Cao Cao swore a swearing troops in Xuchang on November 7, and more than 100,000 reserve teams gradually pressed forward from the rear, which would take several days to prepare.

Xiahou Dun's vanguard was the fastest move because the troops they were going to use had already been deployed in Wuyang, Yancheng, Dingling and other places in advance.

As long as Xiahou Dun and Li Diandu Xi, they brought some direct guards and cavalry to these three cities with light and fast horses, they could drive away after pulling troops. They spent two days gathering troops and then marched for three days. They could go around and arrive at Bowangpo.

Don’t think it’s slow. It’s already very fast to use 60,000 people to march. The subsequent heavy Xiahou Yuan and other troops and Cao Cao themselves will need to be three to five days slower than Xiahou Dun.

So, on November 9, Xiahou Dun assembled all three cities to Wuyang, which was closest to the target of the back, and officially suddenly invaded the enemy territory. Liu Bei's army did not realize that the war had begun at all. The scout alertness along the border patrol was still the same as the usual stalemate stage, and did not enter the wartime state.

Xiahou Dun advanced quickly along the north bank of the Lishui River, attacked and robbed three or four towns, robbed some military food, property and supplies military supplies, and killed several waves of Liu Bei's army patrol scouts. Within one day, he went deep into the enemy's territory fifty miles and arrived in Ye County from Wuyang.

However, Xiahou Dun strictly enforced Cao Cao's general order, without even looking at Ye County, and continued westward from the other side of the river. After walking more than ten miles, the sky gradually became darker, and Xiahou Dun ordered camping.

After all, camping in the mountains in winter is quite troublesome and cold. You can't wait until it's completely dark before stalking, which can easily lead to soldiers being frozen and non-combat reduction.

Wuyang and Ye County are both counties located on the south bank of the Lishui River, but Wuyang belongs to Yingchuan County, Yuzhou, and Ye County belongs to Nanyang County, Jingzhou. Since this area is the junction of the two states, it naturally belongs to the Tongbai Mountain area, so the terrain is relatively narrow, and only the Lishui Valley is easy to move.

Xiahou Dun had as many as 60,000 troops, which was difficult to unfold in this terrain, and it was easy to drag into a long snake formation that stretched for more than ten miles east and west along the river valley. Fortunately, he knew that there were not many defenders in the small town of Ye County, so he didn't dare to come out to intercept the field, so he didn't have to worry.

If Liu Bei's army in Ye County dared to attack, even if Xiahou Dun came out and left the city to cut off Xiahou Dun's retreat, Xiahou Dun would not be able to seek it, because Xiahou Yuan's main force in the siege would arrive in three days. In three days, there would be no food at all. At that time, Xiahou Yuan would save himself from siege and directly wipe out the Ye County defenders who had left the city.

Among Xiahou Dun's army, Li Dian was the one with a higher IQ.

Li Dian initially planned to strictly implement Cao Cao's military orders, but after he arrived in Ye County, he was still a little worried, thinking that his lord might have not been to Ye County in person and Tongbai Mountain, so he didn't know that the river valley here was narrow and not suitable for the large army to carry out.

So after camping, Li Dian came to Xiahou Dun's tent to advise: "General, the lord ordered us to go deeper into the gate of Bowangpo. Perhaps the lord had not come here in person to see the terrain within the enemy's territory, so he became a little radical.

I see that although the surrounding area of ​​Ye County is only fifty or sixty miles more than Wuyang to the upper reaches of the Lishui River, the terrain is much narrower than Wuyang. The gentle slope of the river valley on both sides of the Lishui River near Wuyang is at least ten miles wide, but the gentle land on both sides of the Lishui River in Ye County is less than five miles, which is half narrower.

Looking at the map, you will walk up for a day for about 60 miles to reach the source of Lishui. Seventy miles west of the source of Lishui is Bowang County. Bowangpo is thirty miles west of the source of Lishui and forty miles to Bowang County, which is the narrowest place at the Tongbai Mountain Pass.

According to common sense, when you reach the Lishui source, the valley is less than two or three miles wide. After no rivers are washed away, the valley will only narrow sharply. When it reaches Bowangpo, it may be less than a hundred feet wide.

Our army has so many troops and horses, and it is impossible to expand in such a narrow place. It is better to be more conservative. After reaching the source of the Lishui River, camp on the spot. First, the supply difficulty of our army's continuous garrison is relatively low, and second, there is no need to go too far into narrow places. If the enemy has an ambush, it can also be avoided."

Xiahou Dun thought for a while: "What Mancheng said makes sense, but it's too conservative. First of all, what is the purpose of the lord asking us to conquer Kunyang and Ye County this time?

It is not just about getting two cities, but the purpose is to cut off all the enemy's strongholds in the northeast of Tongbai Mountain and prevent Li Su from building the canal. If we do not break ahead and reach the main ridge of Tongbai Mountain, then Li Su will only block the main ridge and build a new pass in the future.

The canal behind the pass can still be dug, and he did not delay any trouble. When he digs to the last few miles, he will take back Ye County and open up the last few miles of the canal with the Lishui source. What effect will our prevention before it happens?

Moreover, the natural geography of Tongbai Mountain is certainly becoming narrower and narrower the westward. But Li Su has already built a canal and dug the Bowangpo Pass. Will they not broaden and rectify the too narrow and steep places? Maybe when our army arrived there, the terrain was no longer as dangerous as imagined. Li Su used hundreds of thousands of men to do the work for us for a year."

Xiahou Dun decided to listen to Li Dian's kindness in part, but not completely, and the situation on the ground shall prevail. He has been assigned to defend and block the task by Cao Cao in recent years, and he also wanted to make more contributions.

