Li Xiong was seriously considering escaping.
First of all, given the current situation, the county town of Xiangyang is besieged, and the Yue people are pressing down on the border. I don’t know if they can hold it.
On the Xichuan County side, Lu Yuan also led his army to sneak attack from the rear, and now captured most of Xichuan County, cutting off the retreat of their entire 100,000-strong army.
Now the opponent is guarding the fortified city, and reinforcements are flowing from the rear.
There are 100,000 people on our side, but their way out has been cut off. Even food and grass are running out because of the loss of Yuzhong Fucheng.
What are the consequences of lack of food and grass?
Just look at the previous Marquis Wu An and you will know.
Even people like Bai Mengyang, when they were guarding Yuzhong Mansion, the Miao people captured Baling County and cut off the food routes behind them. In the end, the army was demoralized, and they fled in embarrassment after being beaten, and ran back to Tianmen Mansion alone.
Li Xiong didn't think that he, or Yu Wenchong, the general of Houzhu State from Zhou Dynasty in Wushan Mansion, could compare with Bai Mengyang.
And what the two of them couldn't do even if the military god Wu Anhou couldn't do it.
Therefore, Xichuan County has become a desperate situation.
Continue to stay here, and when the Yue people gather their strength, their own food and grass are completely cut off, and the army begins to collapse. At that time, the enemy is coming to kill, but it is really a life and death crisis.
Therefore, although he directly gave up the foundation of Xichuan County, Li Xiong was very unwilling.
This emperor of Western Shu, no, should be called the King of Shu now.
Since he took refuge with the Zhou people, Li Xiong had long since resigned from the imperial title and was demoted to the king in order not to conflict with the Zhou emperor.
And not only that, even the large and small affairs of Xichuan County, with the arrival of the Zhou people, were actually gradually no longer under Li Xiong's control.
For this King of Shu, in addition to the tens of thousands of Qiang soldiers under his command, he can also command.
All other prefectures, counties, and even court officials were thoroughly controlled by the Zhou people.
Li Xiong is the king of Shu in name, but in fact, he has become a puppet, nothing more than a general commanding tens of thousands of troops.
It is precisely because of this that I have already lost most of my foundation, so now I feel particularly happy to give up.
Compared to dying here and losing everything.
At this time, despite tens of thousands of soldiers and horses, Li Xiong himself was still an innate master.
With such strength, he can dominate wherever he goes.
'I can even go to the southwestern barbarians, find a small barbarian country, and directly dominate it, and I can become the king. '
Thinking of this, Li Xiong's heart suddenly moved.
Rather than being a puppet here and even risking death in battle, it is better to go to another country and be free and at ease.
Talk to yourself about why an innate master should be trapped in this place of death.
The more he thought about it, the more tempted he became.
However, despite this, Li Xiong still hesitated to abandon the tens of thousands of Qiang soldiers under his command and the hundreds of thousands of Qiang people.
After all, these are his relatives and his most trusted tribesmen. To lose them like this at this time is not an easy decision to make.
"That's all, let's give it a try first and see the results later."
Li Xiong resisted the urge to leave immediately and sighed: "If I really want to escape anyway, with my strength, as long as I don't find Lu Yuan and others, I can't escape with my life from the rebel army." hard.
After all, I am from the Qiang ethnic group, and my achievements today are all due to the support of these people.
I can't bear to abandon them now. "
With the last bit of conscience in his heart, Li Xiong sighed, then turned and walked down the hillside.
After a busy day, 50,000 Zhou Shu coalition troops finally set up camp outside Yuzhong Fucheng.
After establishing a foothold, Li Xiong mobilized 10,000 troops and began to try to attack Yuzhong Fucheng.
However, after charging several times and killing thousands of people, they were driven back halfway up the mountain before even getting close to the city gate.
Seeing that the siege of the city failed, but instead suffered heavy casualties, and the retreat route was lost, the coalition troops were immediately demoralized.
Fortunately, Li Xiong's prestige is still good and can be maintained.
On the next day, he sent another 20,000 troops, gave a heavy reward of gold and silver on the spot, and asked the soldiers to take turns to attack Yuzhong Fucheng.
This time, the soldiers of the Zhou-Shu coalition also knew that the situation was critical.
If they don't capture Yuzhong Fucheng and take back the food in the city, they will all die without a burial place. In addition, Li Xiong issued a heavy reward, so the soldiers worked extra hard this time to attack the city.
Several times, they were able to fight outside the city and even attack the top of the city.
In the end, Lu Yuan had no choice but to take action himself, using his innate power to kill thousands of people before repelling the attack.
During this period, Li Xiong was huddled behind, watching his soldiers being slaughtered by Lu Yuan at will, without even daring to come forward to stop him.
