Taohuachong is located in the hinterland of Guanjuan Mountain, sandwiched between the left and right peaks. Every summer and autumn, there are heavy rains and mountain torrents. They rush down along the turning of the mountain, sweeping down countless rocks in the mountain, forming a rocky beach in the shallow valley. There are more than a dozen hundred-year-old peach trees next to the rocky beach, so the locals call this place Peach Blossom Chong.
Chong is also a creek.
In addition to the post road from Langu City to Fugu (Fuzhou City) and the border wall of Caocheng River where Minglu Village, Guangwu Village and Piantou Village are located, this is also another road from Lanzhou to Fuzhou with relatively easy terrain. aisle.
Xu Huai raided Lanzhou last year, and when he was retreating to Fuzhou, he executed Cao Shixiong's eldest son, Cao Xuanwen, and strangled his body on a withered peach tree.
In the past, this place was located behind the Caocheng River Border Wall and Langu Castle. Fuzhou and Lanzhou both belonged to the Dai Viet border, so they did not need to defend each other, and of course there was no need to build strongholds or set up passes.
After the Red Hu people invaded the south, Cao Shixiong and Cao Shili surrendered to the enemy in Xianlanzhou. However, Fuzhou is still loyal to Dai Viet, and Taohuachong has become an important node to limit the opponent's troop dispatch.
Gu Jiqian had not done anything yet, so Cao Shixiong first built a Wuzhai here and then built a simple mountain road to connect it from the east side of Lanzhou Stone Field to the post road between Kelan and Langu.
After that, Gu Jiqian added a sentry post under the jurisdiction of Shengjun Fort to the north in a valley seven or eight miles west of Taohua Chong, and stationed a dozen soldiers to guard against any changes here.
Taohua Chong Village is small in scale, less than 300 steps square. It is built along the mountain. The gate is only set up facing the rocky beach. In addition to stationing a battalion of infantry soldiers here, Cao Shixiong also assigned more than 200 servants as hard labor. The purpose of digging mountains and roads and leveling the land is to open up a new channel for the use of troops against Fuzhou, so that in the future, troops can be used against Fuzhou at the same time from here.
Taohua Chongzhai was planned by Cao Shixiong as an advance base for troops against Fuzhou. Before it could take effect, it was already involved in a fierce battle.
Before a large group of enemy soldiers attacked Minglu Village, they lit wolf smoke to send a message. The view of Taohua Chong Village was blocked by wind and snow, so naturally the wolf smoke could not be seen. However, Langu City was worried that the Fuzhou Army and the remnants of the Khitan tribe would join forces to launch an offensive. Send a messenger to report the enemy's situation, and ask Taohua Chongzhai to be on guard against the enemies of Fuzhou.
Tang Pan led two hundred men and horses, put on the robes and flags of the Qing Shun Army, and surrounded Cao Shixiong's two sons from the hinterland of Lanzhou, braving the wind and snow. How could Yang Zhiheng, the village inspector, have thought that there was fraud involved?
Even though the two hundred men and horses were all wearing tattered and bloody clothes, and even when he stood in front of the village wall and saw the two sons of Cao Shixiong sitting on the horse with panic-stricken expressions and their voices trembling when they spoke, Yang Zhiheng only thought that there were enemy troops bypassing Minglu Village. These soldiers and horses were sent by Commander Jie. After repelling the enemy troops who attacked Minglu Village, they came here for reinforcements.
The trickster likes to be clever.
There are obviously many loopholes, but the imaginative person can imagine what he thinks is a reasonable explanation.
After receiving the warning from Langu City, Yang Zhiheng sent a number of scouts to brave the wind and snow to approach the sentry fort on the opposite side for reconnaissance. They did notice something unusual. He was worried that Taohua Chong Village would also be attacked, so he was preparing to send people Rush to Lanzhou City to request reinforcements.
At this time, Tang Pan led his men and horses from the center of Lanzhou. Yang Zhiheng naturally thought that reinforcements were coming uninvited.
After ordering the gate of the village to be opened in preparation for reinforcements entering Taohuachong Village, Yang Zhiheng noticed something unusual.
Except for the two young masters, he didn't recognize any of the generals or military officials leading the army!
As an inspection envoy, Yang Zhiheng was of course not a big figure in the area of thousands of miles under the jurisdiction of the Chihu people, but within the Qing Shun Army, he was a middle-level military general, and he was a child of the Han army in Shuozhou since he was a child. It was Cao Shixiong's direct lineage who was able to guard Taohuachong Village. How could there be other middle-level and high-level generals in the Qingshun Army that he could not recognize?
Yang Zhiheng was very alert and saw that the situation was not right. He immediately ordered his own soldiers to stop him and fled into the stronghold.
Tang Pan, Shi Hu, and Wu Chihai were gathered around Cao Shixiong's second son. They were still more than ten steps away from Yang Zhiheng. It was a pity that they could not attack and kill him directly.
However, Yang Zhiheng fled into the village and it was too late to order the gate of the village to be closed.
Tang Pan and the others stabbed their horses with knives and drove several frightened horses to rush into the village gate, scattering dozens of guards who were about to close the gate. Then several of them took the lead, one horse at a time, and forced their way into the village. They first blocked the gate. Dozens of defenseless defenders were killed and many people fell to their knees.
However, it had not been two hours since the news arrived at Taohuachong Village that Minglu Village had been attacked by an enemy.
During this period, Yang Zhiheng sent scouts from Taohuachong Village and noticed something unusual at the sentry on the opposite side. Five hundred defenders wearing armor and holding sharp swords were on high alert.
