Chapter 565: Battle of Gan Ge Yuan

Chapter 565: Battle of Gan Ge Yuan

Chapter 565: Battle of Gan Ge Yuan

September 17, the 20th year of Yongqing.

King Yong assembled 30,000 infantry and 5,000 of his own cavalry and marched toward Dengfeng City in the north of Qingzhou.

During the army's advance, the Northern Wei army in Dengfeng City, under the command of General Hou Yanshan, took the initiative to attack, sending out cavalry several times in succession to harass and attack at night and during meals.

In addition to the strategy of tiring out the troops, General Hou even sent his nephew to lead 2,000 cavalrymen to attack Dongyang City from behind. Unfortunately, the city was heavily guarded by the Cuifeng Army.

Both moves were ineffective, and the Northern Wei army completely went into a defensive posture. Dengfeng City was an important town on the Southern Liang frontier, with high walls and deep moats. If the general had not voluntarily surrendered before, it would have been extremely difficult to capture it.

In view of King Yong's previous performance, General Hou did not take it lightly at all. He ordered the walls to be coated with wet mud to prevent fire attacks, dredge the ground to guard against water attacks, build a listening wall to monitor the enemy's underground advance, and burn the field for 20 miles, clear the fields and fortify the walls, not giving the Qingzhou army a chance to build siege equipment on the spot.

Internally, they controlled lights, checked military records, set up secret codes, and tried their best to prevent Southern Liang spies from burning military supplies or attacking the city gates.

In just one or two days, General Hou turned Dengfeng City into a true iron wall, quietly watching the Qingzhou Army and the Dragon Riders arrive to besiege the city.

……

On the morning of September 18th, at the Qingzhou military tent.

"Your Highness, Hou Yanshan picked out four beauties from the people of Nanliang captured in the three counties of Wuyang yesterday and took them as concubines. He then gave them to his generals as a reward, saying that they should hold on for a hundred days to prevent loneliness."

"But according to the intelligence we have obtained, the Tiange and Chile armies now only have seven days of military rations left. The evidence is solid."

In the big tent, a man wearing an ugly bull mask was reporting.

The Emperor of Southern Liang had two secret forces. One was from Xuanjin Villa, one of the ten great sects of the time. It was filled with experts who were usually stationed at the inner court and served as guards for important members of the royal family and court figures. The other was the Night Guard, which monitored the Sixteen Prefectures of Southern Liang and was responsible for espionage with spies from the Northern Wei Dynasty. It was also under the jurisdiction of Xiao Qingzhi.

In the Night Guard, the highest-level spies are called the Twelve Zodiac Signs, all of whom are sub-hero masters of the fourth realm.

The one who came to report the news at this moment was Chouniu. Compared with the struggle in the court, Xiao Qingzhi's position was Emperor Wu of Liang and the Southern Liang world, and he obviously cared more about the situation on the Qingzhou battlefield.

Jiang He sat in the main seat of the big tent and said calmly:
"Give me a seat and a reward of ten thousand taels of silver."

At the lower left, Asan clapped his hands, and the fierce soldiers under his command immediately carried out a heavy silver box. The military funds raised by Commander Wu were more than enough.

"Thank you, Your Highness." Chouniu didn't hesitate and sat down directly.

Jiang He asked casually, "Given Hou Yanshan's intelligence, why is there such a shortage of food and grass?"

Chou Niu stood up again, clasped his fists and answered, "The prince of the Northern Wei clan is in Licheng. Before attacking Dongyang City, Hou Yanshan asked this relative of the Northern Wei clan to transport food and grass to Dengfeng, but because the prince sent troops to recapture Dengfeng City at that time, the matter was left unresolved."

Everything has been going well since the march south. Even this relative of the Northern Wei Dynasty could not believe that the 100,000 elite troops led by General Hou himself would be defeated in front of Dongyang City, which had only more than 10,000 defenders. It was obvious that they did not care much about food and fodder.

"The Northern Wei clan can't escape this time."

Jiang He thought to himself that according to the interrogation of Chi Le Gong, Hou Yanshan's position in the Northern Wei Dynasty was actually quite prominent.

