The hot air balloon rises in the sky, the wind howls, blowing across the rolling mountains in the field of vision.
The mountains in early winter are green and gray, with ups and downs like a strange ocean. The roads between the mountains are like giant dragons breaking through the ocean, spreading forward as the army marches. The woods in the distance are undulating, and there are hidden things hidden in the woods.
The gnawing abyss.
The terrain of Shu is majestic. Li Bai once said: The road to Shu is difficult, and it is harder to reach the blue sky. But in fact, this road, which is described as difficult to reach the sky, is already a relatively easy pass into Shu.
To the west of Jiange, and to the north of Jinniu Road, is a place called the Longmenshan fault zone in later generations, which is a real natural chasm. Although the roads to the big and small Jianshan Mountains to the south are also rugged and densely covered with cliffs, Jinniu Road passes through the mountains and ridges, and there are many
Stations and villages are attached to the roadside to see off traveling merchants, and hunters can also come and go in the mountains.
After all, the only people who could travel through such rugged mountains in the past were old and poor hunters nearby. With dense mountain forests and rugged terrain, ordinary people may get lost in the mountains soon after entering the forest and never be able to turn back.
.In mid-October, the first wave of large-scale fighting broke out in this terrain.
With the help of hot air balloons or watchtowers built at high places, you can occasionally see explosions in the distant dense forests or mountain streams.
The Chinese army scouts carry explosives called grenades with them, and the Jurchen scout troops also carry fire thunders that can be ignited with open flames. In addition to the violent noise caused by these two, most of the fighting in the forest is not easy for the outside world to see.
Only screams would be heard in the distance, smoke rising from the forest could be seen occasionally, or a distant "bang" sound coming from nowhere, and the troops on the road would know that the fighting was going on.
In the first few days, there were still fierce but scattered battles in the forest. The two troops that started to fight cautiously tested the strength of their opponents. There were sporadic explosions near and far. There were probably dozens of them a day. Occasionally, there were injured people coming out.
After withdrawing from the forest, the Jurchen scouts at the head reported the strength of the Chinese army's scouts to the generals above.
These scouts are the most elite veterans of the Jurchen army. They are either hunters trained in the harshest environment in the northern mountains, or warriors who survived the sea of blood in the mountains of corpses. They have keen senses and can survive and find their way in the mountains and forests.
, or kill bears and tigers, it’s not a problem. Moreover, many of them are quite famous in the army, and they are trusted confidants by the generals in any army. Yu Yu used these confidants from the beginning. One of them is
Trust them, and the second is to get the most accurate feedback.
Feedback from the first encounter came back quickly with the wounded and the retreating scout team. The Chinese army scouts who had been developing in the southwest for several years were no strangers to the mountains of Sichuan and Sichuan. The first batch of elites who entered the mountains and fought against the Chinese army
The scouts achieved some success, but suffered considerable casualties.
In the first few days of friction, it was actually impossible to judge the accurate casualty ratio - but this situation did not surprise the Jurchen upper echelons - in small-scale conflicts with less than a hundred people, even the Wu Dynasty army could often
With their two-shot record, the Han people have no shortage of brave men, not to mention the Black Flag Army who killed Lou Shi and refused to give up.
On the 20th, follow-up scouts arranged in advance entered the mountain one after another. For these non-Jurchen scouts, the army's top brass offered extremely high rewards: killing a Black Flag Army soldier would give you a hundred dollars, and officers would be rewarded incrementally on this basis.
Higher up the company level, there are acres of land, official titles and even knighthoods, and the penalty for being captured alive is tripled.
There was a huge gap between the rich and the poor in Wu Dynasty society. The poor people could only spend a few copper coins a year. From the eighth-grade county magistrate's monthly salary of about fifteen copper coins, they were already relatively wealthy. A common head here is worth a hundred copper coins. Scouts
Most of them are elites in the army. If you kill a few of them with flowers on their shoulders, you will be rich and worry-free for the rest of your life.
The gold and silver used for rewards were packed in boxes and placed next to the military camps at several post stations on the road, dazzling people's eyes. This was directly received by the scouts of each army. As for the army's killing of enemies on the battlefield, the rewards first belonged to each army.
Military merit will be rewarded uniformly after the battle, but it will basically be the same as the price per head of the scout. Even if you die in battle, as long as the military merit is in place, the reward will still be sent to each person's home in the future.
With such a reward, Wanyan Zonghan would have to spend at least tens of millions of dollars to "buy" all the heads of the Chinese army, but he didn't mind.
