The day's fight ended soon, and the defense line outside Yancheng broke through, ending with the Han army seizing two lines of defense.

At the last moment before the evening, Gao Shun thought of making more breakthroughs, but in the end, because the depth of the enemy was too large, the subsequent enemy fortifications had not been destroyed by siege weapons before.

So after some casualties, Gao Shun noticed that the enemy reorganized the orderly resistance and could only stop decisively and left nearly two hundred more bodies to retreat.

In today's battle, the total number of Han army killed only seven or eight hundred people, and finally 200 people were left behind in the test of the third line of defense. The remaining injured were only more than two thousand people, and more than half of them were not seriously injured.

The previous ten days of trench construction, confrontation, feint attack and test, the total casualties combined were not as much as the total attack of today.

After half a month of war, the Han army suffered more than 1,400 deaths and injured more than 4,700 deaths.

The Cao army on the opposite side has suffered 20,000 casualties these days, two-thirds of which were lost today. Moreover, the proportion of Cao's deaths in the battle was particularly high, exceeding 10,000 people.

The main reason is that the troops blocking the palace behind were bitten and completely annihilated, and no one came back alive. The influence of Cao's army's weak armor has always been very powerful.

The army of more than 200,000 people on both sides fought in a bloody battle for half a month, with a total casualty of 20,000 or 30,000. It can only be said that a large battle of this scale naturally has such a terrifying intensity. Who made this the final decisive battle that determines the belonging of the world?

A few years ago, a medium-sized battle was over, but this was a loss.

After Cao's army lost its troops and defense line, Guo Jia was worried and cleaned up some of the mess, and then went to Yancheng to report to Cao Cao and apologize.

Cao's army had previously built six or seven defense lines from Rushui to Lishui on the periphery of Yancheng, crossing the entire river estuary triangle, which was built in the previous year.

Guo Jia advised Cao Cao to build such a large defense line at that time because he realized that as long as Liu Bei's Nanyang Canal was really dug and put into use, the Yancheng side was a necessary node for the Lishui ships to penetrate into the Henan Plain. Liu Bei had to take this place.

Now that two lines have been broken through, the remaining defense can still be held, but a countermeasure must be come up with a solution. Otherwise, Zhuge Liang will be able to eat everything in one move and just replicate it mechanically, and sooner or later he will die.

"The Prime Minister is not investigating Zhuge Liang's method of attack and fighting. He was continuously killed and injured by the Fuqiu deployed by Zhuge Liang in front, which implicated General Le and threw two lines of defense in our army. Please punish the Prime Minister!" Guo Jia's attitude of admitting his mistake was very sincere.

When Guo Jia came, Cao Cao was watching the front-line military information sent by other states.

The place where Cao Cao is stationed now is the county government office in Yancheng, but now it has been changed to the prime minister's temporary office. As the prime minister, he has to be so busy. He has to take charge of the overall situation and is worried about any abnormal movements in Jizhou and Huainan every day. He not only needs to be wary of the attack of the Han army, but also guard against those who are unstable insiders.

Fortunately, I haven't seen any bad news on other roads in the past two days, which has made Cao Cao's psychological endurance slightly better and could mobilize all emotional resources to deal with Guo Jia's failure.

"Victory and defeat are common in military affairs. We have done our best to serve our army, so how can we punish you?"

While commenting, Cao Cao subconsciously rubbed his nose bridge and head of his nose, squeezing out the greasiness accumulated due to anxiety. It can be seen that his endocrine is as disordered as his emotions, and his nose is as oily as squeezing toothpaste.

Moreover, his wording is not "what is wrong" but "what is punishment", which means that he thinks Guo Jia must have made a mistake, but the enemy is too strong and inevitable, so he doesn't need punishment.

Anyone who has studied criminal law knows that "innocence" and "no criminal punishment" are completely different concepts.

Fortunately, after squeezing the oil, Cao Cao's mentality improved a little, and he asked constructively: "The key at the moment is whether we can find a countermeasure to defeat Zhuge Liang's new tactics. As long as we can find it, we will be able to overcome the achievements."

Before Guo Jia came, he had obviously been fully ignorant. He discussed in a controversial tone: "Prime Minister, my subordinates think that the way to deal with it can be divided into offensive and defensive ways.