When he was young, he was a Jinshi of the previous dynasty. Later, he served as the Lieutenant General of Shanhaiguan. When the general fled, he defended the pass and resisted the army of the clan outside the pass, showing his outstanding talent for leading troops.

Later, due to the court struggles at the end of the previous dynasty, Hou Yanshan's eldest brother and his family were convicted and executed, and he was implicated in serious crimes and eventually dismissed from his post. The new general rushed to Shanhaiguan and was responsible for escorting him to Beijing to be imprisoned.

But within just two days of the handover, the clan army captured Shanhaiguan, and the team escorting Hou Yanshan was captured. The Wuhuan, who had not yet become immortals on earth, and Emperor Wei Xiaowen, who was still an ordinary legitimate son at the time, both valued this young man, so much so that they later rehabilitated his unjust case, married a princess, and ranked him as a general.

It is worth mentioning that the reason why Brother Hou Yanshan was imprisoned was because he was a descendant of the Daode Sect. The large-scale encirclement and suppression of the Daode Sect in the last years of the previous dynasty was the main factor that prevented this number one sect in the world from staying out of the war between the North and the South.

At that time, the vast land under the command of Emperor Daozong was all tax-exempt according to the ancestral laws of the previous dynasty, which aroused countless covetousness.

"Even though the clan members are noble, with the military commander and the emperor around, it would be difficult for them to just stand by and watch Hou Yanshan die."

Jiang He immediately gave the order: "Jiang Asan will lead the Qingzhou Army to continue the siege of the city. The five guards will take turns on duty to prevent the enemy from attacking at night. The Skeleton Dragon Cavalry will gather in the south."

"I understand." Asan smiled and clasped his fists.

"Yes." The generals responded. After winning the battle to defend Dongyang, King Yong was ranked second among the candidates in the world. His prestige was at its peak at this time.

……

Two days later, on the south bank of Jiuqu Tianhe River, Licheng.

The night is dark and torches are like a forest.

The 30,000 defenders of Licheng are gathering. The leader has a heroic appearance, and beside him is the famous figure in the Northern Wei Dynasty - the Five Treasures Monk.

Generally speaking, the famous elders are all sub-heroes of the fourth realm.

"Your Majesty, General Hou has said something before." The Licheng Governor said anxiously, "You must stay in Licheng, so that he can calmly defend Dengfeng. Dongyang has been defeated, and the situation is extremely urgent. A single move can affect the entire body."

"I have made up my mind, so please don't say any more." The prince of the Northern Wei Dynasty swung his whip, his face hard and hard, but he was sighing in his heart.

Although General Hou is a good commander, he has no idea about court politics. The army is surrounded while marching south. The emperor and the military commander must be paying attention. If he does not express his opinion at this moment, in case Dengfeng falls and the supreme commander Hou Yanshan is killed in battle, it goes without saying who will be held responsible for the huge defeat in the Qingzhou battlefield.

Just for not helping someone in need, he will never be able to recover in his life and his prestige in the army will be completely gone.

In the beginning, he came to Licheng at all risks for military merit, but in the end, he achieved nothing and had to bear the blame. The Northern Wei prince could not accept this in any way. According to the situation in the Southern Liang Dynasty, he would inevitably withdraw from the sequence of succession in the future, and his efforts would backfire.

But if Hou Yanshan could cooperate with the Licheng army to attack from both inside and outside, it would be an unprecedented achievement to turn the tide.

"Send troops." The Northern Wei prince shouted.

The 30,000 Licheng troops went out in full force, equipped with enough dry food for three days, with armored soldiers standing in line and cavalry surrounding them. It took them only half a day to arrive in Dengfeng, and the decisive battle would begin at dawn.

At three quarters past the hour of the Chou Dynasty, the Licheng army arrived at Gangeyuan.

The land was flat all around, and the princes of the Northern Wei Dynasty followed the advice of the governor and avoided the mountains and hills where ambushes were easy to set up. Even if they had to take a detour, they would never take shortcuts. This governor had guarded the border for several years and his experience in leading troops was worthy of respect.

Suddenly, the front army reported that someone had broken through the siege of Dengfeng City.

The Northern Wei prince looked solemn and immediately summoned five elite Tiange cavalrymen covered in blood.

