Late Tang

All the towns gathered in Chang'an, and when Li Ye ascended the throne together, outside Chang'an Pass, the defeated Qi army left Lantian, Yueshang Luoshan, passed Wuguan, and returned to Henan again.After experiencing the disastrous defeat in Chang'an, the Qi army at this time claimed that there were still 15 people, but in fact this was just their usual bluff. As a result of the Japanese accomplice Zhu Ahsan's side, there are only more than [-] troops, of which less than [-] are real fighters.

One frosty and windy night, in the desolate mountains of Tongbai County on the border between Tangzhou and Suizhou, on a bare hilltop with only five pine trees standing among several boulders, at the fork of the narrow path, A group of cavalry in poor armor stood silently.There were about three hundred of them, a burly man with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and a beard, with a dignified look and a majestic look, was sitting motionless on the horse, holding the rein with one hand and holding the other hand tightly. A big white flag.

This big flag has a flag tassel made of snow-white horsehair and a silver flag spear point that shines with silver light. The center of the flag is embroidered with a large Chinese character "Qi" in black satin.

Standing in front of the big banner is a very tall steed with a short mane and tail. The horse is completely white without any variegation. .Now riding on this thousand-mile horse is a 34-year-old knight, tall, with broad shoulders, protruding cheekbones, full heaven, high nose bridge, deep eye sockets, thick eyebrows and big eyes, and those big eyes are piercing right now God, is staring ahead.

He was wearing a phoenix-winged helmet, a set of vermilion lacquered mountain-pattern battle armor, and a silver silk woven gold cloak.A bow was slung across his back, a horizontal knife and a cowhide hulu were hung in his waist, and there were thirty sharp arrows stuck in it.This is a quiver with red lacquer and gold. This is a decoration of red lacquer and gold that can only be used by the royal family. This quiver was once used by Huang Chao, the emperor of Daqi. Give it to a guard, let him bring it to Shang Rang, and ask him to lead the rest of the Qi army to evacuate Chang'an.

It was by receiving this quiver that Shang Rang was able to command the rest of the Qi army and lead them all the way out of Chang'an until here.During this period of time, Shang Rang took this quiver to break through the encirclement, and it was dotted, some places were worn out, and some places still had knife wounds and arrow marks.

At this time, Shang Rang, who was still carrying the quiver, was waiting for something, looking intently towards Nandong.

To the east, separated by some hills, about ten miles away, some silver reflections could be vaguely seen, and he knew in his heart that it was the source of the Huaihe River.A little farther there is the campfire of the army, and there is Tongbai County, a small county located at the source of the Huai River and between the four states of Tang, Sui, Cai, and Shen.

These days, they have been heading east from Chang'an, passing through Zhu Asan's territory along the way.Zhu Ahsan didn't plan to fight them to the death, he also knew that the current Qi army was already a complete desperado, whoever dared to block the way, they would fight to the death with them.Zhu Asan is a cunning guy, he saw the decline of the Qi Dynasty early on, and demoted the officers and soldiers early on. Now that guy is the King of Liang, but he also knows that his foundation is his soldiers.

All the way here, the Qi army has been far away from the main force of the official army, and the sense of urgency and urgency began to relax when they broke through the encirclement. The Qi army immediately began to become a little messy. Army, some people want to go to Henan, some people want to go back to Shandong, and some want to go to Jianghuai... There are all kinds of ideas, people's hearts are starting to disperse, and it is difficult to lead the team.

As the second-in-command of the Qi army and now the de facto number one leader, Shang Rang needs to maintain the stability of this defeated army and must not let them split again.He knew very well that at this time of splitting, the only thing waiting for them was to be ruthlessly wiped out by the Tang army in Zhuzhen, and they would be wiped out.But the current situation is really bad. They fled all the way. In order to prevent the pursuit of the officers and soldiers, they threw all the gold and silver that they didn't bring with them on the road to slow down the pursuit of the officers and soldiers.

The most lacking thing is food, just now Zhang Juyan reported that there is only three days' food left in their army, if they can't find any more food, let alone other things, this defeated army will be astigmatized in a blink of an eye.

They had to attack, they had to attack a city.

Only in the city can there be food. The countryside outside the city is already empty, and even if you scrape the ground three feet, you can't scrape food for tens of thousands of people.Their most suitable target now is Tongbai City in the east, which is a small county town with not many defenders.

But just now he received another bad news, Feng [***] Jiedu envoy, Qi Wang Qin Shouquan has sent his general Sun Ru to Tongbai with [-] soldiers and horses Xingye.This damned Qin Zongquan was just defeated by his subordinates at the beginning, and he once surrendered to their Great Qi Dynasty. Now, in a blink of an eye, he went to lick the crotch of the old eunuch Yang brothers and became Yang Fuguang's godson. The king of Qi in the Chang'an court of the Tang Dynasty.Damn, the things in this world are so fucked up.

With three days' worth of food, they had no other choice.Even if Sun Ru led his troops to arrive, they would not have time to change to a second target, so they had to fight to the death.