When the Liao Kingdom was still there, the Wu Dynasty paid the Liao Kingdom more than one million guan every year in silver coins, and relying on trade, the Wu Dynasty earned back many times the amount by changing hands. Tong Guan redeemed the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, and
Families of all sizes in the North, and bureaucrats from all walks of life in the DPRK and China collected property worth tens of millions of dollars. In the end, he conquered the Liao Dynasty, regained Yanyun, and became famous. Wouldn't everyone still get these tens of millions of dollars of property from the hands of the people?
go back.
When the Jin Kingdom conquered the Central Plains and overthrew the Wu Dynasty, destroying families and clans along the way, the number of gold and silver they copied and the number of slaves they could capture back to the north to produce gold and silver would be much greater. If they could use tens of millions of gold and silver "
After buying the Huaxia Army, Zong Han, Xi Yin and others are really not stingy at this time.
This is the final battle to determine the world.
With such huge benefits and glory, not only the scouts, but also the soldiers at the middle and lower levels are gearing up and ready to take action.
On the 22nd, the conflict between the scouts in the vast mountain forest suddenly began to become fierce. The Jurchens invested troops and the Chinese army invested more troops at the same time and at the same node.
Since the afternoon of the 22nd, the most obvious sign of conflict that can be seen in the rugged mountains is not the occasional explosion, but the black smoke pillars and mountain fires rising from the forest: this is
After fighting in the chaotic environment of the forest, many people chose a strategy to confuse the situation. Some mountain fires swirled and extinguished, and some wild fires spread raging in the relatively dry environment in early winter. With the howling north wind, they set off
A huge momentum.
Thick smoke billowed across the mountains, and the traces of burning were clearly visible for dozens of miles away. The animals living in the forest fled in all directions, and occasional fights broke out in this chaotic situation.
Most of the fires in the forest were caused by Bohai people, Liaodong people, and Han army scouts on the Jurchen side.
Although the huge bounty offered by the Jurchens made these brave and skilled military elites eager to go into the mountains to kill the enemy, but when they entered the vast forest and started to confront the Chinese soldiers, the tremendous pressure came.
It will fall on everyone.
The mountains and forests of Sichuan and Shu seem to be vast, and those who are good at running in the mountains can indeed find many roads, but the rugged terrain makes these roads appear narrow and dangerous. Everything is easy to say until you encounter an enemy. Once you encounter an enemy, what will happen is
The most intense and bizarre fight.
In groups of ten, the Chinese army scouts, who were originally trained for fighting in the forest, mostly wore clothes similar to the colors of the mountain scenery, and each of them carried a powerful hand crossbow. When they suddenly encountered them, ten
Several members blocked the road from different directions, and just the first wave of crossbow arrows fired from different angles was enough to make people frightened.
In addition to crossbows, each person carried two or three thrown grenades. If they encountered such an explosion on a narrow road, it would really be a dilemma.
In addition to hand crossbows, fire thunder and other items, the ten members each have different emphasis and coordination. Some team members carry stainless steel hooks for easy climbing, pulleys that can make people go up and down mountains like apes, and there are also a small number of elite teams.
Moving forward with sniper rifles, they occupied high places, used binoculars to observe, and sent signals to nearby teams.
Of course there are also Hai Dongqing among the Jurchen scouts, many sharpshooters who can penetrate the Yangtze River with a hundred steps, and people with special skills who are good at climbing dangerous peaks. However, under the systematic cooperation and forward pressure of these Chinese army squads, they encountered the enemy for the first time that day.
The scout team suffered huge casualties.
Hundreds of thousands of scout troops were still crowded and lively on the road into the mountain pass. They entered the mountain forest and chose different roads to disperse. From time to time, they would encounter the retreating figures of the elite Jurchen scouts who had entered the mountain in the past few days. As a new force, they
As substitutes came in, hundreds of special operations teams from the Chinese Army had also arrived one after another. By the afternoon, there was a chaotic fight in the forest. Some of the surviving scouts set off fires, and some of the flames were burning brightly.
Some of the scout troops who had surrendered to the Jurchen side cried for their fathers and scolded their mothers. Although they were "outnumbered" in the forest, the combat power of each team was high or low, and their styles were different. The coordination and progress of each team were different.
There are also differences. Some troops are fighting in the front, and they see the flames spreading from behind...
On the other hand, each special operations team of the Chinese Army had a rough combat plan early on. This was still the early stage of the war. The teams were closely connected and deployed with core teams occupying various commanding heights in different areas. The advance and retreat were orderly and basically
There is no team that is too aggressive yet.
In the past few days, although I have encountered extremely powerful veterans, hunters and other characters in the opponent's team, some suddenly appeared and sealed their throats with an arrow, while others hid in the piles of dead leaves and killed people violently, resulting in many incidents.
