After making a major sacrifice and concession, Zhou Yu presented facts and reasoned to stabilize Yu Jin, which finally prevented the situation in Jiangdong from collapsing immediately.

But the price Zhou Yu is about to pay is obviously heavy.

Under the major negative news that Huang Gai and Zhu Ling's road attack were completely wiped out, and Li Su Pioneer had arrived in Nanling Port for two or three days, and had already begun to gradually launch land offensive preparations. The broken place in Nanling really could not be defended anymore.

Not only should Nanling not be kept for a long time, but there were several places in the future where Zhou Yu was preparing as a strategic deep river defense support point at the beginning, and he could only give up after delaying for a few days and exchange time for space.

In the middle of the night that day, Zhou Yu and Yu Jin assembled all the main warships, broke through and left Nanling, and moved wildly downstream.

Although it was dark night, Li Su set up a certain amount of alert patrol after all, and took the opportunity to pursue the night and annihilate part of Zhou Yu's troops behind the palace. In short, Zhou Yu did not escape unscathed.

Zhou Yu had only 50,000 naval troops left before the war. Huang Gai lost a lot of him and lost thousands tonight. When he fled to the rear, he only counted 37,800 people. Yu Jin's naval troops were also slightly damaged, leaving only 20,000.

Yu Jin and Zhou Yu added up to the total sailors and troops were only 60,000. The total number of front-line soldiers of the Sun-Cao coalition army also dropped from 110,000 before the war to 90,000. There were 30,000 pure army troops on the north bank of the Yangtze River, led by Cao Ren and Li Dian and others.

Fortunately, as Zhou Yu retreated, Sun Quan would slowly replenish the remaining strength in Danyang and Wujun magistrate's family to Zhou Yu.

Moreover, the decline in the size of the army on the north bank is not a big problem. Cao Cao has few naval forces and many army still has many army. With Cao's reinforcements filling the front line, there are no need to worry about the risk of Li Su landing in Jiangbei and seizing Huainan together.

In the next ten days, Zhou Yu designed Tongshan Pass in the eastern part of Nanling County, and delayed Li Su for another four days. The port area is crisscrossed, and the Yangtze River is forked into several waterways by several river islands, which is indeed convenient for the attack troops to drag time and escape unscathed.

To put it bluntly, although this Tongshan did not even have a county-level place name during the Han Dynasty, it was quite famous in later generations. It was the battlefield of the battle of the Dingjiazhou, which was the main force of Jia Sidao, the Mongolian and Yuan troops annihilated Jia Sidao's main force. It can be seen that this section of the Yangtze River terrain is indeed suitable for blocking wars.

(Note: It is now Tongling in Anhui. At that time, Tongling was just a copper mine and was not thoroughly developed at the end of the Han Dynasty. After the development of the Six Dynasties of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was not until the Sui and Tang Dynasties that it became the largest copper mine in the country, and a separate county was established, and Tongling was divided from Nanling)

Then, he gave up Chungu in turn in Wuhu (called Wuhu in the Han Dynasty), and within half a month, he retreated his Jiangnan naval headquarters to Dangtu and Niuzhu.

At the beginning, Yu Jin had to retreat to the Ruxu River on the north bank of the river. As long as the mouth of the Ruxu River was blocked, Li Su would not be able to pursue him.

But Zhou Yu tried his best to find a reason to persuade him, so that he could rest assured, and told him to retreat to Dangtu that Niuzhu would never be unable to escape, and would never have a way out.

Zhou Yu's explanation was very technical, and Zhou Yu's responsible attitude of "blocking, blocking, and then breaking, letting my troops do it, protecting friendly troops first" in the past half month also more or less restored Yu Jin's admiration for him. In the end, he finally convinced Yu Jin and retreated to Dangtu, dozens of miles downstream than Ruxukou.

As for Ruxukou, it is necessary to block the river, but it is enough to let Li Dian's army block the river. The estuary of Ruxuhui River is very narrow. The army sets up earth platforms on both sides of the straits, and erects on the crossbows can definitely completely block the river surface. The enemy ships will die as much as they come, and it is impossible to carry the city defense fortifications.

