Through strict investigation and isolation and torture of prisoners, the martial arts of Ji County and even further east were confirmed, and the defenses of Youfufeng counties such as Huaili and Youfufeng were ineffective and in size. After the number of troops, the counselors under Liu Bei also estimated that Li Jue was gathering troops, wanting to circumvent the back or do some other big moves.

So Liu Bei left Zhang Fei, Wang Ping and Fa Zheng to resist the front line of defense and gave them 20,000 troops.

All the other troops were collected and prepared to face the decisive battle that would break out. Guan Yu's main infantry force took two days to slowly return to Chen Cang, while Zhao Yun and Ma Chao's cavalry were spread out on a large scale, pulling the net from Weibei all the way to the north to investigate.

Don’t think that Li Su and Xun You have insufficient IQ. They didn’t expect Li Ru to instruct Li Jue to meet Guo Si around Jieting. Mainly for the side attacking backwards, they actually have several choices.

If Li Ru was more risky and knew in advance that Liu Bei had moved his main force forward to Mei County to fight an encirclement and annihilation battle, then Li Ru had another choice: after swooping down from Huating and reaching the Shiji River Basin, he could directly go south to Chencang.

Even if you cannot defeat Chen Cang's city, you can at least take advantage of Chen Cang's emptiness to surround the city, then back-pin Yan Yan at the mouth of the Wei River Valley in Longshan west of Chen Cang, and attack Yan Yan with Guo Si along Longshan Wei Valley. If this point is broken, Li Jue and Guo Si can also join forces and retreat to Guanzhong.

Therefore, it is also necessary to build heavy troops in Chencang area. If there are enough troops and can fight against Li Jue in the field, then you will not be afraid that Li Jue will break through Weigu after besieging the city.

However, Li Ru didn't know that Chen Cang had a short period of emptiness for a few days. He only knew that Jieting had been empty all the time. In order to seek stability, Li Jue insisted on circling Jieting.

Li Ru and Li Su both chose the most stable way to deal with each other. They can still distinguish between the more important and will not gamble directly.

On February 29th, when Guan Yu's infantry troops had just returned to Chencang, Ma Chao's cavalry troops had already parted ways with Guan Yu's infantry half a day and a day in advance, searching along the Sishui River, and heading north in Mei County to search for the enemy situation. If they encounter an enemy army, they should retreat immediately.

(Note: Yesterday someone reminded that the Loess Plateau is not loess yet, but I always have to write a place name that everyone can understand and cannot be fabricated temporarily. So everyone knows that the greening is currently pretty good. If it really doesn't work, I will write "Jinghe Plateau" below)

On the same day, Li Jue's vanguard cavalry had already occupied Huating first, then passed through the eastern Longshan vein, passed through the Yinshui River Valley, and then climbed up the western Longshan vein, cutting off the contact between Jieting and the Chencang battlefield in the south. Then he made some preparations and began to attack Jieting that afternoon.

Unfortunately, although Jieting did not have a city block and only had some wooden fences, it was not a cavalry unit that could easily break through the wall by charging and shooting and suppressing it. After a tentative fire reconnaissance, the cavalry generals under Li Jue paid hundreds of cavalry losses and immediately stopped the offensive and quickly informed the military situation to the infantry brigade behind.

The next day, on the first day of March (some months in the lunar calendar are 29 days, but not 28 days), Li Jue's infantry troops finally arrived at the Jieting battlefield and immediately started attacking without any repairs.

Because Guo Si did not receive timely notification, he arrived slowly as planned, and it is estimated that it will take two days to arrive.

The reason why Li Jue dared not let the troops repair the attack immediately was because he had already bet on all the capital and could not delay it.

For this battle, he marched all the way, Linjing County, the county seat of Anding County, and Jingyang County near Huating, all of whom were crazily arresting strong men and exile as troops.

The spring plowing in early March has ended, and it is relatively not as busy as the sowing season. At most, it is just fertilization, weeding, irrigation and other work. Even if you don’t work in farming, at most, the crops are not growing well and the harvest is not bad, so you won’t completely lose your harvest. Of course, an inhuman guy like Li Jue doesn’t care about the lives and death of the people. In his opinion, it is not enough for the people to fight without heavy farm work.

When attacking Jieting, the fortifications such as loading soil to fill in pits and destroying deer antlers and horses to trap pits and pickets at the beginning, the elite soldiers were no different from ordinary strong men. They were cannon fodders engaged in engineering demolition work, which just happened to kill the young men who had just been arrested, and the elite soldiers were resting for a long time until the peripheral fortifications were demolished before rushing.

...

In Jieting Camp, Zhang Ren waved the horse-killing sword used to supervise the battle and patrolled along the village wall several times to ensure that the army's system and morale could still be supported after repelling another wave of enemy charges.

The size of the guards in Jieting Village is 5,000, but because the road entrance is narrow and cannot be spread out on the front, although there are many enemy troops, the size of soldiers who can invest in frontal charges is only a few hundred.

Before Zhang Ren came, he also obtained fifty Zhuge crossbows, so he could appropriately pour out his firepower when the situation was critical.

During the first two waves in front of Li Jue, each row of fronts was densely filled with soldiers. He wanted to give full play to the advantage of the number of people and put pressure on him. As a result, he was taught to be a human being by the crossbow.

Because the formation was too dense, the hit rate of the crossbows soared. Li Juejun died hundreds of people in vain in every wave. Only then did he learn to do so and use a relatively loose formation to launch a charge in the attack camp, slowing down the attack intensity. This also led to Zhang Ren being able to hold on for a longer time.

