The Moon in the Qin Dynasty

Chapter 691 Brotherly Friendship and Respect
Moreover, there is no longer any hidden threat from Fu Chu in the Chu court, which gives him enough time and preparation to adjust the court situation and then confront Fu Chu openly.

In addition, after Xiong Han had experienced assassination attempts and nearly encountered unexpected events, he became more rigorous and cautious in protecting the monarch.

Fu Chu's trump card was also used in the previous assassination, which meant that Xiong You would not be killed by ghostly means.

Although Xiong You's personal ability is not as good as Xiong Han and Fu Chu, if he can take over smoothly, he has the advantage and can still fight with Fu Chu. After all, Fu Chu only has a small corner of the country.

After Xiong Han died, Fu Chu pretended to send people to express condolences, but in fact he was investigating the truth of the power transfer. If there was a chance, he would attack immediately.

But unfortunately, the transfer of power had already begun before Xiong Han's death, and Fu Chu did not have this opportunity.

And when Xiong Yougang succeeded to the throne, according to convention, he must have also launched external attacks to demonstrate his martial spirit.

However, after looking at Daqin next to him, Xiong You decisively set his target on Fu Chu.

How can we attack other countries without any reason? I will not do such unjust things.

But the rebellion must be resolved!
A country cannot have two masters, and there cannot be two suns in the sky!
Fu Chu, the rebel who has been like a thorn in the king's side when his brother was in power, must be dealt with!
There can only be one king in Da Chu!

Then Xiong You sent a letter to Changping Jun.

Ask if there is any possibility that Daqin will take advantage of the situation to rob?

After consulting Ying Zheng, Changping Jun replied to Xiong You that unless there were special circumstances, Qin had no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of Chu.

Xiong You had both joy and sorrow. The joy was that the Qin State had suffered another disaster. Zhao had been punished by heaven for three consecutive years, causing serious damage to the entire Qin State. It seemed that the Qin State had neither the energy nor the mind to interfere with the Chu State.

The worry is, this is uncertain.

What is a special situation? This makes Xiong You quite conflicted.

Isn't it you, the Great Qin, who have the final say on this so-called special situation?
Xiong You knew very well that even though the Qin State was suffering heavy losses in disaster relief, it still had enough strength to attack Chu if it wanted to. He could not act rashly without being sure of Qin's attitude.

Then Xiong You sent an envoy to ask the Qin Dynasty for help in suppressing the rebellion!

Xiong You wanted to use this opportunity to test Qin's true thoughts.

Ying Zheng ignored him. Xiong Han, who was stronger than Fu Chu, could not destroy Fu Chu. Xiong You, who had just succeeded to the throne and was even weaker than Xiong Han, had no chance of defeating Fu Chu.

Let them brothers continue to fight among themselves.

Ying Zheng said that the Qin State was busy with disaster relief and had no time to care about the State of Chu. He then sent the envoy back without saying anything.

In fact, he was secretly paying close attention to what was going to happen in Chu State next, and had made all preparations. He must not let Xiong You win! No matter if it was a big defeat or a small defeat, he could not win anyway.

As for Xiong You, after receiving the reply from Ying Zheng, he gritted his teeth, thought again and again, and decided to attack Fu Chu despite all objections.

He felt that, on the one hand, it would take time for Qin to digest the territories of Wei and Qi; on the other hand, the losses in disaster relief were severe, and it was probably true that Qin had no time to take care of other things.

In any case, one side will gain while the other side will lose. If the situation drags on, Qin will recover its strength, and it is hard to say what will happen. Fuchu has also been accumulating strength, and Chu is about to split in essence, so there is no time to delay.

Even though Li Yuan tried to dissuade him strongly, Xiong You did not listen.

Now that things have come to this, we have no choice but to take action.

After two years of recuperation, Xiong You, or the entire Chu State, has recovered a little bit of its vitality.

Xiong You gritted his teeth and raised an army of 200,000, still led by Li Yuan, and marched towards Jiangdong in a mighty force.

With the information support from Ying Zheng, Fu Chu had already made preparations for the response and knew the basis of this attack very clearly.

Under the targeted defense, facing the extremely perfect defense that Fu Chu had spared no effort to build over the past few years, Li Yuan had no idea where to start.

The Yangtze River is a natural barrier, and the city defense lines on both sides of the river are all in Fuchu's hands, and they are completely connected into a line. Fuchu's soldiers are all good at water battles, and they have many warships. Relying on Jinling City as the core, they can attack or defend, and are basically impeccable.

As for Li Yuan, not to mention the lack of warships, it was difficult for him to capture the cities on the north bank of the Yangtze River because of the natural barrier of the Yangtze River.

These cities support each other, with Nanjing as the core and the Yangtze River at their back. It is impossible to lay siege and wage a protracted war because Nanjing can provide water support and transport food and supplies at any time.

Li Yuan couldn't help cursing, "Damn Wei and Qi. If they hadn't caused trouble back then, they wouldn't have fallen to this point!"

If the important places on the north bank of the Yangtze River are not lost, we can directly cross the river from multiple places to attack Nanjing. It is not like now, all the strategic locations are in the hands of Fu Chu, who has painstakingly built them up for several years. Although they are not impeccable, they are difficult to attack.

Internal strife already has low morale, and a head-on fight would result in too heavy a loss, so the soldiers would not do it.

Looking at these big cities connected in a line, Li Yuan felt really helpless.

Originally, Li Yuan was not in favor of attacking Fu Chu. Fu Chu had become a powerful force and it would not be so easy to eliminate him. They needed to wait for the right opportunity.

