Qian Zhao hurriedly came to report the battle situation. It can be said that the Qingzhou Army achieved a complete victory in this battle.
Chen Mu asked: "How's it going at the front camp?"
"Yuan Shao has already launched an offensive. Zhongda's side can still resist it, but they cannot break through the trapped army."
"That is not bad."
"Let's go take a look at the front too, Zi Jing. I'll leave this place to you to deal with the aftermath."
Liu Bei gave an order.
"only."
Qianzhao responded and left behind to deal with the aftermath.
Liu Bei and Chen Mu went down the hill, and Lu and Ziying, who each rode on, went to the front camp.
At this moment, the battle in the front camp had just begun. Yuan Shao launched an offensive from the front, so he had to fight from the bottom of the slope to the top of the slope. He was attacking from his back and was at a natural disadvantage.
Therefore, he had to move step by step, with wooden curtains hanging from the outside rushing to the front to resist the bows and arrows shot from the top of the slope.
The outer camp is nearly two miles away from the bottom of the west slope. Excessive distance means that the defense line is very long.
When Zhang Liao climbed up the slope from the east, it was fortunate that Gao Lan came to the front. Otherwise, it would not have been so easy to defeat the Jizhou army at that time.
Everyone knows that the longer the defense line, the better. This is the so-called depth. If your defense line is only 100 meters and people push forward, you will be in trouble. But if your defense line is two kilometers, the pushing distance is
Line of life and death.
Although ancient wars were not hot weapon wars, a long defense line meant that it could cause greater damage to the enemy. However, it was not completely without benefits. A large number of ditches were dug around the slope bank, making it impossible for vehicles to enter.
When the distance between the two sides was about one and a half miles, Yuan Shao only relied on the wooden curtain to advance for half a mile. The large number of ditches in front of him made him lose his equipment and he could not push forward any further.
"Abandon the cart and move forward with the shield hand!"
As a sharp shout came from the rear, the messengers began to move forward to convey Yuan Shao's orders. After receiving the order, the generals who were advancing at the front immediately acted according to his instructions.
By this time, the war had just begun. The Jizhou troops abandoned their wooden chariots one after another, jumped over the ditch, and continued to move forward.
There was no way. It was not that Yuan Jun had never thought of building wooden planks to allow the wooden curtain car to pass, but the generals on the front line had observed it and believed that it was too difficult to implement this plan and almost impossible to implement.
First, there are too many ditches, and there are a large number of pits on the ground. The amount of work required to build wooden planks is too large. Even if the planks are built, there are still dangers of sinking into the pits.
Second, they don't have that many boards.
So after reporting it to Yuan Shao, Yuan Shao weighed the pros and cons and had no choice but to abandon the vehicle and move forward.
"The enemy reaches hundreds of feet!"
Gao Shun led the trapped troops to guard the mountainside, with the distance between the two sides only a hundred feet away.
The messenger shouted loudly: "Get the crossbow ready!"
"Crunch, crunch, crunch!"
The soldiers pushed and pulled the winch with all their strength. Under the pulling force of the winch, the huge bowstring made of cowhide showed an exaggerated curve and was buckled on the crossbow frame.
The thick arrows on the child's arms were draped, and the sharp arrows shone with a terrifying cold light. There were hundreds of crossbows, giving people enough threats.
"shoot!"
"Buzz buzz buzz!~~~"
Following the order, the cowhide tendons buzzed, and the crossbow arrows pierced the void with a scream, shooting towards Yuan Jun down the slope like lightning.
Since Yuan Jun was attacking from the rear, if you look at the field of view, you can actually see the bed crossbow ready to go.
Moreover, the terrain on the slope below is relatively open, causing their formation to be relatively scattered.
Therefore, almost at the moment when the crossbow arrows were fired, a large number of Jizhou troops instinctively fell to the ground. They could feel the strong wind roaring above their heads, and the god of death flying past their heads.
"Dong dong dong dong!"
Most of the arrows did not hurt anyone. They were either shot far away or inserted into the ground. Only a few unlucky ones were hit.
"Load arrows!"
With another order, the trapped troops quickly began to take action.
On the Jizhou Army side, under the urging of officers at all levels, the soldiers in front got up from the ground and began to march forward again.
"The enemy is nearly ninety feet away!"
the lookout shouted.
"shoot!"
"Buzz buzz buzz buzz!~~~"
It was another round of crossbow arrows. This time with experience, many people even jumped into ditches and tunnels to avoid the arrows, resulting in very few people being killed.
Under the slope at the rear, Yuan Shao saw that the crossbows of the Qingzhou Army had lost their effectiveness because of too many trenches dug on his side. He immediately laughed and said to his left and right: "Does Liu Bei think this is a siege? They dug so many trenches.
The ditch eventually turned into a trench for my soldiers to hide from arrows."
Liu Hui advised: "Ming Gong, it is better not to be careless. Liu Bei dug the ditch just to block our attacking equipment such as rams, nests, wooden curtains, and stone lorries. Although it was impossible to divert the water from the Qinghe River into it, the irrigation
The river is full of water, but our weapons cannot get close to it, and Liu Bei has established a stronghold, so it is difficult for us to attack it."
