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Chapter 1116: The Turkic Army Marches South (Part )

The Battle of Hengling, in which 200,000 men died, had cooled the boiling waters of the grassland. Those tribes who relied on their military strength and rushed to the front had suffered heavy losses and had to return to their own territories to lick their wounds, never again mentioning the invasion to the south.

The Right Wise King's tribe used to be the only one in the grassland, and they were arrogant and had offended many surrounding forces. Now that they have lost a part of the east and lost 100,000 young and strong men in the battle, they naturally have to focus on defense and keep their current base.

Accumulate strength in an attempt to "recover lost ground".

As for the Shiluodie tribe, there were too many rebels in it, so the clone simply wiped out some of the powerful tribes, as well as the Ashina clan who had been gathering strength for more than a decade, waiting to launch a shocking plot.

After the battle of Hengling, Shi Luodie easily persuaded these ambitious people to gather 200,000 troops and march south. After reaching the northern part of Liaodong, he also brought along some of the Khitan and Jurchen who were expected to bring disaster to the Central Plains, and marched south together to "make a fortune".

The Khitan and the Jurchen lived on the fertile and vast black soil. They had developed rapidly in recent years, and both tribes could easily spare 30,000 brave warriors. Relying on their strength, they constantly harassed the Liaodong Peninsula and the Yanshan area in northern Hebei.

Don’t you want to fight? Don’t you covet the Central Plains?
The clone simply asked them to empty the tribes, including children in their teens and elderly people over 40, and each tribe gathered 50,000 troops, a total of 300,000 troops, to invade the south together.

Faced with such a powerful military force, the defense line of the Liaohe Plain was instantly broken like paper. The army captured a city almost every day. In just half a month, they captured more than ten border towns and headed straight for the important town of Pingzhou and Lulong in the Liaozhou Grand Marshal's Office.

Li Yan knew that this was also the most famous pass in the world in later generations, Shanhaiguan.

Smelling the slightly salty sea breeze, the clone shook his head lightly. He did not mobilize too many troops, but only called upon 300,000 cavalrymen, a force that the grassland overlord could easily mobilize in any era.

This should not be too difficult for the Central Plains to deal with.

The Tang Dynasty had been stable for too long. Since the Battle of Dingxiang in the winter of the third year of Zhenguan, there had been no major battles for a full sixteen years. The military was neglected and the defense was lax. When facing powerful enemies, some border towns did not even know where their defensive equipment was.

After the Turkic army entered the city, they opened the warehouse and found it covered with dust, corroded logs, dried up kerosene, damaged catapults, broken artillery carts, and other city defense equipment unusable. Even some of the locks on the warehouse doors were rusted.

Li Yan sighed. The old saying is true: people are born from worry and die from comfort. A hundred verbal reminders are not as effective as a life-and-death threat once.

The border troops, who had not seen war for a long time, could hardly lift their weapons. In the past half month, out of the more than ten cities that were conquered, three or four surrendered without a fight, directly opening the city gates. This result really excited the Turks.

This made Li Yan extremely indignant!
It seems that I am still too soft-hearted. When the grassland can never be conquered, the transitional protection of the Central Plains is harming them. Instead of doing this, it is better to use the Hu cavalry in the north to keep this sleeping lion awake.

The border defense was so poor that it was beyond Li Yan's expectations.

Compared with the neglect of cities and armaments, what makes Li Yan even more heartbroken is the numbness and indifference of the people in the border areas.

Not only did the common people lack the will to resist, but some generals who owned large amounts of land and wealth, the aristocratic families in the cities, and the landlords and gentry in the countryside actually took the initiative to flatter the Turks, offering them countless money, food, treasures, and beautiful women in an attempt to make friends with them.

Some people also presented the deployment of Tang Dynasty troops in nearby cities in the hope that the Turks would show leniency to their families.

What's worse, they were so shameless as to be willing to surrender to the Turks in exchange for the Turks' permission to take in civilians who fled the war as tenants, annex some "unowned" land, and provide a steady supply of money and food support to the Turkish army.

The clone suppressed his anger, and after figuring out the shameless plans of these disgusting people, he unceremoniously ordered that all of them be killed, and also carried out a massacre of the wealthy families by confiscating their property and exterminating their clans, and ordered the army not to harm innocent civilians.

Many tribes protested against the incarnation's order, especially the Khitan and Jurchen, who needed a large number of people as slaves to increase their strength.

But who is Li Yan now?
That is, he is not the Tang Emperor Li Chengqian who needs to pretend to be a gentleman, nor is he the Right Wise Prince Li Yan who needs to restrain himself, but the cruel, evil, cold-blooded and murderous Shi Luodie. This identity will not last long, and it will be abandoned after completing the mission.

Li Yan completely let himself go. Instead of reasoning, he directly ordered those who raised objections to be dragged down and beheaded.

When several bloody heads were brought up, no one dared to question his words anymore.

Li Yan also experienced the feeling of being a tyrant. Seeing his subordinates who were so quiet and trembling, Li Yan cursed them inwardly, saying that they were all cheap bones, and they would not listen to him and had to use heads to establish their authority to know who was the big and small king.

Shi Luodie himself was the Great Khan of the Turkic Khanate. Over the past few decades, he had accumulated some prestige, especially when Shi Luodie personally led his troops to destroy the three countries of Goguryeo, Silla and Baekje. In the hearts of the tribal groups in the northeast, Shi Luodie was still very intimidating.

