Late Tang Dynasty Floating Life

Chapter 699 Coup
The car formation formed by Liu Qi's department rushed to the front.

Five hundred peasants from the Tutuan acted as grooms, shield bearers, and porters, and a thousand warriors stood ready and marched forward in armor.

Anyway, it's only three miles away, and it's not difficult for all the staff to go through it in armor.

The cavalry shifted their targets and began to harass the vanguard, but it seemed that they were afraid of casualties, and they often stopped at the point, which greatly increased Liu Qi's confidence.

The main force of the Poxia army and [-] Tutuan peasants followed three or four hundred paces away from them. They were nervous for a long time. Seeing that Gaocheng County was in sight, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.Especially after seeing someone walking up and down on the top of the city wall and actively opening the city gate, I felt even more determined, and finally had a temporary place to stay.

The dark city gate made people feel a little uneasy, but after a short while, a large group of people entered the city quickly, and nothing happened.The entire county was as quiet as when they arrived before. The only people hiding in their homes looked at them with complicated and unspeakable eyes from behind the windows and doors.

Those who are about to die are pitiful!
"Woo—" the horn sounded.

Liu Qi who was riding on the horse was stunned for a moment, but before he could react, a puff of arrows hit him, the pain made his eyes go dark, and he fell directly off the horse.

Strong crossbow!A powerful crossbow that only exists in the military!This was Liu Qi's last thought.

Many crossbowmen appeared on the houses on both sides. They shot ruthless arrows into Liang Jun's body from the air, causing breathtaking damage in a short time: more than a thousand Liang Jun entered the city, and the arrow rain wave after wave In one wave, the casualties had already exceeded [-], and they were still increasing rapidly.

"Kill the thief!" A large group of soldiers suddenly poured out from the street, led by the officers, formed an formation to kill the Liang soldiers who were in chaos.

Liang General Liu Qi was dead, and suffered a devastating arrow rain. In front of Xia Bing who suddenly appeared, he had almost no ability to resist, and was directly killed in pieces.

Wei Boqiu personally led the team, a long spear was like a poisonous snake coming out of its hole, every time it stabbed, a person was killed.

Encouraged by him, the morale of the sergeants was high, and they used both swords and guns to harvest the lives of the enemies from behind with ease and joy.

The pursuit continued outside the city, and the bandit soldiers had no fighting spirit, and crashed out, causing heavy casualties.

Liang Jun outside the city already knew that something was wrong inside. After all, the screams and shouts of killing could not be faked.Liu Qi's more than 1000 people must have been ambushed. There is no doubt that he helped everyone, and the end is probably not good.Of course, now is not the time to worry about this. What everyone should consider is how can there be summer thieves in Gaocheng County, and how many summer thieves are there?

"Ambush, run!" Without any warning, the more than 1000 local peasants were blown up.

Their morale was low on the way to retreat. At this moment, they saw that they were in ambush, so what a fart!One by one, they greased the soles of their feet, threw the long guns that were in the way, and opened the chariot formation. Regardless of the threat of Xia Jun cavalry, they directly retreated into the mountains and forests on both sides, running faster than anyone else.

Zhao Lin's face turned pale, and what he was most worried about happened.Xia bandits attacked back and forth, and people were panicked, but the Tutuan villager ran away directly, which further affected morale.

Xia Jun's footsteps in the city didn't stop at all, and he rushed directly to this side.The cavalry also became active again, and dozens of cavalry gathered together, watching eagerly, waiting for them to show their flaws.

"Withdraw—" Zhao Lin was interrupted by Du Yanqiu in the middle of his words.

I just heard him say: "The matter is urgent! You can't retreat. If you retreat, the whole army will collapse. Now you can only fight bravely and fight for the chance."

Unexpectedly, Zhao Lin shook off his hand directly, and said, "Shi General Du, it's not like you don't know the details of the Po Xia Army. In the past, the 3000 people with the old base might be able to fight a dozen, but now there are so many recruits mixed in. Can you fight?"

