The arrest of Zheng Zongnan was led by Sun Tu's plan, so he chose such a time-consuming and laborious approach, which was also because he had learned the lesson of Lao Guan's calm death in front of everyone. In order to prevent him from committing suicide by taking poison, he asked his colleague and friend Mai Liang to give him a fine wine with a sweat drug. After turning it over, he could easily get rid of hidden dangers, making it difficult for him to die.

When he was unable to die, Zheng Zongnan's last retreat was completely cut off. Although he had forced himself to grit his teeth and insisted on him at the beginning, Sun Tu would not be polite to him at all, and immediately ordered severe torture to confess. After using the methods in one night, he was already full of flesh and blood, just like a blood gourd, but his mind was still clear and he had no worries about his life.

It was not until this time that Zheng Zongnan truly understood his situation. In the desperate situation where he could not die, he could only suffer. After all, he chose to surrender. After all, he was not a real Khitan, but a Han native, and his loyalty to the Liao Kingdom was not very strong. In addition, he had been lurking in the Song Kingdom for many years and had become accustomed to the peaceful life in front of him. His ambitions when he was ordered to come had long been wiped out, so he could only make the most beneficial choice at this moment.

As he spoke, there was a lot of noise in Yanmen Pass. To be honest, even Tian Boyuan never thought that there were so many Liao spies hidden under his nose. Not only those civil servants who had just arrived, but also seven or eight spies who had been hiding for a long time in the city, one of which was an officer in the north gate of Yanmen Pass.

After taking down the people and finding conclusive evidence, Tian Boyuan felt even more scared. Because once they really colluded with each other and found an opportunity, they would be afraid that Yanmen would be occupied by them in an instant, and then they would have to pay an extremely heavy price to defend the city. Moreover, during this period, the food and supplies stored here would be deliberately damaged by others, which would inevitably severely damage the morale of the front line team and even completely determine the result of the defeat of the Song army in the Northern Expedition.

Fortunately, with the help of Sun Tu, these hidden dangers were eliminated one by one, which finally made people feel relieved, and made generals such as Tian Boyuan respect and gratitude more and more. But Sun Tu was not too happy, but was still worried: "Although the Liao spies in Yanmen Pass have been cleared, they can be safe. However, the current dilemma has not been resolved yet. The elite Liao army is still waiting for hunting outside. Our food and supplies are still not transported to the front line."

Indeed, although Zheng Zongnan also explained the way to contact the Liao army outside, when Sun Tu proposed to simply use the strategy to take this opportunity to lead the enemy into Guancheng, and then set up an ambush and annihilate it, Du Changguo tried his best to reject it.

His reason is quite reasonable. If there is a mistake, Yanmen Pass will be really broken and fall into the control of the Liao people, no one can afford the consequences. Even if Sun Tu thinks that this is a completely plan to close the door and fight dogs, the enemy is completely unprepared, and once ambushed from all directions, he will inevitably collapse instantly. But he still cannot convince the military supervisor. He then said with a serious expression: "What if there is anything? Yanmen Pass is so important, how can you ignore the safety here because you are greedy for me for a while? If it is true, it is not something you and me, and everyone in this pass can bear!"

After he said this, even Tian Boyuan began to shake. He had been guarding this pass for a long time and naturally knew the importance of Yanmen Pass to the entire Song Dynasty. Even if it was a slight possibility, they would not dare to take risks. So in the end, this strategy could only be invalidated.

Then they decided to ambush the north of Yanmen Pass and then lead the Liao soldiers to come, and then suddenly attacked the enemy in failure. Although they did use the contact method explained by Zheng Zongnan, the letter that shot outside was not touched all night, so did the Liao people not have the idea of ​​capturing Yanmen Pass at all?

After waiting for a few days, this strategy was forced to give up. In this way, the only way to Sun Tu and the others was left - throwing out the bait and leading the enemy to the bait!

But this time, even Tian Boyuan couldn't accept it: "General Sun, your method is really too risky. If you brought the soldiers of the Hu Ben Army to the north as a team of escort food and grass, and after attracting the Liao soldiers to attack you, then use wolf smoke as a letter to ask the officials to lead the army to rescue him, then you have thought, if there is a problem in the middle, I will wait a step late, or if you can't defend it, what will happen?"

"Yes, Yue Hou, this matter is too dangerous, please think twice." Even Du Changguo, who had some opinions about him, tried his best to dissuade him: "In my opinion, the front line should already know that there is something wrong in the rear. At that time, they will send troops to search for the whereabouts of the Liao people and completely annihilate them. Why not take this big risk? You have made many contributions to the court, so why bother to care about this small matter?"

