"Your Majesty, Song Army Li Xianzhong's troops have arrived in Dengzhou!"
"This is an emergency letter from the prefect of Dengzhou to you!"
Yang Polu handed a letter to Xu Xian.
Enlightenment to the Holy One.
Li Xianzhong's and Wang Zhen's 30,000 troops have now arrived at our Dengzhou City. Although our Dengzhou City defenders are less than 5,000, the people in the city have a strong fighting spirit and are willing to defend Dengzhou to the death.
Here, I beg the Holy One to quickly send troops to support us in order to repel the invasion of the Song Dynasty.
Xu Xian took the letter and took a look at it.
"Military advisor, what do you think?"
Xu Xian handed the letter to Xin Qiji, the military advisor on the side.
"Since the soldiers and civilians of Dengzhou are determined to defend them, of course we cannot give them up easily!"
"And Dengzhou is only a hundred miles away, so we should send troops to support immediately!"
"So I am willing to personally lead an army of 30,000 people to rescue Dengzhou, and I hope your Majesty will approve it!"
Xin Qiji immediately asked for a fight after reading it.
"Of course I, Yue Lin, should be responsible for rescuing Dengzhou!"
"You are a military advisor, so of course you have to be in front of His Majesty to advise him at all times. How can you lead troops away at will?"
"So let me go for this battle!"
Yue Lin immediately asked for a fight.
"King Han is right!"
"I can't live without you as a military advisor. Let the King of Han lead his troops to test Wang Zhen's strength first!"
Xu Xian agreed to Yue Lin's request.
Since ancient times, Dengzhou City, together with Xiangyang in the south, has been a transportation fortress from the Central Plains to the south to Jingchu, and from Jingchu to the north to the Central Plains. It is also an important defensive town.
"Prefect Deng, will your Majesty send troops to support us?"
"Zhang Zhen's soldiers and horses have been besieging the city for three days. They have attacked the city no less than ten times, but our soldiers and civilians have fought hard to stop them all!"
"Now nearly 30% of the residents in our city have been killed or injured trying to defend the city. If Zhang Zhen's soldiers and horses continue to attack like this every day, I'm afraid our Dengzhou City won't be able to hold on for a few more days!"
Xu Hui, the guard of Dengzhou City, asked the prefect Deng Gang very anxiously.
"You don't need to ask me, I'm in a hurry right now!"
"I originally thought that with our five thousand soldiers and the thousands of strong men in the city, we could withstand the attack of the Song soldiers!"
"I didn't expect that the Song soldiers' offensive was so fierce. I didn't expect this either!"
"If I had known this, we could have escaped with our people. Why would we put ourselves in such a desperate situation now?"
Deng Gang looked helpless at this time.
"Then Prefect Deng, what should we do?"
"We can't sit still and wait for death, we must prepare in advance!"
Xu Hui continued.
"We really can't sit still and wait for death. It's time to prepare, get ready!"
After Deng Gang finished speaking, he quickly returned to his home.
Tangzhou is a hundred miles southeast of Dengzhou City.
"General Lee!"
"Now we have captured the city of Tangzhou without a single blow. It seems that in this counter-insurgency operation, our army in the middle will definitely achieve a great victory. We can annihilate the Xu thief army in one fell swoop, capture Luoyang, and restore the Central Plains!"
A general excitedly came to Li Xianzhong, the commander of the Song Army's middle route.
"We were able to easily win Tangzhou because Xu Xian didn't even think about defending here!"
"Furthermore, the mission given by the Holy Emperor to our Central Route Army is to capture Luoyang. What we are facing may be the main force of Xu Xian's army, so we must not underestimate the enemy!"
Li Xianzhong responded.
"Then...general, what should we do next?"
"Should we cooperate with Wang Zhen's army to first help him capture Dengzhou and then go north to attack Luoyang, or should we simply attack Xuzhou and cooperate with General Wang Qi to destroy Pusan Zhongyi's army?"
The general asked.
"The mission given to us by the Holy Emperor is to attack Luoyang, so of course we don't need to cooperate with Wang Qi to attack Bianjing!"
"With Wang Zhen's 30,000 elite troops, it should be more than enough to capture Dengzhou. If it cannot capture even a small Dengzhou, how can it do what I, Li Xianzhong's vanguard general, can do?"
"So Dengzhou does not need support. We will repair here in Tangzhou for a few days. When Li Xianzhong takes Dengzhou, we can go north with him!"
Li Xianzhong continued to respond.
"good!"
"Then I will go and tell the soldiers to stay where they are!"
After the general finished speaking, he left in a hurry.
"Shuai Xu!"
"After all, we are old friends. I really don't want to be your enemy. I am forced to lead the army to attack you this time!"
"As for the battle of Dengzhou, I will not participate in it. Let everything be left to fate!"
Li Xianzhong was talking silently at this time.
The Song Army camp outside Dengzhou City.
"General Wang!"
"There is news from Tangzhou that General Li has ordered his people to rest in Tangzhou. It seems that he will not come to help us attack Dengzhou!"
A general reported to Wang Zhen, the vanguard general of the Central Route Army.
"Can't we capture this mere Dengzhou City sooner or later?"
"If we still want to wait for General Lee to come to support us, doesn't it make our vanguard army too incompetent?"
"So we must capture Dengzhou City as soon as possible and let General Li see the true strength of our vanguard army!"
Wang Zhen said confidently.
"The defense of Dengzhou City is obviously not as good as yesterday. It seems that our two consecutive days of offensive have achieved great results!"
"Then how should we attack Dengzhou City next?"
The general continued to ask.
"Although we attacked for two consecutive days and caused a lot of deaths among the defenders of Dengzhou City, we killed a thousand enemies and suffered eight hundred losses. We also had a lot of casualties!"
"And the most important thing is that our current siege equipment has been exhausted. If we attack the city tomorrow, I'm afraid it won't be as effective as before!"
Another general next to him said.
"General Zhu!"
"How long will it take to build these siege engines now?"
Wang Zhen asked the general who had just spoken.
"Although there are many mountains and forests around here, there is really very little wood that can be used to make these instruments. If we recruit them from Xiangyang, it will be delayed for at least a few days!"
"So if you want to rush to build these siege engines, no week will be enough!"
General Zhu responded.
"A week?"
"Why didn't you prepare more siege equipment before?"
Wang Zhen was a little unhappy.
"The equipment we prepared before was enough to take down Dengzhou City, but unfortunately, in the past two days, the city has been attacked continuously. The enemy forces in the city used the strong walls of Dengzhou City to carry out desperate resistance, which led to a shortage of equipment for us!"
"This...it's not our fault!"
General Zhu explained.
"They also said that I can't blame you. It's just that you underestimated the enemy and didn't prepare enough equipment, which led to this!"
"I order you to build enough equipment for the next siege within three days, otherwise you will be dealt with according to military law!"
Wang Zhen gave the order.
So General Zhu had no choice but to take his people and start looking for suitable wood in the nearby mountains and forests to build instruments.
But after searching all day, General Zhu and hundreds of people could not find suitable wood.
At this moment, General Zhu saw a villager pushing a cart of firewood passing by.
"Stop, what kind of wood are you pulling?"
So General Zhu quickly ordered people to stop him.
"Master Jun, this...this...this is the cypress wood I cut nearby!"
"Master Jun, I am penniless!"
"Please don't make things difficult for me!"
The villagers were naturally frightened.
"Kashiwagi?"
"This...isn't this exactly the firewood we need to build the equipment?"