Such actions immediately caused the Zhou and Shu coalition forces to plummet again after finally recovering.
The coach is cowardly and afraid to fight.
What energy do these low-level soldiers have to fight?
Not to mention Lu Yuan Shenwei, the innate grandmaster dealt with ordinary soldiers like them with such ease as massacre.
Li Xiong was so frightened that he did not dare to fight because of the courage of the generals. Naturally, the soldiers under him followed suit and began to fear and fight.
So on the third day, when Li Xiong once again gathered 20,000 troops and sent them to attack the city.
The soldiers of the Zhou-Shu coalition fought extremely perfunctorily.
They just charged a few times at will, and then after the defenders resisted strongly and found it difficult to attack, they abandoned more than two thousand corpses and fled down the mountain.
The morale and morale of these enemies are no longer usable.
On the fourth day, more than 20,000 newly recruited civilian warriors from Lu Yuan's rear, now the first batch of more than 10,000 people, finally arrived at Yuzhong Fucheng at starry night. The garrison in the city grew to 30,000 people.
After realizing that the reinforcements had arrived, they also knew that the morale of the soldiers below was low and they were no longer able to survive the war.
Li Xiong did not continue to attack the city, but huddled in the camp established at the foot of the mountain, adopting the strategy of holding on.
On the sixth day, several nearby groups of rebels led more than 7,000 people to Yuzhong Fucheng.
On the seventh day, the remaining 10,000 people bravely arrived in Yuzhong.
On the eighth and ninth days, rebels from Tongchuan, Liu Ming and other places arrived one after another.
On the 15th, after annihilating two groups of rebels who disobeyed orders in the rear, Zhou Qing led more than 10,000 newly recruited warriors and 10,000 soldiers and horses in his hands, and rushed to Yuzhong Fucheng.
By this time, the number of soldiers and horses under Lu Yuan's command had grown to nearly 100,000 in and outside the city of Yuzhong Prefecture, and their momentum could be described as extremely strong.
The troops are strong and the horses are strong, and the morale of the army is available.
Therefore, on the 16th day, they changed their defensive posture, opened the door and formed a formation, mobilized the rebel vassals who had gathered, and let them begin to storm the camp at the foot of the mountain.
There were almost 30,000 rebel vassals, and Lu Yuan ordered them to take turns to attack the enemy camps.
During this period, there were even several rebellions due to heavy casualties, and in the end more than a thousand people were killed before being suppressed.
After three days of such a strong attack, Lu Yuan defeated the enemy's outer camp. After fighting for several days, Lu Yuan withdrew the rebel army, which had less than 10,000 people left.
Then he mobilized the civilian warriors he had recruited, totaling more than 40,000 people, and personally led them to continue to storm the enemy's camp.
After two days of fighting, more than half of the camps of the Zhou and Shu coalition forces were captured. Even counting the previous days, these enemy forces lost more than 20,000 soldiers and horses.
But during this period, Li Xiong still did not show up.
The resistance of the Zhou and Shu coalition forces was gradually declining.
In this way, time came to the twenty-first day.
This morning.
Horns sounded continuously in Yuzhong City, and a large number of elites gathered and began to leave the city.
Lu Yuan stood on the city tower, looking at the foot of the mountain from a high place, looking at the enemy camp that had shrunk in size. He turned back to his disciple Zhou Qing and said: "In the past few months of the war, the enemy troops in front of me have fought against me one after another, but other The coach never moved.
According to the captured soldiers, it was Li Xiong, the leader of the puppet Shu, who commanded the enemy troops outside the city.
But with his innate body, he sat back and watched me take action and massacre his subordinates.
Although I don't know why this is the case, after fighting for so many days, the enemy's troops have been destroyed by more than half, leaving less than 30,000 men, and their morale has declined to the extreme.
This situation is a good opportunity to defeat the enemy.
Later, I personally took the risk and led the elite troops to break through the formation. You command the army from behind and follow closely.
Today I want to defeat the enemy in front of me in one fell swoop. "
Zhou Qing looked at his high-spirited master, and his whole body was affected. He said loudly: "Master, just go forward and kill. The disciples will lead the troops and follow closely behind, and they will not be left behind."
Lu Yuan laughed: "Okay, then today I will let you and my master and apprentice defeat this thief together."
After saying that, he jumped off the city tower and landed on the horses that had been prepared at the city gate.
"Set off!"
As soon as he waved his whip, the horse galloped forward with its hooves flying.
Behind him were dozens of knights, following closely.
Seeing this, Zhou Qing also turned around and walked down the tower and started to take action.
Lu Yuan had already begun to charge the stronghold, and he had to arrange his army early to follow closely to prevent his master from being surrounded by enemy forces.
Drums rumble and flags fly.
Outside the enemy camp in front, more than 10,000 soldiers and horses have gathered, and more people are still coming from the mountains.
