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March of the fourth year of Qianfu.

After Wang Xianzhi's death, Huang Chao, who became the recognized leader of various anti-Tang Cao Army troops, no longer used the title of General Tianbu E-Adju and the tyrants of the country. He changed his name to a new name. Although it seemed that the new name was not so majestic, it was more combative.

Under the city of Bozhou, Huang Chao called himself "General Chongtian" and established his own reign title "Wang Ba"! Although Huang Chao did not establish a dynasty, he had officially issued his reign title and refused to use the reign title of the Tang Dynasty again, and no longer recognized the true meaning of the Tang Dynasty.

Cui Anqian, who had just wiped out Wang Xianzhi, mobilized his troops to encircle Huang Chao from all directions, preparing to kill Huang Chao in Henan in one fell swoop. Seeing that the encirclement was getting smaller and smaller, Huang Chao sent a letter of surrender to Cao Quanshi, the new Tianping Army governor, and asked him to submit it to the court on his behalf.

After the court received this news, it happily agreed to the request for revenge and generously appointed Huang Chao as the general of the third-rank Right Guard, asking him to go to Yuncheng to accept the appointment and disband the army. However, this was just a bait set by the court. Tian Lingzi secretly ordered Cui An to mobilize the troops of various towns to prepare to wipe out the bandit army in one fell swoop in Yunzhou.

The court planned to make a plan, but Huang Chao did not intend to surrender to the court at the beginning. The so-called request for surrender was just a plan to attack the east and pull the tiger out of the mountain.

Just when the imperial divisions rushed to Yunzhou to set up ambush on all sides, Huang Chao did not go to Yunzhou to receive surrender, but suddenly turned around and led his troops into Songzhou and Bianzhou, and then attacked Weinan and Ye County. The troops were in Luoyang, the eastern capital of the Tang Dynasty.

The eastern capital Luoyang is a fatal weakness of the Tang Dynasty in the war with the thieves. Every time the thieves are beaten, as long as the thieves point their troops to Luoyang, they can force the official army to change their encirclement and suppression plans and withdraw from the Dongdu.

The court never seriously considered the memorial written to the emperor when Li Jing fought in Liaodong. The memorial to the emperor stated that Huang Chao was not capable of capturing Luoyang. Therefore, it was a good thing for the thieves to attack Luoyang. Once the thieves were short of the city and could not defeat it, the official army could easily completely siege the thieves and then wipe out the thieves.

However, when Li Jing wrote this memorial, he had already expected that the court would never agree with his proposal. Writing this memorial was just to participate in the Battle of the Central Plains on the surface.

In fact, the court was indeed as Li Jing expected. Faced with Huang Chao's advance to Luoyang, and he didn't know how many times he advanced to Luoyang, the court still subconsciously issued an order and spared no effort to protect Luoyang. To this end, a series of emergency orders were issued, with Liu Jingren, the general of the Zuo Shenwu, as the Dongdu support and defensive envoy, and urgently transferred the troops of Heyang, Xuanwu and Zhaoyi to his command and entered Luoyang to defend.

Secondly, Cui Anqin, the envoy to recruit thieves in various camps, issued an order to rush to Luoyang immediately. Thirdly, the troops in Yicheng Town were transferred to defend the four passes of Luoyang, Yique, Heyin and Wulao, and the suburbs of Luoyang, and Huang Chao was detained outside Luoyang.

The court transferred all its troops to protect Luoyang at all costs, and the encirclement that was originally like an iron barrel suddenly became a sieve.

Huang Chao successfully mobilized all kinds of officials and finally created conditions for going south. He quickly seized this short opportunity, took the Cao army quietly retreated from the outskirts of Luoyang, and rushed south.

Along the way, Huang Chao avoided the real and attacked the virtual, avoided almost all the solid cities and military strongholds, and soon crossed the Huai River and rushed into Huainan again.

At the end of March, Huang Chao and Shangrang led the Cao army to cross the Yangtze River in Hezhou area, and rushed into the soft abdomen of the Tang Empire for the first time, and headed straight to Xuanzhou, which is Xuancheng, Anhui in later generations.

