The Yangtze River!
Jiangdong's natural barrier, Southern Heaven's lifeline!
Jiangdong warships, great banners bearing the character for Wu flying high above them, sailed through the surging Great River, churning up layer upon layer of white waves. Everyone aboard wore an expression of indescribable excitement.
Lu Su, who had planned for this long ago, could not help laughing aloud.
This was Jingzhou!
Without the Huai River basin, they could still rely on the Yangtze's natural defenses to hold their ground. But without Jingzhou, they would not possess the entire Yangtze, and Jiangdong would have no way to defend itself. If warships sailed out of Shu and swept downstream, Jiangdong would surely fall!
Defending Jingzhou could be exceedingly difficult; otherwise, the Jingzhou Gentry would not have surrendered outright, but would have followed the example of the gentry in Shu and carved out their own territory to protect themselves.
Yet it could also be truly simple: they only needed to hold two places.
In the eyes of Luo Chu and the others of Wu State, two places in Jingzhou were paramount.
The first was Xiangyang, on the border between Nanyang Commandery and Nan Commandery. When Duke Wen of Luo established the Han-Yang Ji States, a city was built here for the first time, serving as his final safeguard against Chu State.
The Han River ran through Xiangyang, dividing it in two.
North of the river lay Fancheng, and south lay Xiangyang. The two cities formed horns of defense for one another, guarding a strategic choke point on the Han River. Any army advancing south from the Nanyang Basin could not avoid Xiangyang, making it a vital prize every military strategist had to contest. Bai Qi had flooded Xiangfan here, leaving a million corpses in Chu State, an event still recorded in the histories.