Volume 3 Chapter 27: Like Black and Yellow (Part 1)
Yanggu was breached in less than two days, and the theoretically nearest route for the Jin army to come to the rescue was blocked. These things were not known to Kong Yanzhou and Liu Lin for the time being... Or rather, they didn't even know that a certain husband had gone to Yanggu, and they were too lazy to know.
For Kong Liu and the other man who set up camp in the wilderness north of Pingyin on the southeast side of the Ji River, they were just fighting hard and seriously, trying their best to paralyze Zhang Rong on the opposite side, waiting for the so-called fatal blow from Li Cheng.
However, suddenly, Li Chenglai came, but he did not come from behind Zhang Rong, but passed by him non-stop from the other side of the Jishui River and never came back.
In fact, at that time, with the military qualities of Kong Yanzhou and Liu Lin, they had already begun to be alert. Kong Yanzhou had even ordered the front-line troops to evacuate the front battle area and prepare to gather troops. However, no matter how alert they were, they could not stop Li Cheng from passing by the northwest of Jishui River, and Yue Fei's troops poured out densely from Mount Tai in the east, directly blocking their way.
The situation is such that there is nothing that can be done to change it.
Since there is nothing we can do to change the situation, we have to find our own way to survive.
However, Kong Yanzhou and Liu Lin are somewhat different:
Liu Lin was the fake crown prince, and he knew that he would be dead if he fell into the hands of the Song army... Even if the official in Tokyo really did not take him seriously as the rumors said, the civil and military officials of the Zhao Song Dynasty would never spare his life.
Therefore, this man did not hesitate at all. Knowing that the situation was critical, he immediately began to gather his troops, rewarded the soldiers, conferred official titles and made promises, as if he was determined to give it a try.
As for Kong Yanzhou, seeing that the situation was getting very bad, he actually sent an envoy to Yue Fei to try to get a result.
This person's behavior seems to make sense.
First, it is the same old story. Both Marshal Kong and Governor Li were essentially bandits from Hebei who drifted to the east of Beijing and became warlords. And if Li Cheng still had some reasonable ambitions, then Kong Yanzhou acted purely for personal wealth and enjoyment. He could have been lured away by Liu Yu with official titles, treasures and the temptation of dividing Yanzhou. Naturally, he had no burden to leave Qi today in order to survive.
Secondly, although this person and Yue Fei did not have a deep friendship, and in fact one was a scoundrel and the other was an archer in their hometown, so they were not of the same kind at all, but they were from the same hometown after all, so he could always find the right person to pass on the message.
Thirdly, Yue Fei's journey along the Wenshui River and over Mount Tai and the surrounding hills to get here basically cut off his old nest, Yanzhou. Therefore, even if he managed to escape this time, it would be difficult for Kong Yanzhou to keep Yanzhou. This was a little hard to accept for Marshal Kong, who had finally lived a rich and luxurious life for a few days.
However, people's thoughts, world views and values are completely different. When Kong Yanzhou's letter of surrender was handed over, Yue Fei didn't even have the desire to scold him... because to him, Kong Yanzhou was exactly the person who must be eliminated this time!
You must know that it was this fellow villager's betrayal that caused the situation in Jingdong to deteriorate greatly and directly led to Zhang Suo's martyrdom in Nanjing. Then, as a subordinate, Yue Pengju, don't he need to avenge his benefactor?
Moreover, it was this same guy who, when in Yanzhou, lured countless refugees from Hebei in the name of being fellow townsmen, and then forced them to surrender to Qi. Among them, Xu Qing and thousands of Xiangzhou young men came with heavy burdens, but had to escape in a panic. As a result, they died in the city of Changsha before they could successfully clear their reputation. Then, as a boss, shouldn't Yue Pengju erase the regrets of his subordinates before their death?