He was a puppet in the Khan's court, but these people didn't know it.

Transportation in the Tang Dynasty was very backward. Coupled with the court's control over local areas, ordinary people could not leave the area where they lived. Some people lived in their own village from birth to death and had never even been to the county town.

This is the case in the Central Plains, and the sparsely populated grasslands are even more isolated.

Some tribes living in the mountains had no idea who the emperor of the Central Plains was, and who the Great Khan of the grasslands was. Only some tribes in the core areas knew about the dual political structure of the Right Wise King and the Great Khan that Li Yan had created. Over the past decade, many remote tribes only knew that Shiluodi was the Great Khan of the Turkic Khanate and the only son of the previous Great Khan, Jie Li, and had no idea about the inside story.

Li Yan has been leading troops for many years and knows that he is now in the limelight. The continuous victories in the past half month and the courage to challenge the Tang Empire have made his image flourish. It can be said that as long as he keeps winning, he can kill anyone he wants.

The more you kill, the more notorious you become; the more brutally you kill, the higher your prestige becomes.

Under the iron-blooded constraints, the common people had no money for three days, no rice for the night, and were ready to fight for their lives. After conquering a village, they could only get a few carts of rice, which were mostly coarse grains such as corn.

On the other hand, those wealthy and powerful families are all like prairie rats. They can dig out a lot of gold, silver, jewelry, antiques and jade at a time. The food in the warehouse is piled up like a mountain. Their homes are like warehouses for storing supplies, with countless good things.

After a few days, the Turks not only did not suffer any losses, but accumulated a lot of wealth. Because they did not kill civilians indiscriminately, the common people just avoided them and did not dare to provoke them. Everyone then realized that the real rebels were those poor people.

As long as I don't invade them, they won't fight me to the death.

The rich were usually unkind and the people hated them. When the army invaded them, the people not only did not stop them, but also applauded. The rich could only keep some servants and warriors, but they were vulnerable in front of the powerful army.

After several battles, the Turks are now familiar with the routine. After conquering a city, they will go to the house with the tallest and most luxurious mansion; and the house with the widest and most high walls must have countless resources.

Instead, people have no interest in ordinary people living in thatched houses and with earthen walls.

Li Yan stood outside the city, looking at the Pingzhou City in the distance, which looked like a normal city, and then looked to the east, sighing in his heart. He had never understood why the Central Plains dynasties had not taken over the peninsula since ancient times, so that they became arrogant in later generations and caused countless troubles for the Central Plains.

This time, from the enemy's perspective, he could see it clearly immediately.

The vast Liaohe Plain and the prairie are connected, without any mountains in between, except for a few winding rivers, which, though not shallow, become a vast expanse of land after freezing in winter.

Such terrain makes it impossible to build dangerous passes, and naturally it is impossible to stop the nomadic peoples from advancing southward.

As long as the Liaohe Plain is lost, the Liaodong Peninsula will be isolated and cannot be controlled by water, so it will naturally become a chicken limb.

It was just like when he led 300,000 troops south, conquering cities and territories along the way, encountering almost no resistance. It took only half a month, with less than 10,000 casualties, to capture the Liaohe Plain and cut off the enclave of the Liaodong Peninsula.

If I stay here for a few months, the officials and generals there will probably have a lot of concerns.

After all, this is an opportunity to transform your family into a country and build your own society. Who wouldn't be tempted?

No wonder our ancestors didn't want this place. It's not that they couldn't conquer it, but that they couldn't defend it, and it wasted money and food. It's not worth it to conquer an enclave that can be lost at any time. In fact, the several small countries on the Liaodong Peninsula, with millions of people, were originally a branch of the Central Plains.

It's just that every time the Central Plains lost the peninsula, they would cede one side, and if they want to regain it, they have to go through a lot of trouble. This kind of place that is difficult to conquer, easy to lose, and has no benefits is naturally annoying.

Over time, the Central Plains no longer had to worry about this.

You must know that from ancient times to the present, all places that could be included in the rule of a powerful dynasty in the Central Plains have been included. The kings of all dynasties who wanted to achieve great things would never give up any piece of land.

Anything that has been passed down to later generations and has not been taken down is useless.

It is obvious that the Tang Dynasty did not realize this at all, otherwise it would have built a dangerous pass like the ones in later generations in Pingzhou, which is backed by mountains and the sea, to prevent the invasion of Hu cavalry and protect the entire area.

The existence of Liaodong Peninsula and Liaohe Plain made the Tang Dynasty subconsciously believe that foreign threats were far away from them, so they treated Pingzhou as an ordinary city. They did not realize that this was the throat of the entire Central Plains and the gateway to prevent the Hu people from moving south.

It seems that people's response to changing situations always depends on severe disasters.

Let me use the killing of the northern Hu cavalry to remind the Tang Dynasty how important this place is to the Central Plains Dynasty!

The clone reined in his horse and ordered his general decisively, "Zhuolibuhua, let's go back! Send a message to the whole army, take a day off today, and mobilize the whole army tomorrow to capture Pingzhou, seize the gateway to the Central Plains, and march straight to the important towns of Yuyang and Jixian in Youzhou."

"Yes, Khan." The team quickly turned their horses around, waved their whips, guarded their clones, and disappeared in the wind and snow.

(End of this chapter)