In the battle of Valley Water on July 26, neither side completely realized their strategic arrangements.

Guo Si and Jia Xu wanted to severely damage Ma Chao's subsequent pursuit potential and attack Ma Chao's cavalry combat power, but Wu Xi's premature collapse greatly reduced the effectiveness of the decisive battle.

Because Ma Chao was too reckless, after exposing his new equipment, he failed to stop decisively after the first wave of unexpected victory and fell into a war of attrition.

And to be honest, if he had planned better before the war, he could have caused greater damage to the enemy when the secret of "the first time the Han cavalry had a new one-time cavalry/javelin". In the end, he was more or less useless and had a superficial use.

However, after the fight, both sides retreated and went back to stalemate, licking their wounds, and seemed to be exhausted about the fight again in the field.

For Guo Si, the time window for taking advantage of the "Ma Chao's logistics difficulties, and his morale gradually declined under the city's strong strength" has passed. In the future, Ma Chao's supplies obtained from the rear will become more and more sufficient, and the adverse impact of Han Sui on the Han army will completely subside within a period of time.

On the other hand, with the battle over, all the autumn grain harvesting work in Wuwei County was also scrambled to harvest within the next few days. In the end, most of the wheat in Wuci County was harvested by Ma Chao's army, and the wheat in Guzang County was completely taken away by Guo Si.

Since there is no need to fight for this year's autumn grain, Guo Si's desire to continue fighting in the field is even lower.

From Ma Chao's standpoint, his troops were far less dead than Guo Si because of the protection of forging steel breastplate, but those soldiers who fell seriously injured after falling off a horse would have to recover for at least a month, and of course they would have to recover slowly.

In the last few days of July, and even in early August, the two sides were in stalemate. Ma Chao moved the camp further through the Gushui River, but Guo Si did not stop him, but just strengthened the walls and cleared the fields.

Then Ma Chao transported some of the catapults components he had built when he was stationed in Cangsong and Wangshi to the front line, quickly assembled, and began to carry out city defense consumption in Guzang County, Wuwei County. The Ma Dai infantry troops under his command were not large and could not attack Guzang City, so he only chose to smash the wall to surround him.

The city walls of Guzang County are not high and are purely rammed earth walls and have no stones, so landslides begin to occur after a few days of smashing. Several places have changed from walls to mounds of earth. For example, the walls that were originally more than two meters high will become mounds of earth after being completely smashed, and after being completely destroyed, they will become mounds of earth with an inclination of forty or fifty degrees. They can be climbed directly along the slope.

It is impossible to completely smash it into flat ground. After all, it cannot violate the laws of physics. Things made of rammed earth cannot collapse completely like bricks and stones.

If it is placed in the usual siege environment, infantry can already swarm and climb up the hill to siege the city. Although there is still a little terrain disadvantage and it needs to be arched, it is much better than using a ladder to climb the city wall. The ladder is at least 80 degrees steep, and the ladder is easily pushed down. The mound of crawling is only fifty degrees at most, and it is down-to-earth.

Unfortunately, Ma Dai could assemble less than 10,000 infantry troops, and Guo Si's main force in Guzang City was three times more than others. The troops defending the city were much more than those who attacked the city, so even if the walls were broken and street fighting or blocking gaps, Ma Dai could not afford to consume it.

But the details are not something Ma Chao can know, and Ma Chao can only look at the result and amazed.

After the two sides learned about each other's situation, Li Su asked how many troops Guo Si's army still has, and Ma Chao also told them one by one. Then he asked Li Su what he thought: "Guo Si and our army are so stalemate, is it because after the field defeat, he wanted to keep the food and waste our army? He was exhausted and retreated?"

Li Su waved his hand: "No, I ask you, have you seen Guo Sijun allocate food, grass, weapons and other supplies from Zhangye County in the rear to Guzang in the past ten days after the autumn harvest?"

Ma Chao said with confidence: "No, the autumn harvest here ends on July 26th. Today is the eighth day of the eighth day, and it is twelve days. I always surrounded and monitored Guzang City.