Not to mention, Yue Fei had been coming back from Mount Tai these days, and he didn't dare to launch a large-scale attack on other places in order to prevent his whereabouts from being disclosed, but he had to take down the key point of Fengfu (now Tai'an) first. After Fengfu was captured, Yue Pengju learned about what his fellow villager had done in Yanzhou... It turned out that after Kong Yanzhou surrendered to Qi, he became the local emperor of Yanzhou, and his speed of degeneration was simply astonishing.
Not to mention anything else, according to the accounts of the surrendered people who had witnessed it with their own eyes from Fengfu, nowadays Marshal Kong needs twenty or thirty young and beautiful maids just to have a meal at his mansion... What are they doing?
Holding the plate, just holding the plate.
Apart from this, the stories of falling in love with beautiful women and forcing their families to be broken up, forcing local officials to collect taxes for the next ten years in advance, and imprisoning local wealthy businessmen in a planned and organized manner to squeeze out oil seem somewhat easy to understand.
Could Yue Fei allow such a person to return to Yanzhou?
"No, it's not impossible."
In the hastily erected tent, the current Grand Commandant and the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Camp, Yue Pengju, listened to the visitor's narration in his hometown dialect and seemed quite calm. "But he turned against Zhang Zhenfu in the past, causing a great defeat. Zhang Zhenfu is now facing us, so it's hard to explain. Moreover, there is a lot of resentment in the court for his surrender to Qi. If he wants to return to Yanzhou this time, he must make great achievements... What if he captures Liu Lin and brings him to see us before talking about Yanzhou?"
The messenger was timid but not surprised. He agreed readily and retreated directly.
When the messenger left, everyone knew something was wrong, but they all held back and kept silent. Only Li Zhang, the Flying Eagle, was a straightforward person, and he asked on the spot: "Does the commander really want to let this man go?"
Yue Fei was equally straightforward. He just sat there and said coldly: "It's just a trick. If we can trick him into starting a civil strife with just one word, wouldn't it save a lot of effort? It will also save some soldiers... Regardless of success or failure, we should still proceed as usual and be prepared. When the time comes, we will attack."
Li Zhang and other straightforward generals all came to their senses, and most of the other generals in the tent also showed the same attitude.
Not to mention how Yue Fei had made up his mind and was planning a general attack, on the other side, Kong Yanzhou received the message in his own tent. Before he took the initiative to do anything, he received an invitation from Liu Lin. This man surprisingly had no grudges and led a hundred or eighty personal guards to the other party's tent in the summer heat.
At noon, the weather became increasingly irritable and dull, and it seemed like there would be some summer rain again. Gong Liu, two young and promising generals from Jingdong, met each other at the moment. Perhaps because it had come to a matter of life and death, both sides were surprisingly frank with each other.
"marshal!"
The two of them sat down at a table across from each other. After Liu Lin brought the fruits that had been hidden in the well, he couldn't wait to greet them. "I heard that you sent an envoy to Yue Fei's tent. What was your intention? What was the result? Marshal, do you think Yue Fei can still tolerate you? Under the current circumstances, even if he agrees to let you go, he is just deceiving you."
"He did promise me, but I was just tricking him. Don't think too much, Prince." Kong Yanzhou took out his sword and cut the melon on the table. The juice flowed out with one cut, but he took a piece of the melon and pushed it to the other party. "I defected that day and killed Zhang Suo directly. I also defended Nanjing for several months. In addition, Zhang Rong hated me to the core. Why would Yue Fei tolerate me? Just because I am from the same hometown? It's just that the current situation has reached a point where it can't get any worse. I'm just trying to cheat..."
"How to cheat?" Liu Lin was not interested, but was just tempted for a moment.
"Think about it, Prince. Regardless of whether it's true or not, since he promised me, I can always take half a day to gather the troops, right? Then I can march forward a few miles in a swagger. If I arrive in front of the camp, Yue Fei still wants to deal with me without fighting..." At this point, Kong Yanzhou took a bite of the crisp melon, and the juice overflowed from the corners of his mouth, but he couldn't stop grinning. "I'll let him know what it means to lose Jingzhou due to carelessness in the book."