Taohua Chongzhai is a standard military defense fortress. In addition to its thick walls, there are also many kinds of war equipment such as side carriages, iron pulleys, and rams.
These war weapons happened to be deployed near the village gate by Yang Zhiheng to prepare for the enemy.
However, the military buildings in the stronghold were densely built, and Tang Pan and others were not familiar with the situation. They led his troops to rush into the stronghold, but soon encountered stubborn resistance in order to avoid unnecessary casualties.
Tang Pan ordered the tribes to retreat to the village gate first, pull back several Jima horses that had overturned in fear, and place them on the inside of the village gate. Then he climbed up the wall of the village and charged on both sides. He used his tyrannical personal martial arts to kill and injure the enemies on the wall. The army expanded its occupation of the front wall of Taohuachong Village.
Taohuachong Village is built against the mountain. The front wall is the thickest and spacious, and can accommodate more people. The walls on both sides are much narrower, and there are steep slopes outside the walls on both sides, which is also not conducive to the enemy. Attacking by force, the back and side were directly against a dangerous cliff with a height of 17 to 80 feet and steep walls, forming a pen stand.
After the front wall of the village fell, the defenders were suppressed in the village by the Chushan Army.
Wang Xian quickly arrived with reinforcements, forming a crushing advantage in strength. He also occupied the spacious wall in front of the village. He first assembled strong bows and crossbows to intensively kill the defenders in the village, forcing the defenders to retreat to the village. In the narrow alleyway.
The dozens of barrels of tung oil deployed by the defenders on the wall were originally intended to suppress the enemies approaching the wall, but now they became an accelerant in the hands of the Chushan army.
However, the buildings in the stronghold are densely packed with earthen walls and thatched roofs. Some important buildings are only covered with a layer of solid crossbars under the thatched roofs to prevent enemies from attacking the stronghold from throwing stone bombs from catapults.
It was a windy and snowy weather, and there was snow on the houses. It was difficult to ignite the fire. At this time, dozens of barrels of tung oil were used to support the combustion. Although the flames did not quickly burst into flames, the billowing black smoke was swirled by the strong wind and swept through the village. .
Taohuachong Village is not large in scale and has a limited number of defenders. However, it was built as an advance base for attacking Fuzhou. The buildings in the village are extremely dense, with black smoke billowing and dark fires flickering. Soon, people are hiding in narrow alleys. The defenders, who had to avoid crossbows, suffered so much that they had to bite the bullet and come out of the alley to fight.
However, facing the elite Chushan Army who occupies favorable terrain and has superior strength, what hope does the defender have to save it?
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"You are the only ones who have escaped from the five hundred troops. Where are the second general and the others, Mr. Wu, Mr. Xing and the others?" Meng Jian stood in the lobby, looking at the two generals who had escaped, and he jumped in anxiety.
, suppressing waves of dizziness, he ordered the returning general to explain clearly the details of the attack.
In the afternoon, hundreds of white-robed cavalry galloped out of Huanglongpo Station and crossed the Fen River directly from Fengyu Pavilion, ten miles south of Lanzhou City.
As a border state, Lanzhou has a vast territory and sparsely populated areas, and the government is extremely neglectful of local construction.
There are so many natural grasslands in Guanjuan Mountain that are not being used, and the dams on the upper reaches of Fenshui River have not been repaired or maintained for many years.
As a result, the Fenshui River often suffers from floods in summer and autumn due to abundant rainfall, destroying fields and houses on both sides of the river, and the river is also heavily silted, making it difficult for navigation.
In autumn and winter, the rainwater dries up and the upper reaches of Fenshui become shallower and silted.
As long as you are not afraid of the cold water in early winter, there are many places in the upper reaches of Fenshui River in Lanzhou where you can bypass the ferry crossing and directly cross the river by horse without taking a ferry from the ferry.
Otherwise, with the limited number of ferries at the ferry, it is even possible to get away in advance, and it would take some time to get all three hundred people across the river.
Seeing hundreds of white-robed cavalry crossing the river to the west, and seeing hundreds of white-robed cavalry occupying Huanglongpo Station, Meng Jian certainly knew that something big was going on.
However, there was no large group of cavalry available in the city, so they could only order the city gates to be closed tightly to prevent the white-robed enemy troops from attacking the city.
At that time, the passage to the west via Huanglongpoyi to Langu was cut off, and they detoured from Ningwu and Yangkou Village in the north in the snowy weather. They didn't know how long it would take to contact Langu. They knew that something big had happened.
Seeing that the armor of the white-robed cavalry was stained with blood, they guessed that Cao Shili had fought with him, but they did not know the details.
It was not until dusk that some of the defeated troops fled back over the mountains at the eastern foot of Guanjuan Mountain. Only then did they know that the 500 cavalry guards led by Cao Shili to Minglu Village for reinforcements encountered twice as many people as they did twenty miles west of Huanglongpoyi.
His ambush and his entire army were destroyed.
The soldiers who fled back and collapsed only knew that the ambush was led by Xu Huai, the old enemy of Lanzhou. The second general Cao Shili was killed on the spot. No one knew whether the two young masters Cao Xuanwu and Cao Xuanwen escaped.
Meng Jian suppressed the fear and grief in his heart and asked for details about the attack. However, he heard Cao Shixiong cough behind him. He turned around and saw Cao Shixiong, who had been sitting silently behind the long desk like a sculpture for a long time. At this time, he covered his mouth with his hand.