Yuan Shao clasped his hands and looked to the east, and muttered: "There should be progress on Guo Tu's side. All the trapped troops are here, Liu Bei's camp is empty, and there are not many people guarding the rear. I am here to hold off Liu Bei's elite for Guo Tu. He
If we can no longer break through Liu Bei's rear camp, then we are too incompetent."
"It's better to wait for the news."
Liu Hui put her hands in her sleeves and said softly.
While the two were talking, the Jizhou Army had dodged several waves of arrows, and the distance between the two sides had been reduced to about sixty feet.
The distance of sixty feet is almost a hundred steps, which is about 140 meters. Gao Shun was condescending, which allowed the crossbow to have a longer range, so he gave up the heavy and difficult-to-eject bed crossbow and gave the order for the crossbow.
"Archers, prepare, shoot!"
After Gao Shun gave the order, two thousand crossbowmen lined up and fired together. Countless arrows flew high, as if covering the entire sky, and pressed towards the Jizhou army like a dark cloud.
Generally speaking, when archers line up to shoot arrows, the accuracy of the first round of arrows will not be very good, because there are many factors that will cause the bow and arrow to fail to achieve the desired effect, such as angle, wind speed, terrain of both the enemy and ourselves, etc., which will affect the position of the arrow.
Deviation occurs.
Therefore, under normal circumstances, the archer needs to adjust the angle in the second and third rounds to ensure accuracy.
However, Gao Shun had already rehearsed and marked where and at what angle he could shoot down the slope. Therefore, only the first round of arrows rained down very accurately into the crowd in front of Yuan Jun.
"Dong dong dong dong!"
The arrows hit the wooden shields, making a dull sound. However, in the rain of arrows that covered the sky, hundreds of people were still hit by arrows, most of them were injured. They kept screaming and wailing, and the remaining people hid in the trenches again.
The arrow rain came one after another. In addition to the existing crossbowmen in the trapped army, Liu Bei transferred most of the archers to him, so Gao Shun had more than two thousand archers.
The people in the front row finished shooting the arrows in their quivers and moved back holding their sore arms. Another two thousand archers were mobilized from the rear to continue suppressing the attack.
In this round of arrow rain, there were tens of thousands of arrows shot out. The ground was densely covered with arrows. Some corpses were even shot into hedgehogs. When the second group of archers took out the quivers,
After all the arrows were shot, there was dead silence down the slope.
Yuan Shao sent a school of 5,000 men as the front army to launch a tentative attack on the mountain. After the rain of arrows, the men of this school were either shot to death, fled back and were killed by the supervising team, or hid in the trenches, resulting in countless casualties.
.
When the rain of arrows finally ended, more than a thousand people crawled out of the trenches and slowly retreated to the rear. The momentum of Yuan's army, which had been charging upwards, suddenly stalled and turned into a retreat.
"Liu Bei has so many arrows prepared."
Yuan Shao frowned. This batch was originally a tentative attack, but he did not expect that Liu Bei would directly mobilize so many archers and throw fifty or sixty thousand arrows down as if they were free. He still did not expect such a generous move.
"Ming Gong, look over there!"
At this moment, a general looked to the east and behind Liu Bei's front camp, with a happy face, pointed over there and said, "There are fireworks rising over there."
Yuan Shao quickly looked around and saw that several kilometers away, billowing dust and smoke continued to rise upwards. Black smoke covered half of the sky. He could vaguely see the occasional flames rising above the camp in the distance. It was obvious that the fire had reached a very high level.
To a large extent.
"That is."
"It seems to be Liu Bei's army's rear camp."
"Guo Tu succeeded?"
All the soldiers opened their eyes wide and stretched their necks to see more clearly.
It's a pity that they didn't have telescopes, because they were too far away, and they could only see the smoke and dust that covered half of the sky, and nothing else could be seen.
"Ming Gong, it seems that Guo Tu has invaded Liu Bei's rear camp and is burning Liu Bei's supplies as planned."
Liu Hui raised his head and looked at the hillside and said: "The trapped army did not hesitate to use so many arrows to repel our front army. I am afraid they just want to repel us quickly and buy time for the rear. It is a pity that they do not have enough troops to resist.
Guo Tu led to the loss of the rear camp."
"oh?"
After hearing Liu Hui's judgment, Yuan Shao asked: "Zi Hui, what do you think I should do now? Should I wait here and besiege slowly, or attack immediately?"
"Attack now!"
Liu Hui said without hesitation.
"Why?"
Yuan Shao was puzzled. Guo Tu had already succeeded and burned a large amount of Liu Bei's supplies. This meant that Liu Bei's camp had no food left and was besieged. Why did he continue to attack when he could just wait for them to starve to death?
Liu Hui said: "Don't forget, Mr. Ming. Master Shang and Wei Qiao are also rushing towards us. If we don't do it as soon as possible, something will happen sooner or later. What's more, Liu Bei's rear camp is lost at this moment. I don't expect them to go forward."
The army must be in panic, and it is time to attack."
