Chapter 100: Moonlit Night Murder

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the army always held banquets. But today was an exception. Li Yuanhui and his colleagues guessed that it was probably because of the tense war situation.

In addition to the mooncakes bestowed by the emperor during the normal Mid-Autumn Festival, each person would also receive two pounds of meat, one liter of wine, and various other foods.

However, although there was no banquet, bonfires were lit in various places in the camp, and the soldiers sat around chatting and admiring the moon.

"There are no mooncakes, wine and meat this year. Are they because the superiors are greedy?"

"The superiors can only deduct a little, how dare they be greedy?"

"Is it because something happened to our Xuzhou Army's Grand Commander that there are no rewards and banquets for our Xuzhou Army?"

"That's not true. Look at the Xiaoguo Army camp over there. There's only a fire but no movement. If there was wine and meat, they would have started shouting. But there's none."

"Hehehe, I feel much better now that I see they are gone."

The soldiers gathered together and chatted. In the central army tent, Li Yuanhui gave instructions to several captains, asking them to appease the soldiers, eliminate their resentment, and prepare for the ant attack on the city tomorrow.

A few captains had just been sent out to have a drink. As soon as the wine was taken out, someone came to find Li Yuanhui.

The visitor Li Yuanhui looked very familiar and was also very surprised.

"Why did Mr. Feng come here? Is it the emperor's order?"

"Consort."

The visitor was the eunuch Feng Jin, who brought Li Yuanhui a secret letter.

The owner of the secret letter is Xiao Wangzhi, the prefect of Huainan County. The content is that he will have someone open the city gate at 3:30 pm tonight. Please send someone from the court to meet and capture the city.

After reading the secret letter, Li Yuanhui's mind was in turmoil. He then asked, "Mr. Feng, is this what the saint wants? Is Xiao Wangzhi a saint's man?"

Feng Jin smiled and did not give a definite answer, but still blinked as if in agreement.

Li Yuanhui immediately ordered outside the tent: "Go and find a few captains for me, quickly."

"promise."

Li Yuanhui appeared to be as calm as a rock on the surface, but his heart was already filled with thunder and lightning. This father-in-law didn't just replace people, he also cheated.

The Huainan County Magistrate Xiao Wangzhi should have been appointed by the imperial court, but he had been pretending to defect to Murong Anguo. In fact, he was under the secret order of Murong Ying, secretly collecting information and playing tricks.

If we can accomplish this tonight, it means that everything had been planned long before the troops were dispatched, or even earlier.

In fact, although Murong Ying was in Xiacai and had not been to Shouzhou in person, he still sent his assassins to sneak into the city by water and contact Xiao Wangzhi, the prefect of Huainan County.

After Xiao Wangzhi learned that the saint was leading the army in person, he immediately formulated a plan to capture the city and wrote a secret letter to have his assassins report back to Murong Ying.

After receiving the secret letter, Murong Ying did not make it public, as he was afraid of the news spreading. It was not until today when he was about to take action that he asked the eunuch Feng Jin to come in person to inform Li Yuanhui's troops, who were several miles outside the south gate of Shouchun, of the agreed time.

He ordered his troops to capture the city at night.

Guo Xiaoke, Liu Tong and other captains of the brave and fruitful army, as well as He Gui, Chen Zhen and others from the Xuzhou army, had just returned to their own camps when they were immediately summoned by the messenger and hurried back to the central military tent.

Li Yuanhui did not waste any words and went straight to the point. He asked Liu Tong to select 200 elite soldiers who could see at night as the vanguard to capture the city, and to sneak to the foot of the city under the cover of darkness and prepare to launch the attack.

The rest of the tribes gathered their troops secretly and prepared torches by the campfire. As long as they succeeded in taking the gate, all the tribes would immediately gather together to capture the city.

Liu Tong followed Li Yuanhui's order with doubts and selected 200 soldiers who could see at night. They only wore cloth clothes and were not allowed to draw their swords to avoid reflecting the light and alerting the enemy. Then they lay in ambush under the city of Shouchun and waited for the opportunity.

"Captain Liu, what are we doing here? We don't have a rope or a Flying Tiger Claw, so we can't climb up if we want to sneak over the city."

A captain from the front whispered in Liu Tong's ear.

