After intensive preparations, within a few days, Yuan Shu's Northern Expedition army had been organized. Hua Xiong commanded 30,000 Xiliang cavalry, Pang Tong was the military advisor. Sun Jian and Xu Rong each commanded 40,000 infantry, and Ju was the military advisor. In addition,

Yuan Shu's 3,000 tiger troops and 3,000 trapped troops, totaling 116,000 people, were ready to go and sailed northward in a mighty warship.

The many movements in Jiangdong cannot be hidden from the eyes of the princes of the world who have been paying close attention. Whether it is the construction of the Jinling Palace, the entry of Xiliang soldiers into the city, or the expedition of Yuan Shu's army, Yuan Shu has no intention of hiding it, so the princes of the world are all looking at it.

I got the news immediately.

Yuan Shao, who was in Jizhou, was furious when he learned that Yuan Shu was building a palace in Jinling. He directly ordered Xun Chen to build a palace in Yecheng within half a month. The specifications should be slightly expanded according to the palace standards of Jinling. Faced with Yuan Shao's anger,

Xun Chen sighed softly after remonstrating with similar behavior to no avail, and had no choice but to try his best to arrange it.

The scale of the palace built by Yuan Shu is no less than that of the former palace in Luoyang, the old capital. This is the result of Yuan Shu's unwillingness to waste money. After all, this place is for him to live in, and he is not the kind of person who is extremely dissolute. Currently, he only has

With one wife and three concubines, the size of the area where the concubines lived was much smaller than that of the Han imperial palace.

For Yuan Shu, the cost of building a palace of this size was just a drop in the bucket. Even Tian Feng, who was very poor, bluntly said that it could be expanded. However, Yuan Shu had no intention of using Jinling as the capital after unifying the world, so he did not expand excessively.

.

Although Yuan Shao was much richer than the princes in the world, he was far behind Yuan Shu. The money required to build a palace of the same size was enough to make Yuan Shao feel pain for a long time, but because of his face, Yuan Shao still insisted on it.

Following Yuan Shu's move to proclaim himself emperor, Yuan Shao also directly tore off the pretense, and his desire to proclaim himself emperor was clear. The situation in the world suddenly changed. Gongsun Zan was excited at this time, but Liu Bei and Cao Cao became extremely resentful.

...

Shanyang County, Changyi City. Liu Bei's more than 70,000 troops have surrounded the city on three sides for several days. However, under the command of Xun Yu in the city, Changyi City remains impregnable and shows no signs of being breached.

"Ming Jin, guard!" Liu Bei gritted his teeth and said with an extremely ugly face as he watched the soldiers under his command who rushed up the city wall be repulsed again. It had been five days of such a strong attack, and Liu Bei's soldiers had lost nearly 20,000 soldiers.

The loss was less than 4,000 defenders in Changyi, and the battle loss ratio was close to 1:5. The heavy casualties were simply unbearable for Liu Bei. Many soldiers had already lost their morale and lost their fighting spirit.

"Lord, such a forceful attack is not an option. Our soldiers have been attacking for many days, and now they have been attacking for several days. We are already exhausted. If we continue to attack by force, our morale may collapse. It is better to take a short rest and build more attacks.

Let’s use the city’s weapons to attack the city again!” Chen Dao couldn’t help but admonish after days of hard fighting and looking at the increasingly resentful army under his command.

Liu Bei's face was extremely gloomy at this time. Ever since he learned the news about Cao Cao's attack on Qingzhou, he was extremely anxious and led the army to attack without rest. In order to catch Cao Cao off guard, he could capture Yanzhou as soon as possible and return to Yuzhou or continue to attack Cao Cao northward.

Expanding the results of the battle. As a result, under the protection of Guan Zhang, they fought non-stop all the way, and indeed won consecutive battles. They successfully entered the hinterland of Yanzhou, but they failed in Changyi.

Xun Yu stayed behind to guard Changyi. Although he had only 20,000 defenders under his command, he built Changyi like an iron barrel. Catapults, crossbows, arrow towers, inner walls, and countless ways to defend the city made Liu Bei despair.