Lu Yuan rode his horse and galloped a hundred steps in front of the enemy's camp. Then he summoned his true energy and shouted: "Lu Yuan is here, Li Xiong, do you dare to come out of the camp to fight me?"
The sound was like thunder, instantly spreading throughout the surrounding wilderness.
Not only could the soldiers arrayed outside hear it, but even within the enemy camp, most of the area could hear the sound.
However, facing this invitation to fight, the defenders on the wall in the enemy camp looked for a while, and looked behind them from time to time, as if they were waiting for something?
But I waited and waited, but the person I wanted to see never came.
Then everyone suddenly understood that their commander was timid again.
Although many people can understand that facing the prestigious King of Changsha, it is actually normal for their own commanders not to dare to fight with him.
But when the two armies were fighting, the coach behaved like this. In the eyes of everyone, it was incompetence.
Therefore, some Zhou soldiers cursed loudly at this time.
"What a bullshit King of Shu. He's so afraid of the enemy that he doesn't even dare to show his face. With such courage, who should be the King of Shu? I think the King of Shu is the right one."
"Brothers have been fighting hard for days, and the innate master who is carrying the thieves has to fight hard. The traitor Li Xiong, as an innate, dare not even show his face, and only watches ordinary people like us die. Everyone is working hard for him, I really have wronged myself.”
"The thieves gathered elite soldiers outside the city, and Lu Yuan showed up again. It seems that he is ready to take action himself. Thousands of people will die again this time, which is really painful. I wonder who is going to die this time?"
"Damn it, I don't want to fight. Li Xiong is so stupid, he really deserves to lose the land of Xishu."
All of the above are considered sensible.
And some other rough people with little education just started to ask about the relatives of Li Xiong's family in the later period, and even the descendants of his ancestors.
Hearing these unpleasant words, many Qiang soldiers beside those Zhou people looked a little ugly.
It is really hard for many people to accept that the king of the Qiang tribe is so insulted.
But it happened that the people in Zhou's scoldings were quite reasonable.
Regarding Li Xiong's behavior these days, to be honest, not only the Zhou people, but also the lower-level Qiang soldiers wanted to scold him.
It's just that they didn't dare to say it out loud because of their feelings and the fear in their hearts of being born noble.
He didn't dare to say anything, but he was listening to Zhou people scolding him. To be honest, many Qiang people are quite happy to hear it.
However, after the scolding was over, the morale of the entire coalition soldiers dropped at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The thieves were about to launch a strong attack. Looking at the troops they dispatched this time, they were all armored and armed. They were obviously elite soldiers and strong generals. The leader was Lu Yuan, the god of death.
On his side, Li Xiong, the only commander who could resist the opponent, was too afraid to fight.
Under such circumstances, they really didn't know what to do to resist.
Does it really make sense to continue to resist like this?
This confusion arises in the minds of many people.
While the Zhou and Qiang soldiers were confused, Lu Yuan outside the city shouted invitations to fight twice more.
Then when he saw that there was still no response, he no longer continued to invite the battle, but directly waved his hand and ordered the army to attack the stronghold.
He himself rode his horse forward directly, taking the lead and rushing towards the camp.
Seeing the trumpets and drums sounding outside, and tens of thousands of enemies coming to kill, the soldiers guarding the camp did not have time to think about life. They quickly prepared their bows and arrows and began to fight back.
However, if the arrow is just missing, how can it hurt Lu Yuan?
I saw him charging forward, and several groups of red sun true fires appeared. Anything that came close around him was burned by the true fire, making it impossible to get close.
It's only a hundred steps away, but it takes only a blink of an eye.
After a few breaths, the stronghold blocking the front was burned away by real fire. Lu Yuan jumped on his horse and plunged directly into the enemy camp.
Within a radius of ten feet, dozens of enemy soldiers were reduced to ashes.
Afterwards, Lu Yuan charged from left to right and killed more than 200 enemy troops in a short period of time.
Seeing this, the other enemy troops around them, whose morale was extremely low, no longer had the courage to resist, so they turned around and fled.
Then this panic spread quickly.
The coalition soldiers who had long been dissatisfied with Li Xiong did not want to sacrifice their lives for the opponent at this time. Seeing that they could no longer fight, they all chose to turn around and run for their lives.
Some people even directly laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Changsha army.
Except for some die-hard tribesmen of Qiang origin, no one was willing to continue the fight.
As for these die-hards, they were naturally targeted by Lu Yuan.
After crossing the battlefield several times, he quickly cleaned up the remaining thousands of Qiang soldiers.
Then Lu Yuan did not stop, but went straight to the enemy's central tent and began to look for the enemy commander Li Xiong who had not shown his face since the war began.