Liu Lin suddenly realized that the other party was trying to take advantage of the false surrender to get their troops as close to the other camp as possible and then launch a surprise attack.
How to say it?
The plan was naturally hasty, and it was just a surprise attack with one's life gambled. Under normal circumstances, only a fool would do such a thing, but as Kong Yanzhou said, the situation has now reached a point where it can't get any worse, and one should just risk one's life.
All we can say is that no matter what Kong Yanzhou's character is, he is known as the Little Yue Fei, and it is not false. Apart from anything else, although he is young, he has been in the army for many years like Yue Fei, so he still has at least some military ability.
Back to the present, with this in mind, Liu Lin asked carefully: "What exactly does the Marshal plan to do?"
"I was just about to say this to the prince." Kong Yanzhou put down the half-eaten melon, wiped his mouth, and faced him proudly. "Yue Fei wants the prince. If so, I want to invite the prince to join my army and pretend to be captured by me to deceive Yue Fei. Then we will go to Yue Fei's camp and work together. If it works, we will succeed. If not, we will go our separate ways. How do you think?"
“…”
"What did the prince say?" Kong Yanzhou urged, holding the melon.
"Not so good." Liu Lin came back to his senses and said cautiously. "Yue Fei has no less than 30,000 soldiers, and we only have 30,000. But if we break out, Zhang Rong will definitely raise his entire army to chase us, so we should have gone all out... But now there are 30,000 soldiers, the marshal has 10,000, and I have 20,000. If I go to the marshal's army, then won't the 20,000 Jinan soldiers be vacant?"
"That's right..." Marshal Kong seemed to be thinking. "What is the prince's plan?"
"Just find someone to pretend to be me, tie him up and fool Yue Fei. I will lead 20,000 Jinan soldiers behind the marshal to support him." Liu Lin responded earnestly. "Just wait for the marshal in front to exert his strength, and then I will lead the Jinan army behind to press forward! Maybe we can really escape!"
Kong Yanzhou immediately dropped the melon and slammed the table: "The Crown Prince is worthy of being the Crown Prince. How could he come up with such a good plan? If so, we should not delay any longer and break out today!"
After saying this, the man walked away with his knife in hand, reaching the extreme.
Liu Lin stared blankly at the man's departing figure until he disappeared. Then he came to his senses... He had wanted to win over this man by promising him the land of Zibo Prefecture, but he didn't have the chance to say it out loud?
But at this point, there was really no time to think about it. The experienced prince of Daqi knew the importance of making a decision, and he immediately prepared.
In the afternoon, when the hottest sun had passed, Kong Yanzhou sent the messenger to Yue Fei again, saying that he had lured Liu Lin into the camp and captured him alive, but he had no control over Liu Lin's 20,000 Jinan soldiers, so he only asked General Yue to open the camp gate and accept him because they were from the same hometown.
Then, he urged the troops to mobilize and gathered the four to five thousand troops who had defended Nanjing in the past to serve as the vanguard. He also told these people that Yue Fei wanted to kill them all because of Zhang Suo, so they should fight hard.
Then, Kong Yanzhou led the vanguard and sent a deputy general to lead the rear army, and headed directly to Yue Fei's camp in the northeast.
On the plain, after two days of probing and pushing and pulling, the two sides were not far apart, so as soon as Kong Yanzhou set out, scouts from Yue Fei's and Zhang Rong's troops saw the situation from afar and went to report. On the other side, Liu Lin's camp was also in a state of excitement, with 20,000 people divided into a strict formation, with the left and right armies sending out at the same time, and the rear army guarding the rear.
For a moment, in the hot summer, these 30,000 Pseudo-Qi soldiers actually seemed to be ready to fight to the death.
