Chapter 4359 4361 [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.

20,000 vs. 150,000, it seems that the strength is much worse, 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 seal, "Brother, you have worked hard these years~"

"Kou Zhong, only you understand me." Song Shidao sighed.

He didn't want to be an emperor, but his father forced him to make progress.

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

Xiang Nan nodded, "Don't worry, I know what's going on."

Li Shimin is one of the few emperors in history who is very good at both civil and military affairs. He can even be ranked among the top emperors of all dynasties. Qin Shihuang, Han Wudi, Tang Zong, Song Zu, Genghis Khan, Zhu Yuanzhang... are all on par.

The reason why the Song clan was defeated was because Song Que underestimated Li Shimin, thinking that he was a junior and he was unwilling to fight him for the world in person.

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

But Xiang Nan would 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 as his own reconnaissance aircraft to detect the location of Li Shimin's food and salary.

That night, he went directly to Li Shimin's food and salary storage area, and with a flying curse, he emptied all the tens of thousands of stones of grain in the granary, followed by a "flame storm", and the entire granary suddenly caught fire, and there was no way to save it.

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

Li Shimin did not expect that his food and wages would be burned so cleanly.

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

After all, "The Legend of the Two Heroes of the Tang Dynasty" 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 masters from sneaking in and destroying. Unexpectedly, the final effort was in vain, and tens of thousands of stones of food and wages were burned, resulting in the risk of food shortage for the 150,000 troops.

Once the food is not delivered in time, the morale will be in chaos, and even the army will be scattered, so Li Shimin urgently transferred food on the one hand, and led the army to attack Shaoguan on the other.

Prepare to capture Shaoguan in one fell swoop, and then you can receive the military rations of the Song army in Shaoguan, and you can resolve the food crisis.

…

With the help of his bird spies, 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 in one go, Xiang Nan used hundreds of huge cannons that he had prepared long ago.

The artillery used by Song Shidao's army before was all small cannons. After all, those cannons had to follow the army, and if they were too heavy, transportation would be a problem, so those field cannons weighed only one or two hundred pounds and could be easily pulled by horses.

But at this moment, the cannons on Shaoguan weighed several tons, and each shell weighed dozens of kilograms. The farthest range was more than ten kilometers, which could be said to be much stronger than the batch of field cannons seized by the Li family.

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

Afterwards, Li Shimin was unwilling to accept defeat. While he continued to pretend to attack Shaoguan, he secretly sent out the ships of the Haisha Gang and the Jujing Gang to take the Li Clan's army by sea from Songjiang to Zhuhaikou.

In this way, they could bypass the mighty pass of Shaoguan, land at Zhuhaikou, and directly attack Guangzhou, the base camp of the Song Clan.

However, his plan of repairing the plank road in the open and crossing Chencang in secret did not escape Xiang Nan. In fact, as long as Xiang Nan liked, he could even live in his big tent and hear all his instructions to his subordinates.

Then, Xiang Nan flew to the sea with his sword, aimed at the transport ships of the Jujing Gang and the Haisha Gang, and used a trick of "calling the wind and rain".

In an instant, the originally calm sea surface was hit by a strong wind, heavy rain, huge waves, and turbulent waves. Dozens of ships were leaking, colliding, or capsizing... 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 a heavy blow 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 sea attack, Li Shimin had to adopt a roundabout strategy again, preparing to attack Guizhou from Yongzhou, and then send troops to the east from Guizhou.

But his strategy was still seen through by Xiang Nan in advance. When the Li family's army set out from Yongzhou and rushed to Guizhou, they suddenly encountered heavy rain when passing through Lingchuan County, followed by landslides and mud and rocks.

The pouring mud and rocks not only blocked the road, but also buried most of the Li family's army alive, with more than 5,000 casualties.

Afterwards, the food transported to the front line by the Li family also had accidents again and again. Either it was wetted by heavy rain and sprouted, moldy, or it was set on fire... 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's army, which was originally high-spirited and mighty, became demoralized, with a lack of morale, fatigue and illness.

Faced with this difficult situation, Li Shimin felt helpless.

He wanted to conquer Lingnan and achieve unification. After all, he knew that the Song Clan was too strong.

Their grain production was high and their equipment was ridiculously strong, especially steel and artillery, which were much stronger than the weapons used by their Li Clan.

Therefore, if Lingnan could not be conquered in one breath, the Song Clan would definitely send a large army to the north again after catching its breath. At that time, even if the Li Clan could repel the Song Clan's conquest again and again, it would pay a heavy price.

Even if it could not be repelled, the country that the Li Clan had worked so hard to build would probably be overturned again. Therefore, Li Shimin wanted to conquer Lingnan and eliminate the Song Clan very much, but he was powerless, which made him quite anxious for a while.

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

First, because he failed to attack Lingnan, his elder brother Li Jiancheng took the opportunity to slander him and hoped to replace him as the leader of the army; second, because 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 the army to fight, but he suffered a series of defeats and lost many soldiers and generals, which made Liu Heita's momentum shaken and caused people in other places to become restless.