Chapter 779 Preset Battlefield

Chapter 779 Preset Battlefield

Chapter 779 Preset Battlefield
In the blue sky, white clouds are floating and wild geese are flying in a line.

Above the ground, a strong wind was blowing and the flags were fluttering.

Thousands of cavalry from both sides engaged in a fierce battle in the wilderness.

Liu Runzhong led 1,500 cavalrymen to the battlefield to support the nearly 2,000 volunteers led by Yin Xi.

They were soon discovered by the Xianbei light cavalry cruising on the periphery.

The two sides distanced themselves and fired at each other repeatedly on the wide field.

As they shouted, people would fall down from time to time.

Liu Runzhong had been hit by an arrow, and the arrow was stuck in his armor, shaking.

More than a hundred light cavalry brought from Shangdang were shot down, and the loss was extremely heavy.

For the first time, he discovered that the intensity of this cavalry fight was quite high.

Why don't the Xianbei retreat? Aren't you also a tribe with a chieftain system? If you lose people and suffer losses, why do you want to continue fighting?

Damn, he can hardly hold on any longer.

When gathering his troops again, Liu Runzhong turned his head and looked at everyone, saying, "Don't retreat! Now is the time to grit your teeth and hold on. Why retreat? Charge!"

Same tribal system, same lifestyle, but different people, the difference is so huge.

To put it bluntly, fighting in a battlefield is a competition to see who can endure more casualties.

Judging from this brief fight, the Xianbei people seemed to be more tolerant than the Jie people.

Liu Runzhong actually wanted to retreat, but he didn't dare to do so today.

If he could not stop these Xianbei cavalry archers and watched them attack the Yicong Army together with the Xianbei shock cavalry, the Yicong Army would inevitably suffer a disastrous defeat. This responsibility was not something he could bear.

After the horn sounded again, Liu Runzhong divided his troops into two groups. One group of three or four hundred riders abandoned their horn bows, took out swords and shields, and rode their horses to join the close combat. The other group of a thousand riders still circled around and shot arrows at the Xianbei horse archers, and drew their swords to fight each other when they had the chance. The battles between horse archers did not always involve arrows. Sometimes they would also use short weapons to hack each other.

Behind them, one could faintly hear the sound of dense drums.

That was the sound of a large group of infantrymen adjusting their formation as they advanced. Everyone knew that a large number of reinforcements were coming from behind the Jin army, but they didn't know how far away they were.

In such a situation, the Xianbei people became more and more anxious as the fighting went on, and their morale became somewhat low after they found that they could not defeat the Yicong army.

After Liu Runzhong made a desperate move and personally led hundreds of cavalry to attack, they finally lost confidence, turned their horses around and retreated towards Shiling Pass.

There were still hundreds of cavalrymen in the city, but now they all dismounted and stood on the top of the city wall, looking hesitant, obviously unsure of what to do.

"Go get the torches." A general rushed to the top of the city wall, looked at the cavalrymen on both sides who were struggling to walk along the hillside while shooting arrows at each other, and ordered: "I will light the fire as soon as I come back."

After saying this, he went down the city wall directly, and then rushed down with hundreds of cavalry stationed behind the city to support his own defeated soldiers.

They were moving very fast and found a good starting position, which was a high and gentle slope from which they could ride directly down.

When they charged, the momentum was so great that they directly smashed the pursuing Yicong Army, which was moving slowly uphill, into pieces, causing heavy casualties.

After succeeding, he did not linger in the battle. He whistled and slowly returned to Shiling Pass with more than a thousand defeated soldiers.

After the Yicong army was defeated, they retreated several hundred steps and formed a battle array.

The two sides, one on the mountain and the other at the foot of the mountain, looked at each other.

Liu Runzhong rode up on his horse and found Yin Xi. He whispered, "General Yin, I think Suo Tou is trying to run away."

Yin Xi had just personally led his team in pursuit, and he was so hot that he was almost killed by the fresh Xianbei troops who rushed down the gentle slope.

