Outside Tonghe City, the Chu army camped.
"Where are the thieves and the others?" General Qu Dazhong asked, his face as serious as water.
"General, the deer thieves bypassed Tiangu Pass, and the guarding general He Zhan led his troops to intercept him, but unfortunately he died in the battle." Tanma Captain Li Lou reported: "Including Tiangu Pass He Zhan, the deer thieves have now passed seven city gates. , including the pursuers, they killed a total of twenty-seven generals above the rank of captain, and they should be in this area now."
Li Lou pointed to a place on the map and said.
General Qu Dazhong snorted coldly and stopped talking.
It was definitely an idiotic idea to let the city defenders go out of the city to chase Lu Wu.
However, it was a strict order issued by the Chu court. The political significance was greater than the military significance, so it had to be promulgated.
Therefore, Qu Dazhong could not object openly. He could only look down at the map and make plans in his mind.
Lu Wu sneaked into Chengdu, rode his horse into the palace and killed the King of Chu - not to mention, when he rushed out of the Guangyan Palace, he killed the Grand Sima Wei Tu, the Zuo Sima Liu Chen, and the General Shu Tong Pinghu. Nine heavyweights in the Chu military including General Weiting on the left and Lincu on the right.
Chu State, as one of the five great powers in the Central Plains, has never seen so many heavyweight military bosses killed in the past two hundred years - whether they were assassinated or killed in battle, there were not so many in total.
What's more, Lu Wu also took away the head of King Chu Xiang's army.
This was a great humiliation that the Chu State had not seen in hundreds of years. All the generals of the Chu State were extremely angry.
The surviving civil and military leaders were really anxious and said directly: The generals along the way must intercept and kill this deer at all costs and seize back the head of King Chu's army. The deer thieves cannot be allowed to return to the south alive.
If there is a general who is afraid of death and refuses to intercept him, he will be punished with the military law of deserting before the battle - running away from the battle is a capital offense according to the military law of that country.
Therefore, even if the generals in the cities and towns along the way knew that Lu Wu was the most brave and had no confidence in intercepting Lu Wu in the field, they still had to go out of the city and risk their lives to intercept and kill him.
Qu Dazhong looked at the map and thought in various ways. He was not thinking about how to defeat his opponent, but how to safely bring back his hundreds of thousands of troops.
At this moment, most people in the camp did not know that King Chu had been assassinated - he wanted to hide it, but the southern rebels on the opposite side would definitely expose it.
If the morale of the army wavers, even Qu Dazhong will not be sure to win this battle.
If Na Lu Wu was commanding the army, Qu Dazhong would definitely win however he wanted - personal force and the ability required to command an army are not the same thing at all.
Even if Lu Wu had started learning the art of war in his mother's womb, it would have been impossible for him to accumulate the complicated and vast experience needed to lead an army, from setting up camps and warehousing food, grass and weapons, to planning roads, arranging ordnance lineups, and appointing grassroots officers, reward and punishment systems, etc.
Leading a large army to fight requires real practical experience, and a large number of talents who can carry it out. It is useless to just read the military books.
But after testing each other for more than half a month, Qu Dazhong knew that the person in charge of the army on the opposite side was definitely an old fox, but he didn't know whether that person was a strategist or a coach.
Judging from the way the army is moving like an arm and a leg, that person is probably a military advisor - according to the intelligence summary, all the officers of the Lu Wu Army came from humble backgrounds. It was Lu Wu who implemented the new military law, allowing the soldiers to elect low-level officers, and then He personally selected them out among the junior officers one by one.
These people were loyal to Lu Wu. In Qu Dazhong's view, without Lu Wu sitting in charge of the central army to calm people's hearts, no one could command such a large army, not even that old fox from the Jiang family.
What's more, that old guy from the Jiang family is good at military skills, but he has little experience in commanding large armies. At most, he is only at the level of an ordinary frontier general, and there is no way he can be so perfect.
