Yang Wanwan led the way, followed closely by Ma Di and Zhang Xiu. Other generals heard the news and rushed over. A large group of people rushed to the place where the fire was set last night.
The dozen or so windmill wells more than a foot deep in the surrounding area have dried up, leaving only some water stains remaining at the bottom of the wells, proving that they are water wells and not cellars for storing things.
Seeing this, Ma Su took a deep breath and realized that he had overlooked a very crucial factor.
Wuzhang was originally a water-scarce landform in spring, autumn and winter!
There is no shortage of water only in summer.
Wuzhang was originally part of the loess plateau at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains. It was bordered by the Qinling Mountains in the south and the Weishui River in the north. It had deep ravines on the east and west, making it a dangerous situation. It was more than 20 years high and flat on top. It was about four kilometers long from north to south and two kilometers wide from east to west.
Because the terrain here is high and the soil is extremely thick, the four seasons in the original area are distinct between cold, warm, dry and wet. In spring, the temperature difference between day and night is large, and cold waves, strong winds, frosts and spring droughts are prone to occur. In summer, precipitation is the largest and heavy rains occur frequently. This season
It is also the season with the least water shortage in the year;
Autumn is dry and rainless, with sufficient sunlight and rapid water evaporation, and there are occasional autumn droughts; winter is cold, dry and rainy.
In addition, the groundwater resources in Wuzhangyuan are extremely poor. In later generations, there was a saying that "if a girl does not marry in Wuzhangyuan, it will be more difficult to get water than to get oil."
There are currently more than 100 large wells in the entire Wuzhangyuan, which can be used by 100,000 people when there is no shortage of water.
Once there is a lack of water, it will directly kill you.
Although only one in 10 wells is currently short of water, it is foreseeable that as the intensity of water extraction increases, more wells will be short of water.
The last time Zhuge Liang garrisoned Wuzhangyuan, there was abundant rain in summer, so he did not encounter the problem of water shortage.
It was unfortunate that the Shu army arrived at the end of September, and the shortcomings of seasonal water shortage in Wuzhangyuan were immediately exposed.
Realizing this, Ma Su was a little flustered for a moment, calmed down, pretended to be calm and said:
"Don't panic, generals. It's just a temporary withdrawal of water. I'm sure the well will be filled soon."
"General, how fast is it?" Zhang Xiu asked hesitantly, "Our army of 50,000 soldiers needs water when the sky hits the sky."
Ma Su waved his hand: "Seven days, if not within seven days, the water will be full!"
After saying that, he turned around and strode back to the camp, thinking about countermeasures.
The four major generals stayed where they were, looking at each other and seeing a look of worry on each other's faces.
Although what Ma Su said was categorical and unquestionable, they did not hear the confidence that they had in controlling everything in the past.
This shows that General Ma has nothing to do.
The whole morning passed quickly.
Under Wuzhangyuan, the Wei army's camp was in a commotion, with soldiers and horses crisscrossing back and forth. It seemed that they could not bear the heavy loss of the failed sneak attack last night and were preparing for the next attack.
On Wuzhangyuan, the Shu army camp was quiet.
Ordinary soldiers did not realize that disaster was coming.
The four major troops would stay in place and wait for the well water to flow out again. As a result, there was no movement at the bottom of the well until dark.
Ma Su walked around restlessly in the handsome tent, brainstorming, thinking about how to solve the problem of water shortage.
He has checked the weather forecast and there is no rain in the next ten days.
Moreover, the results of the simulated battle situation are not optimistic: in the next ten days, if the Wei army stands still, 80% of the wells on Wuzhangyuan will be exhausted.
Ma Su found it difficult to accept this simulation result.
The reason why he deliberately retreated to Wuzhangyuan to camp was that he wanted to rely on the favorable terrain to fight with Sima Yi, hold back Wei's troops on the western front, burn the war within Wei's territory, and give Zhuge Liang time and space to deeply control the Longyou area and the
Liangzhou area.
Otherwise, Wei will return its attention to Longyou.
Ma Su originally thought that Wuzhangyuan had a steep terrain, a wide and flat top, and no shortage of water. It was a good place for garrisoning that Zhuge Liang had verified - Zhuge Liang had been stationed here to deal with Sima Yi for several months.
But unexpectedly, the well water suddenly dried up, causing this perfect "defend according to danger" strategy to have a fatal weakness, turning it into an embarrassing situation of "being trapped in a dead end".
After seeking help from the system to no avail, Ma Su walked around anxiously in the camp all day. Axiu tried to comfort him with kind words, but he roughly pushed him aside, then covered his face and left sobbing.
Zhang Xiu came to report the situation, but because he didn't have access to the account, the soldiers pushed him on a shelf and beat him with twenty army sticks, leaving his skin and flesh bruised.
