Tibet.

Chapter 1404: A sudden disaster
The Anguo cavalry swept in like a hurricane, and the rolling dust they raised obscured everyone's eyes.

When they got closer, they saw a sea of ​​gleaming long swords, as if they were facing a forest of swords.

The cavalrymen running in the front screamed in fear, but it was too late. The cavalry group rushed into the forest of swords, and immediately a bloody mist filled the sky. The screams and wails of death resounded throughout the Gobi Desert.

The extremely sharp Mo Dao pierced the bodies and horses of the cavalry in front. The corpses quickly piled up in front of the Mo Dao formation. Dozens of cavalry jumped over the piled corpses, but were chopped off in mid-air by a single sword. Bloody body parts and internal organs fell from the air.

The impact of the cavalry was offset, and the Modao formation was immediately launched. Three thousand people were divided into three rows and advanced like a wall. The Modao flew up and down, and the cavalry and horses were all broken into pieces wherever they passed. The killing left a sea of ​​blood and corpses, which was extremely frightening.

Seeing that the enemy had wavered, Xi Wanli immediately ordered, "Cavalry attack!"

"Woo——"

When the trumpets sounded, ten thousand cavalrymen divided into two groups, like two long dragons, and launched a fierce attack on the enemy from the south and the north at the same time.

Facing the unstoppable Modao formation in the front and being attacked by 5,000 Tang cavalrymen in the north and south, Sabah's army began to fall into chaos. In particular, the powerful killing power of the Tang heavy armored infantry frightened all the enemy troops, and their originally strong morale began to rapidly fade.

At this moment, another 10,000 Tang cavalry appeared from the west, led by General Chen Dan. "Boom! Boom! Boom!" The war drums of the cavalry's attack sounded from the west.

Ten thousand cavalrymen rushed towards the rear of Sabah's army like a tiger descending from the mountain.

Sabah's army collapsed completely in an instant. They shouted and turned their horses around looking for a chance to escape.

Sabah broke out from the southwest under the protection of more than a thousand soldiers, and there happened to be a gap here.

But this gap turned out to be a trap. When they rushed in, they found themselves surrounded.

Arrows rained down from all directions. The leather armor of the enemy cavalry could not stop the sharp armor-piercing arrows of the Tang army. They were shot and fell off their horses one after another. In just a few rounds of shooting, the enemy suffered more than 70% casualties. The remaining cavalry fought desperately to break through, but could not break through the Tang army's iron wall. Under the ruthless killing of the Tang army, they gradually disappeared.

In just one hour, 13,000 cavalrymen disappeared under the powerful attack of 23,000 Tang troops.

The Tang army found Sabah, the culprit of the attack on Suiye, among the pile of corpses. He had been shot by more than thirty arrows and was dead.

The deputy general Charan rushed to the front and was chopped into pieces by the Modao Army. Another deputy general Maimana was killed by the Tang cavalry.

The killing of these three people meant that the army had completely disappeared. The Tang army then seized 5,000 camels in a date palm grove thirty miles away, which was Sabah's logistics, and seized 600,000 gold coins and a large amount of dry biscuits.

The Tang army also seized a large amount of personal wealth from the horse bags of the enemy's war horses. These soldiers sold the looted wealth and people cheaply and exchanged them for gold and silver coins, which they carried with them. Each soldier had several bulging money bags.

All in all, the wealth of the enemy soldiers alone exceeded 500,000 gold coins and over a million silver coins. Together with the 600,000 gold coins seized from the logistics camels, the total number of gold coins was close to 1.2 million.

Xi Wanli immediately rewarded each soldier with ten gold coins. One gold coin could be exchanged for two strings of money according to the official price, but it could be exchanged for three strings of money on the black market. The soldiers were immediately delighted.

Even the more than 20,000 soldiers who did not participate in the war could get a reward of ten silver coins. The gold and silver coins were temporarily stored in Juzhanti and would be transported back to Chang'an after the war.

Li Ye's worries were not unnecessary. After entering July, the Central Plains entered a rainstorm mode. Heavy rains continued for more than ten days, and the extreme drought turned into extreme flooding. All the tributaries of the Yellow River were filled with water, rushing to the Yellow River from the north and south at the same time. The water level of the Yellow River was also rising day by day, and had long exceeded the warning level.

