"Taiwei, let's break through and retreat." Yang Ye, who saw Pan Mei losing his fighting spirit, made his final suggestion.

"How can we break through under such a siege?" Pan Mei did not take Yang Ye's advice seriously. He now had nothing but despair.

"We have a last move. Before we set out, the Duke of Anding County sent someone to send a box of things and a letter. The letter said so. If we are besieged, we can break through with the things in this box."

"What else can help us now? Is there a box of wings?"

In order to prevent it, Yang Ye brought the box with him, when he opened it, he saw that it was a box of bombs and another letter.

Yang Ye opened the letter and saw it as follows:

“Half General Yang

When you open this box of things, it is probably that your army has been besieged. This thing is called a grenade. Using fire to ignite the fuse on each grenade and throw it out will cause an explosion. The power of the explosion may not be of great help to your siege. But if your army is besieged, you can use this to open a retreat. But my sincere hope is just my worry, I hope you have not used this box of things."

Yang Ye then took a grenade and took out a fire sniff and lit it. After igniting the grenade, Yang Ye threw it towards the Khitan army.

I saw a grenade exploded in the moment of contact with the Khitan army. Although the Khitan soldiers were not killed directly, they injured their horses. The Khitan soldiers affected by the bombs also temporarily lost their combat capabilities.

"This really worked, Taiwei." Yang Ye said to Pan Mei with some joy after seeing the effect.

Pan Mei naturally saw the effect of the grenade, and a trace of hope ignited in his eyes.

So Pan Mei immediately ordered the army that could gather together immediately and find a place to break through.

There were about fifty grenades in the box. Yang Ye found fifty cavalry to assign grenades to each person's hands, and then handed over the methods they used.

These fifty people became the vanguard, leading the remaining less than 10,000 people who could be gathered to break through.

With countless loud noises, the Liao army's encirclement was blown up, and the Song army, which was less than 10,000, began to break through. Soon Pan Mei and Yang Ye both broke away from the encirclement.

However, the Liao army was not a vegetarian. Seeing that Pan Mei and Yang Ye and nearly 10,000 people broke through, they immediately pulled out the troops and prepared to pursue them.

Seeing this situation, the fourth, fifth and sixth brothers of the Yang family decisively chose to stay and leave the rear. They drew less than a thousand volunteers from the 10,000 people to stay.

Yang Ye knew that his three sons would be bound to die forever, but he had no choice. Protecting Pan Mei to retreat was the top priority at this time.

After saying goodbye to his third son with tears in his eyes, Yang Ye and his eldest son also had his second son, and the remaining 8,000 people protected Pan Mei and began to retreat south.

Three days later, they retreated to Yingzhou City.

Yingzhou City was already dilapidated due to the previous heavy blow, and the population in the city had been moved back to the pass by Yang Yanzhao. At this time, there were only 5,000 defenders left by the army when they left.

After the army left, the five thousand defenders were slightly repaired by the collapsed city wall, but it was basically useless for blocking.

Just after Pan Mei and Yang Ye, more than 8,000 people entered the city, the Khitan pursuers also arrived less than half a day.

Relying on the remaining city-guarding equipment and more than 1,300 people, the Song army began to deal with the Khitan soldiers.

At first, the Khitan cavalry also wanted to use the gap in the original city to attack Yingzhou City, but after the gap was repaired by the Song army, it was basically impossible to directly use cavalry to rush into the city.

If you abandon your horse and use infantry, you can enter the gap, but the Song army has heavy troops guarding the gap, and if you have entered the gap, you will be directly encircled and suppressed.

Even if they successfully broke through the encirclement and suppression, the street fighting in the city would trap the Khitan soldiers and then kill them.

At this moment, there are no people in Yingzhou City, so the Khitan soldiers now have only one purpose after entering the city, that is, to kill or capture all the remaining Song soldiers.

However, due to obstruction, the trend of the Khitan army siege began to gradually weaken.

"We are not good at siegeing the city, but the Song army is guarding the city with the mentality of hiding death. What should we do?" Yelu Xizhen, who arrived at the city of Yingzhou, said to Yelu Mo with some worries.

As Yelu Xizhen said, since there were no more people in the city, the Song army naturally had no worries. Knowing that he could not escape anyway, he was ready to kill many Khitan soldiers and kill as many as possible, and to earn a foothold when he was about to die.

Yelu Mo, who rubbed his temples, finally came up with the only way to siege the city. He would siege him without fighting. At worst, he would spend money on you. The Song army would definitely not have much military rations. At worst, he would spend some more time to suck you to death.

In this way, the Khitan army surrounded Yingzhou City for three days. Although they occasionally sent some people to disturb them during these three days, they basically stopped moving and fled with the Song army.

...

"All this is my fault. At that time, we should have retreated to Yunzhou instead of continuing to attack."

Yang Ye couldn't say anything that could comfort Pan Mei at this time, because he also knew that they basically had no way to do anything except wait for death.