At this time, all the generals knew that Ma Su was in trouble today, and they all stayed away, for fear of offending him and suffering unreasonable physical pain.
Immediately afterwards, the news about the water cutoff spread in the camp, and the soldiers discussed it privately, and the morale of the army was unstable.
Compared to Ma Su's anxiety, Sima Yi's mentality was much more relaxed.
The fact that Han Ying and three thousand soldiers were wiped out last night did not dampen his self-confidence.
Sima Yi had a high level of confidence in his military abilities and knew that this kind of "sneak attack failure" accident was inevitable.
In war, there are inevitably winners and losers.
Originally, Sima Yi had never considered a sneak attack. The Shu army was stationed on high ground and was defending in danger. It was unlikely that they would be able to defeat the enemy with a sneak attack.
Based on two considerations, he finally chose a sneak attack.
The first is to test whether Ma Su has real talent and knowledge, and whether he is really as invincible as the legend says, and whether he is invincible or not.
The second was to show off his power. He wanted to use such a military action to shock the Shu army's morale and demoralize the Shu army, and then wait for an opportunity to attack, so that he could get twice the result with half the effort.
However, Ma Di's military ability greatly exceeded his expectations. After sensing the Wei army's attack, the Shu army actually took advantage of the situation and devised a plan to lure the enemy, which in turn caused the Wei army to lose another 2,000 people.
Sima Yi thought about it all night and finally figured it out. Ma Su did have two brushes and he couldn't get rid of them.
Then we can only think about it in the long term.
After daybreak, Sima Yi immediately sent out several teams of cavalry to start regular patrols around Wuzhangyuan. At the same time, he also sent soldiers with better eyesight to the Qinling Mountains in the south to observe the movements of the Shu camp.
Sima Yi knew about the seasonal water shortage in Wuzhangyuan.
This is also the reason why he only placed 3,000 troops and horses at Wuzhangyuan after Zhuge Liang retreated.
There are too many soldiers and horses, but not enough water.
The soldiers responsible for investigating the movements of the Shu army soon discovered something unusual. The soldiers in the Shu camp were walking around, looking restless, which seemed to be a precursor to an imminent mutiny.
"It seems that they have encountered a water shortage problem." Sima Yi stroked his beard and nodded, smiling like an old fox.
"Hey, hey, my destiny is indeed mine!"
"Ma Su, what are you trying to do with me?"
Sima Yi called Sima Zhao and ordered him to instruct the Wei troops not to move rashly and to strictly guard their positions. Then he took off his armor, lay down on the wooden bed, and slept with his eyes closed.
At this moment, the Wei army no longer needs to attack, they just need to wait for the Shu army to rebel.
The situation was just as Sima Yi expected. At the end of the day, more than a dozen wells on Wuzhangyuan dried up, and a pessimistic atmosphere filled the Shu army camp.
Ma Su became even more irritable and his eyes became aggressive, which made the three generals and Yang Wanwan not dare to approach him.
Even if someone in the camp mentioned the word "water", Ma Di would rush to the other person in excitement, staring at him with eyes that seemed to be eating people, until he stared at the other person until his spirit collapsed, he knelt down to admit his mistake, and then walked away.
.
White terror instantly filled the entire military camp.
Everyone carefully paid attention to their words and tried to avoid words related to "water".
the next day.
When the sun rose, Ma Su calmed down a little, and went to the North Cliff of Wuzhangyuan alone, looking at the Wei River flowing not far below the mountain, and was silent.
Anger cannot solve the problem, it will only make it more complicated.
Now, only by solving the water shortage dilemma can we quickly reverse the unfavorable situation.
While he was pondering, Ma Su thought of the scene when he stationed troops at Jieting Nanshan last time.
The situation we faced at that time was that we were outnumbered and we were short of water. Ma Di used the method of "relay water transportation" by soldiers, and it only took ten hours to fill the Tianchi on the top of the mountain.
But this method is not applicable now.
At that time, there were only 10,000 Shu soldiers stationed at Jieting Nanshan, and the amount of water required was not much. Moreover, the north side of Nanshan was a gentle slope, so it was not difficult to relay the water buckets.
At this time, a full 50,000 troops were stationed on Wuzhangyuan, which required a huge amount of water. Moreover, the slope at the northern end of Wuzhangyuan was almost vertical, making it impossible to transfer water manually. Even the method of fetching water using slings and buckets was not feasible - because the slope was not enough.
Vertically, the bucket will tip over during the lifting process.
Of course, it's not completely impossible.
While inspecting the terrain of Wuzhangyuan, Ma Su repeatedly thought about the solution he had just come up with - find a place with slightly lower terrain near the Wei River, and dig deeper. As long as the depth of the well is equal to the water surface of the Wei River, there will be no water shortage.
The crisis will inevitably resolve itself.
