Chapter 1186 The Death of the Evil God

Li Xilie led nearly 20,000 remnants of his army to flee back to Zhongli County, attempting to cross the Huai River from Zhongli County and head north to join Li Zhengji. However, when he was still 20 miles away from Zhongli County, he encountered a 50,000-strong army led by Ma Lin. One side wanted to break through, and the other side tried to intercept them, and the two sides fought fiercely.

Although Li Xilie's Huaixi Army was powerful, the enemy had far more troops than him. In addition, Zhang Boyi's generals such as Lun Weizhen and Liu Chang were eager to make achievements, and they were not afraid of casualties and went all out.

Li Xilie was no match for the enemy, and after thousands of casualties, he turned around and retreated south. In this fierce battle, the Huaixi Army lost about 5,000 people, and the Tang Army also paid the price of nearly 8,000 casualties before winning the battle.

Li Xilie only had 10,000 troops left, while the enemy had more than 40,000 troops left, and the number ratio was already four to one.

Li Xilie also knew that even if he killed more enemy troops, his army would be completely destroyed. He decisively led his army to retreat southward, southeast of Haozhou. He wanted to retreat to Chuzhou or Yangzhou.

Two days later, Li Xilie and his 10,000 troops stopped at a place called Panjia Village, which is in the central part of Haozhou, about 200 miles away from Zhongli County.

The village had been destroyed by the epidemic, and there was no one. The whole village seemed to have been burned. The roofs were gone, and only ruins were left. It was normal that the people used fire to deal with the epidemic.

Li Xilie's soldiers had run out of food, so Li Xilie had to order all 300 horses to be killed and cook horse meat to feed the soldiers.

However, they were not short of wood. There was a low hill to the south of the village, covered with pine forests.

Wang Cu, the scout general who went to explore the road ahead, came back with a very unfortunate news. Just a dozen miles to the southeast, there was a Tang army of tens of thousands of people, which should be the army coming from Yangzhou, cutting off their way to the east.

This news made Li Xilie feel like he was falling into an ice cave. There were 40,000 troops chasing him in the north, 30,000 Guanlong cavalry chasing him in the west, and now there were 30,000 troops in the southeast, which meant that they were surrounded by the enemy.

Li Xilie was terrified. He suddenly thought of offering sacrifices to the heaven. Now he could only offer sacrifices to the heaven and ask the heaven to bless him.

He immediately ordered: "Kill a horse for me, I want to offer sacrifices to the heaven!"

The generals under him said helplessly: "Only the lord's mount is left. All other horses are killed for the brothers to share."

Li Xilie was stunned for a moment. Did he want to kill his own horse? How could he do that? That was his most beloved warhorse, and it had followed him for many years.

Li Xilie's mind moved, and he ordered: "Bring up that dog king!"

After a while, several soldiers brought up Li Tan, the King of Shu.

Li Tan was full of anger. His warhorse was also dragged away and slaughtered by the soldiers. Some of the money in the horse bag was also robbed by the soldiers. He was penniless now. Without a horse tomorrow, how could he walk?

"You bastards, you bastards, compensate me for my warhorse!"

Li Xilie smiled sinisterly, "You, the dog king, don't need a horse now. Now you are both a dog and a horse!"

Li Neng gritted his teeth and said, "I don't understand what nonsense you are talking about!"

Li Xilie slowly drew out his sword, stared at the sword tip and said, "I plan to offer sacrifice to the heaven, but there are no three animals, so I will use your head instead of the three animals!"

Li Neng was shocked and turned around and ran. A cold light flashed, and Li Neng's head flew up. Li Xilie grabbed his hair in mid-air, and the headless body fell to the ground with a plop, and the blood from the neck cavity flowed all over the ground.

Li Xilie placed Li Neng's head on a big stone as a sacrifice. He couldn't find a candle, so he simply took out Li Neng's succession decree from his arms, dipped it in oil to make a torch, stuck it in the ground, and lit it with fire.