Mobilizing the enemy, breaking the encirclement and suppression, and moving into Jiangnan is simply a soldier. After Li Jing received the news, he even sighed secretly that Huang Chao's strategic advancement could be comparable to the four crossings of the Chishui River in later generations.

The vassal states of the Tang Dynasty can be roughly divided into four categories, namely the Heshuo separatist type, the Central Plains defense type, the border dismantling type and the Southeast wealth source type. South of the Yangtze River is where the southeast wealth source type vassal states are crowded with.

As the name suggests, this type of vassal state was the money tree that the Tang Empire relied on for survival since the Anshi Rebellion. The reason why these money trees were able to grow money for the imperial court was that the southern economy had developed greatly and began to become more prosperous, more importantly, their soldiers were few and their military expenditures were low. For example, the southeastern towns such as Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, and eastern Zhejiang had only rated troops of only 10,000 people.

Without sharp claws and fangs, but with good flesh, such prey is of course the best choice for hunters. At the same time, in Jiangxi, there are Wang Chongyin, Xu Tangju, Xuanshe, and Wang Xianzhi, the old subordinates of Cao Shixiong, are at the event. Huang Chao also has the idea of ​​going south to meet with the tribes and unify them under his own general's command.

When Huang Chao moved to Jiangnan, the court removed Cui Anqian from his official positions as a sect for the thieves.

There are various speculations in the world about this sudden news. Some people think that the government army was unable to eliminate the thieves in the Central Plains as planned, causing Huang Chao to run away, and the court needed to find someone to take over. Some people think that the thieves withdrew from the Central Plains, and the court felt safe, and the birds were gone and the bow was hidden. Some people even said that this was actually a party struggle in the court. Cui Anqian, whose backstage was for prime minister Wang Duo, was not strong enough. There are rumors that Lieutenant Lu Xie and Hotan intended to promote Gao Pian, the governor of Jingnan, as a recruitment envoy, and Cui Anqian was forced to give way to Gao Pian.

When Li Jing heard these rumors, he only smiled and said, "Cui An sneaked off the stage, all of which are the reasons."

In early April, Huang Chao first defeated the official army chased from Caishi Ferry in Nanling, west of Xuanzhou City, and killed Wang Juan, the capital general, but the victory was not complete, and four or five thousand defeated soldiers fled to Xuanzhou. Huang Chao took advantage of the victory to attack Xuanzhou. Tang Xuanshe observed the king gathered internal and external forces and fought to the death. The "Cao Army" attacked fiercely, and Huang Chao had to move his troops eastward and prepare to enter the prosperous Zhenhai. The area was equivalent to southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai, headquarters in Runzhou, now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, and eastern Zhejiang, most of Zhejiang, headquarters in Yuezhou, and now Shaoxing, Zhejiang.

When Huang Chao attacked Runzhou, Tian Lingzi and Lu Hui took the opportunity to urgently transfer Gao Pian, the governor of Jingnan, to serve as the governor of Zhenhai, sent troops to seek assistance from Runzhou, and took on the important task of suppressing bandits. They also created momentum for the promotion of Gao Pian's next step of recruiting envoys.

The thieves turned to the southeast, and the court breathed a sigh of relief. Although the southeast was a place where the court had a major wealth, it was at least far away from the Central Plains and the capital of Guanzhong.

Just as the thieves turned to the southeast, Zhen** also fought a series of victories in the northeast. The news was conveyed to the capital, which made the emperor and the princes in the court stunned and disbelief.

In February of the fourth year of Qianfu, Li Jing led the town to raid the Chongcheng behind the Goguryeo people from the sea, Boxian City and Jiankou City at the mouth of the Yalu River, and then captured Daxing City. In mid-February, Li Jing bluntly went north along the Wugu River, pretended to be a team of grain transport in Bohai, opened the Wugu City gate and entered the city.

Wugu City, an important city with a circumference of 16 miles, was captured by Li Jing and all five thousand defenders were killed.

Subsequently, Li Jing sent his army to continue northward and captured the northern Shanchenggou Mountain City and the large Lijiabao Mountain City.

