bookbashuk Chapter 73 Guo Jing Destroys the Song Dynasty
Chapter 73 Guo Jing Destroys the Song Dynasty
Spring of the second year of Qianwu.
At the age of twenty-nine, Guo Jing led the 200,000-strong army of the Great Qian Dynasty across the Huai River and southward, taking the Wo River and directly attacking Shouzhou and Luzhou. He then went up the Han River and besieged Xiangyang.
Zhang Rou led a detachment of 50,000 troops across the Yangtze River from Yangzhou, heading straight for Jiankang and cutting off the communication between the east and west of the Southern Song Dynasty.
The sudden and unannounced war by the Daqian Dynasty shocked and angered the entire Southern Song Dynasty. No one expected that the Daqian Dynasty, which had only been established for a year and had just experienced a bloody war with the Mongols, would be so militaristic.
No one realized that the situation of the war had already changed.
The history of warfare in this world has quietly shifted between the era of cold weapons and the era of firearms, towards the era of biological weapons and super soldiers.
Many people in later generations have analyzed why Yang Kang's Great Qian Dynasty was able to mobilize large-scale wars multiple times in a short period of time. After countless studies, the key factor was ultimately identified as the Pusiqu Snake, which became an absolute strategic resource of the empire a century later.
The gallbladder of the Pusiqu Serpent unlocked the key to evolution for the Dragon Cavalry of the Great Qian Dynasty, giving a force of only a few hundred men a strategic position that could influence the course of battles.
Furthermore, the presence of two malevolent figures, Yang Kang and Shi Tianze, meant that the Great Qian Dynasty did not suffer even the slightest cost in its two strategic decisive battles at the beginning of its founding.
However, it is clear that the Southern Song emperors and ministers at this time could not have realized the difference between the Great Qian Dynasty and the previous northern foreign states.
The Song dynasty was successively ravaged by the Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols, and even the Tanguts once launched a direct attack on the Zhao Song dynasty.
No matter how greedy, corrupt, weak, and incompetent the Southern Song Dynasty was, countless Han Chinese could not accept being ruled by a foreign race, and the people, from the army to the court and even the common people, were united in their resolve.
This last Han Chinese kingdom, through sheer willpower, withstood the siege of foreign tribes despite a weak and incompetent emperor and a corrupt and decadent court.
No country had the ability to destroy the Song Dynasty—at least, past experience had taught them so.
The Southern Song emperors and ministers believed that this was just another repetition of history.
But they didn't realize that this situation was completely different from the previous northern expeditions and southern campaigns.
The emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty was a Han Chinese, as was Guo Jing, the commander who came to attack them.
As early as the beginning of the war, Yelü Chucai listed all the major crimes committed by the Song Dynasty since its founding. From Zhao Kuangyin's usurpation of power by bullying orphans and widows, to Zhao Gou's kneeling for peace and killing loyal officials, which destroyed the Great Wall of China.
Each and every one of these incidents struck a blow to the backbone of the Southern Song Dynasty, leaving no room for rebuttal among any scholar with even a shred of shame.
Yuan Haowen further defined the Great Qian's conquest of Song as "attacking the wicked and saving the people," a symbol of the Han dynasty's destiny turning in the world.
In these proclamations, Yang Kang's double pupils were no longer a symbol of the defeated Xiang Yu, but rather an embodiment of the sage king Shun of the Three Dynasties.
These pronouncements spread widely throughout major cities in the north and south. They had little use for ordinary people and lower-ranking soldiers, but for those who had read some books and understood some principles, they had a nuclear-like effect.
Just like Lu Chengfeng and his son from Guiyun Manor, the Six Eccentrics of Jiangnan who lived in seclusion in Jiaxing, and even the Beggars' Clan—countless heroes of the martial arts world remained silent in this war.
As Zhao Kuangyin said, "How can I allow others to sleep soundly beside my bed?"
But silence is silence, and each person's silence contains different things.
In Guiyun Manor, Lu Chengfeng spread the official gazette on the table without saying a word.
Lu Guanying stood behind him, clenching his fists, his face flushed. He tried to speak several times, but his father silenced him with a single look.
If you don't know what to do, just sit down.
Lu Chengfeng said calmly.
He saw his son's desire to make a name for himself, but he hesitated, unsure of whom to help.
A Han Chinese emperor destroyed a Han Chinese dynasty. As a Han Chinese, he should have supported unification, but as a Song Chinese, he did not want his motherland to perish.
After hesitating and struggling, Lu Guanying finally fell silent.
In the Misty Rain Pavilion in Jiaxing, Han Baoju downed three bowls of yellow wine and slammed the bowls on the table.
"That dog emperor Yang Kang, he not only destroyed the Song Dynasty, but he also made Jing'er do it."
"That brat Jing'er, he actually joined the army!"
"Could it be that Master Qiu named them Jingkang so that they would join forces to bring about another Jingkang Incident for the Song Dynasty?"
Ke Zhen said, his anger rising.
No one spoke anymore.
Among the seven oddballs, Han Xiaoying's eyes reddened, Nan Xiren's knuckles turned white as he gripped the hoe, and Quan Jinfa looked down at his boots.
Everyone fell silent, their hearts filled with confusion.