"By the way, Shang'er!"
Yuan Shao slapped his forehead and almost forgot that Guo Tu had mentioned in the official document sent to him that Liu Bei sent Zhang Fei north to attack his son Yuan Shang. He originally wanted Guo Tu to go to the rescue, but Guo Tu persuaded him to take advantage of the opportunity.
Liu Bei's army was empty and attacked the camp.
At that time, he felt that although Zhang Fei's troops had a large number of cavalry, Yuan Shang's side had 30,000 men and occupied a favorable location, so they should not be defeated no matter what, so he agreed with Guo Tu's opinion.
Now it has indeed succeeded, but he doesn't know the specific situation on Yuan Shang's side. What if it fails?
Therefore, the right choice is to capture Liu Bei's camp immediately, so that Zhang Fei from the north can be forced to come back and relieve the crisis on Yuan Shang's side.
And the most important thing is that the main forces of the Qingzhou Army of Zhang Liao, Zang Ba, Dian and Wei are still rushing back. The longer it is delayed, the more disadvantageous it will be to Yuan's army. Therefore, what Liu Hui said is correct, and we should indeed attack immediately.
At that moment, Yuan Shao did not hesitate and issued the order for a general attack.
The mighty Jizhou Army began to charge all the way up the slope. Just as Liu Hui expected, the trapped troops suddenly became commotion and panicked when they saw smoke coming from the rear camp.
Seeing that the Jizhou Army launched another offensive at the foot of the slope, Gao issued an order by the way, asking the soldiers to retreat and return to the camp above the slope to use the wall to hold on.
"Liu Jun is really in chaos."
Seeing this scene, the soldiers of Yuan's army suddenly laughed.
Because they saw that there were actually a lot of unused equipment on the slope bank, the bed crossbow was abandoned like this, some rolling stones and wood were not pushed down, and they did not dare to continue shooting even though there were still arrows, this could only mean one thing -
Gao Shun was also panicked.
Yuan Shao ordered his officers to publicize the news in the army that Liu Bei's rear camp had been burned by Guo Tu's sneak attack. After seeing the retreat of the trapped troops, the morale of the Jizhou army soared, and tens of thousands of people began to rush to the bank in a swarm.
This time, the troops of the school were not as scattered as they were at the beginning. Tens of thousands of troops were crowded together, as if they were afraid that if they ran slower, they would not be able to make achievements, and they all wanted to fight with the wind.
However, after all, the slope was two miles away from the camp above, and there were a large number of ditches and obstacles in the middle. Therefore, Gao Shun had already withdrawn to the camp before they had rushed far.
At this moment, the flags were fluttering in the camp above the slope bank. Liu Bei and Chen Mu also happened to come back at this time and found Gao Shun, Jushou Xunyou, above the wall of the camp.
"Ming Gong, the fourth general!"
Gao Shun looked dignified and just gave a simple military salute.
Liu Bei didn't pay attention, waved his hand and said: "Zhongda, how is the situation?"
"My lord, please take a look."
Gao Shun pointed outside and said: "I have followed the instructions of the four generals. When the fire broke out in the rear camp, I pretended to be panicked and retreated. Yuan's army has already pressed into the border."
"Okay, okay."
Liu Bei suddenly became happy, looked at the situation outside, nodded and said: "Yuan Shao has been fooled."
Chen Mu also said: "Yuan Shang's fall is imminent, Guo Tu's entire army has been wiped out, Yuan and Shao's three armies have come out, and we have defeated two of them one by one. The last one is about to die. I'm afraid the third brother has arrived in Changle a long time ago.
Big brother can immediately send someone to prepare to intercept Yuan Shao's defeated army."
"Well, I'll send someone right now."
Liu Bei quickly ordered.
"In this battle, Yuan Shao will be completely destroyed."
Jushou sighed.
Xun You praised: "Zi Gui's plan is really unpredictable. He first used the granary to lure and annihilate Yuan's cavalry, and then used the navy to pretend to be the main force to attack Weiqiao, making Yuan's army think that we divided our forces. He also used clever tactics to defeat Yuan Shang and burn Guo Tu.
They are interconnected and admirable.”
Chen Mu smiled slightly and said: "Gongda is too praised. I just took advantage of people like Yuan Shao and Guo Tu who wanted to defeat us as soon as possible and deliberately exposed some flaws to lure them into being fooled. If the person who comes is Lian Po, I will burn myself."
Without my own food and grass, I guess Yuan Jun will still be as safe as a mountain."
This is taking advantage of the weakness of human nature. If you have no desires and do not want to defeat the enemy at all, but only want to defend, then it will be useless no matter how many flaws the enemy reveals. But if you pursue something, see that the enemy has flaws and choose to take the initiative
If you attack, you have to bear the risk of whether the enemy did it intentionally.
But Yuan Shao is like this, he forgets his life at the sight of small profits, isn't that the case?
Jushou looked at the sky. The Jizhou army slowly ascending the slope seemed to be no longer in his eyes. He only looked at the blue sky with rolling clouds in the distance, and said softly: "It's time for the world to change."