"Your Majesty, the general sent an urgent message. At midnight today, we left the city to harass the Qingzhou army, but we did not see the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry taking over the gate. Something might have changed." The Tian Ge Elite Cavalry said in embarrassment: "The general asks the king to hold on to Licheng and not to leave. He will have his own way to get food."

The Northern Wei prince was speechless, as he was almost there.

Rumble!
The sound of horse hooves is getting closer and closer.

For a moment, everyone in the central army changed color, and the governor gritted his teeth. The various camps of the Licheng Army had been the headquarters for many years. He directly seized the command power from the prince, and he really didn't want to die here.

"Line up to meet the enemy!"

"Line up to meet the enemy!"

"The personal guards will protect the prince!"

……

It was a moonlit night. Under the moonlight, the outline of the Licheng army's formation was vaguely visible. In the front army's battle formation, the Licheng governor seemed to smell an unsettling smell of dust.

The thunderous sound of horse hooves exploded in my ears.

Looking down from the sky, the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry was divided into five thousand-household teams, attacking from several directions.

The five thousand cavalrymen, having taken away the original armor of the Crushing Front Camp, are now all equipped with second-grade Yang steel armor, spears, grappling hooks, and bows and arrows.

And the most crucial thing is that after ten years of training in the Land of Gluttony, these evil guards have mastered superb combat techniques. The orders come from someone, so there is naturally no room for cheating.

The five thousand-household teams did not charge directly, but circled the enemy's battle formation and drew their bows and arrows.

In the darkness of night, a vicious guard drew a powerful arrow from the quiver and shot it out with great skill. The sound of the wind was so sharp that it seemed to be able to cut through the watery night before their eyes.

call out!
The arrow flew across the sky and hit a centurion wearing heavy armor. The strong force exploded instantly, tearing the armor apart. The violent spiral impact force shredded the flesh and blood, mixed with the armor plates, and the upper body of the centurion disappeared without a trace.

Whoosh whoosh!
The entire army fired rapidly, and a rain of arrows fell.

The soldiers on the periphery of the Licheng Army fell down like wheat being cut.

After ten years of training day and night, he was able to hit the target every time within 300 steps.

The Licheng Governor's eyes were shocked. He realized clearly that this was a powerful army that could rank among the top three in the world.

Five thousand men, elites of the second realm, all equipped with second-class armor and lances. All of them were sharpshooters selected from the warriors in the army. Their arrows were extremely powerful. The most important thing was that they could actually launch attacks in units of small flags, as if they did not need any command at all.

When the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry surrounded the enemy, they immediately split into fifty centurions, each of which set up camps while maintaining suppression and hunting down the enemy's middle-level generals.

In a quarter of an hour, five rounds were fired.

More than 10,000 Northern Wei soldiers died in the arrow rain attack, which normally could only be considered harassment. The death came so swiftly and tragically that the Licheng army did not have time to collapse.

"Kill me!"

The governor was furious and no longer cared about the Northern Wei royal family. He called back 800 of his personal soldiers and began to charge on horseback. Under the moonlight, a handsome man in a red robe stood alone, with no one around him.

"King Yong, die!"

Jiang He looked up and saw eight hundred riders charging towards him.

As he was out of command, the hunting speed of the evil guards dropped significantly, but now they only needed to crash into the formation.

Jiang He's eyes were calm, and a black knife gradually condensed in his palm like running water, and then swept out horizontally.

The silver-white blade light was like a thin line tens of meters long. When it passed over the ground, countless weeds were shattered into powder, leaving faint cracks and scars in the space.

The knife light cut the governor's horse, and then cut his waist and abdomen. The eight hundred riders were separated, corpses were scattered all over the ground, blood gathered like a pool, and the light and darkness madly annihilated all life.

Jiang He turned his head. As the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry did not give the enemy a chance to flee, the Licheng Army, under the command of the Northern Wei royal family, formed a four-layer battle formation with shieldmen interlaced, and only then did they barely block the arrows.

"No one cares about me?"

In fact, since his advent, there have been a large number of military strategists and sorcerers restricting him in every war, but now the enemy seems to be unaware of his existence.

Boom!