The food and grass in the city were almost exhausted, and the soldiers were exhausted. The soldiers who were both attacked by injuries and fear every day were basically no longer able to fight.

They had the mentality of dying together, but they didn't expect that the Liao army would not attack and wanted to kill them directly.

"There is only one way now, try to lead the Liao army into the city, and then set fire to the city, burning both jade and stone." Yang Ye, who was already desperate, proposed this method.

Pan Mei, who also had no extravagance, nodded as if she agreed to Yang Ye’s approach.

So the Song army in the city began their final preparations. They collected all the things that were easy to ignite in the city and piled them in the city. Then they collected all the sulfur saltpeter and charcoal to make explosives, ready to detonate and ignite everything.

Then the Song army opened the surrounding city gates, and then Yang Ye walked up to the top of the city.

On the top of the city, Yang Ye took Pan Mei's head and surrendered to the Liao army, asking them to enter the city to accept it.

After deciding to burn both jade and stone, Pan Mei drew her sword and committed suicide, preparing to use her head to allow Yang Ye to pretend to be a mutiny and surrender to lead the Liao army into the city.

Yelu Xizhen under the city was naturally very happy to see Pan Mei's head. He was about to lead his troops into the city and was stopped by Yelu Mo.

"General, I'm afraid that there is a fraud, so it's better to let the front army enter the city first. Everything is safe and then enter the city.

So the Khitan army sent only 20,000 front troops into the city.

Just after the Khitan army entered the city, they naturally saw flammable items piled up in the city. When the front general who felt bad was about to let the entire army retreat, the explosives in the city exploded, and then the city gate was suddenly closed and a fire broke out in the entire city.

Although he only joined the Khitan army of 20,000 people, Yang Ye also knew that if he didn't work, he would never have a chance again. So while the Khitan commander Yelu Xizhen was still outside the city, Yang Ye gave the order to take action.

In this way, the few remaining Song troops and the 20,000 Khitans were burned to pieces.

After hearing the huge explosion in the city, he saw the flames soaring into the sky. Yelu Xizhen outside the city naturally reacted to the Song army's plan.

While thanking Yelu Mo for stopping him in time, he also hated the Song people. Then he ordered the Yunzhou and Shuozhou to be recaptured immediately.

Within five days, the Khitan army recaptured Yunzhou and Shuozhou because there were not many Song Dynasty defenders in these two states.

However, after recapturing these two states, the Liao Kingdom found that these two states were actually empty, with no one except a small number of defenders.

After seeing such a situation, Yelu Xizhen's anger burned to the peak. In order to vent his anger, he chose to massacre all the surrendered Song army.

After venting his anger, Yelu Xizhen also left only a small number of defenders and retreated.

On the fifth day after the war in the Western Route Army ended, Zhao Weiji finally led reinforcements to the city of Yingzhou, but there was nothing but a burnt ruin to greet them.

Seeing the tragic situation in front of him, Zhao Weiji quickly inferred the reason for all this.

When he knew that Yang Ye, Pan Mei and even other Yang brothers might have been burned to death in the city, Zhao Weiji knelt directly on the ruins and burst into tears.

"ah!!!!!!!!!"

After hearing the commander's heart-wrenching roar and seeing the scorched earth in front of him, the others probably understood, and the entire Song army could not help but burst into tears.

At this time, Zhao Weiji felt a strong feeling that he had never felt before: "I want to change all this, I want to become an emperor to fundamentally change all this. This is a systemic mistake, and the system is the source of all evil."

It turned out that the reason why Zhao Weiji came to rescue was that the war-weariness of the entire central army had reached its peak. Zhao Weiji, who was preparing to come to rescue, was facing the vast majority of the central army no longer willing to fight again.

At this time, the Central Army had only one idea, and went home to receive the merits and meet the family. They didn't care whether they had their own robes there and were still fighting.

Due to the system, the status of the soldiers of the Song Dynasty was very low. Once recruited as soldiers, they had to tattoo their faces to prevent them from escaping.

This caused all soldiers to think that they were insulted, and they looked down on themselves and even more so. In addition, they could not meet their families for a long time, and the entire Song army's grassroots level had a vague psychological illness.

They are eager to make achievements to get rid of this low status, but once the war is frustrated, they are afraid of war. They are selfish and do not care about other parts of the entire battle situation as long as they can achieve military merits.

These morbid minds even affected the commander. Cao Bin's repeated defeats and Pan Mei's greed for merits is that the lack of attention from the soldiers in the system makes them want to earn as much military merit as possible.

Zhao Weiji spent a lot of effort in this sick army to gather these rescue troops, but when they finally crossed the Taihang Mountains and arrived in Yingzhou, this was the case.

"I must become an emperor, and I can never keep up with it and change all this. I even want to restrict the imperial power after becoming an emperor. I want to end the era of supreme imperial power ahead of time, and I will do what I say." Zhao Weiji, after wiped away the tears, sweared in his heart.

As a man who has returned from modern times, he certainly knew what kind of tragedy the supremacy of imperial power would cause, and he vowed to change all this.
Chapter completed!