Liu Tongdao said, "I don't know either. The general said that someone will open the gate at 3:15 pm. It will be here soon, just wait." At the gate of the Yan army camp, Li Yuanhui was already fully armed and riding on a horse, looking at Shouchun City several miles away.

Suddenly, under the light of the fire, the gate of Shouchun city opened and the drawbridge was lowered.

Liu Tong, who had been preparing outside the city for a long time, immediately shouted: "Follow me into the city. Anyone with a white scarf on his left arm can be killed."

Then he drew his sword and was the first to rush into the city.

Li Yuanhui heard the shouts and saw the city gates were wide open, so he immediately ordered the entire army to attack.

Chen Zhen, He Gui and other troops had already been ordered to dress up in the camp. Everyone picked up a torch from the campfire, and then quickly left the camp and rushed towards Shouchun City in the order of deployment.

At this moment, Liu Tong's troops had all rushed into the city, catching the unprepared Huainan County soldiers by surprise and forcing them to flee in all directions.

When the shouting and screaming had not yet begun in the south of the city, Murong Anguo was still drinking and having fun with his trusted subordinates in the prefectural mansion.

Without paying any attention, County Magistrate Xiao Wangzhi went out on the pretext of going to the toilet and did not come back for a long time.

It was not until he heard the shouts and screams that Murong Anguo came to the courtyard in panic, "What's going on? What's going on?"

"Report, Your Majesty, it was the Deputy Commander Xiao and the Commandant Xiao who opened the South Gate, and now the Yan army has entered the city."

"what?"

The combat effectiveness of the Huainan County soldiers was not as good as that of the Xuzhou Army, and behind the Xuzhou Army was the Xiaoguo Army.

Except for Li Yuanhui and his personal guards who rode into the city on horseback, the rest of the troops, even the cavalry, dismounted and walked, entering the city in advance according to the advance deployment.

Among them, Liu Xuanji's 600 troops, led by Xiao Wangzhi and his brother Xiao Shizhi, the commander of the South Gate, went straight to the prefectural government in the core of the city.

Guo Xiaoke's troops were responsible for capturing the east gate, Chen Zhen was responsible for the west gate, He Gui's troops were responsible for the north gate, Ma Baozong was responsible for capturing the armory, and Dou Jian and Murong Bao's troops blocked the main camp east of the city. Various troops continued to pour in from the south gate, and then followed the guides who had been prepared long ago to rush to their destinations.

Outside the city, Duan Wuchen and Wei Xiaoju also received orders in advance to immediately block the east and west gates after Li Yuanhui captured the city, blocking the Huainan County soldiers' escape route. The navy's warships were used to block the loopholes at the north gate.

The Huainan County soldiers in the city were defeated by the Yan army that suddenly rushed into the city. They were in disarray and fled in all directions.

The city was in chaos, with soldiers from both sides taking the opportunity to break into people's homes and burn, kill and loot.

Murong Anguo quickly packed up his belongings and hurriedly left the prefectural government with his sons and close associates and came to the north gate. When he arrived at the north gate, he found that all the ferries here were on fire, and through the water fort he could see the large ships of the Yan army with torches lit on the Huai River.

"Xiao Wangzhi"

Murong Anguo lay powerlessly on the ground. He knew that he had lost, and he also knew what the consequence of losing would be.

Soon, Xiao Wangzhi and Liu Xuanji blocked Murong Anguo, his cronies and two hundred personal guards at the north gate ferry.

These two hundred personal guards were all Murong Anguo's trusted elite men who had been nurtured by him for many years. Even at this point, they refused to lay down their weapons and surrender.

But Liu Xuanji's troops were all Youzhou cavalry, and even in infantry combat they were no match for these people. But Old Liu was afraid that his precious heavy cavalry would suffer too many casualties, so when dealing with the last 200 people, he asked Li Yuanhui to send him archers.

Even armor cannot withstand the close range attacks from bows and crossbows.

All of Murong Anguo's personal guards were killed in the battle, and no one surrendered.

When Murong Anguo was finally captured, he cursed Xiao Wangzhi as a "thief and traitor" and said, "I trusted you so much."

But Xiao Wangzhi said: "These 200 people are your retainers. It is only right that they die for you. I, Xiao Wangzhi, am a retainer of Great Yan. I should be loyal to Great Yan and its sage. How can you, a usurper, call me a traitor?"

Upon hearing this, Murong Anguo turned pale and said nothing.

(End of this chapter)