Chapter 1353: Straight to the End

Chapter 1353: Straight to the End

Chapter 1353: Straight to the End
As the saying goes, speed is of the essence in war. After learning that the main force of Goguryeo was gathered on the southern front, Shao Yu did not hesitate at all and immediately started to advance.

After the order was issued, the soldiers took out the food and fed it to the horses without hesitation. Anyway, the captured food could not be taken away, so feeding it to the horses was better than burning it.

The soldiers of the prefecture began to prepare dry food frantically to ensure that there would be enough for seven to ten days.

The injured or dead war horses, as well as the captured pigs and sheep, were all made into smoked meat. This task was handed over to the soldiers who stayed behind, and the meat would be sent up after it was completed.

Yes, as the first city they captured, Mudi City will send soldiers to garrison there, and the candidates have been determined: Zuo Feilong, Wei Xialou, Longxiang Mansion Buqu Du Shi Xian and more than a thousand palace soldiers and their followers.

They did not need to attack, they just needed to hold their ground, and also wait for the 3,000 cavalry from the Yuwen tribe and possible follow-up reinforcements.

On the 19th day of the leap July, they rested only for one night and set out in large numbers the next afternoon.

This time, the leader of the group, Duan Bao, was appointed as the vanguard, leading several hundred cavalrymen.

The guards of the Prince of Yan's palace and the 7,000 men of the Left Flying Dragon Guard were in the middle, and the light cavalry of the Xiluo tribe were the rear guard, totaling more than 8,000 people, and they marched quickly along the river valley.

On the evening of the 20th, we encountered more than 2,000 enemies on the road and defeated them in one fell swoop, beheading 500 of them. The rest fled into the mountains.

After interrogating the prisoners and learning their origins, Zuo Feilongwei traveled all the way to the outside of Heigou Mountain City (now Hongmiaozi Township, Xinbin) late at night, climbed in, captured and killed more than 200 guards, and seized the city.

The next day, soldiers and civilians of Zhuanshuihu Mountain City (now Xinbin Xiangshuihezi Township) in the northeast of the city abandoned the city and fled. Upon hearing the news, Shao Yu did not care. He did not have enough troops to take over the city. He was even hesitant about whether to send troops to guard Heigou Mountain City. He kept thinking about this issue during the two days of rest.

"Goguryeo is like a fruit core, with a hard shell but extremely weak inside." Lieutenant Sima Luhan laughed.

Everyone was eating, and Lu Han was holding an ox leg bone in his hand, feeling very unhappy.

The Goguryeo people were reluctant to kill the cow, so I will help you kill it.

I’ll help you eat the dried fish that you’re reluctant to eat.

"In fact, he was not that weak." Pan Dan stared at the stew of mushrooms, wild vegetables, and dried fish in the clay pot, and said, "Didn't the thief official say that when he was tortured? The strong men were taken to Xiangping Road to defend the city and stop the army. Mudi Road is mainly for defense, and there are not many elite soldiers. Mudi City lost most of them, and Cuizhen Fort and Gaoershan also sent some troops, so there is no one left. Goguryeo wants to keep the enemy out of the country, but once the country is lost, the inside will be very empty. Your Majesty, I think there is no need to defend this city, just go around Xiangping Road and attack Gao Zhao from the front and back, and the matter will be settled."

Shao Yu remained silent.

By now, it has been almost determined how many so-called "elite soldiers" Goguryeo had: 50,000.

However, these so-called "elite soldiers" were considered very suspicious by the Liang army: their weapons and armor were very ordinary, and they were not professional warriors. They usually lived in various cities and farmed, and were recruited in times of war, that is, they were peasant soldiers.

Of course, the combat effectiveness of the peasant soldiers is also different.

Some have never heard of war for years, but they collapse at the first sign of war.

Some of them go into battle frequently and are not so easy to defeat.

The sources of Goguryeo's peasant soldiers were even more complicated. There were tribal soldiers from the five chiefs, farmers directly under the imperial court, and servant soldiers from the newly conquered areas. They cannot be generalized.

Among these 50,000 peasant soldiers, more than 40,000 were transferred to Xiangping Road, to join the remnants of the Murong clan and rely on several cities to confront the main force of the royal army. The manpower in other places was quite tight. In addition to the "elite soldiers", a large number of old and weak soldiers must be transferred to help defend. Therefore, Pan Dan suggested not to disperse the troops, as the Goguryeo people did not have the ability to cut off the army's retreat.

