The sky was like a curtain filled with ink, pitch black.
Countless raindrops hang straight down, hitting the rocks and trees in the Qinling Mountains, making a crackling sound. This complements the sound of the Jin Ge here.
The offensive and defensive battle between Wei and Han lasted for more than a month.
The progress of the war is also developing in the direction that Wei Da Sima Cao Zhen hopes.
After he, as the supreme commander of the war, issued the order to attack regardless of casualties, Zhuge Liang, the prime minister who rebelled against Shu, finally did as he wished and led the last mobile force, the Tiger Infantry, to Baozhong County in Hanzhong County.
In other words, the surprise army he planned, with nearly 30,000 infantry and cavalry stationed behind Xiaoguan in Anding County, can achieve great results!
Scouts and special agents found out that the only troops guarding the rebels outside Xiaoguan were the Xuanwu and the Xuanwu troops led by the Shu rebel general Zheng Pu.
Just five thousand soldiers!
Even if the road is encamped and guarded, it is impossible to stop the 15,000 elite tiger soldiers led by Wei Ping and Dai Ling!
It is even more impossible to contain the Xianbei begging tribe and the more than ten thousand cavalry commanded by the Xiongnu security guard Hu Bojuzhizhi!
Once Wei Ping and Dai Ling suddenly left Xiaoguan, they divided their forces to trap Zheng Pu's tribe in Nishu, and marched to Lieliu City on the Guanlong Road. They allowed the Qifu tribe and the Xiongnu cavalry to drive to the Changlishui River Valley, and then Nishu could be defeated.
Shu, Wei Yan, Wu Ban, Chen Shi and other tribes had all their retreats north of the Weishui River cut off!
Let them either be trapped and die, waiting for the food to be exhausted and the soldiers to mutiny and die.
Either he must never leave the city, break through the dangerous pass, and suffer all casualties in the heavy encirclement and suppression by the Wei army!
The only way to survive is to surrender!
Even the Gao Xiang and Ma Dai tribes in Longxi County would have difficulty retreating because they were on the front line. The Wei army took the lead and rushed to the Qishan Road in Wudu County, cutting off the retreat route back to Hanzhong.
In other words, as long as there are no accidents, the nearly 50,000 troops of Shu in Longyou, Longxi and other places will be wiped out by Wei in one fell swoop!
Because Ni Shu has no reinforcements to save him.
Several armies of the Wei State attacked Hanzhong County and pinned down Zhuge Liang, Li Yan and Zhao Yun, the prime ministers who had rebelled against Shu, in Hanzhong.
Moreover, Wei's military strength was enough to offset Shu's geographical advantage.
If they dare to mobilize a force of troops to rush for reinforcements, Hanzhong County will be breached!
However, will Zhuge Liang, the prime minister who rebelled against Shu, give up Hanzhong for the land of Longyou?
Cao Zhen had the answer in his heart.
Because Longyou is not defended, Hanzhong County can still support it.
Once Hanzhong is lost, the land of Longyou will also become an enclave, and neither Badi nor Shu will be stable.
Don’t you see, after the former Emperor Cao Cao captured Hanzhong County, even if Liu Bei, the leader of Shu, was still there at that time, tens of thousands of people in Shu were shocked every day!
Now that the first leader of Shu, Liu Bei, has died, the Shu Kingdom, which suffered successive defeats at Xiangfan and Yiling, has once again lost several counties and lost tens of thousands of soldiers. How can people's hearts be at peace? Perhaps, if the Wei Kingdom captured Hanzhong
After the county, the rebellion in Bashu was like a cloud. Countless people came to Wei to ask for surrender, and they were willing to serve as guides in order to gain a title and the glory and wealth of their descendants!
"Someone is coming!"
Cao Zhen, who was determined, summoned his followers and sent the order to Anding County for Wei Ping and Dai Ling to lead the army out of Xiaoguan.
Although, it is not the best time for Wei Ping and others to leave Xiao Pass.