Let’s talk about the most stable defense method first. The most urgent task is to build a wide corridor between the subsequent defense lines of our army, which is enough for the reserve team to quickly invest.

Moreover, it is best to cover the top of the corridor with branches, leaves and mud, so that soldiers can be prevented from being killed by the divine arm crossbow in the trench outside the first line of defense when they advance from the corridor to reinforce.

If you think the corridor is built too slowly, you can dig a trench and pile up soil on both sides of the trench to form a semi-buried and semi-submersible shape. Anyway, the key is to have a roof, and the wall is secondary."

After Guo Jia finished speaking, he paused to observe Cao Cao's reaction. After Cao Cao thought about it for a while, he also discovered the beauty of Guo Jia's method.

In fact, Guo Jia was also a temporary move and was beaten by Zhuge, so he drew a tiger-like dog, which roughly imitated a simple version.

Just as in the history of later wars, when the attacking party uses the tactic of trench approaching and deploys firepower in the sudden front, the defense party will also dig "traffic trenches" to facilitate the removal of the troops when the enemy prepares for the early firepower. After the enemy's firepower is ready, the reserve team will then enter through the "traffic trenches".

Because both the offense and defense know that advancing on a flat ground without any cover and putting in troops is the most likely link to be killed in large quantities.

Of course, Guo Jia's strategy is still very different from the historical traffic trench, that is, the classic traffic trench mainly prevents horizontal side firepower. This is also because after entering the musket era, the weapon range has become larger, and no one has shot anymore, and they are aiming and shooting. Therefore, the traffic trench mainly relies on the ground on both sides and provides cover by depth.

But what Guo Jia has to defend now is only long-range shooting firepower. The god-arm crossbow arrow and the catapult gravel rain were all point-like strikes from the sky. The hit rate was actually very low and he had no aim at it.

But for the defense, the wall of the corridor is not important in this case, the top is the most important thing.

Of course, in addition to building traffic trenches and corridors, Cao's army also had to provide shields to all the phalanx pike soldiers who blocked the entrance. Before entering close combat, they had to pass through the uncovered area with their heads. At least they could not give up the shield in order to hold longer spears with both hands.

Cao Cao was also a scheming general who was a wise soldier. Of course, he quickly understood all the technical points summarized by Guo Jia, and waved his hand to continue talking:

"This method is feasible, but blindly using defense will hurt morale too much. The soldiers fought for more than half a month, never fought a single victory, and there was not even a small-scale tactical counterattack. There were many new recruits in the army, so I was afraid they would be dispersed.

Tell me about your counterattack method. You may kill and injure the construction soldiers while Zhuge Liang continues to dig forward. There is no need to do more. As long as you seize the opportunity to wipe out one or two battalions of engineers, you can boost our army's morale."

Guo Jia was about to talk about his method of attack as defense, so he immediately took the conversation:

"What the Prime Minister saw was that his general idea was inconsistent with his subordinates. This matter was hard to come by. It was only every time Zhuge Liang sent someone to dig a trench on the third line of defense, our army would clamor and shoot arrows, and even open the door to send cavalry to patrol the siege, and pretend to charge at any time.

Zhuge Liang will be constructed for at least five or six days. If he digs horizontally, he will be able to stand up to a longer time if he wants to stand up to a more crossbowman. I don’t believe that he is so cautious every day, and there will always be times when he is slacking off.

I watched Zhuge Liang dig trenches with Gao Shun's troops and let Huang Zhong lead the cavalry to patrol and protect them so that he could counterattack at any time. However, Huang Zhong often despises our army and occasionally uses a small number of cavalry to advance and show off his power.

As long as you seize the opportunity, use the elite soldiers and generals who act quickly to kill Huang Zhong and defeat the enemy's cavalry that day who changed the defense wheel patrol, you can massacre the remaining engineers who have no combat power."

Cao Cao had no other way. The enemy was better than him in all aspects. His mentality was like the one in the Battle of Guandu, "stayed and waited for change" and had to wait for the opportunity to wait for the flaws.

If the enemy generals underestimated the enemy, they personally went to the front line to supervise the construction of defensive fortifications. This is indeed a fighter that is more likely to be raided and killed. In the Battle of Dingjunshan in history, wasn’t Xiahou Yuan killed by Huang Zhong? At that time, Xiahou Yuan built deer antlers and fences and supervised the worker himself.