However, the lowest point on the Wuzhangyuan is more than ten feet (about 23 meters) above the ground, that is, the water surface of the Wei River. Even if the water is dug out, how can the water be pumped up?
It is definitely not possible to draw water from the windlass well by buckets. Firstly, it will be too slow and secondly, it will be laborious.
Wait, extraction?
Suddenly a flash of lightning flashed in Ma Su's mind.
Limited by technology, it is very difficult to get water from deep wells to high places in this era. There is no other good way except using a pulley handle.
In fact, people in this era would never dig a well deeper than a foot deep.
But in later generations, water wells were usually more than one foot deep, and some wells were even more than ten feet deep, because people at that time had solved the problem of getting water from low places-just a piston-type manual water pump was enough.
The structure of the manual water pump is very simple, consisting of a long enough water pipe and a piston cylinder. The principle is that when the handle outside the piston is rocked back and forth by hand, the piston is made to reciprocate up and down through transmission mechanisms such as shafts, rocker arms, and connecting rods.
sports.
When the piston moves upward, a vacuum is formed, and the liquid is sucked into the flow channel from the suction pipe, opening the suction valve and entering the cylinder. At the same time, the piston falls back, and the cylinder returns the suction valve due to the compression of the piston, allowing the suction valve to return to its original position.
The water will not return from the pipe, and gradually fills the entire piston cylinder, and then flows out from the highest drainage pipe.
If you keep going back and forth like this, the water will flow out continuously.
The principle of the entire water pump is similar to a cylindrical syringe, and also similar to the hand-operated bellows used when cooking over a fire in rural areas. It is very simple.
However, due to limited materials, water-absorbing pipes are somewhat difficult to manufacture in this era. For the time being, they can only be replaced by spliced and sealed bamboo.
There happened to be a ready-made bamboo forest on Wuzhangyuan. The bamboos were long, thick and straight.
As for the piston cylinder, it is relatively easy to make.
After making up his mind, Ma Su drew the schematic diagram of a manual water pump, hired craftsmen, and asked them to hollow out the middle of the large truncated log, smooth it, and make the piston cylinder and related parts.
At the same time, the soldiers were ordered to dig downward in the low-lying area of Wuzhangyuan.
Thanks to the attribute bonus of the full-level "Infrastructure Maniac", when Ma Su gave an order, the soldiers there started to work wildly.
The dust was flying and the digging speed was very fast.
Three large craters not far apart sunk in at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In less than two hours, the soldiers had dug three large wells with a diameter of one foot and a depth of ten feet. One of the wells actually dug directly through the surface of the underground river. The clear water gushed up and soon overflowed the entire river.
Inside the well.
If Ma Su hadn't yelled "stop" quickly, these soldiers who were digging wells would have marched towards the core of the earth with their shovels.
In the afternoon, the craftsmen also followed the drawings and Ma Su's instructions, and after scrapping several piston cylinders in succession, finally created the first wooden version of the "water pump".
When the water from the three wells was pumped out by three lever-type hand pumps at the same time, and the white water flowed on the ground, dozens of Shu soldiers cheered thunderously, holding each other's arms and jumping up and down.
The worry of water shortage is solved!
The soldiers looked at Ma Su with admiration and expectation, and everyone's hearts were filled with intense joy.
Facing everyone's fiery gazes, Ma Su smiled calmly and pressed down his hands: "Thank you for your hard work! Everyone who digs a well will be rewarded, and he will be promoted to another level!"
"Thank you, General!" Everyone cheered loudly in response.
Ma Su looked around and said seriously: "Now that the water shortage crisis has been resolved, I hope everyone will keep this secret for the time being and have a showdown with Sima Yi in the future!"
"Yes, General!" Everyone lowered their voices and responded with their throats raised.
Compared with Ma Su's calmness, the soldiers were happy from the bottom of their hearts. Since the well water dried up, although their daily meal was still fragrant pemmican.
But since there was no water, they suddenly found the meat pie so difficult to eat.
Yesterday morning, everyone could still get a small gourd of water to quench their thirst. By the afternoon, the soldiers below the tenth captain could not get any water at all. Most of the soldiers in the entire military camp fell into a state of depression.
In fact, Ma Su knew very well that just because he had not drank water for a long time, it did not make the soldiers so depressed. They were more faced with the psychological anxiety caused by the result of "running out of water."
Therefore, Ma Di would attack first and blow himself up before the soldiers' emotions broke out.
Later, I felt that this level of outburst was not enough, so I randomly found an excuse to beat Zhang Xiu severely.
Tell the soldiers their sufferings so that they have nothing to complain about.
Fortunately, the crisis is now over.
When he returned to the camp to visit Zhang Xiu, Ma Su breathed a sigh of relief as if he had survived the disaster.
How dangerous.
The entire army collapsed in an instant.
Thanks to the leader of Sister Congee for the reward!