However, when he arrived at the Chinese army's tent, Lu Yuan discovered that the place had long been deserted, and Li Xiong was nowhere to be seen.
After catching a few broken soldiers nearby and questioning them, they learned that when Lu Yuan invited the battle, Li Xiong had gone out of the camp for an excuse to inspect, and then disappeared to nowhere with some of Li Xiong's cronies in the camp.
"Escaped?"
When Lu Yuan heard this result, he couldn't believe it.
He never expected that Li Xiong could be considered a powerful leader and once dominated Xichuan. Now, it has fallen to such an extent that not only is it afraid of the enemy but it refuses to fight, it even runs away.
Just hearing the voice of his invitation to fight, the man was so scared that he lost his courage and ran away with him.
This made him angry and laughing, but he was also surprised and had some strange emotions in his heart.
"Is it possible that I, Mr. Lu, have reached such a prestige that I can make an innate grandmaster run away without a fight?"
At this moment, Lu Yuan was basically certain that Li Xiong had not shown up for more than half a month because he was afraid of himself.
And this discovery naturally made him feel proud and proud, and at the same time he had some doubts?
Could it be that I, Lu, am so awesome?
That is the innate master.
It could make an innate master run away. Thinking about it carefully, there is only one example in Lu Yuan's memory.
That is when Yin Huixuan of the Liuyang Sect went south to Lingnan, Yan Wangqiu was afraid of the other party's reputation, so he left the Nanhai Sect with excuses just before Yin Huixuan arrived, and did not dare to meet the other party.
But the conditions at that time were: First, Yin Huixuan was a master of the second level of Xiantian, and he was already the number one person in the martial arts world of Yue Kingdom.
The second is that Yan Wangqiu is old and frail. He is already in his twilight years and cannot fight at all.
In this case, it is actually understandable for the other party to flee. People who are familiar with the inside story will not say anything if they find out.
But now, Lu Yuan is only at the first level of Xiantian, and even the time to break through Xiantian is shorter than that of Li Xiong, so he can be regarded as a junior.
But when the senior Li Xiong faced the junior Lu Yuan, he didn't even dare to fight and just ran away.
Even with Lu Yuan's many previous achievements, after this matter spreads, Li Xiong will definitely be ashamed, ridiculed and despised by many innate masters, and disdain to associate with them.
After thinking deeply about this confusion in his heart, Lu Yuan took a deep breath, suppressed the surprise and excitement in his heart, and finally confirmed one thing.
That is, after killing two innates in a row, the prestige he has accumulated now is indeed far beyond his previous imagination.
This kind of deterrence is already powerful enough to affect one side's war situation.
Li Xiong's escape is an obvious example.
Even counting this person, he has the record of scaring off an innate grandmaster based on his contribution and reputation alone. It is conceivable that after this matter spreads, Lu Yuan's reputation will rise to a higher level.
"Overall, this thing is good for me."
Lu Yuan thought about this and looked at the prisoners kneeling around him. He was in a good mood.
Not only is he happy for his victory, but he is also happy for adding to his record, and he is also happy for his reputation.
…
On March 16th of the eighth year of Hongdao, King Lu Yuan of Changsha led an army of 100,000 people and fought with the Zhou and Shu coalition forces in Yuzhong Fucheng and defeated them.
In this battle, 30,000 people were beheaded and 20,000 captured. The thief general Li Xiong, king of Shu, abandoned his army and fled without a trace.
Then, taking advantage of the great victory, the King of Changsha led his troops eastward and took advantage of the situation to regain Linjiang Prefecture.
On March 20th, the army arrived at Wushan Prefecture, captured the city, and marched to Wushan Pass, surrounding the remaining 30,000 Zhou troops in the pass.
Yu Wenchong, the commander-in-chief of the Zhou army in the pass, received the news and feared that he would be surrounded and killed by the four innate masters including Lu Yuan and Shangguan Ming, so he followed in the footsteps of Lian Yun and Zhang Chanyi.
He also followed Li Xiong's example and abandoned the army that night and fled.
So on the second day, after the Zhou army in the pass discovered that their commander had escaped, their morale was in great confusion.
After some confusion, several temporarily introduced principals discussed and felt that there was no need to continue the fight.
So everyone unanimously decided to surrender from Kaicheng.
On March 23rd of the eighth year of Hongdao's reign, 30,000 Zhou troops surrendered at Wushan Pass. Lu Yuan and Shangguanming led their troops into the city and captured Wushan Pass.
At this point, it took two months since Lu Yuan led his troops to launch a surprise attack, but he finally achieved his goal.
Not only was Xichuan's lost territory restored, but the 100,000 Zhou and Shu coalition forces entrenched in Wushan Pass were also destroyed.
The coalition forces achieved their second major victory since the Northern Expedition.