If he can let the various troops attack for more than ten days, it will make Ni Shu's troops guarding Hanzhong County even more strenuous. If he can completely kill them and rush for reinforcements, the effect will be even greater.
But he couldn't wait any longer.
There have been heavy rains in the Qinling Mountains and Hanzhong County for more than ten consecutive days.
Sima Yi's troops who were attacking Huanghuang Gorge in the east gate of Hanzhong County were unable to form a strong containment due to the heavy rains that caused the water flow of Mian River to become more turbulent. Zhao Yun, the former general against Shu, was able to do so easily and sent more than 2,000 men to support Hanzhong in the Tangluo Valley.
North Exit - Shu Liu Min's tribe was in danger after being attacked by General Fei Yao.
Moreover, although the heavy rains for days made it difficult for the Yuanrong Nu who countered Shu to exert their combat power, it also made it more difficult for the Wei army to continue fighting.
The slippery valley roads made it easier for soldiers rushing forward to fall.
The most fatal thing is the continuous supply of food, fodder and baggage.
The grain and baggage he had previously stored in the small flat area in the middle of the Baoxie Valley was slowly exhausted during the war that lasted for more than a month, and the three assistants in Guanzhong had already started transporting it.
The small-scale flash floods and landslides caused by the heavy rain washed away part of the plank road, making the transportation of grain and fodder more efficient and less effective.
If the delay continues, it is feared that the civilians who have been forced into corvee labor will gather in crowds to cause trouble and destabilize the rear because they cannot bear the pain of hard labor.
Well, as for the morale of the officers and soldiers of the Wei army, Cao Zhen was not worried.
In other words, he doesn't need to worry.
In the face of Wei's military law, as long as the soldiers did not fall into a situation of inevitable defeat, it was impossible for their morale to collapse.
Because of their family members at the rear, they did not dare to collapse.
Whether one person dies in battle, or the entire family is killed or enslaved, they all know it by the military law that has been in operation for decades.
Furthermore, Cao Zhen's method of boosting morale made the soldiers willing to die.
If this battle is won, all soldiers who die in the battle will receive pensions, and regardless of the victory, everyone will gain the merit of beheading.
But if you are afraid of fighting and refuse to advance, or if you hear the drum and refuse to advance, you will be killed on the spot!
And hold the family members accountable!
How can the soldiers dare to spare their lives when the general is about to give orders like this?
Therefore, although the Wei army now only has one route to Baoxiegu and can hardly push the battle line to the entrance of Jigu, more than 20,000 people have been killed in the battle.
However, such results greatly boosted the morale of the Wei army.
Not only because Ni Shu also lost more than 6,000 people in the battle.
What's more, once the Wei army captured Jigukou, they would no longer have to deal with the hardship of the narrow mountain road!
Facing the vast plains of Hanzhong County, the Wei State, whose military strength was still twice that of Ni Shu, made every general see the dawn of victory. Cao Zhen, who had been in the military for decades, learned that the great banner of Zhuge Liang, the Prime Minister of Ni Shu, appeared in Hanzhong
The Queen of the County also firmly believed that victory in this battle was imminent.
However, it's a pity.
What he didn't know was that there was another reason that prompted Prime Minister Zhuge Liang to lead the army to support Baoxie Valley in Hanzhong.
It was a military report sent by Zheng Pu.
Said: "The plan is done, Xiao Guan will belong to my big man!"
However, Zheng Pu's vicious plan worked.
When Yang Yi allocated supplies and sent people to drive two thousand sheep to Xiaoguandao, he began to implement the poisonous plan.
They ordered people to kill all the sheep and throw the bodies into the huge pits that had been dug long ago.
Use ditches to divert Wating water for soaking.
After the sheep carcass had rotted for more than ten days, during the morning and evening time when the Wei soldiers and horses stationed at Xiaoguan were cooking, they dug a ditch connecting the tributaries of the Jing River and poured the corpse water into it. Once a day in the morning and evening, the Wei army took water to make rice.