There were casualties, but in terms of exchange ratio, the Chinese army always had a huge advantage.
According to later statistics, on the 22nd, the number of Jurchen-affiliated scouts who died in the forest fighting was about six hundred, and the Chinese army suffered more than a hundred casualties. On the 23rd and 24th, the casualties of both sides decreased, and the scouts of the Chinese army
The battle line was generally pushed forward, but there were also several Jurchen scout troops who became more and more familiar with the mountains and forests and occupied several important observation points in the front of the woods. This was still a small loss before the war started.
Yu Yu adapted to this situation and made several adjustments to the battle in the mountains, but in general, he would not care too much about the blunt response of some vassal troops during the battle.
On the 25th, tens of thousands of troops separated from Su Ling were ready outside Huangming County, and thousands of Han prisoners were driven toward the county wall.
Huangming County developed from the inn town that was originally located here. It was not a fortified city. Its city wall was only three feet high, and the total length on the side facing the mountain pass was 460 feet, which is what it would look like in later generations.
.The city wall winds from the open area to the hillside in the south. The hillside is relatively steep, causing the defense in this section to form an "L"-shaped angle with the lower part. Several catapults and cannons with longer defense distances are placed here.
Open, the hot air balloon responsible for observation is also floating high above the city head here.
The northern end of the city wall is adjacent to a mountain stream of 6 or 7 battles, but there is also a path across the city close to the city wall. As the prisoners were driven away, the soldiers on the top of the city shouted loudly, asking the prisoners to circle north of the city to survive.
Naturally, the Jurchens at the rear would not allow it. They first drove the prisoners southward with arrows, then set up cannons and started firing catapults towards the crowd at the north end.
The crowd was crying and squeezing toward the bottom of the city wall. Arrows, stones, and cannonballs fell into the crowd behind. Explosions, cries, and screams were mixed together, and the smell of blood spread everywhere.
The prisoners who squeezed under the city wall were out of the range of artillery shells, carts and other objects. Some of them shouted below the city hoping that the Chinese army would open the city gate, and some hoped that ropes would be thrown down from above. However, the Chinese soldiers on the wall did not
Moved, some people spread towards the north of the city, while others ran towards the rugged hillside in the south of the city.
In fact, at this time, only the path between the mountain stream in the north of the city and the city wall was the only way to escape. In the Jurchen army formation, Ba Lisu quietly watched the prisoners being driven to the bottom of the city wall, without any landmines exploding in the middle.
When the crowd began to crowd toward the north, he ordered people to drive out the second batch of about a thousand prisoners.
Mixed among this batch of prisoners was an archery team of about a hundred people. They used the cover of the Han prisoners to close the distance from the city wall, and began to shoot arrows at the prisoners running north under the city wall. Some arrows were zero.
They fell sporadically on top of the city.
Pang Liuan ordered the artillery fire.
Three artillery shells roared out from the wall of Huangming County and fell into the crowd mixed with archers. At this time, the Jurchens also sparsely fired at the rear of the running prisoners. The three artillery shells flew towards them, mixed with shouts and shouts.
It was inconspicuous amidst the smoke of gunfire. Ba Lisu patted his thigh on his horse, with a bloodthirsty taste in his eyes.
He waved his hand and ordered his men to release the third group of prisoners.
There were also thousands of prisoners in this group. The difference from the previous ones was that the Jurchens issued dozens of crudely made ladders to these prisoners.
"... If you want to escape to the north of the city, you can't get through! The wall of the county town ahead is not high, and the Black Flag Army regards itself as China. As long as you go up there, they won't kill anyone! Carry the ladder and run for your life! Those who run slowly, be careful of women.
A real cannon!”
The person being held in front of the prisoners and shouting was a former Wu Dynasty official. He was covered in blood, with a bruised nose and face, and conveyed the Jurchen's message to the prisoners. Among the prisoners, a large number of people with families and families carried ladders and cried forward.
Fang ran over. Some people hugged the children, and they were begging for mercy incomprehensibly.
At this moment, the Chinese soldiers on the city wall were lowering their shields, swords, guns, door panels and other objects towards the crowd below the city to allow them to defend themselves against stray arrows. Seeing someone coming over with a ladder from the other side of the battlefield, Pang Liuan and Chief of Staff Guo Chen remained silent.
for a moment.
"...let people shout and tell them not to bring ladders. There are spies in the crowd. Don't fall into the Jurchens' scheme."
Guo Chen gave the order, and then sent an order to the artillery: "Calibrate the distance."
Soldiers with loud voices held simple loudspeakers at the top of the city and shouted desperately toward the front.
