Chapter 116

Return to the Great Wall battlefield

Xu Ningmei was indeed somewhat shocked by the passionate atmosphere at the scene! This was a scene she had never seen or heard of in the imperial capital!

Youzhou is a remote frontier with crude culture and poor literary style. If it were not for the great poet Liu Buqi, it would basically be regarded as a barbaric place by the literati of the empire!

I hadn't expected the generosity and tragedy here to surpass the splendor and luxury of the imperial center! This is a feeling that no words can accurately describe!

No wonder there are people like Yue Lingxi and Liu Buqi who can look down on all the heroes in the world!

For the first time, Xu Ningmei felt proud of this place and thought it would be a good place to settle down! So she responded loudly!

"Madam, if the soldiers are willing to kill the enemy, please grant their request. Don't let the sincerity of the men on the battlefield be chilled!"

Liu Buqi bowed again and said, "Alright! Since Lord Situ has agreed, I would like to thank you all again. Let's go to the Great Wall battlefield today!"

The painting style changed, and he imitated Yue Lingxi and continued in a somewhat teasing tone:

"Guan Ying, you old veteran, when you get to the battlefield, don't just focus on killing the enemy yourself. Don't forget to teach these new recruits from Yanjing City a lesson!"

This statement caused a burst of laughter from the old soldiers, but many new recruits who had never been to the battlefield were ready to fight, and they would never let these old soldiers look down on them!

Liu Buqi was about to ask Liu Feiyan to fill a glass of good wine for everyone, but Guan Ying stepped forward and said, "Madam, these brothers are just the vanguard right now. There are still a large group of people waiting for news from us, and they haven't caught up yet!"

Liu Buqi asked curiously, "How many troops are there behind?"

"When we just left Yanjing, we had gathered 20,000 people with their own armor, and more people are coming one after another. I don't know how many people there are now!" Guan Ying responded to Liu Buqi while waving to an equally disabled old soldier to ride back to the city on horseback to report the news.

Although the old soldier was also missing a leg, there was a special lock on the stirrup that directly fixed the prosthetic leg on it, and his superb riding skills could actually be revealed to some extent!

"Do the people in Youzhou have their own armor and weapons at home?" Yue Hanxin, who had not spoken for a whole day and night, asked Guan Yinglai in a hoarse voice, and seemed to be very interested in this question!

Although there is no explicit ban on civilian use of weapons in the empire, these battlefield equipment are also extremely strictly controlled. Moreover, a set of armor and weapons is very expensive, and ordinary people would not prepare them at all!

Guan Ying looked up at Liu Buqi before answering, "Your Highness, you may not know this, but we've been fighting the grasslands and Yehe for years. Every family in Youzhou has soldiers, and every family has lost their lives on the battlefield!"

"Whether they're retired or dead in battle, these armor and weapons can be kept as a keepsake. Once they need to recruit civilians, they'll be useful! So almost every household has these things!"

Yue Hanxin nodded silently. With just Liu Buqi's command, Yanjing City was filled with followers! It was conceivable that Yue Lingxi's reputation in Youzhou would be even higher after leading the troops in battle!

In addition to the world-famous Youzhou Canglang Army, Yanjing has a population of 200,000, and nearly 30,000 armored soldiers can voluntarily come out in just one night!

Once this number is expanded to the million people of Youzhou, it means mobilizing more than 100,000 soldiers in a short period of time!

This is a terrifying number! As far as he knows, Liu Buqi has been raising the children from the grasslands and Yehe tribesmen he recaptured as Chinese, and a large number of women from other ethnic groups have been married off to Youzhou veterans!

It is conceivable that in ten or twenty years, when this group of new Youzhou people grow up, Youzhou’s terrifying war potential will be magnified several times!

Right now, if the empire really wants to attack Youzhou, Yue Lingxi will gather a huge military force at the command of a single command!

This is "hiding troops among the people"!

Yue Hanxin understood why Liu Buqi had dragged him to the Great Wall battlefield! This was a naked deterrent, although he still didn't understand the purpose of this deterrent!

Liu Buqi did intend to intimidate Yue Hanxin, which would reduce a lot of trouble for Youzhou in the future, but for now, he still had to deal with the matter of the Great Wall first.

The army rushing from Yanjing City was already in sight, so vast that it stretched as far as the eye could see! Retired veterans who had volunteered to be the statisticians had already arrived!

This was also a comrade-in-arms of Guan Ying. After greeting Liu Buqi, he reported directly that there were more than 28,000 volunteers who came this time, and many of them had old armor and weapons. Those who were too old or too young were directly persuaded to go back by these veterans!

Looking at these soldiers who had already undergone preliminary screening, Liu Buqi bowed deeply to express his gratitude. Now there were more than 30,000 soldiers gathered here!

This has completely exceeded Liu Buqi's expectations, and even exceeded the limit of Zhenbei Prefecture's food supply!

Moreover, the grassland has limited military forces, and our side is mainly focused on defense. So many troops are completely a waste of resources!

Liu Buqi immediately ordered that among these people, those who were only sons, had no children, or had brothers who had joined the army and had no one to support the elderly at home must return to Yanjing.

Even so, there were still 20,000 soldiers and generals left! More than 5,000 of them had been on the battlefield in the past few years!

Leading this large army, Liu Buqi hurried on the road while using the locations of the soldiers' homes as the standard. Every thousand people were formed into a squadron, and they were arranged from one to twenty according to their numbers. Each squadron was commanded by several veterans according to their military ranks.

In the evening of that day, the aid army arrived at Zhenbei Prefecture!

Zhang Ruoxu, with a face full of stubble, had already left the city early to greet them. After all, he was a scholar and did not know how to march and deploy troops. In the offensive and defensive battles, he mainly relied on some experienced veterans. He was indeed exhausted these days.

Liu Buqi was very satisfied with his performance! In addition to verbal encouragement, he also directly appointed him as the commander of Zhenbei Prefecture and asked him to contact Lu Qinghou and Li Huaigu frequently to jointly ensure the logistics of the army.

After entering Zhenbei Prefecture, the Great Wall defense line is right in front of you. In the past few days, grassland soldiers who have crossed the border have been harassing this place in the middle of the night.

Although Zhang Ruoxu tried his best to resist, the defense line facing the Great Wall in the mansion was already riddled with holes!

The arrival of 20,000 armored soldiers made him ecstatic.

After Liu Buqi and his men had rested for a while, they heard a report from a soldier that soldiers from the grassland were attacking the defense line of the mansion. After careful consideration, Liu Buqi ordered Zhang Ruoxu to continue defending the city according to the previous method.

And they had to pretend that the defenders of the city were exhausted and created the illusion that Zhenbei City had been conquered, so as to gradually lead the grassland soldiers deeper into the encirclement they had set up in the city and strive to completely wipe out this team of troops!

The long-awaited battle is finally here!