Li Xilie knelt down on his knees, kowtowed to the sky, and silently prayed to God to bless him to break through successfully.

After the prayer, Li Xilie ordered a big fire to be lit, and the heads, corpses and half of the imperial edict were thrown into the fire. Li Dan and his dream were finally burned to ashes.

At dawn, the soldiers drank all the remaining horse meat soup. Under the leadership of Li Xilie, 10,000 soldiers began to break out to the east. Li Xilie divided the 10,000 troops into three teams, and ordered his trusted generals Dong Daiming and Han Shuanglu to lead an army each, holding his flag respectively. He led another 4,000 people, but was very low-key without any flag.

Li Xilie raised his sword and shouted: "Brothers, we will kill into Yangzhou City, and women and wealth will be distributed to everyone!"

Ten thousand soldiers roared like wild beasts, and Li Xilie pointed his sword, "Set off to break out!"

The three armies broke out to the northeast, east and southeast respectively, and Li Xilie led 4,000 soldiers to break out to the southeast.

To the east was the 30,000 troops led by Nan Jiyun. In order to prevent the enemy from breaking through, Xi Wanli assigned another 10,000 cavalry to Nan Jiyun.

At this time, Nan Jiyun was well prepared. Facing the enemy's divided troops, he also divided the 30,000 troops into three routes, each to surround and kill one army.

Nan Jiyun also issued an order, "No surrender, no mercy!"

The drums on the battlefield were loud, and the shouts of killing shook the sky. The Huaixi soldiers who broke through to the northeast were first shot by arrows. Three rounds of arrows killed more than a thousand people. Pei Rong, the Tiger Guard Langjiang, led 10,000 troops and then surrounded the remaining 2,000 soldiers and killed them mercilessly.

The 3,000 Huaixi soldiers who broke through to the east took the official road. They did not encounter the arrows, but fell into the fire oil array deployed by Nan Jiyun on the official road, and the fire burned rapidly. Three thousand soldiers were engulfed by the raging fire that lasted for a mile.

Countless soldiers fled from the flames crying, but were mercilessly shot to death by the crossbows all around them.

Li Xilie's plan to break out separately was of course his plan. He let two armies fly his banner in an attempt to attract the main force of the Guanlong Army, and then he broke out from the southeast where the enemy's troops were weak.

But things in the world often happen to happen when you least want to encounter something. In the southeast, he not only encountered 10,000 troops led by Nan Jiyun, but also 10,000 cavalry led by Xi Wanli himself.

The 10,000 cavalry cut his 4,000 troops into pieces. Li Xilie, who was at the end, saw that the situation was not good, so he immediately led 1,000 soldiers to flee to the hill.

Li Xilie was cunning by nature. He had another way to retreat, which was to go south and flee south through the hills, so he led 1,000 personal soldiers to walk at the end. After betraying the 3,000 troops, he led 1,000 personal soldiers to rush up the hill in the south.

Xi Wanli saw clearly that the only horse-riding general led 1,000 people to run away to the hill in the south, and it should be Li Xilie. He immediately took out the horn and blew it hard.

"Woo--"

The low sound of the horn echoed on the battlefield. Twenty thousand cavalrymen from the west galloped over and surrounded the hill. Countless rockets were fired at the hill.

The hill was actually very small, covering only more than two hundred acres, only more than ten feet high, and covered with lush pine forests.

The Guanlong Army set fire from all directions, the flames were raging, the smoke was billowing, and the fire took advantage of the wind, and the flames soon engulfed the hill.

Li Xilie and his one thousand soldiers could not escape, all of them were buried in the sea of ​​fire, and the generation of fierce god Li Xilie died in Haozhou.

It was fulfilled that Zhang Luanzi had told him that he would ascend the throne in a prosperous and hot atmosphere.

It's just that the prosperous and hot atmosphere is not the flag and atmosphere, but the burning fire, and ascending the throne is not ascending the throne to become an emperor, but being burned to death and returning to the throne. Of course, Li Xilie could not ascend to heaven, he would only go to hell.