Confusion was the feeling of all the heroes of the Southern Dynasty at this time; it was neither agreement nor opposition.
On the land of the Han people, everyone knows that unification is the grand path, a great cause that every Han emperor dreams of.
Of course, this excludes most of the emperors from the Zhao family.
This day was anticipated by everyone in the world, and even by countless martial arts practitioners.
However, with the motherland about to perish, people will feel somewhat lost and disoriented.
Without those spontaneously organized civilian righteous people, the emperor and his ministers of the Southern Song Dynasty suddenly found that the court had become deaf and blind, and even the army's combat effectiveness was far inferior to before.
The Daqian army besieged Xiangyang for a month, and the defending general Lü Wenhuan gradually approached the brink of collapse under the pressure from Guo Jing.
The Lü Wenhuan in this world is not the Lü Wenhuan in real history, and Xiangyang in this timeline is facing an enemy more terrifying than the original history: Guo Jing.
Although Xiangyang was a fortified city with high walls and deep moats, it was not without its flaws in the face of Guo Jing, who had become a fully-fledged military strategist after his experience in the Western Expedition.
Under Guo Jing's pressure, Xiangyang showed signs of being breached almost every day, and the defending general Lü Wenhuan's hair and beard turned completely white within a month.
The reason Guo Jing was slow to capture the city was not because he couldn't, but because the cost of conquering Xiangyang was too high.
He wanted a way to end the Song dynasty with fewer casualties.
After a two-month siege, the Southern Song emperor and his officials were completely unaware of the situation.
Following the strategy devised by Guo Jing before heading south, Shi Tianze secretly departed from Dengzhou Port.
After destroying the Jin dynasty, Yelü Chucai secretly recruited merchant ships and civilian vessels in Dengzhou and Liaodong, converting them into warships. After more than a year, he now has 120 warships.
Although it wasn't a particularly sophisticated warship, it was more than capable of transporting troops for surprise attacks.
Shi Tianze led eighty ships carrying 15,000 elite troops southward along the coast for 1,500 li, heading straight for the sea off Lin'an.
The fleet was divided into three groups, each with more than twenty ships, and each group took different routes, meeting at sea two days apart.
All eyes in the Southern Song Dynasty were drawn to the precarious state of Xiangyang, and no one expected that Guo Jing had a backup plan.
Caught off guard, the Song navy was routed by Shi Tianze's attack, and the flames from the rockets illuminated the coastline.
Shi Tianze led the Imperial Cavalry to land overnight, and by dawn they were already at the gates of Lin'an.
The Song dynasty had no way out, and the court and the public were shaken.
The news reached Xiangyang.
"Uncle, was General Shi's surprise attack on Lin'an your plan?"
Guo Jing suddenly stood up from the command tent.
Inside the tent, the young Möngke glanced at Guo Jing and secretly swallowed hard. Only now did he realize the true value of being the number one contributor to the Mongol westward expedition.
Möngke is now the commander of Guo Jing's guards, and also the Mongol specimen that Yang Kang placed beside Guo Jing. With old friends like Möngke around, Guo Jing would not so easily resign and leave if he had any compassion for the lives of his former grassland companions.
"General Lü still refuses to surrender?"
When the envoy who tried to persuade Guo Jing to surrender for the third time was driven out of Xiangyang once again, Guo Jing finally made up his mind.
"Let the conflicts among the Han people in the Central Plains end today."
Guo Jing took a deep breath, a look of seriousness flashing in his eyes, and then ordered the attack on the city.
Upon receiving the order, the generals could no longer suppress their long-suppressed fighting spirit.
In Guo Jing's eyes, the defenses of Xiangyang were like child's play. Knowing that Lin'an was under siege, the Xiangyang garrison had no will to fight anymore, and he easily found a weakness in their defenses. But the city walls would not collapse on their own just because they had no will to fight.
Soldiers fell one after another from the ladders, and the defenders poured boiling oil and molten stone on them all night long.
But the flaw that Guo Jing found was the real opening that broke through the city's defenses. More than thirty Imperial Cavalrymen were the first to scale the city walls from a collapsed section on the west side. The defenders were as fragile as paper in front of these super soldiers.
When the city fell, the ground was littered with severed limbs and broken armor.
The blood in the moat was so thick it couldn't flow, and armor plates and severed limbs blocked the water gate.
In the latter half of the night, the Daqian army captured Xiangyang, a formidable city north of the Yangtze River.
The cost was the lives of more than five thousand people.
Five thousand people, overnight.
Guo Jing had fought countless battles in his life, but this was the first time he had ever seen a meat grinder like this, where soldiers faced each other on the city wall, hacking away piece by piece.
He walked to the top of the city wall, where his old comrade-in-arms from the original story, Lü Wenhuan, had unknowingly bled out his last drop of blood in the bloody battle and quietly died leaning against the city wall.
Guo Jing walked to Lü Wenhuan's side and stared at him for a long time.
"Collect General Lü's body and give him a proper burial."
"All the soldiers here were buried, regardless of whether they were friend or foe."
Guo Jing silently gave the instructions.
After recapturing Xiangyang, Guo Jing led a large army towards Lin'an to join forces with Shi Tianze.