If his own soldiers had not given him the horse, he might not have been able to escape.

Seeing Yin Xi remained silent, Liu Runzhong said, "General Yin, why do you blame yourself? War is like this. Today you make a mistake for me, and tomorrow I make a mistake for you. It's normal. After winning a battle, how can we not pursue the enemy? If we don't pursue, we will be scolded. If we pursue and encounter an ambush by the enemy and suffer a loss, we will also be scolded. This kind of thing is difficult to avoid. It all depends on luck."

Yin Xi's expression eased a little, he glanced at Liu Runzhong and smiled.

This guy knows how to comfort people.

Indeed, in a hurry to pursue, how can you care about so many things? If you don't pursue, the problem will be even bigger.

All I can say is that Suotou was too cunning and he was too unlucky.

"You just said that Suo Tou wanted to run away--" Yin Xi had just finished speaking when he saw columns of smoke rising into the sky from Shiling Pass and faint flames coming out.

"This is how fighting in Suotou works." Liu Runzhong added, "Although they are known to be strong and brave enough to fight to the death, they also have some Xiongnu legacy. They like to lure the enemy deep into their territory, harass them repeatedly, tire them out, and demoralize them. When the time is right, they will launch a decisive battle."

"They burned Shiling Pass, obviously they didn't want to leave the city and settlement intact to our army."

"Setting fire and then retreating is a strategy to lure the enemy, trying to draw the infantry brought by the king hundreds of miles away, cut off the food supply, and then surround and annihilate them."

"I expected that Suotou Ding would set up a strong camp at Yanmen to block our main army, and the cavalry would be scattered on the left and right wings, waiting to ambush us. They are used to this trick."

After listening to this, Yin Xi asked, "Do you think the king has no chance of winning this battle?"

"The chances of winning are slim. It will be a draw at best." Liu Runzhong shook his head and said, "If the Xianbei set up camps and guard the city, will it be possible to win with the more than 10,000 infantrymen brought by the king?"

Yin Xi thought about it and felt that with more than 10,000 people from the Silver Spear Army and the Yellow Head Army, they might not be able to capture the city. What's more, it was impossible to use all the infantry to attack the city. At most, they could send out a few thousand people, which would make it even more impossible to capture the city.

If we fail to capture the city or the camp, and are stationed under a strong city, and then are repeatedly attacked from the rear by the enemy cavalry, that would be really dangerous.

"Let's not talk about this for now." Yin Xi sighed and said, "Let's go up and put out the fire first."

******
On the 28th, the flag of "General Shao" had been planted on the top of Shiling Pass. Shao Xun climbed up to the top and looked into the distance, looking at the Suotou cavalry cruising in the north, and asked: "Where are the Pingyang reinforcements?"

"I have passed Xiurong and am heading towards Loufan." Zhang Bin replied.

"Let them change direction..." Shao Xun called his subordinates and whispered a series of orders.

The assistant finished writing it quickly, checked it for errors, and sent a messenger to take it away.

Zhang Bin was somewhat surprised. This war strategy was really...

"It's useless to come to Jinyang." Shao Xun said, "There are too few soldiers who can fight. If the enemy defends the dangerous pass or the strong city, I'm afraid there is nothing we can do. Shao Shen's army has only 10,000 people. Even if they come, they may not be able to change the situation. It's better to change direction and maybe we can gain something. Oh, and don't let the Luoyan Army come. Let Duan Mobo go and join Shao Shen."

Zhang Bin nodded slightly.

To defeat the Tuoba Xianbei, we need to mobilize the whole country, but right now the strength is insufficient.

"Let's go." Shao Xun glanced at Zhang Bin and said with a smile, "Suotou retreated step by step, first abandoning the outer periphery of Jinyang, then abandoning Yu County and Shiling Pass. Judging from the current situation, Jiuyuan County (now Xinzhou) should have been abandoned as well. He has thrown out so many sweet things, I will eat them first."