, became so angry that he just ignored it and forced his army to attack the city. However, after five days, countless troops were lost and generals were lost, but all efforts were in vain.

Looking at the soldiers who were scrambling to retreat with panic on their faces, Liu Bei sighed softly: "As you said, let's rest for two days."

Guan and Zhang breathed a sigh of relief when they heard this. They carried out Liu Bei's orders directly without any reason, but they felt quite distressed when they saw their exhausted soldiers engaging in a meaningless war of attrition.

.

After retreating to the camp, Liu Bei summoned everyone to the commander's camp and said a little tiredly: "Now that our army has surrounded Changyi but cannot move, what are your plans?"

Everyone looked at each other and remained silent. A siege battle is about using the lives of soldiers to win battles. Let alone a battle loss of one to five. If it weren't for the gates, even a battle loss of one to ten wouldn't be possible.

Strange. Even though the two battles of Tongguan were fought so easily before, the first time was because the Xiliang soldiers were not good at defending the city and the defensive equipment was insufficiently prepared, while the second time was due to the excessive advantage in military strength.

Yuan Shu's many archers suppressed the enemy from a distance, and then the siege damage was reduced to about one to two.

Now Liu Bei was facing a well-prepared Xun Yu. Even though he had three times the number of troops and powerful generals like Zhang, he really couldn't take advantage for the moment.

Seeing that everyone was silent, Liu Ye couldn't help but sigh in his heart, and stood up and said: "My lord, Changyi is not something we can capture easily. Xun Wenruo defends the city in a flawless manner and has many tricks, so attacking by force is not a good strategy."

"But Cao Cao has now reached Donglai and besieged Lu Bu in Huang County. If we don't capture Changyi, we may have no way out after Cao Cao defeats Lu Bu and comes back with reinforcements!" Liu Bei said anxiously.

"In addition, lord, there is another piece of bad news." Chen Qun stood up and said in a deep voice: "Yuan Shu has sent troops from Jinling with more than 100,000 troops to Yuzhou, and it is expected that he will invade Yuzhou in three days. Lord, at this time Yuzhou

However, the more than 20,000 defenders cannot hold out for long."

Hearing this, Liu Bei became even more anxious. He looked at Chen Dao with crazy eyes and said coldly: "Uncle Zhi, how is the training of the white-eared elite soldiers that I ordered you to train?"

Chen Dao looked at Liu Bei's crazy look, his heart trembled, and he clasped his fists in a low voice and said: "My lord, my combat strength has been reduced enough to fight."

"Okay!" Liu Bei said with a determined look: "Take a short rest in the past two days and build more ladders to rush the chariots. In two days, Bai'er's elite soldiers will be the vanguard and must capture the city of Changyi at all costs."

"But, lord!" Chen Dao heard this and wanted to dissuade him anxiously. Although the Bai'er elite soldiers are said to be capable of hundreds of battles, it is too wasteful to use them in siege battles. Siege battles are not like frontal battles. A rolling stone, a

After the golden juice comes down, the outcome of the white-ear elite soldiers is no different from ordinary soldiers. It is really unacceptable for Chen Dao to waste the elite soldiers he has trained so hard on this kind of battle. But Chen Dao saw it before he finished speaking.

Liu Bei's cold eyes were full of murderous intent. His whole body was soaked in cold sweat and he stopped talking.

"The elite Bai'er soldiers are the absolute elite trained by you in order to turn the tide in times of crisis. Now that the situation has deteriorated to this point, I must capture Changyi as soon as possible, otherwise Yuzhou will be lost. I know Bai'er

The elite soldiers of Er are your hard work, but thousands of elite soldiers and the land of a state, which is more important, I hope you can wake up. After this battle, I will allocate thousands more elite soldiers to you, and the elite soldiers of Bai'er can also be rebuilt, but so

Once a good opportunity is missed, it will never come back." Realizing the slight dissatisfaction in Chen Dao's heart, Liu Bei explained.
Chapter completed!