Dangtu and Niuzhu ports are roughly equivalent to Ma'anshan and Caishiji, which are under Ma'anshan in later generations. Anyone who has read a little about history knows that this place is the last river defense portal to attack Jianye/Jinling from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River since ancient times.

The most famous water war defense war that took place in Caishiji in history was naturally the later Confucian general of the Southern Song Dynasty, Yu Yunwen, led 130,000 Song troops to repel the 600,000 army of King Wanyan Liang of Jin Hailing, crossing the south expedition, making Wanyan Liang's bragging "to lift millions of troops on the West Lake and immediately the first peak of Wushan" a laughing stock.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, in history, Sun Ce defeated Liu Yao and captured Jianye, and it was also the battle of Niuzhu that he defeated Zhang Ying and Fan Neng that he captured the base in Jiangdong. Of course, because of the butterfly effect in this life, those events changed.

But no matter what, Niuzhu is already Jianye’s last Jiangye defense gate. If it is broken through here, it can only be watched as the enemy lands and defend Jianye City to the death.

The great men of this dynasty once read history and said that "the ancient and modern Confucian general Xie Zhou Yu" was the feeling, that is, they believed that the famous generals who fought against the Northern Territory since ancient times were led by Xie An, Zhou Yu and Yu Yunwen.

As time goes by, Zhou Yu's last decisive battle in his life was dragged to the vicinity of Niuzhu, and to the place where Yu Yunwen became famous a thousand years later. Zhou Yu can be regarded as "all famous generals of the Southern Dynasty possessed the souls, and he was not fighting alone."

However, Zhou Yu was able to convince Yu Jin to follow him and not hide in Ruxukou, but to station in Niuzhu downstream. It is certainly not enough to rely solely on Niuzhu as the last portal of Jianye.

Yu Jin was always concerned about "will he be unable to retreat because he retreated to a port on the south bank and was divided and surrounded by Li Su and caught a turtle in the jar."

The key to Zhou Yu is to solve his doubts.

Zhou Yu sincerely told him to the map: There is another key retreat to retreat to Niuzhu, that is, Niuzhu is the estuary of the important tributary of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, "Zhongjiang", a river forked from the Yangtze River.

Note: It does not flow into the Yangtze River, but forked out from the Yangtze River! That is to say, it is not that the water level of the Zhongjiang River is higher than that of the Yangtze River, and the Zhongjiang River flows into the Yangtze River, but in turn, the Yangtze River flows into the Zhongjiang River.

Yu Jin was not familiar with Jiangdong hydrology and geography. When he first heard this, he was surprised. How could a small river flow from the Yangtze River in turn? No wonder his name is Zhongjiang, which means that this is indeed part of the river.

But since it is accepted by the Yangtze River, where will the river flow in the end? Will it go directly into the sea?

Zhou Yu answered him: Zhongjiang will flow into Taihu Lake from Niuzhu eastward, which is the main upstream water source of Taihu Lake. Therefore, even if the troops are stationed in Niuzhu, even if they are not good at defending Jianye and are landed by the enemy, they will have the opportunity to drive along Zhongjiang into Taihu Lake.

The enemy's warships could not enter the Zhongjiang River, and the landing army troops could not stop them from retreating along the waters of the Zhongjiang River, which was absolutely foolproof.

As long as you enter Taihu Lake, there will definitely be a way to escape in the future. You can enter the East China Sea from the east bank of Taihu Lake through Songjiang, or from the Wuchengshui and other ancient canal sections of the south canal in the south bank of Taihu Lake, and enter Zhejiang Bay from Yuhang County.

(Note: The Jiangnan region has a history of dredging and connecting natural river channels into canals since ancient times. It began to be built in the Goujian and Fuchai eras. It was as long as the Hangou between the Jianghuai River and Huai River, and it was still in use in the Han Dynasty. Later, when Yang Guang built the Grand Canal, the Hangou and Jiangnan River sections were only re-driggered the silted and abandoned ancient Wuyue river channels.