On the "battlefield" ahead, there were no soldiers, only crowds of people running away, shouting, and crying. The smell of blood rose up, mixed with gunpowder smoke and internal organs.
This was the most "gentle" beginning on the entire battlefield. Ba Lisu looked at it all with bloodthirsty fanaticism in his eyes.
For the Jurchens, this was just a simple massacre without even letting go, but he enjoyed the enemy's dilemma, and what the opposite general showed - whether it was determination or anger, made him feel satisfied.
For the Chinese army, this is also a psychological test that sounds cruel but is actually extremely ordinary. Many people have experienced it as early as the Xiaocanghe period, and now, a large number of soldiers have to go through it again.
The Jurchens are sweeping across the world. If they need to take prisoners, tens of millions are not a problem for them. They will drive them forward, chase them, and massacre them. If the soldiers on the wall show the slightest mercy or
It was a flaw. After these thousands of people, Ba Lisu, Zong Han and others would not mind rushing in another hundred thousand or one million people to kill them in front of the battle formation.
The prisoners holding the ladder were driven over, the distance was shortened, and they began to merge with the previous batch of prisoners. The soldiers on the city wall shouted at the top of their lungs. Pang Liu'an took a breath.
"fire."
On the city wall, soldiers lowered their torches, the muzzles of the iron cannons made a roaring sound, and the shells rushed out of the firelight and flew over the sea of people.
After one cannonball, there was another, and then the third. As the air blasted out, some people were blown away, some had their hands and feet broken, and they were crying miserably.
"Hahahaha..." Ba Lisu laughed on his horse and issued subsequent orders in an orderly manner.
Catapults from all directions on the battlefield began to take advantage of this chaos to slowly advance forward, the artillery array advanced, and the fourth batch of prisoners was driven out... In the Jurchen camp, Meng'an (Thousand Commander) Wulitan and
All the subordinates have been prepared and are waiting to set off.
This is a battle-hardened vanguard general among the Jurchens. As early as when Aguda was still around, Wulitan was a close and brave general under the command of Ba Lisu. This attack on the Chinese army is of great significance to Zong Han and Xi Yin.
Many people also regard it as the last obstacle to conquering the world, but the cautious use of troops and sufficient preparation do not mean that the people in the army have lost their original spirit.
Facing the obstacle of Huangming County, after Ba Lisu set up his battle formation, Wu Litan asked the general for orders, hoping to lead the battle first and seize the Lou room, and wait for the marshal's revenge without giving up.
The first success of the battle. Ba Lisu agreed.
As the prisoners were driven out one after another, the formation of the Jurchen army was also slowly advancing. Around noon, the catapults with the longest range gradually brought the Huangming County city wall into the attack range. The Chinese army, which was waiting for work, was the first to do so.
They used catapults to attack the Jurchen catapult camp, and the Jurchens quickly fixed their equipment and launched a counterattack. At this time, less than eleven people were able to escape from the battlefield through the trails north of Huangming County, and the battlefield had turned into a meat grinder for civilians.
.
Not a moment later, at the most boring and tiring time in the afternoon, the first wave of climax broke out on the bloody battlefield. The thousand-man team led by Wu Litan changed their clothes slightly and led another group of civilians towards the city wall.
The advance began. He predetermined the attack location, divided the thousand-man team into ten batches, and attacked the front from different routes.
Ba Lisu rode on his horse and looked at the battlefield calmly. At a certain moment, his brows frowned slightly.
There were still cries and noises on the battlefield. The catapults of both sides attacked each other. Five of the catapults set up by the Jurchens had been smashed. Under the city wall of Huangming County, an unknown number of people were rolled into pieces by flying boulders.
.The flying stones caused huge destruction and never stopped for a moment. But at a certain point in time at the head of Huangming County, the atmosphere seemed to suddenly become quiet.
Ba Lisu felt this moment of silence.
On the city wall, Pang Liuan suddenly rushed forward. He picked up his telescope and quickly scanned the battlefield. Some veterans among the Chinese soldiers guarding the city also seemed to feel something. They looked out under the cover of shields. The army
The middle section of the novices who did not have much experience watched the movements of these veterans who had experienced the Xiaocanghe period.
"Hehe...he finally dared to come over..."
The long knife was pulled out of its scabbard, and the sound from the throat was suppressed to the bone marrow. A ferocious aura like a slaughterhouse spread across the city.
"...here you go, do you want to fire?"
The city wall in Huangming County is only three feet long. If the enemy gets close, they can quickly climb onto the city to fight. Pang Liuan's eyes swept over the battlefield filled with overflowing blood and shrill cries, and he gritted his teeth.