A huge threat of dam collapse appeared in Jeju. This area had become a suspended river on the ground decades ago. Fortunately, the imperial court had been prepared and all the people within 50 miles on both sides of the Yellow River were relocated.

One hundred thousand soldiers used countless mud bags to reinforce the river embankment, but to no avail. In the face of the destructive power of nature, human power seems insignificant. The Yellow River dike bursting was inevitable. The key was whether it would burst to the north or to the south. This involved the issue of diverting the Yellow River.

That night, the dike in Liuyang Township, Liaocheng County, Bozhou, on the opposite bank of Jeju was finally broken by the Yellow River. The width of the breach reached several miles in an instant, and the surging Yellow River water rushed down and swept towards the northeast.

In just two days, Bozhou, Dezhou, Dizhou, and Cangzhou became a swamp. The Yellow River flooded northwards through the Yongji Canal and finally flowed into the sea at the Haihe River in the north of Cangzhou.
The Yellow River flood turned the eastern part of the North China Plain into a flood zone, affecting more than 300,000 people and killing thousands.

You may find it strange that only over 300,000 people were affected and only a few thousand died.
That was because during the An-Shi Rebellion, the people of Hebei were brutally massacred by An Lushan and Shi Siming, and the remaining population fled to the south in large numbers. In addition, due to the separatist rule of the feudal lords for several years, wars broke out constantly between the feudal lords, and Hebei had long been a barren wasteland with a declining population.

Only a few thousand people died because preparations had been made long ago. All the people within fifty miles on both sides of the Yellow River were relocated. People living far away were extremely sensitive to various disasters and had already packed up their belongings. When they heard that there was a fire in the Yellow River, people in the relevant counties and prefectures fled desperately. Almost all the people who died were elderly and sick people who were unwilling to leave their hometowns.

When the news of the Yellow River's dike breach in Hebei reached Chang'an, Li Ye urgently convened a military and national meeting to discuss disaster relief.

Li Ye sighed and said, "I should have listened to the advice of the Water Conservancy Commissioner and opened the dike in Dizhou to release the floodwater, which would have effectively lowered the water level. Dizhou has the smallest population, so even if it flooded, the loss would be small. I was just hoping for the best and was reluctant to issue an order, so in the end the dike still broke.

Wei Jiansu quickly advised, "Your Majesty did not issue an order because the rainfall in the Central Plains has begun to weaken. It is very likely that the Yellow River will not burst its dike. No one expected that it would burst at the last minute. Your Majesty does not need to blame yourself. Moreover, according to the information we have received, most of the people in Bozhou and Dezhou have evacuated in time. Cangzhou and Dizhou have a sparse population, so the death toll should not be high."

Li Ye was helpless and asked again: "I am concerned about whether the dike will collapse again in the future? Will it affect the area south of the Yellow River?"

Wei Jiansu shook his head. "The key is that the rain in the Central Plains has weakened. Once the rain stops, the water will soon seep into the ground, and the Yellow River's water replenishment will be less than its outflow, so there will be no more dam breaches. The top priority now is disaster relief."

Li Ye asked Xiao Hua, the Minister of Revenue, "Has the Ministry of Revenue come up with an estimate? How many people are affected?"

Xiao Hua bowed and said, "Reporting to Your Majesty, the Ministry of Revenue has made a preliminary estimate based on the number of counties and prefectures affected by the disaster, and the number will not exceed 400,000!"

Li Ye breathed a sigh of relief. "Although the number of people is not large, the resettlement of more than 300,000 people is also a big problem!"

Liu Yan stood up and said, "Your Majesty, let's follow the previous plan! Relocate them to Liaodong. This is a good opportunity. I am willing to go to Hebei to help your majesty!"

Li Ye nodded, "I'll leave the disaster relief to Minister Liu. Hejian County is one of the three major material storage points. There are 300,000 dan of grain and 50,000 tents, as well as other materials such as medicinal materials. You rush to Hejian immediately, and then I will arrange for the follow-up materials to be delivered to prevent the outbreak of the epidemic. As for resettlement to Liaodong, that is the next step."

"The minister obeys the order!"

(End of this chapter)