After time passed, the eastward ditch was blocked again, and water was stored again to soak the sheep carcasses to keep the poisonous water.
He also ordered his followers who were good at climbing to continue to closely observe the mountains on both sides.
So as to determine the time when the plague broke out among Wei soldiers.
When the messenger was sent to the Prime Minister, it was the seventh day of the burial.
The retinue of the Wei army saw that within one day, more than ten soldiers of the Wei army who were guarding the walls of the pass fell to the ground for no reason.
In other words, the plague is already rampant!
Immediately, Zheng Pu had people bury the pits and ditches.
Those soldiers who carried out the execution would burn their clothes and other items after they were finished, bathe in soup, and set up separate camps in separate places. They would not return to the army until one month later when they were confirmed to be healthy.
Plague is a thing that kills indiscriminately.
It's not like he hurts others or himself.
As for whether it is too early to bury the pit now?
But there is no need to worry.
In the place where troops are stationed, all soldiers are ordered to stay in a military camp; if one person is infected with the disease, it will spread to the entire military camp.
And there is an incubation period. Once the clues appear, there is no way to stop it.
Wei Jun could no longer stop it now.
The general appointed by Cao Zhen to take charge of Xiaoguan's strange plot was Wei Ping.
After Dai Ling, who temporarily served as his deputy general, led the army to Xiaoguan, he handed over the supervision of defense and garrison to Dai Ling and rushed back to Anding County to govern Linjing County to supervise the transshipment of grain, fodder and baggage.
Because he has been guarding peace and stability.
Returning in person to supervise and supervise can make the Qiang and Hu tribes and the powerful people dare not cause trouble, and can make the Li Shu who have been conscripted into corvee work more conscientiously.
At first, he received a message from Dai Ling, claiming that some soldiers in the army were sick, but he had not thought that it was an outbreak of plague.
From the hot July to the cool autumn and August, it is the most vulnerable time to contract diseases.
It is not an accident that some soldiers become ill.
At that time, he only asked Dai Ling to carefully prevent the spread of the disease and asked the county to recruit doctors to treat him.
The news that followed made him heartbroken.
Among the 15,000 tiger warriors stationed behind Xiaoguan, as well as the more than 10,000 cavalrymen of the Xianbei Begging Tribe and Hu Bo, the leader of the Xiongnu security guard, all suffered from the disease.
The spread is extremely rapid.
At first, there were only a dozen soldiers who claimed to be dizzy and weak in their limbs. After one night, hundreds of people showed similar symptoms.
And the fatality rate is very high.
Soldiers who fell ill died in about four or five days.
Such symptoms also made him understand what the so-called disease was.
Once an epidemic breaks out in the army, no general or commander can curb the panic of the soldiers. And once these elite soldiers, who have been fighting with swords and spears for a long time, lose control, it will cause unbearable consequences.
Wei Ping, who had been on the battlefield for a long time, immediately ordered the county soldiers to block the road back from Xiaoguan and Anding and into Guanzhong.
Afterwards, while sending people to report urgently to Grand Sima Cao Zhen, he led his bodyguards and rushed to Xiaoguan.
He wanted to win the trust of his soldiers by accumulating prestige for a long time, and do his best to prevent the plague from spreading too widely.
However, he had only been marching for half a day when the bad news came.
General Dai Ling, who was already in his fifties, also fell ill and died.
The soldiers, who witnessed the deaths of Pao Ze one after another every day and lost the control of their commander-in-chief, finally rioted.
In despair, some set fires and killed everywhere; some gathered crowds to rob supplies and wanted to escape to the Wuthering Mountain Forest in Liupan Mountain; some used their last strength to seek revenge in the past when they had conflicts of words or the swords of enemies.
A very small number of them retained their senses and came back together to seek treatment from Wei Ping.
However, although their choices are different, their endings are all the same.
All died within a few days.