It would be better for the entire army to move south and cooperate with the main force of Wang’s army to defeat Gao Zhao’s troops.

"How to get to Xiangping Road?" Shao Yu asked.

Pan Dan was stunned for a moment, and said: "I just heard that you can take a shortcut, and the thief official who was tortured doesn't know either."

"That's it." Shao Yu shook his head and said, "Neither you nor I know how to get around it. It's too risky."

After that, he asked someone to bring a map and said, "The road we are taking now was dug by the Goguryeo people during the Han and Wei dynasties. It was taken by the envoys of the previous dynasty when they were enthroned. It is relatively safe. It is hard to predict the consequences of taking a detour. If we are trapped in the mountains and there is nothing to plunder, the army may be overthrown. How can I joke with the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers?"

Pan Dan sighed softly. This is also true.

Goguryeo was so mysterious that the outside world had very limited knowledge of it. For hundreds of years, not only did people from the Central Plains rarely set foot on this land, but even their neighbors, the Murong Xianbei, had never been so deep into it. Therefore, they faced many difficulties when marching and fighting, and could only march along the roads drawn on the map.

"Your Highness." The attendant Guo Shi hurried in and reported: "Gaoershan City has been conquered. The commander sent more than 10,000 reinforcements to the east, and he moved his troops to Cuizhen Fort to supervise the attack on this city."

"Who is leading the troops?" Shao Yu asked with a perky look on his face.

"Zheng Long, the Left Sima of the Chanyu Palace."

"Why take a detour? Let's go straight to Maru." Shao Yu said, "Once I reach the city, Gao Zhao will definitely withdraw his troops, and we can still achieve our goal."

After that, he pondered for a moment and then said, "Speed ​​is of the essence in war. We will not wait any longer. We will send out troops tomorrow and head straight for Marudu. We will leave Mudi, Heigou and other cities to Zheng Long to take over."

Everyone responded in unison, and at the same time they trembled a little. This stick was poking too deep. Would it be a repeat of the feats of Gongsun Kang breaking the Guonei City and Guanqiu Jian ascending the Wandu City?
Guonei City and Wandu City were once the capitals of Goguryeo. They were conquered by Gongsun clan and Guanqiu Jian respectively. In history, Murong Huang conquered Wandu again, burned down the palace and left, forcing the King of Goguryeo to move the capital to Pingyuan City.

Since the founding of the country, the capital was destroyed three times. Once, the capital was approached by the Later Han army. Goguryeo comforted the Han army with carp in the pond and fine wine, making them mistakenly believe that there was enough food in Maru City (in fact, there was not much food). They could not besiege for long, so they retreated.

However, since then, they have become stronger and have never experienced such an embarrassing moment again.

During the Northern Yan period, they took advantage of the opportunity of the last emperor Feng Hong's surrender to the Yan Dynasty and plundered Longcheng's population, wealth, and arsenal, greatly increasing their strength. However, they were completely conquered during the Tang Dynasty.

This country is quite resilient. From the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, it was conquered by the Central Plains dynasties 23 times, and suffered many defeats, but it was not destroyed, which is also strange. This time, it is time for Goguryeo to be tested again.

******
On the 22nd, the army continued its march.

In the quiet Boiling Water (Fuljiang) River valley, the mountain breeze blows, and it looks very peaceful.

However, when the sound of cavalrymen's iron hooves came, the tranquility was quickly broken.

Endless arrows fell like locusts, and the Goguryeo people who were harvesting crops fled in all directions.

On the hillside, the shepherd also rode on a fast horse, and even dared not to take the sheep, and fled without a trace.

Some soldiers dismounted and collected livestock abandoned by the enemy, or rushed into the fields and collected the grain that had been neatly laid out after being harvested.

The village was almost empty. Perhaps they had received the news that the Liang army was coming, so they fled to the nearest mountain city. Those who were caught by the Liang soldiers today might just be some of the men who went down the mountain to harvest crops. Although the battle was dangerous, it was really difficult for the Goguryeo people to abandon the crops that were about to mature.

A large group of cavalry stopped here, but not all of them.