Now that Liu Qiang and Cao are weak, it is Huang Zhong's turn to go to the front line to supervise the fortifications and cover the engineers. Guo Jia in turn wanted to design and kill Huang Zhong.

...

Five or six days after that, the battle situation almost replicated Zhuge Liang's previous operations when he wanted to break the first and second lines of defense.

The Han army dug trenches again and deployed a divine arm crossbowman. The catapult smashed the wall of Cao's third line of defense in advance, with dozens of gaps. Even if Cao's army repaired it every night, more than half of it was repaired, and there were still more than a dozen left.

The time finally entered May. It was the second day of the fifth month. Seeing that the noose on the neck of the defenders in the subsequent defense line of Cao's army became tighter and tighter, Cao's army had not yet moved.

The Han army was also full of morale, thinking that the enemy had not come up with a way to deal with it, so they could only be passively beaten.

The main strategists of the Han army were also optimistic. On this day, even the genuine Lu Su could not help but tell his brother-in-law Zhuge Liang:

"Cao Cao and Guo Jia are in poverty. Brother, you are a good move to dig trenches and deploy crossbows. It is really easy to deal with such thick and weak rammed earth defense lines. Such skillful skills, no one can come up with a way to crack it in a few days."

Zhuge Liang was also quite optimistic before, but today he had just stepped up the repair of the first viewing building that was deployed in a forward manner. He saw some new situations, which made him less optimistic.

(Because Cao's army gave up two lines of defense, the previous building was too far away from the front line, and it was no longer visible, and its vision was blocked. Therefore, Zhuge Liang had to build the building forward every time he broke through two lines of defense)

Zhuge Liang shook his folding fan and instructed: "Reward the lookout sergeant, Guo Jia has built a corridor behind the defense line, with branches and leaves as the top, which is probably able to cover the crossbow arrows. In the future, our army will not be so efficient when it comes to killing the enemy troops blocking the entrance.

And the faster it looks, the more cautious it is. Recently, I have been caring for General Huang and General Gao every day, and we must beware of the Cao army's ability to dig trenches. After realizing the wonderful use of our army's trenches, we will go out to the defense line to destroy construction and slaughter the engineers.

Fortunately, Your Majesty did not think I was too verbose and was too cautious. He kept his personal guard cavalry battalion on guard and could attack at any time. The cavalry in other departments were also alerted every day."

Lu Su was also very steady. Of course, he would not have any objection to Zhuge Liang's approach. Instead, the two gathered there to discuss the details to see which side of the anti-counterattack was not prepared enough to plug the leak in time.

Lu Su: "My dear brother is right. I see Le Jin, Shi Huan, Wang Zhong and others on the other side often clamor to open the door, and use light cavalry to harass the arrow and then retreat. We must be careful that they will contain one truth among the nine false.

But General Huang is old and doesn’t know that he can keep up with his energy every day. Fortunately, Le Jin, Shi Huan and other martial arts are just like this. Even if it’s not a fighting general or a cavalry, it may not be able to gain benefits.”

Zhuge Liang and Lu Su, two guys who are so sure that they can make the enemy fuck, are so cautious. Guo Jia on the opposite side is helpless, because no matter how many times he has been, Zhuge Liang will always consider you to be true.

Seeing that they didn't take action, they were about to find another opportunity, Le Jin, Shi Huan and the others decided to take action. Fortunately, Guo Jia's previous virtual and real acting could not be considered a complete failure.

It should be said that it was "successful, but not completely successful" - at least Guo Jia made the Han army think that the candidate who sent Cao's army to slaughter the engineers was the strongest, Le Jin and Shi Huan. But in fact, Guo Jia had already persuaded Cao Cao and asked him to borrow Xu Chu.

On this day, Fo Xiao was probably the Han army was assembling a catapult in the parallel trench pit in the front section of the newly dug Z-shaped trench before dawn. Huang Zhong and some cavalry patrolled the catapult pit position next to the catapult pit position.

Xu Chu, Le Jin and Shi Huan each brought thousands of cavalry to the raid, and killed Huang Zhong with more and less, and then slaughtered all the Han army's engineer troops.

The clay man is still three-part, not to mention the Cao army's cavalry, they are all bloody. After being pressed and beaten for so long, they finally have a seemingly possible opportunity. How can they know if they don't try it?
Chapter completed!