Because the cause of the epidemic was not the infection among the soldiers, but the food they ate every day to satisfy their hunger.
It also makes the Xiaoguan area feel like a ghost land.
Such a result made Wei Ping want to cry without tears.
In front of countless corpses of soldiers who fell dead on the road, he could not lead the county soldiers to Xiaoguan to find out what happened.
After all, when the news of the outbreak of the epidemic in Xiaoguan came back, the common people in Anding County were panicked. Some wealthy people had already fled to Guanzhong with their families.
If he forces those county soldiers to go to Xiaoguan, mutiny will be the inevitable result.
I couldn't explain it to Grand Sima Cao Zhen.
Yes, Cao Zhen's order for him to lead his army out of Xiaoguan has just been delivered.
Fortunately, the epidemic did not spread to Anding County.
There are two source tributaries of Jingshui River, which converge to form Jingshui River more than a hundred miles behind Xiaoguan (today's Pingliang).
Zheng Pu only asked the soldiers to discharge the poisonous water in which the sheep carcasses were soaked in the morning and evening when they were cooking meals for the Wei army stationed at Xiaoguan. Under the continuous dilution of the water flow, it was decomposed by another tributary of Jingshui River, and it no longer existed in Anding County.
The toxicity is palpable.
However, the Xianbei Qifu tribe in the Wushui (Qingshui River) basin, and the Xiongnu tribe that thrived in the north of Chaona County and west of Gaoping County, did not survive.
Because after the outbreak of the epidemic and the death of Dai Ling, the Xianbei and Xiongnu cavalry relied on instinct and drove their horses back to their habitats in panic, seeking refuge from the tribe's witch doctors and gods.
But Changshengtian abandoned them.
They and their mounts were also dead.
He also brought the source of the disease back to the tribe, making countless tribesmen pay the price for their ignorance.
The Huns are better off.
The leader of Wei Baosai, Hu Bo Juzi, was in the prime of his life and was in the prime of life. He did not personally lead his people to Xiaoguan to join the expedition, so he survived the disaster. There was no fight for the leadership position, which led to fratricide.
The tribe suffered heavy casualties and completely lost the ambition and strength to rise during the conflict between Wei and Han.
The situation in Xianbei is much worse.
The leader personally led his tribe to Xiaoguan, but died on the way back.
The tribe, which was originally quite strong, fell into pieces.
His sons were all deprived of the right to compete for the leadership position.
The prestigious witch doctor in the tribe claimed that the dead leader led the army to help the Wei Kingdom attack the Han Dynasty, which was the cause of the death of countless members of the tribe and was the sinner of the tribe!
The children of sinners cannot be blessed by the Immortal Heaven, nor can they become leaders.
Therefore, the surviving people of the Qifu tribe followed the rules of the wolf pack and began to choose the leader. This also allowed the Xianbei Lujie tribe, which had been annexed not long ago, to take the opportunity to rebel.
In the Wushui Basin area, those who survived the great epidemic faced the time of killing each other with swords and spears.
The leaders of some small tribes were unable to compete and did not want to be killed, so they migrated back to the north to seek protection from other Xianbei adults; or they entered the four counties of Liangzhou and Hexi to join the local Qiang and Hu tribes.
Whether it was the Xiongnu or the Xianbei, the word-of-mouth transmission from the survivors of the disaster gave the Xiaoguan Epidemic a mysterious color.
If you follow Wei and attack the Han Dynasty, you will be punished by heaven!
When this statement reached the ears of the common people of the Han family, it became known as "Wei's position is not right and it is not destiny!"
Guanzhong is the place where the Han Dynasty established its country and established its capital, and the stories of the Han Dynasty are not unfamiliar to any aristocratic family.
For example, "The Prophecy of the Golden Sword".
The prophecy says: "Liu Xiu sent troops to arrest him but failed to do so. He spent money and cultivated virtue and became the emperor."
"Hanshu": "The character for 'Liu' is Mao, Jin, Dao."