And he also had a tactical consideration in his mind, but he didn't tell Li Dian:

Xiahou Dun was also aware of the army. He knew that the narrower the terrain, the more elite the troops, and the more crowded the troops were not good.

He seemed to have an army of 60,000, with a large number of people. However, if the enemy troops on the opposite side were calculated based on the size of the entire Nanyang and even Jingbei region, it might be as high as 150,000, and they were all new recruits that Gao Shun trained in the past two years.

Therefore, Xiahou Dun was still at a disadvantage because he had to insist on finding the narrowest hole in Bowangpo to block it, so that Gao Shun could not use the advantage of many reinforcements in the future.

Then he can use a few but elite troops to destroy the mobs with many but weak fish.

It's so happy.

Li Dian felt that what the coach said was not unreasonable, so he decided to observe again.

The next day, on November 11, the army marched normally as usual. After traveling 60 miles, they first arrived at the source of the Lishui River, and then set up a camp, leaving a little men to ensure the retreat. After preparing to stay overnight, the main force continued to go deep into the pure mountainous area without rivers.

At the same time, in order to seize time and test whether the enemy has ambushed, Xiahou Dun also sent a search force of pure cavalry overnight and rushed straight to Bowangpo to explore the way. Anyway, there was not much time for a thirty-mile cavalry to fight back and forth, so he could still come back to sleep before the middle of the night, or leave people in batches to monitor the surroundings of the pass.

Not to mention, after Xiahou Dun's cavalry search troops were sent out, they saw many scattered construction sites along the way. They even caught and killed some canal-digging civilians who had been separated and had no time to retreat. (The main reason is that after there were too many people, there were always people who did not obey management. Guoyuan actually organized the evacuation of civilians before the war started.)

All kinds of roughly processed stones were piled up by the pre-digged river channel, and loose kaolin and montmorillonite piled up as high as small hills. Xiahou Dun's soldiers obviously did not know what economic value these things had. They could not even name these earth and stones, but just regarded them as ordinary mud.

No matter what, it is just a canal construction site that is really unsuspecting.

...

It’s true that Xiahou Dun encountered a strong enemy when he entered the army this time.

Because it was winter, Li Su, a person who liked to enjoy life by nature, no longer personally supervised the construction of the canal. He had returned to Luoyang City to supervise the subsequent construction in the Gongyuan renovated in Biguiyuan, and soaked in the Roman bath.

Zhang Fei has been transferred to Bingzhou to become familiar with and understand the troops stationed in Hebei, and is preparing to wait until the opportunity to attack Youzhou next year.

Guan Yu brought a small group of elite soldiers in advance to Kunyang without using the banner, preparing to suffer some hardships when Cao Cao attacked the city.

Liu Bei considered that the year was approaching and the court was still in Chang'an after all, so he had to go back to preside over the presidency in advance, so he also ended his inspection of the new Guangfu territory in the eastern region. It is estimated that Liu Bei has been to Luoyang and Nanyang this year, and will not come next year. When he comes again the year after tomorrow, he should have officially moved the court back to Luoyang.

Liu, Guan, Zhang and Li Su were neither in Nanyang nor Bowang, so when Xiahou Dun invaded, there were really no top famous generals here.

Only Gao Shun and his main force stationed in Wancheng.

Zhuge Liang and Guoyuan brought tens of thousands of new recruits and a small number of civilians to dig rivers in Bowang County. After all, it is too cold in winter, and the land is prone to hardening the frozen soil and it is difficult to dig. Although the farming season is slack, the construction scale will still be reduced.

In addition to civil officials like Zhuge Liang, military generals have small margins, such as Chen Dao, Liao Hua, and Zong Yu, who are responsible for maintaining order on the construction site.

Zhuge Liang and Li Su have designed a plan to seduce Cao Cao to invade this winter. However, Zhuge Liang still doesn't know whether the other party will be seduced, if seduced, when and what tactics the enemy will adopt after the arrival.

After all, this is not a fantasy world, nor does it exist "Zhuge is so wise that he is almost demonic".

Zhuge Liang, who was twenty years old, had not yet grown to the peak of military adaptation. Moreover, the Bowangpo Battle in history was not fought by Zhuge Liang, but by Liu Bei, who fought five years before Zhuge Liang came out of the mountain. In "Romance of the Romance", Robben helped Zhuge Liang fight on his behalf.

Li Su read history books in his previous life, so he knew the truth, which led to him not daring to give Zhuge Liang random advice before leaving to avoid misleading Zhuge Liang. Everything must be analyzed in detail and adapted to the situation.

Therefore, the young Zhuge Liang, who had taken off his fantasy color, fought with Xiahou Dun, which was very fair. Guan Yu dealt with Xiahou Yuan and Cao Cao.

When Xiahou Dun passed Ye County on the tenth day of November, Zhuge Liang did not know that Xiahou Dun had invaded. It came too quickly. Ye County was immediately surrounded by the city. The Ye County garrison did not expect that the enemy would go around the back without looking at the city, so he didn't have time to call the police behind.

On the 11th, he continued to advance to the source of the Lishui River and re-camped and sent cavalry to kill some migrant workers in the river repair industry. Only after someone gave him back to Zhuge Liang overnight. Zhuge Liang was awakened by the military information in his sleep in the middle of the night, which was in the early morning of the 12th.

Fortunately, it was not too late. Zhuge Liang designed several plans for what to do when encountering an enemy attack. He immediately asked the soldiers involved in the river repair of Bowang to organize the relatively elite soldiers (mainly relying on the tens of thousands of people who joined the army last year, and even more elite), to block the entrance of Bowangpo and wait for an opportunity to defend and counterattack.
Chapter completed!