save the bachelors

Chapter 4359 [Turning the Tide]

Xiang Nan then led the remaining 20,000 troops of the Song clan to Shaoguan to fight against the 150,000 troops of the Li clan.

Twenty thousand versus one hundred and fifty thousand, it seems that the strength is quite different, but Xiang Nan is very confident in himself.

Song Yuzhi was very worried, "Kou Zhong, you must come back alive."

"Don't say such discouraging words. I will definitely come back alive." Xiang Nan waved his hand and smiled.

After arriving in Shaoguan, Xiang Nan took over Song Shidao's command, "Brother, thank you for your hard work over the years~"

"Kou Zhong, you are the only one who understands me." Song Shidao said with emotion.

He didn't originally want to be an emperor, but his father forced him to do so.

"Shimin is very good at fighting, you must be careful." Song Shidao warned again.

Xiang Nan nodded, "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

Li Shimin was a rare emperor in history who was both great in civil and military affairs. He even ranked among the top emperors of all dynasties, on par with the Qin Shi Huang, Han Wudi, Tang Taizong, Song Taizu, Genghis Khan, Zhu Yuanzhang...

The reason why the Song clan suffered a series of defeats was because Song Que underestimated Li Shimin, thinking that he was a junior and that he was unwilling to personally fight with him for the world.

As a result, Li Shimin's military ability was by no means inferior to his, and was far superior to Song Shidao, so the failure of the Song clan was doomed.

But Xiang Nan will not underestimate him.

As soon as he arrived in Shaoguan, he immediately used the technique of gathering beasts and birds to get a group of birds to serve as his own reconnaissance planes to find out the location of Li Shimin's food and pay.

That night, he went straight to Li Shimin's grain storage area, and with a flying spell, he emptied the granary of tens of thousands of stones of grain. Then with a "flame storm", the entire granary was suddenly engulfed in flames, and there was no way to save it.

After the military rations were burned, Li Shimin's 150,000-strong army suddenly fell into a food shortage.

Li Shimin never expected that his food and wages would be burned so cleanly.

In fact, he did send martial arts masters and heavy troops to guard the granary.

After all, "The Twin Dragons" is a martial arts world with many masters. Although martial arts masters are not good enough to fight against the army, they are perfect for reconnaissance, destruction, and assassination.

Therefore, he specially ordered Li Jing, Hong Fu, Cheng Yaojin and other masters to guard the granary to prevent them from sneaking in and destroying it. Unexpectedly, the granary was ultimately destroyed, and tens of thousands of stones of grain and salaries were burned, causing the 150,000-man army to face the risk of food shortage.

If food was not delivered in time, morale would be greatly disrupted and even the army would be dispersed. Therefore, Li Shimin urgently transferred food on the one hand and led his army to attack Shaoguan on the other.

We were preparing to capture Shaoguan in one fell swoop. By then, we would be able to receive military rations from the Song army in Shaoguan and resolve the food crisis.

……

With the help of his flying bird spy, Xiang Nan easily found out the movements of Li Shimin's army.

When he led his army to Shaoguan and prepared to attack the city, Xiang Nan used hundreds of cannons that he had prepared long ago. Before, the cannons used by Song Shidao's army were all small cannons. After all, those cannons had to follow the army, and if they were too heavy, it would be a problem to transport them. Therefore, those field cannons weighed only 100 to 200 kilograms and could be easily pulled by horses.

At this moment, the cannons in Shaoguan weighed several tons, and each shell weighed dozens of kilograms. They could fire as far as ten kilometers. It could be said that they were much more powerful than the field artillery captured by the Li family.

Therefore, when the war started, hundreds of cannons fired at the same time, and Li Shimin's siege team was immediately blown to pieces, and could not approach Shaoguan at all. In the end, they had to leave thousands of corpses behind and evacuate in a panic. Xiang Nan also won the first battle.

Afterwards, Li Shimin was unwilling to accept defeat. While he continued to pretend to attack Shaoguan, he secretly sent ships from the Haisha Gang and the Jujing Gang to lead the Li family's army via the sea route from Songjiang River directly to Zhuhaikou.

In this way, they could bypass the strategic pass of Shaoguan, land at the mouth of Zhuhai, and directly attack Guangzhou, the base camp of the Song clan.

However, his plan of repairing the plank road in the open and marching through Chencang in secret did not escape Xiang Nan's notice. In fact, if Xiang Nan liked, he could even live in his big tent and hear all his instructions to his subordinates.

Afterwards, Xiang Nan flew his sword over the sea, aimed at the transport ships of the Giant Whale Gang and the Sea Sand Gang, and used the move of "calling the wind and rain".

In an instant, the originally calm sea was filled with strong winds, heavy rains, huge waves, and turbulent tides. Dozens of ships were either leaking water, or collided, or capsized... None of them were spared, and tens of thousands of Li clan troops fell into the water.

The Giant Whale Gang and the Sea Sand Gang suffered heavy losses and could not launch a second attack in a short period of time. After all, a sea ship is very valuable, and it is not easy to build a sea ship.

……

After the failure of the surprise attack at sea, Li Shimin had to adopt a roundabout strategy again, preparing to attack Guizhou from Yongzhou, and then send troops to the east from Guizhou.

However, his plan was still discovered by Xiang Nan in advance. When the Li family's army set out from Yongzhou and rushed to Guizhou, they encountered heavy rain when passing through Lingchuan County, followed by landslides and earthquakes, with mud and rocks falling down.

The pouring mud and rock flow not only blocked the road, but also buried most of the Li clan’s troops alive, causing more than 5,000 casualties.

Afterwards, the grain that the Li family transported to the front line also encountered problems again and again. Some of them sprouted and molded after being soaked by heavy rain, while others were burned by people... causing the food shortage in the army to become more and more serious.

Moreover, because the soldiers in the north could not tolerate the hot and humid weather in the south, many of them suffered from diarrhea, colds, fever, chills and other symptoms, and were suspected of being infected with the plague.

In less than half a month, the Li clan army, which had been high-spirited and mighty, became demoralized, with soldiers exhausted and sick.

Faced with this difficult situation, Li Shimin felt helpless.

He wanted to conquer Lingnan and unify the country. After all, he knew that the Song clan was too strong.

Their grain production was high and their equipment was incredibly powerful, especially their steel and artillery, which were much stronger than the weapons used by their Li clan.

Therefore, if they cannot conquer Lingnan in one go, the Song clan will definitely send a large army to the north again after they have recovered from this breath. By then, even if the Li clan can repel the Song clan's conquests time and time again, they will pay a heavy price.

If they could not defeat the Li clan, the kingdom that the Li clan had worked so hard to build would probably fall again. Therefore, Li Shimin wanted to conquer Lingnan and eliminate the Song clan, but he was powerless, which made him quite anxious for a while.

At this time, two more things happened, which made him even more troubled.

One reason was that he failed in his attack on Lingnan, which gave his elder brother Li Jiancheng the opportunity to slander him and hoped to replace him as the leader of the army; the other reason was that Liu Heita of Jizhou successfully borrowed troops from the Turks and led his army to attack the Li family.

Li Yuan sent his fourth son Li Yuanji to lead troops to fight, but he suffered successive defeats and lost many soldiers and generals, which greatly weakened Liu Heita's reputation and caused people in other places to become restless.