Dang Shousu had already raised one foot and was about to run away, but stayed at the last moment and continued to besiege Zhou Guodong. He ordered Sun Chengye to withdraw from Ningyuan County, move closer to the Jiuyi Mountain area, and gather the troops together, which is relatively safer. In case the Western Army launches a surprise attack, they can still take care of each other. The Western Army immediately occupied Ningyuan County. Lu Mingchen and Gao Wengui led their troops into Jiuyi Mountain, approaching a place twenty miles away from Dang Shousu and setting up camp, pressing closely. Dang Shousu was startled and thought that he had made a mistake in judgment and that the Western Army was finally going to turn against him and take action. However, Lu Mingchen and Gao Wengui stopped there after setting up camp and monitored Dang Shousu's troops from a distance. They made no other moves. Su hesitated again and again, but in the end he was still reluctant to leave. The siege of Zhou Guodong was about to succeed, and he really couldn't bear to give up at this time. So, there is a Chu army on the mountain, a King Qin army at the bottom of the mountain, and a Western army. The three armies will not fight or make peace, and will not leave until they surrender. They waste time staring at each other every day. Among them, Zhou Guodong's Chu army was trapped on the mountain and simply had no ideas. Dang Shousu, who was in the sandwich biscuit position, felt the most uncomfortable. Now he can fight if he wants and leave if he wants. With too many choices, he worries about gains and losses. Hesitant, not only wanting to take advantage of the situation, but also worried about when the Western Army would suddenly attack. In just a few days, Dang Shousu, who had been in deep anxiety, had a lot of gray hair. The key to why the Western Army was so worried and hesitant was that there were conflicts among the top leaders and no unanimous opinion was formed. The base camp of the Western Army is in Yunnan. In the past few years, it has been accumulating strength and can be said to be well-equipped with troops and food. After it established the Yongwang Zhu Cihuan, it became more powerful and expanded its territory rapidly. It successively occupied the entire province of Guizhou, most of Sichuan and Guangxi, and After winning several great battles in succession, the morale of the army was high. It was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the victory and march forward to expand the results. However, whether the next step was to go north or east, differences arose between Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu. Li Dingguo advocated going north. ? And for good reason. Food was provided by Sichuan, the land of abundance, and troops were provided by the northwest, where the folk customs were strong. This was the way Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries. If the main force of the Western Army went north from Sichuan, crossed the Qinling Mountains, and captured Hanzhong and Shaanxi, it would be as invincible as Qin Shi Huang. Defeated territory, and furthermore, the capital to compete for the world. Although Sichuan's current population has dropped sharply due to long-term war, and its food output has been greatly reduced, the Western Army can fight steadily, spending several years to reclaim wasteland and farmland in Sichuan, and at the same time practice in the northwest The new army will wait until the time is right before leaving Tongguan and sweeping across the world. Compared with Qin Shihuang back then, the Western Army also had a very big advantage, which was the rich copper mines in Yunnan. After several years of development and construction, the output of copper mines in Yunnan has been increasing steadily, providing the Western Army with a large amount of If time passes, the output of these copper mines will continue to rise. By then, the Western Army will have money, food, and elite soldiers, and it will be easy to defeat the Manchu and Longwu courts. Sun Kewang, however, advocated advancing eastward. He also has good reasons. Li Dingguo wanted to imitate Qin Shihuang, but two thousand years have passed, things and people have changed, and times have changed. In the pre-Qin period, the south of the Yangtze River was mostly a barren land, but now the south of the Yangtze River is the richest in the world. Both the population, money and food are far more than those in the north. The economic strength of Suzhou Prefecture in Zhili exceeds that of a province in the north. For example, Huguang, the base camp of the Chu army, is the granary known as "Huguang is well versed in the world". Wang Kefan occupies thousands of miles of land along the Yangtze River and controls these richest people. All the provinces were included in the bag, so they had the strength to launch the Northern Expedition one after another, knocking the Qing army, which was known as the invincible, to the ground. In short, the south of the Yangtze River was far more important than the northwest, and the Western Army should advance eastward now. Before the Manchus entered the customs and in the two years after they entered the customs, they were indeed invincible and invincible. However, in the past few years, they have shown signs of fatigue and have begun to decline. Sun Kewang once heard an expert say that the rise of a power or a country is like pushing a big iron ball up a mountain. It takes a lot of hard work to climb to the top. Once it starts to go downhill, it becomes faster and faster and unstoppable, so the Manchu and Qing Dynasties also Like other Yi and Di foreign tribes, although they can wreak havoc in the Central Plains for a while, they will retreat beyond the Great Wall in a few years, so there is no need to worry. Emperor Longwu and other forces, such as King Lu, Zheng Chenggong, etc., are even less worth mentioning. Only Wang Kefan is the life and death enemy of the Western Army! The Manchu Qing Dynasty has long been aware of Wang Kefan's huge threat. In the past two years, it has continued to show goodwill to the Western Army. Recently, Dorgon sent a secret envoy to sue Sun Kewang for peace. Dorgon said that the Qing Dynasty had never had the idea of ??replacing the Ming Dynasty. The reason why we entered the Pass during the Jiashen Incident was to avenge Emperor Chongzhen, punish the people and punish Li Zicheng, a rebel who had no king or father. , only because Emperor Chongzhen and several princes were killed in the rebellion, the artifact remained in Beijing without an owner.?The Yongwang Zhu Cihuan inherited the Ming Dynasty's orthodoxy, and the Qing army is willing to be friends with him forever, and form an alliance with the Western Army to jointly attack the puppet Ming regime of the Tang Dynasty. In the future, the world will be equally divided and ruled by rivers Sun Kewang's heart was pounding. Sun Kewang didn't believe the nonsense about crossing the river to rule, but he was about to fight Wang Kefan. Dorgon took the initiative to come to help at this juncture, which was of course welcomed. But he was very careful not to make any announcement, and only sent a few close men to secretly promote the progress of the peace talks. After all, the Eighth King Zhang Xianzhong had just passed away a few years ago, and he died at the hands of the Qing army. Everyone in the Western Army regarded the Manchus as They are sworn enemies who want to kill them all, and suddenly want to become allies with them. The officers and soldiers of the three armies will definitely not be able to accept it. If the trouble gets too big, this matter will definitely be ruined. Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo had different opinions, and Liu Wenxiu was caught in the middle, so they were inevitably at odds with each other. The eldest brother was right, and the second brother was right, but in his heart, he still favored Li Dingguo. Unlike Sun Kewang, who is both civil and military and ambitious, Liu Wenxiu is a pure soldier who only considers problems from a military perspective. Unless the situation forces it, he is unwilling to fight an uncertain battle. In his opinion, the comprehensive strength of the Chu army Very powerful, the Western Army is still outnumbered. In the previous small-scale conflicts, the Western Army did not take advantage. In the battle between the Western Army's fierce generals Gao Cheng'en and Zhou Guodong in Lingchuan, more than 4,000 elite Western Army troops occupied the area. The city held firm and waited for work, but the entire army was defeated in less than an hour, which left a deep impression on Liu Wenxiu. If calculated according to this ratio, the hundreds of thousands of Western Army soldiers could only deal with the main force of Chu Army of 30,000 to 50,000. This battle , how to fight? There is really no chance of winning by rashly starting a war with the Chu army. Once an all-out war breaks out, it will be a life and death battle related to the destiny of the country. If you win, everything will be easy to say. If you lose, the current good situation will be ruined. All the hard work in the past few years will be in vain, and it will be difficult to have a chance to come back in the future. . The best policy is to avoid the reality and turn to the imaginary. Among the Manchu, Chu and Longwu armies, the Longwu army was undoubtedly the weakest, so Liu Wenxiu presided over the war against the Longwu army and personally led the army to capture Guilin, Liuzhou and other places, occupying most of Guangxi. , and then wanted to attack Guangdong, but after Emperor Longwu was snatched away by the Chu army, the situation suddenly became complicated. Liu Wenxiu led tens of thousands of troops to pursue Daozhou, hoping to intercept Emperor Longwu. However, Liu Fangliang, Dang Shousu and He Zhen were too useless and were successfully broken out by the Chu army. The Western Army was temporarily in a dilemma. Since Emperor Longwu fell into the hands of the Chu army, even if Guangdong and other places were extremely dissatisfied, they would definitely not have the courage to set up their own business. Forced by the situation, they would probably bow to Wang Kefan. In this way, if the Western army continues to march towards Guangdong, the Chu army will definitely not sit idly by. Ignore it, because Hunan is right at the waist between Guangdong and Guangxi. Once the Western Army, which is advancing alone, is cut off, the consequences will be disastrous. Without solving the problem of the Chu army and capturing Hunan, we cannot continue to advance eastward. Liu Wenxiu couldn't make up his mind whether it was a fight or a draw. He didn't know whose hands Emperor Longwu would eventually fall into, or whether he was snatched back by Liu Fangliang and He Zhen, so he stopped at the Daozhou and Ningyuan front lines to wait for the situation to develop further. When it became clear, he quickly passed the letter and discussed the next strategic direction with his two sworn brothers, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo. Li Dingguo quickly wrote back, suggesting that Liu Wenxiu stop in Daozhou and take a long-term view. The Western Army had already taken a lot of advantages in this battle, and it would be enough to maintain the current front. After digesting and stabilizing the newly occupied territories such as Guangxi, the main force of the Western Army would You can go north. Sun Kewang, however, advocated taking advantage of the victory to invade Hunan. Liu Wenxiu first captured Yongzhou Prefecture and Chenzhou. He and Li Dingguo sent troops from western Hunan at the same time to launch an all-out war against the Chu army. Liu Wenxiu became more and more in a dilemma. The conflict between the two sworn brothers was too deep and they had different opinions. If it weren't for the seriousness of the matter, he really wouldn't want to argue with them like this. Since he still couldn't reach an agreement, he had to continue to wait and see. Keep talking. Since then, the performance of the Western Army has been very strange. Tens of thousands of troops stared at Dang Shousu eagerly, but they remained stationary. However, Dang Shousu was inexplicably confused and his nerves were highly nervous. In fact, in the eyes of Liu Wenxiu and the generals of the Western Army, they did not take Dang Shousu's more than 10,000 men seriously at all. If they really wanted to destroy him, it would be as easy as crushing an ant. No matter whether he resisted or escaped, he would There is no way to escape the disaster of death. Of course, if Dang Shousu sees an opportunity and runs away, Liu Wenxiu will not bother to chase him. He is just an ant-like existence, not worth the effort. However, Dang Shousu thought about the problem too complicatedly. He drove the tiger to devour the wolf, sat on the mountain and watched the tiger fight, and the mantis stalked the cicada while the oriole was behind, like a little mouse spinning around a mouse trap. Feeling a lot of danger, but reluctant to part with the fragrant bait so close at hand, "Zhou Guodong is really hungry!" Several days passed in the blink of an eye, and Zhou Guodong's horses and livestock were probably killed.Now, even if they are not killed, they should all starve to death. The weather has turned warm now, and horse meat will soon rot. It stands to reason that the Chu army has run out of food, but so far, no Chu army soldiers have defected and went down the mountain. , every morning and evening when eating, smoke can also rise on time from the top of the mountain. "What on earth is Zhou Guodong eating?" Dang Shousu sent the most capable scouts to secretly go up the mountain to conduct reconnaissance.