"Li Yuanba, you only have ten thousand cavalry. Do you think you can defeat me with just this amount of troops?”
Liang Shidu's voice reached Li Yuanba's ears, and the corners of his mouth curled up.
"Haha! You can only rely on the 36 forts outside Shuofang City. But do you think this will work on me?”
After Li Yuanba finished speaking, he rode his horse back to the army.
"Pass down my order. The entire army will temporarily retreat!”
Li Yuanba gave the order, and the 12,000 cavalry swiftly retreated from Shuofang City, leaving behind Liang Shidu and his cousin Liang Luoren, who were staring at each other with wide eyes.
"Royal brother, what is this Li Yuanba doing? They're retreating just like that?"
Liang Luoren rode beside Liang Shidu and asked curiously.
"Humph! As long as we hold Shuofang, I don't believe he can conquer my Daliang Capital.”
Liang Shidu rode his horse back after he finished speaking, and his army slowly retreated back into the city.
Liang Luoren took a deep look at the retreating Tang army, and a strange look flashed in his eyes.
·········
"Your Highness, our people have already observed the situation. The thirty-six forts outside Shuofang City were linked together, and each fort was about half a mile to a mile apart.
Each fort was about thirty feet tall, and each fort was divided into three levels, upper, middle, and lower. Archers and swordsmen were stationed on each level.
If we want to attack head-on, I'm afraid we'll have to pay a considerable price.”
After Li Yuanba retreated for ten miles, he stopped to rest. Niu Jinda squatted beside Li Yuanba and said to him.
"I know! I never thought of relying on these cavalry to conquer Shuofang.”
Using cavalry to attack a city was the most foolish act. The essence of cavalry lay in offense, in charging on the plains. Attacking a city wasn't something a cavalry should do.
"Then how do we fight next?"
Even though Niu Jinda had been in the military for half his life, he still did not know what Li Yuanba would do next.
"Liang Shidu thought that I would attack Shuofang, so he hid his sixty thousand soldiers in Shuofang City. As a result, his other regions were empty of troops.
Why don't we occupy the other counties of Liang Shidu? As long as we occupy the other prefectures and counties, leaving only Shuofang behind, no matter how capable Liang shi is, he probably won't be able to do anything about it!”
Li Yuanba's lips curled into a cold smile. No matter how many soldiers you had, a lone city was nothing more than a trapped beast fighting. Even sleepiness could trap you to death.
"But Your Highness, we are close to the Turks. If we are discovered by the Turkic cavalry, we will be in big trouble!”
Niu Jinda frowned and said. Although Li Yuanba had a noble status, Niu Jinda was a pure soldier. He would still say what he needed to say, even in front of Li Shiming.
"Turkic cavalry? Haha! Don't worry! They didn't have the time to care about Liang Shidu now. Their Jie Li Khan was an ambitious fellow.”
As soon as Li Yuanba finished speaking, a scout ran up to him and squatted down."Your Highness, just now we encountered a small Turkic tribe. We swept through them and obtained a piece of news.”
"What news?"
"Jie Li Khagan has personally led an army of more than one hundred thousand into the Great Tang.”
"Leading an army of more than one hundred thousand into the Great Tang?”
Li Yuanba frowned. The history he knew was that at the end of August, Jie Li Khan led two hundred thousand soldiers to the Wei River.
However, it was only the middle of July, so why was he leading an army of more than 100,000 to the south?
Li Yuanba thought for a moment and called out to the system in his mind.
"System, how many points do I need to search?”
"20 points for one search, time limit of one minute!”
Li Yuanba cursed in his heart. However, he still chose to search through the history of this period of time. After all, he was not sure about the current situation.
Many people in the later generations only remembered that after Li Er ascended the throne, Jie Li Khan led his army to the Wei River, but they didn't know much about what happened before that.
Soon, Li Yuanba received the information he wanted.
In the seventh month, Jie Li Khan personally led more than 100,000 troops south into the territory of the Tang Empire, fighting all the way to the martial arts. This place was only about 190 miles away from Chang 'an.
Li Shimin then sent Yuchi Gong to lead the Left Golden Guards. Yuchi Gong fought with the Turks in the martial arts region and killed several thousand Turkic soldiers. Jie Li Khan felt that he had not gained any advantage in the Great Tang and had lost many soldiers, so he slowly retreated.
······
"Don't worry about the Turkic cavalry. He believed that Li Er would deal with them. Let's continue dealing with Liang Shidu!”
Shuofang would not understand the importance of Shuofang if it had not suffered from the invasion of the grassland nomads.
He was like a bridgehead. Back then, the Sui army had controlled Shuofang, so the initiative in the war was in the hands of the Sui army. This was how the Sui army later used the strategy of sowing discord to divide the powerful Turks into two.
In history, before the second year of Zhenguan, Shuofang had always been in the hands of the Turks, so they had constantly harassed the Great Tang's border towns and held the initiative in the war.
In the second year of Zhenguan, the Tang army came to the border and took Shuofang. The initiative of the war was once again in the hands of the Tang Empire, which led to the Tang army's northern expedition against the Turks in the third year of Zhenguan.
Starting from the second day, which was the 14th day of the 7th month, Li Yuanba split his 12,000 cavalry into three, with each unit consisting of 4,000 cavalry, and began to ravage the entire country of Liang.
Provinces and counties were taken down by the Tang army one after another. They took out the food from the counties and distributed the rest to the local people, except for a portion left by the army.
This caused the local people to have a favorable impression of the Great Tang. Liang Shidu's tyranny in the territory had long aroused the dissatisfaction of the people, but they could not speak of their grievances.
Now that the Great Tang had come and distributed food to them, the people immediately began to submit to the Great Tang. This was how the people were. Whoever treated him well, he would support and side with.
The fall of one prefecture after another caused Liang Shidu to panic. He didn't think that Li Yuanba would be so decisive as to not attack Shuofang and instead attack his other territories.
He began to worry. He wrote a letter every day and then sent someone to deliver a letter to Jie Li Khan, hoping that he would send reinforcements to him like before.
However, what Liang shi didn't know was that the messengers he sent out were all intercepted by Li Yuanba.
At the same time, Li Yuanba sent out letters of surrender to Shuofang City every day, requesting Liang Shidu to surrender.
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