Late Tang

(Thanks to Dying Coconut, Fearless So-called, Yuexi Lazyman, and Nanyanghuo for your support!)

Liaodong.

The three-day deadline has come, and Gao Anwu in Liaodong City still wants to resist, but finds that he has betrayed his relatives.The generals of the Goguryeo Kingdom had already left the royal city with their own men and horses fleeing for their lives.

After counting the battleable soldiers in the city again, Gao Huiwu found to his dismay that there were less than 2 soldiers left under his command.Moreover, even the [-] soldiers have lost their morale and have no fighting spirit.

As the sun rises in the east, three days have passed.

The sound of the horns of gathering troops has been heard outside the city. Gao Anwu, who is half drunk and half awake, holds the sword out of its sheath with red eyes and orders to stand firm, ready to fight the Tang army to the end.

However, after hearing this order, the faces of the remaining commanding generals all darkened.

For a long while, none of the generals moved.

Seeing this reaction from the generals, Gao Anwu was annoyed at first, and then frightened.

When he understood what was going to happen, he could only look up to the sky and let out bursts of laughter.

After a while, the laughter stopped abruptly.

Soon, the gates of Liaodong City were opened wide, and a group of Goguryeo military officers came to surrender with Gao Anwu's head, soldier talisman, seal, household registration account book, etc.

Among the prosperous military formations under the city, Li Jing didn't seem surprised by the result of the Goguryeo people killing Gao Anwu and surrendering.Faced with the surrender of the Goguryeo people, Li Jing was not embarrassed, but accepted the Goguryeo people's surrender with a smile.

On the same day, [-] Goguryeo people in the city disarmed and surrendered, leaving the city to accept reorganization.

Li Jing led his army into Liaodong City, the largest city in Liaodong. This huge flat city located on the plain in the middle reaches of Liaohe River has been the military and economic center of Liaodong for hundreds of years.Square city, double city wall, three city gates.

Although Goguryeo soldiers and horses have been fleeing continuously since the Tang army besieged the city, it turned out that 20 Goguryeo troops fled [-], and another [-] Khitan troops withdrew.However, in the entire city, the combined population of old and young troops, common people and merchants still exceeds [-].In particular, Gao Degui has been operating here for many years, and it has always been the trading center of Goguryeo, Bohai, Khitan, and even Shiwei and Silla. There are many granaries in the city.

For Li Jing, after taking Liaodong City without bloodshed, the greater significance was to kill the two generations of kings of Goguryeo, which had been restored for less than a year, and seize the capital.The entire Goguryeo has completely lost its unified command and morale.

Although there are important mountain cities such as Baiyan, Xincheng, Gaimu, and Jinshan, as well as various Goguryeo forces.

But now, these people have become a mess, and they can no longer unite against Tang Jun.

After capturing Liaodong City and killing Gao Anwu, Li Jing now has the ability to quickly wipe out the remaining forces of Goguryeo.

After Li Jing entered Liaodong City, he immediately issued two orders.

He ordered two generals Zhao Ji and Zeng Yuanyu to lead [-] soldiers and horses to march eastward along the Daliang River in the south of Liaodong City, and attack the Goguryeo forces along the north and south sides of the Daliang River.

Order Lin Wu and Li Juyi to lead [-] soldiers and horses to march northeast along the Xiaoliao River to the west of Liaodong City, and attack the Goguryeo forces along the east and west banks of the Xiaoliao River.

Li Jing personally sat in Liaodong City, and presided over the suppression of local remnants after the capture of Liaodong cities, as well as the relocation of Goguryeo people, the relocation of people from the Central Plains, and the construction of roads, city building, and land distribution in the newly occupied areas.

In order to be able to strengthen the thorough control over these new occupations, Li Jing now strictly implements that every time he occupies a place, he immediately moves the occupied Goguryeo and other foreign people to the interior, and then moves the people from the Central Plains to Liaodong. Very troublesome.But for the sake of long-term planning, Li Jing will never discount this work.Even the workers who are currently building roads and cities in Liaodong are basically resettled in the states and counties of the Central Plains, and after living for almost a year, they are recruited to build roads in Liaodong.

The family members of these people are all in the Central Plains control area, and they also get paid for road construction, which is not too hard. This can greatly avoid such things as natives rebelling after the occupation.

The west bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Liaohe River is Liaoxi, which has been occupied and controlled by Li Jing years later.

Now that Li Jing had captured Liaodong City, he began to aggressively attack the plains on the east bank of the middle reaches of the Liao River and the hilly areas further east.

Daliangshui is the Taizi River in later generations. The most important cities in this river basin are Liaodong City and Baiyan City.

And the Xiaoliao River further north is the Hun River of later generations.This basin is distributed with Goguryeo's heavy city and new city.

The areas that Goguryeo still controls are basically concentrated in the Taizi River and Hun River basins.Its control area is equivalent to Liaoyang City, Benxi City, Shenyang City, Fushun City, Tieling City, and Kaiyuan City in later generations.Half of it is in the plain on the east bank of the Liao River, and the other half is in the hilly area of ​​Qianshan Mountains.

However, the west, south, and east sides of the Goguryeo-controlled area are already occupied by the Tang army. Without the danger of the Liaohe River and the danger of the Qianshan Mountains, the remaining tens of thousands of Goguryeo people are completely nothing to fear.