As the sun set further in the west, dark clouds gradually gathered. As the entire army of Zhang Rong of Pingyin was dispatched, the narrow plain on the south bank of the Ji River looked increasingly like dark clouds were pressing down on the city, threatening to destroy it.
After all, no matter what, this was a battle involving nearly 70,000 to 80,000 troops, and it was destined to be recorded in history. Not to mention other people, even Yue Fei in the camp was independently presiding over a war of this scale for the first time, so he was inevitably a little nervous.
However, when it was evening, after Zhang Rong's pursuit troops came into contact with the Qi army, things began to take a turn for the inexplicable direction - Kong Yanzhou's vanguard troops, which were approaching Yue Fei's camp, became more and more nervous, more and more excited, and even more encouraged. Liu Lin's army in the middle was still in order, and Yue Fei's camp was still quiet and calm, but Liu Lin and Kong Yanzhou's rear troops collapsed at the first battle with Zhang Rong's pursuit troops and fled.
No one is a fool. Don’t you know that you are surrounded?
Don’t you know that you are being treated as a pawn?
People from Jinan, Yanzhou and Dongping Prefecture are all neighbors. Can't they just ask for their lives?
However, the imminent collapse of his own rear army and the rear army of Kong Yanzhou on the far right made Liu Lin, who was in the middle, a little panicked, but Kong Yanzhou in the front army was unaware of it.
In other words, he didn't care about those things at all as he was only two miles away from Yue Fei's camp, and it was too late for him to care about them.
Since the second envoy never returned, Marshal Kong, who was resting here, had to send a third fellow from Xiangzhou as an envoy. As soon as the envoy set out, he ordered the entire army to be prepared, and then personally rode his horse up a hill, pointing to the dark camp of Yue Fei's army that was already in sight but still had no reaction and stretched for seven or eight miles, to issue a pre-war mobilization.
But before he could say anything, a muffled thunder exploded above his head, frightening Marshal Kong so much that his liver trembled.
However, he was a man in troubled times after all, and after a brief moment of shock, he was overjoyed, and then he shouted in the increasingly dense raindrops:
"Did you see that? I, Kong, am a man with destiny! Yue Fei fell into my trap and was caught off guard. God also sent rain at this time to prevent him from gathering his troops... God's will is on me. Follow me, Kong. From today on, I want the world to know who is the best hero in Xiangzhou?!"
After saying this, he rode his horse down the hill and led several hundred of his closest armored cavalrymen straight towards Yue Fei's camp.
Rain began to fall densely, but there were very thin clouds in the west behind him where the sun was. Although it could not be said to be half sunrise and half rain, the battlefield did not quickly enter a dark state because of the rain. Instead, it cast a strange color on the entire battlefield.
Turning his head, Kong Yanzhou was riding in the front, followed by hundreds of personal guards and cavalry, and thousands of soldiers and horses followed closely behind. In a moment, they had galloped a mile and even the fence of Yue Fei's camp was clearly visible. Marshal Kong was alert because there were archers and flag bearers on some simple watchtowers made of bundled wood, but they were just whispering to each other, and there was no sign of surprise or panic.
But there was no time to think about it, because at this moment, a sudden change occurred.
Suddenly, a red flag was raised in the camp right in front, followed by red flags in camps within a few miles. What followed was not the sound of drums as imagined, but the sound of countless people shouting in unison in the camp that stretched for seven or eight miles.
The shouts were well prepared and not uniform, but driven by the flags, they were almost the same and clear enough to be heard.
More importantly, tens of thousands of people shouted together, which was earth-shaking, like thunder, overwhelming the rain. The sound alone was enough to frighten Kong Yanzhou and his vanguard troops so much that they lost their composure, stopped for a moment, and the offensive stopped instantly.
Kong Yanzhou was the closest and heard the voice most clearly, which was:
"Kill Kong! Kill Kong! Kill Kong! "