Zhang Ren's armor was covered with blood, but none of them were his own blood. Some were the blood of the enemy soldiers who were chopped and killed, and some were purely splashed out by friendly troops or enemies after being shot by crossbows.

Especially after the attack just now, when he patrols the positions and comforts and encourages the wounded, he demonstrates with his own hands to help several crossbowmen shoot by barbs to draw arrows. He must cut off a piece of meat near the barbs before pulling them out, so that the muscles will not be pulled out by barbs on a large scale.

As a result, the blood sprayed out of the arrow sore was shot all over his head and face, which looked very terrifying, as if he had personally experienced countless bloody battles.

While inspecting, Zhang Ren also shouted to boost morale: "Don't let go! Li Jue attacked so hard, must be to meet Guo Si. They were so anxious, must be because they knew that the king and the right general, and General Guan would see through their movements and send reinforcements to reinforce us.

So as long as the reinforcements come, we will win, and everyone can make meritorious contributions and rewards! Moreover, our army is well prepared, with sufficient supplies, and hundreds of thousands of crossbow arrows. With such a narrow terrain, Li Jue is not afraid of it!"

Zhang Ren presented facts and reasoned, trying to boost morale with words that ordinary illiterate soldiers could understand, and stabilized the morale of the army for a while.

In fact, he is still in the position of Sima of another department, and is one level lower than Yan Yan, who has been promoted to the commander-in-chief. There is no way to do this. The main reason is that he is young and poor, and his education is low, and his starting point is poor. If it weren't for seeing him guarding Jiange under Liu Yan, he would not be qualified to let him lead troops to guard Jieting this time.

The Han Dynasty court had the chief generals of the commandership and the ranks of the chief lieutenants were all chief lieutenants. For example, the eight gate guards around the capital Luoyang were each chief lieutenants. However, Jieting was not considered "a pass with a year-round arrangement", but it was just a temporary military base for defense, so the officers who blocked the door were Sima, which was also in line with the personnel system.

When he was selecting personnel, he assigned Zhang Ren here, and Li Su's advice was given to him, so he gave him a favor. Because Li Su knew that Zhang Ren was better at level defense among officers of other departments at Sima.

However, Liu Bei's camp still pays more attention to official qualifications and starting qualifications and historical achievements. Li Su cannot completely break through the employment system and suggests that Liu Bei will be promoted randomly. The kind of thing that "judging the ability points of the generals directly take the rocket to be promoted" cannot be convinced, and he can only do it in the game.

Fortunately, Zhang Ren was also very successful this time. He did a good job in resisting Li Jue in the first wave. And when he saw that he was stationed in Jieting, he did a relatively comprehensive preparation. At first glance, he was trained by guarding Jiange for many years and confronting Gao Shun.

Not to mention anything else, just talking about the past half month, Zhang Ren's dispatch was much better than Wang Fangleixu's enemy generals - Wang Fangleixu and others were defeated in Weinan before, the key point was that the deployment of the fortifications and camps was top-notch. He felt that behind it was a friendly controlled area, so he did not dig pits or set up antlers to resist horses. He did not consider "Once the enemy breaks through, he would not be able to adapt to the situation." So the Beiyuan Village has been set up for the whole winter according to Jia Xu's suggestion, and he did not strengthen the double-sided fortifications when he was idle, and he was passively lazy.

Zhang Ren did a good job in this. He was in Jieting for a short time, only about twenty days, but he dug a pit on both sides to arrange shooting holes on the building on both sides, and there were deer antlers to resist horses in front and behind.

If he had only wanted to defend Guo Si at the beginning and only focused on defense on the west side of the mountain pass, then this time when Li Jue came from the east, he would be finished if he could not hold on for two days.

The reason why Li Jue dared to tentatively attack and attempted to attack Jieting at the beginning was actually because he was betting that Zhang Ren was ignoring the future. Now that he has attacked for two days, he knows that his method is rigorous.

With another day's failure in the crackdown, Li Jue couldn't help thinking in his heart when he withdrew his troops: "Although this enemy general guarding the village is unknown, he has rigorous rules and regulations. Unexpectedly, Liu Bei's army would just pull out a separate Sima's army. The weak guards on the four or five thousand lines could withstand my 70,000 or 80,000 troops for two days. He is a talent.

Fortunately, Liu Bei has not come to reinforce, and Guo Adu is about to arrive. It is probably no big problem to meet. We will continue to harass ourselves tonight and take turns to fight to not let Zhang Ren's soldiers sleep. In this way, as long as Guo Adu arrives, he will be able to break through in one day."

The vicious plan of continuous harassment was actually what Li Ru, the military officer, helped him think, and Li Jue just adopted it.

Everything was arranged as planned. Li Jue reduced the intensity of the attack, but improved the sustainability of the attack. Moreover, he used the night guards' vision and had a low shooting rate for the crossbow, which really wasted a lot of Zhang Ren's ammunition.

At the same time, the news that Li Jue attacked Jieting was also known by Chen Cang's Liu Bei's army. Guan Yu's troops set sail north early the next morning, while Zhao Yun and Ma Chao had moved quickly, they had already faced the anti-current along the Li Jue and Duan Wei's blocking troops in Wen County and met Li Jue and Duan Wei in Wen County.

Unfortunately, the Lishui River is located in the Jiagu of Longshan Mountain, and it is not suitable for Zhao Yun and Ma Chao's roundabout maneuvers, so it is impossible to get a good deal by relying on more than 10,000 cavalry to fight several times the enemy's troops to block the mouth. It can only be a tentative attack and break through the siege. If it really doesn't work, you have to wait for Guan Yu's army to arrive.
Chapter completed!