Although my total strength is not as large as Guo Si's, if I encounter Guo Si's entire army breaking through, I will probably not be able to stop it. But as long as he is not a large army, I will cut off his baggage team and scout, the messenger can still do it.

So, I am very sure that Guo Si did not transport supplies forward after the autumn harvest. Instead, some cavalry troops occasionally break out when our army did not assemble and suddenly break out west. I lacked enough troops and did not dare to bypass Jiancheng and pursue too far, so they all let them go."

Li Su took a folding fan and tapped it on the back of his hand: "That's right. You think that Guzang County, as the county seat of Wuwei County, has a relatively dense population. Some of the industrial and commercial populations do not work in agriculture and live on buying grain. Therefore, relying solely on the local agricultural grain production in Guzang County may not be enough to eat. In previous years, other neighboring agricultural counties have sold grain here for cattle and sheep.

This year, the grain of Cangsong, Lingju and Wuwei County in Wuwei County has fallen into the hands of our army. There are tens of thousands of full-time soldiers in Guzang City to support it. If Guo Si does not transport the grain, how can he eat the famine next spring?

If he continues to hold on, we don’t have to attack the city. As long as we persist, we are not afraid of suffering and we will surround us until the cold winter month. At that time, it is impossible for him to march and flee far away, and vehicles and ships will not be able to pass. At that time, Guo Si will starve to death in the city."

Ma Chao thought for a while: "So, Guo Si still wants to run away in the end?"

Li Su nodded: "It must be true that the reason why Guo Si is still insisting is that on the one hand, he wants to consume more of your supplies and let your father eat more of the autumn grain surplus in Cangsong counties. On the other hand, he himself wants to eat up not much of the remaining grain in Guzang County.

At that time, unless our army robs all the food for the people to live until next spring famine, Guo Si will make sure that we cannot get additional supplies for a grain of wheat from Guzang. Therefore, he is not in a hurry to transport Zhangye's autumn grain to the front line."

Ma Chao thought about it for a while, and then he roughly thought about Jia Xu's thoughts that he couldn't understand a few days ago.

No wonder Guo Sijun desperately attacked Ma Chao's strategic pursuit ability, focusing on attacking Ma Chao's cavalry, consuming Ma Chao's war horses, and ensuring strict solid walls and clearing the fields after the war, so that Ma Chao would not get more supplements from the local horse area.

To put it bluntly, in the Battle of Gushui that day, when Ma Chao was cleaning the battlefield after the war, he also plundered and added a group of horses that had no owner to scatter because of the death of the cavalry, but the number was not large, no more than a thousand.

Because the horse's target is much larger than that of the people, the probability of being injured and killed in battle is no less than that of the Xiliang cavalry. In that bloody battle, the horse losses of the casualties of both sides were also very terrible.

In addition, after the war, Ma Chao thought about picking persimmons and pinching them. After a few days of rest, he concentrated his troops to find trouble for the Qiang people such as the moth siege tribe and other Qiang people, and got horses from them. However, the moth siege was obviously taken care of by Guo Si. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, he was firmly cleared and the field was ready to defend the valley water and valley entrances of the Qilian Mountains. Ma Chao was not convenient to divide his troops to attack.

In short, Guo Si gathered all the horses that he could mobilize in the area he occupied and moved them to the rear.

Ma Chao could not understand the meaning of these tricks at first, but now he has been able to understand them by Li Su and explaining the situation and confirming it.

Li Su sighed: "It's true that I didn't expect. Then you send a scout to see it. Send it a little further away, at least two hundred miles west. It's best to sneak into the boundary of Zhangye County to see how many counties, towns and towns at the source of Ruoshui River, and whether there are still civilian ships on Ruoshui River that can be recruited."

Ma Chao received the order: "I will arrange the scouts now and let Pang De take him deep into the enemy's backbone to investigate."

His scout team was dispatched that day, and he asked Pang De to travel 200 miles a day to quickly investigate. Three days later, on August 11, in the evening, Pang De came back and reported that "the source of the weak water was indeed impossible to find a boat."
Chapter completed!