomited blood and suddenly became more than ten years older.
"Master Yuan, why did my great country in Liyang suddenly become like this?"
He lay on the hospital bed and looked weakly at Emperor Master Yuan Benxi.
At this time, Yuan Benxi no longer had the wisdom and troubles he had in the past. He was silent for a long time, and finally gritted his teeth and spit out a name: "Huang Longshi!"
"The devil who claims to have killed three million people with his three-inch tongue?"
Zhao Dun was a little surprised, "His fuel was indispensable behind the Spring and Autumn Unification War. Isn't this what he wants to see? Why do he still want to provoke division?"
"Hmph, no one can see clearly what that guy is thinking."
Yuan Benxi snorted coldly, "But when this kind of layout is carried out, no one can notice it. Once it is launched, it will turn everything upside down. No one else can do it except him."
"Then what should we do? Beiliang has rebelled, Western Chu has rebelled, and Beimang refuses to retreat...my world...cough cough cough——"
As he spoke, Zhao Dun became so angry that he coughed violently, "Is it going to be like the Great Qin of the past, and die in the second generation? Will I also want to be the second generation of Qin?"
"Although the situation is troublesome now, it has not yet reached a point where it is completely out of control."
Yuan Benxi was not as panicked as Zhao Dun, "Although the restoration of the Western Chu Kingdom has stirred up many scholars, but with the presence of Guangling King Zhao Yi, they will not be able to fight for a while. They can let Yanla King Zhao Bing send troops to attack from behind. It’s just a disease!”
"What about Beiliang? They have already captured Xishu and Nanzhao. It seems that the Western Regions are colluding with them... The Western Regions are the stronghold of Buddhism. Will the Buddhists in the Central Plains cause trouble? I heard that Beimang is being destroyed. Buddha, do we want him too?"
Zhao Dun asked in panic.
"Beiliang is indeed a big problem, but their betrayal of Liyang this time has completely destroyed the hearts of the Central Plains. We will no longer have any scruples when dealing with them in the future. And we are not the only ones who are anxious about Beiliang becoming bigger. Maybe we can wait and see..."
…
…
Yuan Benxi saw it accurately.
Beiliang's unconventional behavior not only confused Liyang, but Beimang was also a little confused.
The empress urgently summoned the Taiping Order and the National Preceptor Qilin Zhenren.
"What should we do now? Should we continue to fight with Li Yang in the two Liaos, or should we take advantage of Beiliang's elite to move south and change direction to invade Beiliang?"
Compared with the panic of Liyang Emperor Zhao Dun, Empress Murong was much calmer. After all, the enemy's family was in civil strife now. They just wanted to choose a plan with greater profits, unlike Zhao Dun who had lost his own family. The situation is different.
"..."
The Taiping Order frowned and pondered, the suggestion he made after returning from twenty years of travel. Among them, there are several major strategic aspects.
The first is to emphasize the importance of harmony and to thoroughly digest the scholars of the Southern Dynasties who fled Hong Jiabei.
The second point is about religion. Liyang Longhushan has lost its qualification to be the leader of the Taoist sect, and the Daodezong of Beimang will take the opportunity to snatch it over. There is also the matter of destroying Buddhas in Beimang. The purpose of destroying Buddhas is to raise military expenses, but it cannot be done across the board. It is necessary to destroy the big Zen Buddha and erect small Tantric Buddhas. In short, it is just to kill a group of people, and by the way, it can also show goodwill to the Western Regions.
The third point is the route to unify the world in the future. First, take advantage of the differences between Beiliang and Liyang to swallow up Beiliang, then take advantage of the situation to take over the Western Regions, Xishu, Nanzhao and other places, and finally compete with Liyang for hegemony in the Central Plains.
These are all major policies at the national policy level, but the problem is, judging from Beiliang's actions these days, several of them have been taken advantage of by others!
For example, they were still waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of the gap between Li Yang and Beiliang to swallow up Beiliang, but they turned against them first. If you go against it, then go against it. As a result, they actually connected to swallow up the Western Region. The actions of pacifying Western Shu and destroying Nanzhao all coincided with the Taiping Order's plan for Beimang.
The key is that although the plans of the Taiping Order sound exciting, they are still on paper. But Beiliang has already started to implement it and it has been successful.
At this moment, Taiping Ling felt as if he was living in someone's shadow, and his every move and thought was completely seen through.
So the question now is that Beiliang has already taken the path he planned for Beimang to unify the world. Where should Beimang go now?
Taiping Ling rubbed his beard and analyzed: "If we turn around and fight Beiliang, the good thing is that we should be able to get support from Liyang, and we don't have to worry about them stabbing us in the back. The bad thing is, Xu Xiao is not that easy to deal with, and when we fight Beiliang, Liyang takes advantage from behind. In the end, it is us who lose.
"If we maintain the current strategy unchanged, taking over Beiliang in the Western Regions, Western Shu and Nanzhao will be enough to strain the Liyang Dynasty. It will then depend on whether Beiliang wants to advance eastward or northward. If we advance eastward, Liyang will be attacked on both sides, so we must divide our forces, and we can also benefit from it. If we go north... we will have time to withdraw our troops by then. Moreover, after inserting Liyang's knife first, we can let them be injured without dying and provoke them again. We, Xu Xiao, should not be so unwise."
His analysis basically agreed with the Empress and Master Qilin, so Beimang's layout remained as it was for the time being.
…
…
"He is worthy of being the Huang Longshi who easily instigated chaos in the Nine Kingdoms! Once he takes action, the world will be in chaos."
"Excellent."
The old man in Confucian uniform waved his hand and sighed, "You are really surprising. After a trip to Beimang, the luck gathered in you is so profound that even I can hardly see clearly."
After a short business exchange, the two sat on the top of the mountain, looking down at the ant-like soldiers of Beimang and Liyang below, and finally got down to business.
"Are you ready for the next step?"
After taking over the Western Regions, Western Shu and Nanzhao, although Beiliang has not officially declared the founding of the country, it has formed a de facto three-part world situation, although it is the weakest family.
At this time, the reason why Li Yang and Beimang seemed to be doing nothing for the time being was because they were both waiting to see what happened in Beiliang, because no one could bear the consequences of being flanked by both sides.
But conversely, the same goes for Beiliang. If given the chance, Li Yang would definitely have the courage to join forces with Beimang to kill Beiliang first.
So despite Beiliang's current momentum, which seems to be in great shape and prosperous, it is still walking on the edge of an abyss and is in danger of overturning at any time.
"nature,"
Huang Longshi gently stroked his short beard and said in a manly voice, "I have already dropped the chess piece. Now let's see if Cao Qingyi, who claims to be invincible in the end, can really live up to his reputation."
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