Volume 2 Chapter 38 Continuation
Xu Qing sneaked in overnight, triggering a crisis that was not a crisis... The reason why it was not a crisis was that as long as Yue Fei gave up gathering the people around Pingyin and gathered his troops to fight back, with both the city and the soldiers, let alone Xu Qing, even if Kong Yanzhou and Liu Lin came with their entire army, they would probably be beaten to a bloody pulp.
However, Yue Fei was thinking about the situation in Jeju and even Nanjing and Tokyo behind him, and he didn't pay any attention to Kong Yanzhou and Liu Yu at all. In his eyes, Xu Qing's military threat was really not worth mentioning compared with the safety of the people of Pingyin.
At noon, the two sides met on the north bank of the Ji River, ten miles north of the city. Yue Fei simply led only 1,500 soldiers to line up in the wilderness, while Xu Qing led 3,000 soldiers. However, the latter came overnight, so their military appearance was inevitably in disarray.
As soon as the two sides met and stood still, Tang Huai reined in his horse and came behind Yue Fei, whispering a suggestion: "Brother, I know what you mean, but it seems that Xu Qing's troops are exhausted and restless. Why not send troops quickly and defeat the enemy while they are unstable? Then we can make a decision after we capture Xu Qing?"
Yue Fei looked back at his brothers, just shook his head slightly, then pursed his lips and moved forward.
Although Tang Huai was rejected, he did not take it seriously. Instead, he rode forward with his gun in hand and called out from a distance in front of the battle line: "Xu Erlang! My governor asks you to come forward and talk to him!"
After a moment, amid the commotion, Xu Qing indeed rode out alone. Seeing this, Tang Huai felt relieved and reined in his horse to return to the battle formation to control the army, while Yue Fei also rode forward alone.
"Yue Zhenfu."
Xu Qing was about thirty years old. He might have come overnight, so his eyes were bloodshot and he looked extremely tired. When he saw the visitor, he could only try his best to bow from a distance, but his voice was inevitably a little hoarse.
"Brother Xu." Yue Fei flew in front of the other party, crossed his horses and faced each other. He spoke in response, then narrowed his eyes slightly, but did not return the greeting. Instead, he held the iron spear in his hand.
Seeing this, Xu Qing could only sigh, and then continued to bow: "Yue Zhenfu, I led thousands of brothers here from Hebei that day. Yue Zhenfu wrote to me and asked me to go to Jeju, but I thought that Yue Zhenfu had a lot of talents under his command. As the saying goes, it is better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of an ox, so I accepted Kong Yanzhou's invitation and went to Yanzhou, but I never expected that this day would come... Yue Zhenfu, Kong Yanzhou believed Liu Yu's lies, saying that the Jin people wanted Liu Yu to be the emperor and Liu Lin to be the prince, and Liu Yu and his son promised him a Grand Marshal of the Army, and in turn promised me a Deputy Marshal. But my brother came from Hebei and really didn't want to follow the Jin people. Now he is desperate and comes to surrender, I hope you will accept him!"
After saying this, the man bowed again on his horse, showing his sincerity.
However, when Yue Fei heard this, he just rolled his eyes and looked at the other person, neither saying anything nor nodding.
Just as Xu Qing was about to say something else, Yue Pengju suddenly stabbed a spear towards the opponent's neck. Xu Qing was so frightened that he immediately rolled off his horse to avoid it. When he stood up, he broke out in a cold sweat again... It turned out that Yue Fei's spear blocked an arrow, and the arrow came from behind him.
Not only that, after an arrow was fired, Xu Qing fell off his horse again. In the distance, Xu Qing's troops suddenly became noisy, and then dozens of riders swarmed over. Seeing this, Xu Qing hurriedly wanted to mount his horse, but found that his horse had already been frightened and ran away. He couldn't help but feel cold in his heart... He knew that his actions today had blocked someone's way, and if he couldn't deal with it properly now, let alone taking back the military power, even his life might not be saved.
"Is it the one with the red turban?" At this moment, Yue Fei still did not move, but raised his gun on the horse and pointed it at the dozens of cavalrymen who were about to arrive in front of him.
When Xu Qing heard Yue Fei's question, he suddenly realized it, but he didn't have time to say anything. He could only quickly respond from the ground: "That's the man!"
In a flash, as soon as Xu Qing said the word "yes", Yue Pengju's face turned serious, and he drew his spear and took out his bow. He didn't care that dozens of riders were about to rush to him, but calmly put his arrow on it and shot forward.
Before Xu Qing could understand the situation clearly, Tang Huai led dozens of cavalrymen to rush over from behind him, and some people even offered their horses to him... When he got on the horse again, he was shocked to find that the deputy general with a red headscarf who had plotted against him had fallen off his horse, and the dozens of cavalrymen who were rushing towards him were all panicked and dared not move.
Yue Fei turned around and pursed his lips slightly. How could Xu Qing dare to waste the opportunity again? He rode forward directly, bypassed the dozens of riders who were still confused, shouted to his trusted generals behind him, and galloped straight into the army.
In a moment, the two armies joined together and captured the deputy general's confidant, and a riot that could have caused unexpected consequences was eliminated.
After this incident, Xu Qing was already extremely terrified and grateful to Yue Fei, so his decision became more natural. As for Kong Yanzhou, it was not that he did not send out a pursuit force... In fact, this was also the courage of the deputy general who had evil intentions... But after the pursuit troops heard from afar that Xu Qing had joined Yue Fei and entered Pingyin City, they were intimidated by Yue Fei and Xu Qing's reputation and did not dare to come again.