After all, Jiangdong is the base camp of the Jing family, and Fu Chu is now a cuckoo in the nest. Now the two sides are only united under the threat of the death of their entire families.

The Jing family borrowed Fuchu's name, and Fuchu borrowed the power of the Jing family. The other small and medium nobles who supported Fuchu were now in a dilemma.

As time goes by, Fu Chu and Jing will inevitably become resentful, and that will be the real chance to put down the rebellion.

In other words, it already exists now, and if we ignore it, they might start fighting.

But now that a large army is approaching, under the threat, they will be forced to give up their grudges and continue to unite, which will ease their conflicts.

Now that he has just ascended the throne, the most important thing for him is to continue to recuperate. It would be difficult to completely quell the rebellion by attacking Fu Chu, and it would even be difficult to achieve any success.

What's worse, if he fails, it will damage his reputation and be detrimental to the stability of the court.

However, Xiong You was eager to establish his authority, so he did not listen to Li Yuan and insisted on sending troops.

The result was exactly as expected. The 200,000-strong army stationed on the north bank of the Yangtze River had no place to start their attack, and the daily consumption of food for people and horses was a huge amount.

But Li Yuan had no idea how to attack.

There are many stupid battles in this world. Apart from fighting hard, there is no room for tricks. It is very normal for a stalemate to last for a year or two. However, the loss of fighting hard is too great, and Li Yuan cannot help but take into account the dynamics of Qin.

As for Fu Chu, Li Yuan's estimation was absolutely correct. The peace in the past two years had indeed caused some conflicts between Fu Chu and the Jing family, but both sides had exercised restraint and the conflicts had not evolved too much.

Xiong Youda's massive attack at this time made them temporarily put aside their grudges and continue to work together to fight the enemy.

The natural defense line of the Yangtze River, which had been built over the years, was easy to defend but difficult to attack, leaving Li Yuan helpless. Fu Chu, for the sake of his own reputation, took the initiative to attack everywhere, mainly to harass.

Taking advantage of the terrain of Jiangdong with many lakes and hills, he organized lightly armed troops to harass the logistics lines of the Chu army and deplete its morale.

The harassment made Li Yuan exhausted, and he had no choice but to withdraw his troops.

After gathering his troops, Fu Chu was helpless in the face of the army's solid defense, and the two sides fell into a standoff again.

Li Yuan launched a tentative attack on the city on the north bank of the Yangtze River, but stopped the siege after suffering a slight setback.

This is the disadvantage of fighting a civil war. Both sides know each other too well, and no tricks are useful.

The battle turned out like this, with two brothers fighting each other, both of them were good at defense but not able to attack. Both sides also had their own strong supporters. Although Xiong You's side was stronger, they did not have absolutely overwhelming force.

Faced with Fu Chu, who had completely occupied the geographical advantage and natural barriers, it was ultimately difficult for him to make any progress.

The two sides entered a standoff again.

But Xiong You could not afford to delay any longer. The army was so large and the amount of food and fodder consumed was astronomical. If he could not advance quickly, he would have to retreat.

After Fu Chu's operations over the past few years, the entire Jiangdong region was on the verge of becoming a de facto separatist regime.

After the two sides confronted each other for a month, Li Yuan decided that there could be no further delay and that the troops had to withdraw.

After Li Yuan sent several urgent letters, Xiong You had to withdraw his troops, ending this war that started off well but ended badly.

Li Yuan urged Xiong You not to attack by force, but to take political measures to persuade him to lift Xiong Han's policy towards Jiangdong.

Jiangdong had no intention of breaking away from Chu and becoming independent, nor did it have the ability to do so.

The most important thing now is to divide the noble forces of Jiangdong and make them stop supporting Fu Chu.

Li Yuan suggested that Xiong You pardon all the rioters and only execute the main culprit, and not pursue the others. Even the Jing family could be pardoned as long as the clan leader was replaced.

Xiong You has been hesitant about Li Yuan's suggestion.

To be fair, this was the best choice. The biggest reason why the Jiangdong nobles did not dare to surrender was because they knew that with their fierce personalities, they would die if they surrendered, and their past crimes would inevitably be brought up again.

However, Xiong You does not have a bad reputation at present, so this strategy is feasible.

The land of Jiangdong is confined to a corner and all its resources have been blocked. Today, the development of Jiangdong is limited and the population is sparse. Both nobles and common people have always lived in hardship. In addition, the Baiyue in the south have been harassing them, and the environment is actually very bad.

It cannot be said that there is an overwhelming amount of complaints, but whether it is the nobles or the common people, it can only be said that they are full of resentment.

The small and medium-sized nobles and the common people did not want civil war in the first place, not to mention that their lives had become increasingly difficult over the past few years.

For the nobles, they were rebelling against Xiong Han, not the State of Chu. The development of things to this point today was not what they wanted to see.

Xiong You is now considering another problem. If he easily pardons these rebels, where will he get the dignity of his new throne?

If he solved the problem by compromising, would he still have the dignity to be a king? How should he govern the State of Chu in the future?

What's more, he inherited Xiong Han's throne, and this group of rebels have always been Xiong Han's core enemy. If he forgives the rebels, then what about the legitimacy of his throne?
Also, the rumors from the past not only involved Xiong Han, but also the Queen Mother!
The reputation of Queen Mother Chu was also completely ruined, but she was his biological mother!
No matter from which perspective, Fu Chu's rebellion must be suppressed, not compromised.

(End of this chapter)