At the end of February, Li Jing completed the siege of 80,000 Goguryeo and Bohai coalition forces in Xiuyan area.

In early March, Goguryeo King Gao Degui gathered 50,000 troops from Goguryeo and Bohai Fuyu to move south, preparing to tear open the Tang army's encirclement to rescue 80,000 trapped soldiers. The two sides launched a fierce battle in the Qianshan Mountains east of An City.

Zhao Yuan led the Feixiong Army and Zeng Yuanyu led the Shenjie Army to guard the military orders conveyed by Li Jing, and defended the city without fighting in the field. With the defense line formed by Anshi City, Qianshan City, Chengzi Mountain City, Xiaojiaogou Mountain City, and Moyun Mountain City, Zhao Yuanyu fought fiercely with 10,000 elite combat soldiers and 20,000 united troops for more than a month. Gao Dexin and Da Weiying lost nearly 20,000 troops, but failed to break through Zhao Yuan's defense line.

In mid-March, the Liaohekou Navy Navy transported 3,000 cavalry straight behind Gao Dexin, landed near Liaodong City, raided the food and grass roads behind Gao Degui, and threatened Liaodong City. Gao Degui's food and grass continued, and was worried about Liaodong City, so he was forced to withdraw his troops.

At the same time, the navy leader Pei You, Megan, Julie and other generals led the navy fleet, Zhang Chengzong's Leopard Cavalry, 20,000 Unity Army and Township soldiers, a total of 30,000 troops raided Pyongyang and attacked Pyongyang City. Then, Zhang Chengzong led the Leopard Cavalry to attack quickly and swept the Goguryeo south of the Yalu River within a month.

Liu Shouqian also began to lead the Yingyang army into the Bohai Sea at the end of February, dividing the entire army into five units, each of which was one route, and entering the Bohai Yalu Mansion and the Nanhai Mansion. According to Li Jing's order, the Yingyang army's mission is to fight behind enemy lines, and not to attack the city, and fight head-on. The order Li Jing gave them was a sixteen-character policy, the enemy advances and we retreat, the enemy stands and we disturb us, the enemy retreats and we chase us, and the enemy is tired and we fight.

By early April, the 80,000 Goguryeo and Bohai soldiers in the Niangniang City Mountain City and the Shouzi River had only half a month left in the food and grass. The town surrounded them, but was not in a hurry to attack, but just defended the defense line. As time passed, the situation became increasingly unfavorable to them.

Goguryeo and Bohai went south from Anshi to rescue, and the Bohai people also tried to rescue the siege from the east, but Zhenzhan defended Bobai City and Wugu City. Although these two cities were lost quickly, they were as hard as rocks in Zhenzhan's hands. Moreover, after the Yingyang army entered the Bohai territory, they burned and destroyed everywhere, and came and went without a trace. The Bohai people were in a state of great trouble. Although these Tang troops did not dare to attack the city, the battles in this way made the Yalu Mansion and the five prefectures of the Nanhai Prefecture uneasy, and even the people in Xijing and Nanjing were frightened.

Seeing that no reinforcements arrived, Goguryeo, and the Bohai Army were about to run out of food, and the Shanchenggou Mountain City and Lijiabao Mountain City were breaking out in the northeast.

Eighty thousand soldiers gave up more than 20 mountain cities including Niangniangcheng Mountain City and Shaozihe, and broke through the northeast. Li Jing personally took charge of Lijiabao Mountain City, fighting from the seventh day of the April 15th, Goguryeo and the Bohai Alliance lost 30,000 bodies and broke through the eighteen lines of defense established by Li Jing within 30 miles of the frontier of Lijiabao, but there were still twelve lines of defense away from Lijiabao.

At this time, the coalition forces had finished their food and grass, and they began to slaughter horses to satisfy their hunger.

On April 16, Zeng Yuanyu and Li Liang led 10,000 troops from Anshicheng to Guo Zhenshan, Gaiyu, and Jingxiang led 10,000 troops from Jian'an City to Jian'an City.
Chapter completed!