Yujing City's outer district, Guang'an Gate.
Two armchairs had been set up before the city gate tower.
Li Wei and Gu Jinzhi sat side by side, silently gazing into the distance.
Behind them, only Zeng Yi stood there holding a horsetail whisk, looking utterly bored. All the other attendants had been sent far away.
By now, the sky was fully bright. On the distant horizon, a thick cloud of dust rolled like a giant dragon, slowly pressing toward Yujing City.
The Capital Army led by the Duke of Li State had returned.
The reason the Duke of Li State had been ordered to bring his troops back to the capital at this critical juncture was that Gu Jinzhi had received an eight-hundred-li emergency military report the day before.
Something major had happened on the southern battlefield.
Xu Yuncheng's net-enclosing strategy, with four main fronts and six auxiliary ones for suppressing the rebels, hinged on one extremely important link: the elite frontier troops transferred from Tong County.
As a result, Tong County's commanding officer—whether he had lost his mind or was simply desperate to claim merit—had actually left the fortifications, underestimated the enemy, and charged recklessly straight into the pocket formation the main rebel force had prepared.
More than ten thousand elite Jing Army troops had been surrounded and attacked by over a hundred thousand men. They had been wiped out before they could even make a ripple.
Taking advantage of the breach opened by that battle, the main rebel force burst straight through the encirclement Xu Yuncheng had painstakingly maintained for two years.
Their army's edge now pointed directly at Fengzhou, a strategic stronghold in the heart of the Central Plains.
Although Xu Yuncheng had fought desperately and rushed troops around in an emergency, he had temporarily blocked the rebels'