When the God Hunt began, the roar of five thousand horse hooves exploded on the battlefield, and a strong wind rolled.

A deep pit with a diameter of tens of meters suddenly appeared on the ground, and Jiang He rushed out like a stream of bright red light.

The Licheng army's array was like a forest, the spears were like dense thorns, and the shield wall was like a mountain range, but the bright red light was like a sword that cut through the sea. When it chiseled into the first array, the extremely violent force turned into an impact that instantly split the shield mountain, and the broken armor and flesh madly overflowed to both sides like blood-red waves.

The first round, smash it.

The light did not stop for a moment, and the Licheng army launched a rain of arrows, but they were all shattered by the powerful tornado when they were about to hit.

The sword flashed like lightning, and a full hundred swords burst out from the ground, chopping two thousand people into pieces. An unprecedented storm of sword energy descended, strangling everything indiscriminately.

The second round, tear.

A stream of bright red light rushed straight forward, and wherever the fist went, armor burst and blood-red fireworks bloomed. As the armor of the last direct cavalrymen was shattered, the princes of the Northern Wei Dynasty collapsed to the ground in despair, and were then crushed to death by the stream of light.

The third formation, the fourth formation, break through.

When Jiang He stopped, even the corners of his red robe were dripping with blood. He wiped the flesh off his face and cut 8,200 armors. His energy value was just exhausted, and he only had one tenth of his physical strength left.

The Skeleton Dragon Cavalry received the order and tightened the encirclement, quickly dismembering the Licheng army until it was completely wiped out.

After an hour, the battle ended.

The silkworm patterns on Jiang He's body gathered and grew into patterns of nine dragons and nine elephants, which sublimated again and finally evolved into a lifelike celestial dragon with golden scales and silver hair, and golden auspicious clouds lingered around its body.

"The power of the dragon."

[Hint: You have awakened the power of force]
Jiang He clenched his fist, violent power surging.

After being supplemented and improved by ten thousand years of martial arts, the Divine Silkworm Sutra can theoretically cultivate the top level of immortality, which is the power of the Nine Heavenly Dragons. If one wants to give birth to power, one needs to accumulate martial arts.

"In the world of Zhulu, killing 33750 people means you have nine dragons and nine elephants, which is a heavenly dragon. Because you need a soldier, the way to get it is limited to war. Death row prisoners can also make do."

Amidst the corpses on the ground, the Five Treasures Monk wearing the Mysterious Dark Robe was lying on the ground pretending to be dead. His left eye opened a crack and he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he saw the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry busy cleaning up the battlefield.

boom!
A golden light came, followed by auspicious clouds.

The ultimate speed and strength gathered into a peak punch, which suddenly hit the Five Treasures Monk on the back.

The entire battlefield was shaken violently. In the deep pit with a diameter of one hundred meters, the rocks were crushed into sand. The Five Treasures Monk's back was pierced through. The power of the Heavenly Dragon preserved the materials while blasting his soul.

[Hint: Your Immortal-level Sin Poison has been upgraded to LV30]
"Nine-section whip, mysterious robe, peach staff, vermilion ring, small mountain seal, the five treasures monk of the Northern Wei Dynasty."

Jiang He picked up five epic props one by one. To him, these were hardly interesting, but the other party was very rich.

The gluttonous black light refined the four trophies, leaving only the small mountain seal as the personal seal of King Yong. Jiang He then took out Aya's huge white snake skin, and the surging extraordinary factor, driven by gluttony, merged into the brocade red robe, so that the color gradually turned white.

[Name: White Fairy Clothes]
[Category: Armor]
[Quality: Epic]
[Effect ①: Immortal-level firmness/toughness]
[Effect ②: Increase all attribute effects by 120%]
[Note: Gluttony Production]
Jiang He didn't care about the color of his gown and started to refine it immediately. A moment later, on the battlefield where the Licheng Army was destroyed, the hundreds of losses of the Skeleton Dragon Cavalry were replenished, and six thousand evil soldiers stood up and began to pick up the weapons on the ground and arm themselves.

"Gan Ge Army, Skeleton Dragon Cavalry, return to Deng Feng City."

"clear."

For a moment, the battlefield was filled with rage.

(End of this chapter)