Du Yanqiu said with emotion: "Whether you can fight or not, you have to fight to know. The last general is willing to lead the crowd to kill, even if he dies, he will not regret it. The military envoy can just sit down, and must not abandon the army and run away."

"I can't fight! Do you know how many bandits are in the city? Five thousand? Ten thousand? Can you stop them?" Zhao Lin didn't listen at all, and called out to his own soldiers, helped him mount his horse, and knocked away the sergeants blocking the way. Fell south.

He is the son of Zhao Ji, the nephew of Chen Xu Jiedu envoy Zhao Jue, who dares to touch him?It's important to save your life right now.

"Zhao Lin's idiot!" Du Yanqiu's roar was earth-shattering.

Wang Yanzhang, who had already led people to fight, couldn't help but glanced this way, his face paled in shock.The master will run first, how can the soldiers still have fighting spirit?
Sure enough, after Xia Jun shouted "Zhao Lin ran away" in unison, and Zhao Lin's general flag fell down, thousands of soldiers of the Po Xia Army collapsed immediately. .

Wang Yanzhang tried to save the defeat, but the defeat was like a mountain, and no one wanted to fight, so he could only sigh and run away.

The collapse of more than [-] troops was actually just a split second.

Who is to blame?It's hard to say, I can only blame Zhu Quanzhong.Even the Po Xia Army, which was urgently expanded before the war, was sent out. It was destroyed in World War I, and it was their own fault. There is nothing to say.

……

Zhang Guihou hesitated for a while in Dengfeng County.

Zhu Hanbin was sent to Taigu Pass by him, with a total of more than [-] troops, to reinforce the defenders and block the Xia thief's attack.

If he withdrew from Dengfeng, then the Xia thief could go west to Yingyang from here and cut off the retreat of the Taigu Pass defenders.If the defenders resolutely resist and are unwilling to surrender, then there will be another tragedy in Heyang South City, because most likely no one will come to rescue them.

After all, they came out together.Zhang Guihou sighed, found his confidants and asked him to ride westward on horseback and inform him at Yingyang County.He can only go so far, and Zhu Hanbin's good luck can only be seen by himself.

After dealing with all these problems, Zhang Guihou retreated southward with more than [-] people on foot.Basically following Zhao Lin's old road, about a day behind.

It was raining heavily and the road was muddy.The cavalry on both sides have almost become decorations, and everyone walks with their horses.

For some reason, Zhang Guihou suddenly thought of Huang He.Since this spring, although the rainy weather has been intermittent, it is generally much more than in previous years. The river should have risen a lot, right?

"Commander, the scouts sent to Gaocheng County haven't come back yet." After walking for half a day, because of the heavy rain, they had to find a village next to the post road to take shelter temporarily, and someone reported to him at this time.

"Not one of them came back? Are they all dead?" Zhang Guihou asked, frowning.

"Never came back."

Zhang Guihou waved his hand, indicating that he knew.

The scout may not be dead, he may be stopped by someone and have to take a detour, or he may be blocked by bad weather and unable to return in time.But either way, be vigilant.

Another thing that puzzled him was that Zhao Lin didn't send anyone to contact him.Is this normal?Absolutely not normal.

After carefully comparing the map, his eyes stopped on the word "Success".

Those two words were like a bottomless black hole, everything that went in became silent, as if it had never appeared before.

"Have you received any news from Pang Dutou of Mengzhou?" Zhang Guihou asked the staff in charge of sending and receiving the documents.

"Return to the commander, no." The staff member was wet and looked a little embarrassed, so he replied immediately.

"Where's Shuai Ding?" Zhang Guihou asked, looking back at the map.

"nor."

"Are you still hesitant?" Zhang Guihou sighed regretfully.

This battle has been fought so far, and the situation has become very clear.