Houmochen led a thousand cavalrymen to replace the empty horses and continued to advance. The others gathered the remaining horses and fed them with cooked beans.

A part of Zuo Feilong Guard also stopped for a while.

They don't really need to maintain horsepower because they don't fight on horseback most of the time, but running too hard is not good either, so they need temporary rest, but the frequency is much lower than that of regular cavalry.

They also replaced some of the horses they rode, probably hundreds of them, most of which were thin-necked and split-eared horses that were a specialty of Goguryeo.

The cavalrymen also liked this kind of horse very much. They all said that they did not expect that there were so many deep mountains and old forests in Liaodi, and there were actually such tall and strong horses. Normally, horses born in forests and grasslands should have thin necks and short bodies.

The crowd didn't get any horses in this village, but it didn't matter, as long as they had food.

The people looked down upon the draft horses that the Goguryeo people used to pull their carts, so they simply skinned them, slaughtered them, and stewed them for food.

By the time the broth was ready, the next group of marchers arrived.

Some people grabbed a few handfuls of dry food and ate them hastily, then drank a few big gulps of salt water, got on their horses again, and galloped away.

Another group of people took the opportunity to change horses, went into the village, found some houses at random, and fell asleep without caring about the mess inside.

This is the marching pattern of their army along the way.

It may seem ordinary to others, but most of the time in a dynasty there are no soldiers who are so hardy and tenacious. Only after experiencing the chaos of times or brutal wars many times will they become particularly tough and cruel.

I was so hungry that I used a dagger to make a small cut on the horse's butt and drank some blood to keep going for a while.

There are also those who are more brutal and tolerant than this. For example, in history, when the Mongols could not get supplies or rob others, they even carried a few bones of suspicious origin with them, boiled them in water and drank the water to fill their stomachs. They considered it a good meal to have human flesh.

If such brutal soldiers met an opponent who had not seen war for a hundred years, it would be a dimensionality reduction attack. Even their descendants would be beaten to a pulp if they met them.

Shao Yu spent a night in this village and continued on his journey the next day, finally arriving at a relatively open river valley in the afternoon of the 24th.

The Feiliu River merges into the Yannan River here, also known as the "Yannan River". It is said that when Qin conquered Yan, King Xi of Yan and Prince Dan fled to Xiangping, "Li Xin chased Dan, and Dan hid in the Yan River. The King of Yan then sent an envoy to behead Prince Dan and wanted to offer him to Qin."

Goguryeo's Ansan Castle is the place where Prince Dan is rumored to be hiding - it's just a rumor, and it's difficult to confirm after so many changes in the world.

Shao Yu climbed to a high place and looked into the distance, and discovered that there was a half-built mountain city (the mountain city of the Ba Dynasty) on the other side of the Yannan River. A lot of soldiers were stationed there, and they were looking at them in panic.

"Their clothes and armor are not in good order, and their weapons are not in good condition. This means they are weak soldiers." He said, "Furthermore, their numbers are small, so Wandu must be empty."

After that, he pointed to the nearby river valley and fields and said, "I heard that Goguryeo prospered here, which is true. The smoke-filled villages are visible from each other, and the fields are crisscrossed. It should be a prosperous and wealthy place. However, most of the workers in the fields are the elderly, women and children, and it is difficult to find strong and healthy people. Why is that?"

He waved his whip and said, "Go and search for food and boats. I want to cross the river."

"Your Majesty, you are able to see the big picture from the small details. I admire you." The haggard Right Chamberlain Cui Jinghua came up and said, "However, there is still Heshenggu City in the west, which is the old capital of Goguryeo. They must have troops. If they attack, we will lose all our retreat. I ask Your Majesty to be cautious."

Shao Yu pondered for a moment.

In fact, both sides are now in a situation where both sides are afraid of each other.

Shao Yu did not have many soldiers, only a few thousand. Although they were powerful, they were still too few.

It is possible that a desperate attempt to cross the river and head south would achieve greater results, but if the troops were stationed under a strong city and their retreat was cut off by the salt and water in the rear, they would be in trouble.

The Goguryeo people were also very scared. They had fewer soldiers and had to send all their main forces out to block the invading Liang army. Then they were attacked all the way to their core area. It was impossible for them not to panic.

In such a situation, every choice made by both parties may lead to different outcomes - completely different outcomes.

(End of this chapter)