At first, Qu Dazhong wanted to show weakness to the enemy and see if he could fish out Luwu, but later he tried his best, but he only had a slight upper hand - of course, this was related to the fact that the opponent had the advantageous location of Tonghe City, but this also shows that The other party is by no means an idle person, and is extremely cautious.
Facing such an opponent, if there was plenty of time and no generals lurking nearby, Qu Dazhong would still be sure to defeat the opponent.
But now that the King of Chu has been killed, and even his head was taken away by the little thief, the news will definitely shake the morale of the army, and then this battle will be difficult to fight - there is no hope of winning, and it will be difficult to escape intact. .
What's even more difficult is that the two countries of Yan and Qi have always been eyeing the Chu Kingdom. After receiving the news of the assassination of King Chu, they are afraid that there will be changes. Even if they have gained a breathing space through diplomatic means, this era is no longer the same. It was an era when a gentleman made a promise worth a thousand pieces of gold.
No one can guarantee that these two great powers will keep their promises and miss the opportunity to conquer Chu.
Now if he makes one wrong move, his army will be in danger of being destroyed.
If the army under his command collapses, not to mention that Yan and Qi will definitely take the opportunity to send troops to attack. Just the army under Lu Wu from the south moving north is enough to put Chu State in danger of subjugation. In a short period of time, Chu State will simply There is not another army that can withstand Lu Wu.
Therefore, the most important thing now is to lead the army back to Yinping City, use Yinping City as the center, use the ground to establish a defense line with a small number of troops, and then quickly bring back the border elites to prevent Yan and Qi from taking advantage of the situation.
As long as the northern side stabilizes the defense lines of Yan and Qi, and the southern side withstands the southern Luwu army, through this period of time, and waits for the new king to ascend the throne and calm down to straighten out the imperial court, with the foundation accumulated by the Chu State in the past thousand years, there is still a lot of hope Odds.
In the 900 years since the founding of the Chu State, there have been more difficult times than this, not just once or twice, but we have survived them all.
The most important thing now is how to safely withdraw the troops under Yinping City and stabilize the defense line of Yinping City - with nearly a million troops facing each other, it is not easy to retreat. There must be no carelessness at every step during this process.
Moreover, it would be even better if an ambush could be set up during the retreat to lure the southern rebel army to attack, thus defeating the southern rebel army in one fell swoop.
Qu Dazhong's mind went back and forth, first considering various unexpected situations, then considering the response plan for each situation, and also considering that Lu Wu would turn around and suddenly jump out to intercept the army in the middle of the road.
Don't say it's impossible - millions of troops were confronting each other here, and that guy actually went directly to Chengdu to assassinate the king. Is this what a normal person would expect?
It is difficult for normal people to understand this line of thinking.
We can only see what the situation is like with Grandmaster Gongsun Boyang.
On that day, Qu Dazhong once asked Gongsun Boyang, if we look beyond the perspective of a military strategist in combat and only look at it from the perspective of a top martial arts master, then how can Lu Wu maximize his role.
Martial arts master Gongsun Boyang said that from his perspective, it would be nothing more than an assassination.
Qu Dazhong just laughed it off at that time, thinking that the martial arts master and the military general were not the same people after all, and they should not be confused with each other.
But it was only after the news of Lu Wu's attack on the palace city and the assassination of the King of Chu came through the flying eagle that Qu Dazhong woke up. Lu Wu's way of thinking was probably not that of a military general, but that of a master of martial arts. thinking.
From this perspective, weren't Lu Wu's previous battles all assassinations?
It's just that his assassination methods are all about charging head-on with his horse. It looks like a military strategist's method. But if you strip away the means and look directly at the purpose, isn't it all an assassination?
Including his assassination of Gongzi Jiu in Wu State, assassination of Qu Wenyi in Nanhe Prefecture, etc.
Even the miraculous battle in Nanhe Prefecture, where seven cities were destroyed in one fell swoop, was a single-handed attack, which was essentially the same as an assassination.
This is simply an assassin disguised as a warrior!