It is mainly because of the three hundred years of the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the south did not need to transport east and west to the north, and it became two separatist regimes. Therefore, the canal gradually abandoned and needed to be unified by the north and south and then rebuilt. In addition, the globe was dug by Wei during the Warring States Period, so only the Hebei section of the Grand Canal was completely dug by Yang Guang himself from scratch, and all the other three sections were renovated by the abandoned rivers)

In short, when you arrive on the sea, the entire East China Sea is connected together. Can Li Su still block you? At that time, Yu Jin wants to continue to serve Cao Gong. Even if Li Su blocks the estuary of the Yangtze River, they can still go north along the coastline, enter Cao Cao's territory from the entrance of the Huai River, turn a circle from the Huai River to the Feishui River to Chaohu Lake, turn a large circle and then to Ruxukou.

Seeing that Zhou Yu had conceived such a comprehensive way out for him, Yu Jin also wanted to take a gamble and turn the tables.

In addition, he had long passed on the message that "Li Su got a large number of elite reinforcements from the Northern Front" to Cao Cao. He also felt that Cao Cao would persuade Yuan Shao to take the initiative to counterattack and separate Liu Bei's pressure on the Southern Front. By that day, there would be a chance to turn the tables in the whole situation.

Therefore, Yu Jin finally hid in Niuzhu with Zhou Yu, relying on Zhongjiang and Taihu as the last alternative retreat. At the same time, he handed over the land defense at Ruxukou on the other side to Li Dian and others entrusted by Cao Ren, as well as the reinforcements sent by Cao Cao later.

...

Yu Jin and Zhou Yu chose to withdraw and shrink their strength and concentrate their forces to wait for the final battle. This process was relatively long and took more than half a month.

After they retreated, because the weather was already very hot, it was almost between the first to the second and second days. Even if Li Su could launch an attack, he had to endure it. It was not too late to wait until the dog days later.

After all, the point that "there are no northerners or Yuan Shao's army captured" is just that Li Su deceived Zhou Yuyu, not true.

If Li Suzhen dared to launch a fierce offensive in the humid and hot dog days in the south, the 20,000 Yuan army prisoners in his army would be able to fall down with a large area of ​​20,000 people in his army, and he would first have a large area of ​​plague of heatstroke.

Therefore, since it was to use a trick, there was no need to do this. Zhou Yu had already forced him to give up Tongshan, Wuhu, and retreat to Niuzhu. In the final battle, he would survive twenty days of summer heat.

But Li Su's immobility also hid murderous intent. However, from a geographical point of view, this murderous intent is not in front of him, but thousands of miles away.

The conversation is divided into two ends, and the timeline goes back to May 28, when Zhou Yu and Yu Jin had just given up Nanling and began to retreat to Tongshan.

The perspective range from God's perspective is temporarily pulled from the south of the Yangtze River to the land defense zone of Jiangbei and Huainan, Cao Ren and Li Dian.

Li Dian had already communicated with Yu Jin at that time and asked Cao Ren for instructions. Cao Ren said that since Yu Jin wanted to continue strategic contraction with Zhou Yu, the space for the defense of the Yangtze River North Bank of the Yangtze River, which Li Dian was responsible for, would become larger and larger in depth. Therefore, he tried his best to mobilize troops to support Li Dian's mobile defense, and further requested Cao Cao to organize reinforcements through Xiahou Dun.

At this time, the evidence of Yu Jin's previous estimate of Li Su's military situation has been reported to Xiahou Dun through Cao Ren. After a brief summary of Xiahou Dun, he would review it with Cheng Yu who had just arrived. If Cheng Yu felt that there was no fraud, he would officially report it to Cao Cao.

Fortunately, after the end of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the northern wheat crops had already entered the slack season. There was no double-season crop planting in the north, and there was no harvest and planting in summer. Cao Cao's military troops could fully enter the state of military mobilization.

Therefore, the military troops stationed in the former Yuan Shu occupied area, which had just been transferred to the newly restored Yuan Shu, were soon mobilized and moved south from Shouchun and Qiao County to support the Huainan War Zone.

As for the old defenders who were temporarily taken away by Cao Ren and handed over to Li Dian, there would be some time window before the new reinforcements were filled. Cao Ren was very complicated at the moment and didn't pay much attention to it. Anyway, he thought it was no big deal.
Chapter completed!