By the Yellow River, Li Jing looked expressionlessly at the huge waves of the Yellow River surging eastward. He knew that if the flood went down, even if the Qi army could not be completely wiped out, at least half of the Qi army would be killed or injured. However, there was nothing in his heart.
Can't bring up any joy.
Since ancient times, water and fire are merciless. Fire attacks can harm Tianhe, and water attacks are even worse.
Once the flood comes, it will be completely beyond our control, and we don’t know how many innocent people will be affected.
Li Jing naturally knew this, but he was forced to have no choice. After all, once the coalition forces from all parties were allowed to join forces, the Qin army would completely lose the initiative. Whether it could hold Beihai by then was a question, let alone go to support it.
Jizhou was the last straw that broke Beihai's life.
Li Jing was not afraid of Wang Mang's 80,000-strong coalition. Although Wang Mang's troops were large in strength, they were patchworked together and of varying quality. As long as he was given enough time, Li Jing was sure to win.
However, the 70,000 elite Qi troops in Zhu Tianpeng's hands are not inferior to the Qin army in terms of overall quality. They are simply invincible to the current Qin army in Beihai.
Even if all the troops in Beihai were mobilized, and even if Li Jing took personal command, he was not sure that he could defeat Zhu Tianpeng's 70,000 Qi army.
Since he couldn't defeat them openly, Li Jing could only use tactics. If he wanted to defeat a total of 70,000 Qi army elites in one fell swoop, there was no more effective way than fire attacks and water attacks.
Li Jing had fought against Zhu Tianpeng and knew that he was a wise and courageous general. Ordinary strategies could not defeat him, so he put a lot of effort into planning.
Originally, Li Jing was more inclined to attack with fire, but after he mobilized all the files about Zhu Tianpeng, he unexpectedly discovered a secret report recently sent back by the Qingzhou secret agent, that is, Zhu Tianpeng actually did more than land battles.
Good at water fighting?
Although Li Jing was also puzzled by this, the information was definitely true. After all, the spy in Qingzhou had never delivered any false information.
So Li Jing decisively gave up the fire attack and chose the water attack instead. After all, people are always more confident in the fields they are best at, and self-confidence and arrogance are only a matter of thoughts.
Since Zhu Tianpeng is good at water fighting, he probably can't hide ordinary water attacks from him either.
Therefore, Li Jing first tried to confuse the public with his plan to cross the Yellow River four times, deliberately delaying Zhu Tianpeng's attention. The real goal of the Qin army was to induce Wang Mang.
But in fact, Li Jing's real purpose was to gather the main force of 70,000 Qi troops on both sides of the Yellow River to facilitate the smooth implementation of the water attack plan.
Secondly, Li Jing took the initiative to let the 4,500 naval troops die. Only in this way could he ensure that there were no clear flaws in the naval attack plan and that Zhu Tianpeng would not be suspicious.
In the end, as Li Jing expected, the sacrifice of 4,500 naval troops was not in vain, Zhu Tianpeng did not become suspicious, and the naval attack was carried out smoothly. The Qi army was bound to suffer heavy losses, but Li Jing could not be happy at all.
During the Battle of the Han River, Qin Hao was forced from Nanyang to Xiangyang by Xiang Yu. He had no choice but to dig up the Han River and launch a water attack. Although Xiang Yu's army was finally wiped out, it also caused the displacement of millions of people in Yuzhou.
Qin Hao was reviled by countless people and his reputation plummeted.
It was also a water attack. Even the Lord Qin Hao couldn't avoid it, and Li Jing certainly couldn't escape either. He could even guess that not long after, even the DPRK would be full of officials who wanted to impeach him.
"One general's success will lead to ten thousand bones being withered."
Li Jing sighed, and now he realized the meaning of this sentence more personally.
"Huh? Didn't I order the flow to be restricted? Why is the water getting bigger and bigger?"
Li Jing couldn't help but frown. He was also afraid that the situation would get out of control and the water would be too strong and endanger the people downstream. Therefore, he made an extremely strict arrangement for this water attack, and did not completely dig out the Yellow River dams. Why was the water flow still not flowing?
Is it under control?
"Your Excellency, what's wrong is that General Ran Min ignored military orders and dug up the entire dam without authorization. Now the water is completely out of control."
"What?"
Li Jing's eyes widened immediately. He never thought that Ran Min would dare to disobey his order.
Li Jing only brought one general, Ran Min, with him on this trip. After all, among the Qin army in the North Sea, Ran Min was the only one who had any suggestions for water warfare. But when Li Jing came up with the water attack plan, he and Ran Min had a disagreement, that is, whether to dig it out completely.
Yellow River dam.
Li Jing believed that the people downstream would definitely suffer as a result of the water attack, but as long as the water was controlled properly, it could also have the effect of flooding the Qi army. Therefore, there was no need to completely dig the dam. In this case, the casualties of the people downstream would be much smaller.
Ran Min believed that completely digging the dam would cause greater trauma to the Qi army. As for the casualties of the people downstream, he didn't care. After all, there is no human being in a war, not to mention that the people who died were the people of Qi, not Qin.
The people of the country?
Li Jing and Ran Min each insisted on their own opinions, and neither could convince the other. In the end, Li Jing relied on his status as the commander-in-chief to force Ran Min to bow his head. However, they did not expect that Ran Min was just pretending to compromise. As soon as he left Li Jing's side, he completely defeated Li Jing.
The dam was dug.
After a while, Ran Min returned with all his men and came to hand over the order to Li Jing: "To report to the prefect, the general has completed the task, and I came here to give the order to the prefect."
Li Jing tremblingly pointed at the roaring water of the Yellow River and asked: "Ran Min, do you know what you have done?"
Ran Min raised his head, looked directly into Li Jing's eyes, and said calmly: "I will know, but I will not regret it."
"you……"
Looking at Ran Min who still had a clear conscience on his face, Li Jing became completely angry and wanted to scold Ran Min, but when he thought that he was the one who proposed the water attack, he couldn't say anything.
"call……"
Li Jing let out a long breath, then stepped forward and patted Ran Min on the shoulder, sighing: "Well done."
His eyes returned to Zhu Tianpeng.
Under the flood, humans appear so insignificant and unable to withstand the power of nature.
Although Zhu Tianpeng discovered it in time, it was still a step too late.
Among the 20,000 Qi troops on the North Sea of the Yellow River, only 3,000 cavalry escaped, while only 7,000 land troops on the south bank survived.
That is to say, Zhu Tianpeng was calm enough and directly let the navy board the ship and sailed all the way eastward away from the seaport. Only then did the navy remain intact.
After the flood, the Qi army's navy quickly returned, and the surviving troops also launched a rescue operation. Although the rescue was carried out as quickly as possible, only more than 5,000 soldiers were rescued.
Afterwards, statistics showed that the flood directly killed 45,000 elite Qi troops, while the Qin army only suffered 4,500 naval casualties, which can be said to be a complete victory.
Looking at the countless corpses lying on the ground, Zhu Tianpeng felt extremely sad and angry. He looked up to the sky and roared: "Li Jing, you will not die a good death."
He never expected that he would go north with full confidence, but only fight one battle and lose most of his troops on the Yellow River. The loss was really humiliating.
"Lord, what should we do now?" Wang Yanzhang asked with a bitter look on his face.
After Zhu Tianpeng thought for a long time, he gritted his teeth and said: "The cavalry returned to Linzi for repairs, and the navy stayed to continue the war. I will make Li Jing pay the price."