Countless torches came from the west, walking on the winding mountain road like a fire dragon, and the Qi army was already making final preparations.Although there are 5000 more Sun Ru in Tongbai City, there are only 6000 defenders in the city, 10 people, and Shang Rang is not in his eyes.In these years, he has never seen any kind of turbulent waves. He has commanded battles involving hundreds of thousands of people. He was afraid of a bird when he crawled out of a real mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood.

The mountain he was standing on was relatively high, and the northwest wind was blowing, which made him look particularly cold. The hot air he exhaled formed shattered ice on his beard.Most of the soldiers around him were wearing thin, dirty and torn clothes, and there were patches of dried black and purple blood on their clothes, some of them were their own, and more were It was sprayed from the officers and soldiers.

Because of standing for a long time, many soldiers held their spears in their arms, and retracted their necks into the round collar as much as possible to resist the cold.There were still people staggering, standing there dozing off exhaustedly.

"Brothers, let's get off the horse and rest for a while, it seems that they won't come early." Shang Rang, who was riding on the thousand miles of snow, said, and then he jumped off the horse, and the hilt of the sword touched the saddle, making a sound of metal clanging .

After everyone got off their horses, he walked to the foot of the five ancient pine trees, so that the terrain was higher and he could see the fire in the east more clearly.

"We still have food for three days, but Tongbai City is only a small city. Although there are [-] reinforcements, they add up to only [-] defenders. Besides, Sun Ru and his men were once defeated by our men. Tonight, everyone sleeps through the night, and when it is dawn, we will go down the mountain and break through Tongbai City, the food inside will be enough for us to eat for a while."

His tone was very calm, and his expression was very leisurely, but these words gave everyone a lot of encouragement.

An old grass thief named Wang Shun said: "We will definitely be able to capture Tongbai. Let alone Sun Ru, even if Qin Zongquan's relatives are here, we will still ignore him. Even if swords, mountains and swords stand in front, we can still rush In the past. Hmph, we have been in the world for nearly ten years, and we haven't seen any kind of big battle."

Shang Rang nodded and said: "That's right, that's right. We have been rampant in the world for nearly ten years, fighting from north to south, from south to north, from east to west, and from west to east. The horse was defeated in our hands, and the two capitals of the Tang Dynasty were occupied by us for several years. Generals such as Gao Pian, Zhou Bao, Wang Duo, Zheng Tian, ​​Cui Anqian, and Zhang Zimian have never blocked us, let alone a mere Qin Zongquan. That's it."

"Taiwei, I heard that Li Jing wants to recruit us, is that true?" A young cavalryman who was not yet 20 years old asked with doubts and expectations.

"That's right, Li Jing intends to recruit us, but the details need to be discussed in detail. We are waiting here for Li Jing's envoy, and the envoy is also an old acquaintance of ours. It turns out that the eighth master of our Daqi Zhang Guiba, one of the commanders-in-chief," Shang Rang replied.

Hearing Zhang Guiba's name, everyone couldn't help being shocked.Zhang Guiba is very famous in the Qi army, the real veteran and important minister, Zhang Guiba and the three brothers of the Zhang family are all generals of the Qi army, and Zhang Guiba is also sworn brothers with Huo Cun and Ge Congzhou, all the same All of them are generals.Among the eight commanders, Zhang Guiba's brothers occupied three positions.But later in the Battle of Xuzhou, he was captured together with Huo Cun and Zhang Guihou, and surrendered to the Qin army.Several years passed, but unexpectedly, Zhang Guiba became the envoy of the Qin army to recruit them.

But while everyone was shocked, there was also some anticipation.In the Central Plains, they are now shouting and beating like rats crossing the street. If Li Jing is willing to recruit them, then they can breathe a sigh of relief.

"What position does General Zhang hold in the Qin army now?"

"Commander of Zuodu in Huaihai Province, Uncle Shuyang, brigadier general of the army." Shang Rang replied, but in fact he didn't know much about the official system of the Qin army, let alone what rank a brigadier general was equivalent to, but since he could be named uncle, The explanation is not bad, at least after staying in Qin Fan for a few years, Zhang Guiba has not been hidden by all birds.

Everyone was talking, but the words were quickly suppressed by the sound of horseshoes coming from the east.Hearing the sound of horseshoes, Shang Rang murmured to himself: "Ah, here we come." When he said this, he felt uneasy for a while, not knowing whether he was looking forward to it or what.Shang Rang didn't agree with the matter of recruiting security with Qin Jun at first, but among the conditions brought to him by Li Jing's secret envoy, some of them really moved his heart.In particular, Li Jing said that they do not need to enter Li Jing's territory, nor annex their armed forces, and they can still maintain the current conditions such as soldiers and horses, which made him relax his vigilance.As long as he has soldiers and horses in hand, this is enough for him to agree to talk with Li Jing's envoy.

After a while, the sound of horseshoes got closer and closer, and then in the sparse bushes, under the cold moonlight, a group of people and horses appeared.

