Southwest of Rencheng, east of Sishui, in a valley of Kangfu.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers gathered here, and there were soldiers dressed in ordinary people outside patrol and surveillance. When they found passers-by, they arrested them directly.

Except for a few guards, most of them were not wearing armor. The armor was placed on the ground and the weapons were placed aside, sitting or lying, with a leisurely expression, but no one spoke, and the surroundings were as quiet as before. Only the army horses with a wizard made humming sounds from time to time, as if expressing their dissatisfaction.

Zhou Xian lay on a complete bluestone slab, with armor pillowing under his head, a dandelion grass stem in his mouth, and closed his eyes and thought about things.

He Jin was besieged in Cheng's family and was completely killed. It was only a matter of time before he was destroyed. Dingtao had already been down, and the entire western Shandong area had all his income. Next, he went west to east Henan. However, there were Suiyang and Shangqiu in the east of Henan. The two cities were tall and thick, and there were many troops stationed. If they were sent to the west, even if they were barely attacked, they would definitely suffer heavy losses.

It is no longer realistic to attack westward, and it is not something that Zhou Xian can achieve. The most reasonable battle strategy is to consolidate the land of gain, deploy defense along the Yellow River, and prevent the rebel army from entering Shandong. At present, the Chuang army in Henan has not many troops, but why isn't he the same? Besides, he cannot completely ignore the capital.

Li Zicheng's vanguard arrived at the city of Taiyuan, and the city's official army had different opinions. Some people advocated withdrawing troops, recruiting young and strong people in the city, and defending the city with the city. However, some people believed that elite soldiers should first lead out of the city to destroy the enemy's spirit, so as to eliminate the fear of the soldiers and generals in the city's army, and then they could hold on to the city. The troops of the two sides were too different. If they did not have the will to win, how could they defend for a long time?

Finally, the two sides reached an agreement, with Niu Yong and Wang Yongkui, two main battle generals, leading 5,000 soldiers out of the city to fight the rebel army, and the general Zhang Xiong stayed to defend the city. The two raided the rebel army and had a small victory. But after all, they were few, and as the rebel army stabilized the situation and surrounded them, they could only retreat. But when they retreated to the city of Taiyuan, Zhang Xiong pressed the four gates and refused to enter the city. Five thousand soldiers were surrounded by tens of thousands of rebel army and were all killed in battle. Then, Zhang Xiongshun successfully opened the city gate to welcome the rebel army into the city.

After resting in the city for three days, Li Zicheng led his troops to advance to the capital and attack Xinzhou. He was blocked by the defenders in the Ningwu Pass in Daizhou for ten days. Chengguan was broken, and the rebel army advanced to Datong and Xuanfu. Jiang Guan, general of Datong, and Wang Chengyin, general of Xuanfu, surrendered without fighting. All the elite border soldiers returned to the rebel army, and the gates of the capital were opened.

However, the capital knew nothing about this. After the army sent out to Juyong Pass, they met Hei Mingdao and Hei Mingde who came to report the news.

The two were the eldest and second sons of Hei Yunlong, the right governor of the rear army who had already returned home, and both served as soldiers in Xuanfu. Hei Yunlong realized that Wang Chengyin secretly defected to the rebel army, so he ordered them to lead their servants to the capital to report the matter to Emperor Chongzhen, and the news came.

Not long after, details came, and Wang Chengyin really defected to the rebel army. Hei Yunlong was killed by the rebel army together with his six sons Hei Mingxiao and Hei Minglian.

And this was just a war on the northern line. After breaking through Taiyuan City, Liu Fangliang, who had divided his troops to march from the southern line, had already left Guguan east and led his troops into Zhending Prefecture.

At this time, Emperor Chongzhen was really anxious and ordered Tang Tong to strictly guard Juyongguan, and at the same time, he ordered Wang Xiantong to move to Changping. Bai Hu also led his troops to defend Baoding and resist Luo Hu and Liu Fangliang.

Zhou Xian received a transfer order to transfer troops from Shandong to the north to protect the capital. In addition to him, Liaodong General Wu Sangui, Tianjin Governor Luo Yangxing, Ji Liao Governor Qiu Minyang, and Shanhaiguan General Gao Di also received a transfer order.

But Gao Di said that the court owed wages for several months and asked that the 200,000 taels of silver owed were first distributed before he could send troops. Wu Sangui's reason was equivalent to Gao Di, but there was one more, and he asked that the people from Liaodong should first be moved to the pass. Although what the two said was true, it was inevitable that they would threaten the crowd at this time. However, Luo Yangxing directly refused with the army and the lack of food and grass.

So far, four or five days have passed, and only Qiu Minyang led thousands of his soldiers to the capital.

Seeing that the two of them were like this, Zhou Xian sent Chen Mingxia as an envoy and brought 200,000 taels of silver north to Liaodong and invited him to help the capital. Wu Sangui had nearly 40,000 troops, and Gaodishan Haiguan Guards also had 20,000. It may be impossible to defend the capital, but it is entirely possible to protect Emperor Chongzhen and the ministers to retreat south.

But before that, Zhou Xian wanted to completely eliminate the threat of He Jin. When Li Yan evacuated from western Shandong, he only retained the bridgehead of Dingtao. As long as the rebel army was willing, he could set out from there to plunder Luxi. For Zhou Xian, he had always wanted to remove the Dingtao point to completely occupy western Shandong. However, when Li Yan evacuated, there were many troops there, and the Dingtao city was solid, so he had never given him such a chance.

But He Jin was obviously not as cautious as Li Yan. He actually launched an attack when he received reinforcements. This time, Zhou Xian used Li Zicheng to approach the capital and lacked troops left in Henan. The Daming Mansion could directly threaten Kaifeng and other external factors, making He Jin unable to judge his true intentions and thus fell into the trap.

All this seems simple, but the implementation process is full of risks. In order to make He Jin completely believe that Liu Kong and the real leader entered the territory of Daming Mansion, and most of the old soldiers began to be mobilized after He Jin went north. The first siege of the new soldiers who had just been trained for one month, otherwise He Jin would not have retreated to Chengshi City and defeated him on the road.

As soon as Liu Konghe entered the territory of Daming Prefecture, he received the order to return to Yanzhou and siege He Jin. This made him very depressed but helpless, and hurried back to Yanzhou. He did not care about the fatigue of the soldiers, so he joined the battle directly, and finally blocked He Jin's retreat to the south and forced him into the Chengshi City.

Later, as more and more soldiers arrived, He Jin was completely surrounded. Although there were still many rebel troops in Yu, there were tens of thousands of Jin in Daming Mansion to restrain him. The troops who were close were small and dared not enter western Shandong easily. However, when they arrived, He Jin would probably have finished it long ago.

Therefore, He Jin was almost sure to win, and he had already met Zhou Xian's initial expectations. And here, Zhou Xian just wanted to see if he could get some more advantage from Li Dingguo.

He voluntarily gave up Teng County and Fei County, and even gave up the military field that Zaozhuang had finally built, moving most of the people to the north side of Sishui to show that he was short of troops. He quietly gathered nearly 10,000 soldiers here, including Zhang Huai's 4,000 musketeers, hundreds of artillery soldiers led by Hao Yonghe, and the five thousand soldiers who had just withdrawn from southern Liaoning.
Chapter completed!