Call of the Heroes of Chaos in Another World

Chapter 2302 Jiang Chaoyu launches a westward invasion, Yue Peng leads his mighty army south.

Zong Ze is now completely isolated and helpless, as the counties behind him have been occupied by Xue Rengui's troops.

Even if he tried to break through, there was nowhere for him to break through!
Even if they could break through the two of them, it would be impossible to cross the long Yangxi Road and escape from Xue Rengui and Li Jing to reach the Guandong and Guanxi regions.

However, the terrain of Jiulian Mountain, where the enemy was stationed, was indeed treacherous, and if they were to launch a full-scale attack, the losses would certainly be considerable.

The situation was already firmly in their grasp, and in Deng Qiang and Guo Ziyi's view, there was no need to continue suffering such heavy casualties.

If they were to completely block all the passages around this mountain range and besiege it without attacking, they could indeed subdue the enemy without fighting, but it would still take several months.

The two of them also did not want to waste these few months and still wanted to join forces with Xue Rengui and Li Jing to attack the Guandong and Guanxi regions.

Therefore, after a brief discussion, Deng Qiang and Guo Ziyi decided to send people to persuade him to surrender.

However, neither of them were reckless. They had heard that Zong Ze, this veteran, was extremely tough and knew that the success rate of this matter was limited.

Therefore, the envoys sent to persuade them to surrender were not their own people, but rather Zhao Jianfu and Yuan Fu, officials of the Zhao Song dynasty who had surrendered to the Han dynasty during their attack on Yangxi Road.

Fortunately, the final outcome proved that Guo Ziyi and Deng Qiang were indeed prescient in not sending their own trusted subordinates this time.

Although it is said that envoys should not be killed during wartime, this rule is not always followed.

Clearly, this time, Zong Ze had no intention of following the rules. Zhao Jianfu and Yuan Fu didn't even get to see Zong Ze before he ordered them to be thrown into a pot of boiling oil and cooked.

Left with no other option, Guo Ziyi and Deng Qiang could only obediently besiege Zong Ze until his supplies ran out, thus achieving victory without a fight.

However, almost at the same time as Li Jing and Lian Po's decisive battle, Jiang Chaoyu, to their east, finally began to stir up trouble, breaking the original peace agreement between the two families and embarking on a large-scale eastward expansion.

Fortunately, Li Jing did not relax his vigilance against Jiang Chaoyu while leading his troops to attack Yangxi Road, and still left tens of thousands of troops to defend their rear.

If Li Jing hadn't made such a preparation, they might have been in real danger behind them.

Sima Chou advised Zhao Kuangyin to let Jiang Chaoyu's troops in to replace the original Zhennan Army. The ultimate goal was that even if the Great Yan side eventually lost its support, the Great Song would not be isolated and helpless when the Great Han was fighting against the Great Song in the future.

After all, if the Great Yan Dynasty were gone, and the Zhao Song Dynasty were gone too, Yangdong Road, surrounded on three sides by the Great Han Dynasty, would be nothing more than a piece of meat in the mouth of the Great Han Dynasty.

Regarding Jiang Chaoyu, Sima Chou's other goals did indeed fail, but at least he succeeded in this one.

As for Jiang Chaoyu, the conditions he initially agreed to with the Great Han were based on the fact that the Great Qian and the Zhennan Ma family had a feud that had been brewing for decades, with one instance of bloodshed and another of this time. The enmity between the two sides had become so deep that it could not be washed away even after several lifetimes.

What use would those Ma family prisoners be? In any case, he couldn't rely on them and let Ma Qianli surrender to them.

Therefore, it would be better to use these people and the Han Dynasty to exchange for those three prefectures, to make the most of these people's remaining value, and to get the benefits they could.

Many of these agreements with the Han Dynasty were actually based on the fact that Jiang Chaoyu never expected that after conquering the Great Yan, the Great Han Dynasty would immediately begin to conquer the Great Song Dynasty.

Furthermore, although the Song Dynasty performed slightly better than the Yan Dynasty, the improvement was not significant.

Although the Great Yan Dynasty only lasted for a little over six months, the Great Song Dynasty also lost the Hexi Corridor, which was of utmost importance to them, within the same period. Therefore, under the persuasion of Zhao Kuangyin's envoys, Jiang Chaoyu finally decided to renew her alliance with Zhao Kuangyin.

Moreover, in his view, his position was also very crucial. At that time, Lian Po was still holding the Yangxi Road defense line, preventing Li Jing from advancing.

At this point, if he could seize the three northwestern prefectures of Yangdong Road in one fell swoop, he would completely sever the connection between Li Jing and Yangguan.

This means that Li Jing's nearly 200,000 troops were directly surrounded by them. With their retreat cut off, they were destined to be wiped out.

However, just half a month after Jiang Chaoyu announced the raising of troops, news suddenly came that Lian Po had been defeated.

This gave Jiang Chaoyu a complete headache!

If he had known beforehand that Lian Po, who had been defending the area so well, would suddenly become so ineffective, even if Yangdong Road were to be surrounded by the Han Dynasty on three sides, he would never have declared war on the Han Dynasty at that time.

However, it was too late to say anything at that point!

Jiang Chaoyu tried her best to withdraw the declaration of war, but unfortunately there was no such function.

Not long after he declared war, Yue Fei, who was stationed in the four provinces of the Great Yan, directly led 300,000 troops to press on.

At the beginning of the fifth year of the Yuanshi era, the war against Yan had come to a complete end. From the war against Song that began in March, to Chang Yuchun's army advancing into Hexi Road in May, and now it was already winter of the fifth year of the Yuanshi era.

In such a long period of time, Yue Fei had already completed the integration of his troops.

He completely dismantled and reorganized his original Iron Lion Army, along with over 100,000 elite Zhennan Army troops, plus the remaining prisoners of the Great Yan, forming the current 400,000-strong army.

Although the prisoners of war from the Great Yan Dynasty were the ones who were left over, there were still elite troops like the Iron Lion Army and the Zhennan Army among them. Therefore, even after being scattered and reorganized, the fighting strength of this army is still guaranteed.

The happiest people were naturally the generals of the Zhennan Ma clan, such as Ma Sui, Ma Chao, and Ma Kui, who took the initiative to declare war on the Han Dynasty.

In their view, this was a blatant opportunity for revenge.

As for the Ma family of Zhennan, although Yue Fei had completely scattered the more than 100,000 troops, he kept the promise Zhang Bin had made to the Ma brothers, Ma Qianli and Ma Baili, and the 8,000 Breaking Tiger Warriors were still led by members of the Ma family.

The Tiger Warriors of Breaking Formation were an elite force that suffered a truly tragic fate.

Decades ago, they suffered heavy losses in the battle against the Great Qian Dynasty.

The Ma family spent decades rebuilding, but half of them followed Ma Qianli to invade Guangyin, and the remaining 10,000 who stayed behind were all lost in that battle.

Even the 10,000 men who followed Ma Qianli were ambushed by the Zhao family. Although they fought their way out with their fierce fighting spirit, they still lost 2000 men.

The once formidable Tiger Warriors, numbering 20,000 at their peak, has dwindled to a mere 8,000.

However, even with only eight thousand men, once they joined the Han Dynasty, they were still considered the Han Dynasty's top infantry elite.