As they were talking, a mixed formation of infantry and cavalry had already headed north outside Shiling Pass, heading straight for Jiuyuan County in Xinxing Prefecture.

On the 30th, the deserted county town was easily recaptured.

Suotou and Yicong's army fought, and each suffered hundreds of casualties, and then retreated to the north.

At this time, Shao Xun's military order arrived in Jiuyuan: the entire army must stop and defend the city, and are not allowed to advance north. Anyone who disobeys the order will be executed.

Jiuyuan is forty miles away from Shiling Pass and is the seat of Xinxing County.

Fifty miles north of the city, you will reach Xinkou.

According to intelligence from the front, there seems to be a large army of Suotou near Xinkou, with no less than 20,000 people, setting up camps on the mountains and across the river.

Although Shao Xun was not very clear about the specific troop deployment of Suotou, his years of combat experience told him that it was best not to fight at the battlefield chosen by the enemy.

It became increasingly clear that Xinkou was the location for the decisive battle as planned by Suotou.

At this time, Xinkou had indeed become a sea of ​​soldiers.

A large number of herdsmen and laborers recruited from Pingcheng, Xinping, Yanmen and other places were digging trenches, building earth walls and repairing fortifications.

More than 10,000 infantrymen were stationed in camps and mountain strongholds, intending to rely on rivers and mountains to consume the Jin troops, reducing their numbers and making them tired.

The war horses were neighing not far away.

Teams of cavalry chose their starting positions and hid in the valleys and behind the woods near the infantry camps.

Once the Jin army failed to capture the camp and retreated, they would charge forward in a large scale to kill as many of the Jin army's manpower as possible.

Another part of the cavalry was sent further south to actively seek out the Jin cavalry and consume them as much as possible.

Just as Shao Xun expected, this was their preset battlefield: lure the Jin army a hundred miles out of Shiling Pass, and then gather and annihilate them in the open wilderness between Xinkou and Shiling Pass.

This is not a grassland style of play, but a mixture of variant tactics from the Central Plains and grasslands.

The only question now is how the two coaches will decide.

On the first day of June, Tuoba Yulu arrived at Xinkou, climbed the mountain and looked to the south.

In the flat basin, there is lush vegetation stretching as far as the eye can see.

The forts and villages are no longer to be found, and it is so desolate as if a world-destroying plague had struck this place.

Is the thief Shao coming or not?

Tuoba Yulu was a little unsure. He had planned a battlefield to annihilate the enemy, but the enemy didn't show up, which made him feel empty.

This is just like the Early Han Dynasty's ambush of the Huns in Mayi, except that the roles were reversed.

What went wrong?

Or maybe Shao is too experienced and doesn't want to put himself in danger?
It would be better to replace the general with a young and inexperienced one. He could station the troops outside Xinkou, unable to advance or retreat, and easily achieve a great victory.

But if Shao Ze doesn't come, he will be in some trouble.

After several battles, the loss of troops exceeded 4,000.

The leaders of the various tribes don't care how many people Shao the thief has killed or injured, they only focus on themselves.

Thinking of this, Tuoba Yulu became a little annoyed.

If the confrontation between the two armies continues for a long time, the pressure on him will become greater and greater.

For no reason, he began to think of the New Party's previous proposal: to stop fighting and make peace.

But the messenger seemed to be detained and did not return...

On the second day of June, Shao Shen received a military order from Shiling Pass in a valley east of Xiurong.

After reading it several times, he did not hesitate and recruited more than a thousand tribal light cavalry on the spot, as well as a thousand volunteers and five hundred Xue cavalry, and turned northwest.

On the fourth day of June, when they were approaching Lan Valley, two thousand cavalrymen of the Luoyan Army came galloping and joined them.

On the fifth day of June, the entire army arrived at Langu County. After resting for a day, they took more than 2,000 soldiers from the government and marched out of Caochengchuan.

(End of this chapter)