However, after easily dealing with the matter of Xu Qing's surrender, Yue Pengju led his troops to escort the people in the north of Dongping Prefecture to withdraw southward in an orderly manner. After two days, they arrived at Yunzhou City (the capital of Dongping Prefecture, in fact, the original name of Dongping Prefecture was Yunzhou). He met Zhang Rong who had organized his troops out of Shuibo to support them, but he received the expected bad news - Dingtao, the capital of his Guangji Army, had fallen.
There was no way. Dingtao was the place where General Yang summoned all kinds of heroes to hold a heroic meeting that day, and it was also the place where Yue Fei and Zhang Rong met. However, the city was to the west and north of the Jishui River and Liangshan Lake, which was exactly on the path of the Jin cavalry heading south... and the defending general Fu Xuan only stayed there with about a thousand people because of this expedition.
In fact, on that day the Jin army moved quickly southwest along the north and east sides of the Ji River. Although Yue Fei noticed it at the first time in Pingyin, he was separated from the enemy by the huge Liangshan Lake and even his fast horses could not deliver the message before the enemy. Therefore, the entire army had already anticipated the fall of Dingtao.
On the other hand, since it was related to the safety of the other party's base, Zhang Rong did not keep the other party for long. He just took over the civilians escorted by the other party and delivered the military equipment in the city as a thank you. As for the affiliation of Li Kui and others, he was also very clear and directly reiterated their status. He handed over these foreign generals who had lost confidence in him to Yue Fei, and took the initiative to urge the other party to lead the newly recruited generals to go south immediately to clean up the situation.
However, Yue Fei left the people of Dongping Prefecture behind and marched south with his army at high speed. Only half a day later, he learned a bad news - after the Jin army broke through Dingtao, they immediately crossed the river, but after crossing the river, they did not attack Jeju, which had an empty defense, but continued to go straight south!
In other words, the situation that Yue Fei was most worried about came true. The Jin people were so deliberate, crossing the river secretly and dividing their troops, just to catch the Song people off guard and to do something stupid, and to abolish Zhang Suo's army in Nanjing (Shangqiu) right away!
Then, as Yue Fei led his troops into Jeju, bad news continued to come.
For example, Fu Xuan, who escaped at the risk of his life, brought news that the number of Jin troops that broke through Dingtao that day was no less than 10,000. He saw with his own eyes that two groups of Jin cavalry, each with 5,000 to 6,000 horses, gathered together at the foot of the city that day... One group came from the northeast along the Ji River, which were the troops led by the Wanhu Ali; and the other group, under the flag of Wanhu Elubu, had no unusual attire, but came from the northwest in the wilderness, and it was not known whether they came from Puzhou or Huazhou.
If there are less than ten thousand Jurchens, they will be invincible!
Of course, this statement was absurd to Yue Fei, who had rich experience in fighting the Jin people. He had been fighting the Jurchens for four or five years, and he knew that the Jurchens were also human and would die. Moreover, since the day he took office as the pacification envoy, he had always thought that in just two or three years, he could train tens of thousands of infantrymen to fight against tens of thousands of Jin cavalrymen in the field...
However, back to the present, Yue Pengju knew very well that his troops had only been formed for less than half a year and might not be able to fight the Jurchens head on. Just take Zhang Suo's Nanjing as an example. There were only a weak army of 120,000 but only 130,000 in fact, which was said to be 15,000.
It was indeed a weak army. Among the 120,000 to 130,000 soldiers, 4,000 to 5,000 were surrendered bandits, 5,000 to 6,000 were newly recruited soldiers brought from Shouchun, and only 1,000 to 2,000 were the so-called 'elite' of the Western Army, and they were still led by Xin Daozon (San Xin), who was like a yamen official.
According to Yue Fei, if there were only five or six thousand people, and Xin Daozon could stay alert and defend the city, he might be able to wait for support from him and General Zhang Jun. But with more than ten thousand Jurchen troops, unless Yue Fei could lead his troops to fly over... or even if he flew over, it would not work, because Nanjing might have fallen by then, and his benefactor Zhang Suo Zi Zheng was in great danger.
With this thought in mind, Yue Fei, who had some hope in his mind, simply passed by Jeju City without entering. He simply abandoned the baggage and asked Wang Gui to pick it up behind him while he led his troops quickly to the southwest.
However, just as he led his army to the border between Shanzhou and Jeju, the densely packed defeated soldiers and the fleeing people of Yingtianfu (where Nanjing is located) and Shanzhou conveyed the exact news to Yue Zhenfu - Xin Daozon died in a hasty battle, and Zhang Suo was taken advantage of by the enemy due to his misjudgment. He was so ashamed that he chose to burn himself to death in the Nanjing Palace.
This incident dealt Yue Pengju an unprecedented blow, because Zhang Suo's kindness to him was similar to that of Zong Ze. For Yue Fei, who lost his father at the age of nineteen, the two of them were truly father and son.
You can't raise an army just because you are angry, let alone when the enemy's situation is unclear?
Yue Fei understood this principle as early as when he arrived in Xiangzhou that day, so the Jeju Governor had no choice but to take precautions and withdraw to Jeju. Then, he carefully deployed defenses relying on the Heshui River southwest of Jeju, and sent a messenger to the southeast direction, to ask for instructions from General Zhang Jun, the only friendly army with sufficient troops on the side of Jeju surrounded on three sides.
However, bad things always seem to happen in clusters. Just when they stabilized the defense line, a huge internal conflict broke out within Yue's army!