Wang Shun stepped forward, "Is it Brother Dong?"

"Yes!" A young man replied immediately.

There were a dozen or so people in this group, and the young man who answered was riding on a big black horse.After reaching the top of the mountain, they all jumped off their horses. Zhao Dong led the black horse to Shang Rang, and reported: "Taiwei, General Zhang, the envoy of the King of Qin, has arrived at the foot of the mountain."

"How many people have they come?" Shang Rang asked cautiously.

"They have a team of more than a hundred people in the Huaihe River, but General Zhang only brought ten people down the mountain."

Shang Rang stroked his beard, "Zhengchen is very sincere, um, let's go, we will meet him when we go down."

The people descended from the top of the mountain and walked along a canyon. The valley was very dark and scattered with large and small stones.After walking about two miles, I entered the mountain pass and saw the moonlight again.Under the leadership of Zhao Dong, they walked into a pine forest, and the moonlight leaked bits and pieces of silver from the branches and leaves of the pine trees.

The pines blow, but there is no wind in the woods.

Seeing them coming, Zhang Guiba got off his horse and stepped forward to meet them.

"Brother Zhengchen!"

"Brother Junyi!"

The two veterans of the grass army met again, with infinite emotion, and embraced each other.

After a long time, the two separated and sat on the ground around the burning bonfire.

"Brother Zhengchen, let's talk about it first, what is King Qin's intention?" Shang Rang has always been skeptical about Li Jing's recruitment. Today's Qi army is like a bereaved dog, and Li Jing's soldiers are well-equipped.

Zhang Guiba laughed for a while, "It seems that Brother Junyi has a deep prejudice against King Qin. In fact, this is a good thing for both parties, so let's open the skylight and speak honestly. To be honest, now that the Yang brothers have established King Shou is the emperor, respects Li Xuan as the Supreme Emperor, and has just conferred the title of King Qin as the Tiance Admiral, but relieved King Qin from the post of Generalissimo of the World's Army and Horses, and turned around and bestowed the status of the two concubine sons of King Qin. It is privately discussed that the eldest daughter of the King of Qin should be made the new emperor. This matter, it can be said that the King of Qin is very unhappy."

"Ah? Why is King Qin unhappy?" Shang Rang was a little puzzled. In his opinion, making Li Jing the general of Tiance and making Li Jing's daughter the queen was a big win over Li Jing.Although the Grand Marshal of the World's Soldiers and Horses was spared, a Tiance General made up for it.Even if Li Jing was given the status of the concubine's son-in-law, it would be nothing if there were some suspicions of interfering in Li Jing's family affairs.

"Brother Junyi didn't understand. There is a hostile relationship between the Yang family and the King of Qin. Yang's sudden behavior seems to be a compromise to the King of Qin. But if you analyze it carefully, it is not difficult to find that, This is actually Yang's showing weakness to the King of Qin, this is a smoke bomb, and under the smoke, it proves that they have decided to take action against the King of Qin."

Shang Rang nodded as if he had realized something, but in fact he was only half-believing, what he was thinking about was what this had to do with him.

"The Yang brothers want to kill the rest of the Qi army and have no other plans. After all, we are all opponents of the Yang brothers. The enemy of an enemy is a friend. This is the attitude of the King of Qin. Since we have a common Of course, it is considered cooperation. King Qin does not need you to surrender and return to our army. The so-called Zhao'an is just a name. You don't need to surrender to them, and we will not interfere with you. The two sides are limited to cooperation and deal with them together. Brother Yang."

"How to cooperate?" Shang Rang was moved, if that was the case, he had no reason to refuse.

"It's a very simple cooperation. We will immediately provide you with some food and equipment supplements."

"What kind of reward does King Qin need?" Shang Rang knew very well what an exchange of benefits was, and Li Jing would not give them money, food, and weapons for nothing.

Zhang Guiba was very satisfied with Shang Rang's cleverness, "In exchange, the King of Qin hopes that you can march to Caizhou immediately, and it is best to take Caizhou!"

"If Caizhou is captured, who will Caizhou belong to?" Shang Rang asked with staring eyes.

"Of course it belongs to you!"

"It's all ours?"

"It's all yours."

"The population and property also belong to us?"

"It's all yours, we don't take a single thing."

Shang Rang was almost unbelievable at first, but after thinking about it, he understood.Li Jing really doesn't pay attention to a little bit of land, money and food.The reason why Li Jing contacted them was, in fact, to offer some money to hire them as thugs. The purpose was to harass the Yang brothers' rear and drive a nail into their confidantes.

They are just a chess piece of Li Jing, and they are just a chess piece.

But Shang Rang only thought for a moment, and decided to agree.Not everyone is qualified to be a chess piece.Li Jing needs a chess piece, and they also need to be a chess piece now.

Only by becoming a chess piece can you go on the chessboard!

(Cooperating action, open Xinlang Weibo, please pay attention to it: Muzi Blue!) (To be continued.)