Sun Tu narrowed his eyes and glanced at him: "This is a small matter? Now that the front line war is about to break out, and then mobilizing troops to the south will only cause countless troubles to Tong Shuai and the others. If this leads to the defeat of the decisive battle, our guilt will be great. Although I, Sun Tu, is not talented, since I have come here, I should do my best to help the front line solve the troubles. Moreover, even if my Hu Ben Army is useless, it is not difficult to block the Liao army with the same force for one or two days. As long as General Tian can lead his troops to arrive during this period, he can completely eliminate this Liao army."

Seeing that Sun Tu had made up his mind completely, Tian Boyuan and Du Changguo finally stopped persuading him, and could only clasp their fists and say, "Since General Sun is so dedicated to the country, we can only obey your wishes and make full preparations."

"Haha, you don't have to worry too much. As long as we let our army prepare more arrows, and we are prepared to fight, we will definitely not make any mistakes." Sun Tu smiled satisfied and made his own request.

In response, Tian Boyuan agreed and immediately asked someone to open the warehouse and remit a large part of the bows and crossbows stored here to hand them over to the entire Hu Ben Army. By the way, the five thousand Hu Ben Army itself are far superior to the ordinary Song army because of the imperial guards. Even the equipment of the crossbows can reach almost five people per unit. Now, after obtaining the supply from Yanmen Pass, this number has reached an astonishing average of two people.

With such crossbow equipment, Sun Tu believes that even if he encounters a strong enemy, as long as he finds a place to guard them, it will be enough to keep it for seven or eight days.

Since the plan was decided and everything was arranged, Sun Tu stopped staying and immediately led 5,000 Hu Ben Army out of the pass and embarked on the road north. However, unlike when they came, their outfits have changed today. Except for the fact that a thousand soldiers and horses are still the same, the others have changed into ordinary people's uniforms, pretending to be civilians, and they have pushed up small cars to the road. Of course, these soldiers are just wearing cloth clothes on the outside, and they are all wearing armor and armor inside. The chariots are all weapons and arrows. If the enemy does not come, they will be spared. As long as they dare to attack the grain transport team as before, they will be greeted with the most fierce counterattack and the Yanmen Pass defenders who followed!

If the previous capture of spies in the pass was to catch foxes, then Sun Tu could be called a wolf hunting operation this time. What he was going to hunt was the group of wild wolves in the northern wilderness, with no fixed whereabouts, but fierce and cunning!

In fact, it is not just Sun Tu who wants to hunt wolves. Qin Ganke, who has made a military order, is more anxious than him to find and annihilate this Liao army.

But what made him feel distressed was that after a few days, he had never even touched the shadow of the Liao army, let alone found its whereabouts.

In fact, Qin Dan had already spent enough effort, and his scouts were working hard enough. He had carefully searched the area nearly two hundred miles away from the front line. Although he had indeed found some traces of the Liao army camp, he often found nothing after following this clue to search.

At this time, he had already understood that the Liao army commander was also a cautious person, and he was most skilled in hiding and hiding. He was even more worried about the encirclement of the Song army. This naturally made him feel even more upset: "Going one or two hundred miles south, you're almost at the Yanmen Pass. Do you think they will be so close to Yanmen?"

"It's hard to say. Judging from the previous clues, they came to the military rations transported from Yanmen, and it's easier to get closer." Some subordinates guessed casually.

"But there are tens of thousands of garrisons in Yanmen Pass. How could those thousands of Liao troops compete? Since they are guarding us, they will naturally guard against us." Someone objected.

"No, we have ignored one thing. Nowadays, most of the defenders in Yanmen Pass are the troops mobilized later. They are not as brave as my border army, so how dare they come out of the pass at will?" Qin Gan suddenly thought of this and said with a serious expression: "There is not much time left, so we must go south as soon as possible. We can't search everywhere as before, so we can go to Yanmen Pass first!"

When the Song army with 20,000 people rushed south, the other two Song and Liao armies were very close to each other, and the Liao army, which was more skilled in field combat, noticed their location before the Song army.

When he heard about this, the Liao army commander Xiao Yanping flashed his eyes: "Does the Song army actually send people to transport food and grass?"

"It's true. Xiaozi looked from a distance and found that except for a thousand soldiers, they were all civilians, and they were also pushing small cars..." The scout who came to report the news immediately reported.

"Only a thousand people escorted the food team north..." Xiao Yanping's hand rubbed his giant hard bow, and slowly showed a strange smile: "Do they really treat me as a fool? It seems that this is just a piece of fragrant bait, to catch us. No wonder there is no movement in Yanmen Pass now. It should be that our people have been exposed."

"Ah...what should we do?" These Liao cavalrymen were used to solving problems with combat, and others only followed the orders of their own generals.

"The sky is going to be dark now, so wait and see. As long as the opportunity is right, it would be good to eat this piece of bait." Xiao Yanping smiled so hard that he was full of confidence.
Chapter completed!