"Goguryeo is over!" Standing on top of the [-]-story pagoda in Liaodong City, overlooking the Liaohe Plain, Cui Yunqing couldn't help sighing even though she was preoccupied at this moment.

Li Jing responded lightly: "This is the general trend. The Goguryeo people tried to stop it, but they were just trying to block the car with their arms. They overestimated their capabilities. In the end, they could only be run over by the wheels of history."

Cui Yunqing turned her head to look at her protégé. Five years ago, when he accepted Li Jing as his protégé, he just thought that he was a courageous and eloquent scholar.Accepting him as a student is just a common practice of the family. They accept those outstanding but poor commoner children as students in order to strengthen the power of the family.It's just that he would never have imagined that in just a few years, this young man who was only a little outstanding in his eyes had actually reached the current stage.

"Hebei has been rebelled, and the four towns have become kings. How does Ji Yu plan to deal with this?" The news of Hebei's rebellion was even known to Liaodong earlier than Chang'an.Cui Yunqing is also very concerned about this matter. Like many people, he also wants to know what Li Jing is thinking now.

"What good strategy do I have for this matter?" Li Jing pointed to the vast plain, and said with emotion: "The imperial court has split the town [***], and let Zheng Xianggong take over the command of the Liaodong war. Originally, I still After Zheng Xiangguo comes, I will go to Hebei to take up the post. But now, the situation is chaotic, but I don’t know when Zheng Xiangguo will come.”

"Why don't you stop attacking Goguryeo and immediately send troops to Hebei to suppress the rebellion?" Cui Yunqing asked.In other words, this is a temptation.

Li Jing didn't want to answer the teacher's question directly.

Seeing that Goguryeo's demise is imminent, how could Li Jing let go of this golden opportunity.What's more, the Hebei Rebellion was originally provoked by him secretly, because he was unwilling to surrender military power, and he did not want to raise the flag to rebel prematurely.

For Li Jing, under the banner of Datang, at this stage, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

As long as he can maintain his military power and territory, Li Jing doesn't mind being a courtier of the Tang Dynasty for a few more years.

However, he didn't want to talk directly to Cui Yunqing about these topics.Cui Yunqing is a representative of the aristocratic family. Their political philosophy is not to overthrow the Tang Dynasty, but to achieve a state where the nobles and the emperor rule the world together.

This is fundamentally different from Li Jing. On the surface, Li Jing respects the king, but in fact, he follows the warlord route.Its purpose, of course, is to replace Li Tang in the end.

"Now is the best time to destroy Goguryeo. If you miss it, if Khitan settles the civil strife, then you will definitely come to fight for Liaodong. The general is out, and the king's life will not be tolerated!" Li Jing said lightly.

"Besides, the current Hebei rebellion is shaking the whole world. The imperial court had already split Zhen[***] and lifted my military power. Now I am only temporarily in charge of the Liaodong military power. If I have no purpose at this time and lead troops west I’m afraid it will cause unnecessary misunderstanding.”

Needless to say, it is too direct, these few words of Li Jing have clearly expressed Li Jing's position.

He was not willing to go west to suppress the rebellion for the court, at least he didn't have this idea before the emperor's imperial decree to dispatch troops was issued.

Although Cui Yunqing has now served as the Ziqing Jiedu envoy, and there are still 1 soldiers under his command, but at this time he only has [-] troops.And he was also very clear that these ten thousand soldiers belonged to his command in name, but without Li Jing's consent, he would not be able to command a single soldier.

Li Jing's words have been made very clear. Between the suppression of the rebellion in Hebei and the extermination of Goguryeo, Li Jing chose the latter.

In the next few days, information from Hebei continued to be sent to Liaodong City, but Li Jing didn't say a word about it.

The civil and military generals in Zhen [***] also seemed to be unaware of the Hebei rebellion, and no one mentioned it at all.

Zhen [***]'s attack on Goguryeo was also overwhelming and victorious.

Two days later, Zhao Ji led his army to break through Baiyan City, an important town on the Liangshui line, which is Yanzhou City.Two days later, the troops of Lin Wu and Li Juyi broke through Xincheng, an important military town in Xiaoliaohe.

Baiyan City and Xincheng are the two largest cities controlled by the Goguryeo people since the Liaodong City was broken. Each city has gathered about [-] soldiers and horses.The Goguryeo people also wanted to rely on the strong city and the geographical advantage to fight against the Tang army, but under the onslaught of the Tang army, the two cities failed to hold on for more than ten days, and they broke down one after another.

After the fall of the two cities, it was a fatal blow to the Goguryeo people. All the cities and villages on the plain east of the Liao River fell into the hands of Zhen [***].The remaining Goguryeos were forced to retreat into the hills and mountains to the east.

The two groups of soldiers and horses pursued the victory. At the same time, Zhen [***] and the last stronghold of the Goguryeo people were swept west from the domestic city and black bone city in the east.

One after another, good news continued to spread back to Liaodong City, and nearly [-] Tang troops swept the land of Liaodong.By the end of September, the last mountain city guarded by Goguryeo was attacked by the three generals Wang Yanzhang, Gao Siji, and Li Cunxiao.

Going north along the Liaohe River to Jinshan City, and southeast to Guoguo City, the entire Goguryeo was completely conquered.

Subsequently, Li Jing announced that the newly occupied land would be divided into five states: Liaozhou, Xinzhou, Jinzhou, Yanzhou, and Gaizhou. (To be continued.)