Among the three passes in Luonan, Yique Pass is the only one that leads directly to Ruzhou.Taigu and Zhuyuan have to detour, and the mountain roads are difficult and dangerous. From a logistical point of view, it is very costly, and once they go deep south, it is easy to be cut off by people.

From Xia thief's point of view, the most ideal is to capture Yique pass.If you can't win here, the next best thing is to conquer Taigu Pass, and then go westward to the back of Yique Pass, two-phase attack, while beating and persuading surrender, take this important pass as soon as possible, and open up the road to the south.

It's just that now it seems that the thief Xia has a big appetite, and he wants to go directly south to Chen Xu to catch the Dinghui tribe in Ruzhou.The defenders of Yique and Taigu are so insignificant in their eyes that they are not the main targets.

Xia Zei really had a big appetite, and he acted decisively without delay. He has already taken the lead and gained a certain advantage.

But can this advantage be broken?not necessarily.At least Zhang Guihou thought of a way, and the Bianzhou military government should have a similar plan, it depends on how and when they implement it.

"It's excruciatingly slow!" Zhang Guihou sighed again.If you had come up with your idea early, why would I not even keep Dengfeng.

It is not clear what kind of regulations are in Ruzhou, whether to keep or run.How Pang Shigu's department mobilized competent people to go south has no idea.

If he came to make the decision, he would have ordered Dai Siyuan to lead the Flying Dragon Army to leave Guancheng and go to Xinzheng.If the action is quick enough, they will have arrived in Xinzheng and even passed Yangdi before the heavy rain falls.

King Liang is surrounded by a bunch of trash!
"Commander, I have something to say. I don't know if I should say it or not?" the staff member said suddenly.

"Let's talk." Zhang Guihou said: "It's about this time, but it's okay to talk."

"Commander, although our army is sharp, there are only more than [-] soldiers. It's hard to say what Gaocheng County is like. If you insist on going south, you will only be able to supply food and grass for six or seven days. If you are entangled by thieves, it will be unimaginable." The staff said: " It is not suitable to go west to Yingyang, because it is easy to become a turtle in a urn. It is better to go east, cross Yangcheng Mountain, and go to Mi County. The thieves say that I am going south, and I will not expect this. If this is the case, the danger will be saved."

Yangcheng Mountain is in the northeast of Gaocheng County. There is no big post road leading directly to it, only mountain trails.It is definitely not very convenient to cross a large army, because it is very troublesome when it comes to logistics, but their halls do not have a large team now, except for the mules and horses accompanying the army and the goods and equipment they carry, they can say nothing. County is no trouble.

But once he arrived in Mi County, he was much more relaxed.You can send a small group of troops to harass Dengfeng and succeed. You don't need to bring much food, three days is enough, light soldiers advance quickly, and run away after fighting. If you retreat, you can also contact Zhengzhou, which is really convenient.

Zhang Guihou slapped his thigh and said with a smile: "You usually come up with bad ideas, but it's rare that you come up with a clever trick."

The staff smiled awkwardly, and said: "I think Xia Bandit fought too smoothly a while ago, and his appetite has also grown. It is not small to formulate such a grand strategy of devouring tens of thousands of soldiers, but it is not impossible to crack it." It’s common practice to march and fight, you come and go, and you see what you’re doing. It’s not like writing a ‘city novel’, you have to follow Xia Bandit’s strategy, and the general just goes to Mi County, so it’s okay.”

Speaking of this, he lowered his voice and said: "The Xia bandits have used a lot of soldiers and horses this time, estimated to be no less than [-]. Next, as long as the weather improves and the roads are no longer muddy, as the Xia bandits advance, the situation of all armies will be tense." It won't look too good. With all the troops in disgrace, naturally no one will pursue the matter of the commander retreating to Mi County."

Zhang Guihou nodded.

It's not that I don't want to fight, it's really hard for a clever woman to cook without rice.If the King of Liang was willing to give [-] government troops, he would have already fought with the Xia bandits in Dengfeng. Why is this, why is this!

(End of this chapter)