Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1030 Dilemma
Cao Cao stood on a high place, looking ahead at Yuan Xi's army occupying the key points of the mountain road and reaching the camps on the hillside, and he couldn't help but feel a little sad.

Because the Huai River around Shouchun was controlled by Yuan Xi's navy, it was impossible for Cao Cao to cross the river until Shouchun. Therefore, Cao Cao now crossed the river in Yuzhou in advance and entered the Dabie Mountain Road east of Shouchun.

During this period, after Zhang He and Xu Huang found out, they took turns leading the troops to block the attack, but Cao Cao easily dealt with and resolved them. In terms of arranging troops, Cao Cao really did not outshine anyone else in the world.

Xu Huang and Zhang He fought and retreated, while Cao Cao advanced all the way, advancing step by step from the mountain road near the Huai River in the Dabie Mountains. He was about to leave the Dabie Mountains. As long as he walked out of the mountains, he would reach the vast Jianghuai Plain, which was two hundred miles away. Shouchun is here.

To be fair, Dabie Mountain is not easy to walk. Even if the route Cao Cao chose is a relatively flat area, it is extremely difficult to walk, especially on rainy days.

Fortunately, Cao Cao was lucky and did not encounter rainy days, so his marching speed was not slow. Of course, marching in mountainous areas was far less fast than on water. The reason why he chose this route was naturally because Cao Cao wanted to avoid Yuan Xi's navy.

Yuan Xi's navy controlled the Huai River waterway, and the navy built by Cao Cao in Yuzhou was completely unable to compete with Yuan Xi's navy. Therefore, Cao Cao was forced to choose a march route away from the Huai River to avoid being attacked ashore by Yuan Xi's navy.

However, the journey was smooth. Zhang He and Xu Huang could not stop Cao Cao's army at all. But to Cao Cao's expectation, when he was about to walk out of the Dabie Mountains and enter the Jianghuai Plain, he was stunned by the densely packed mountain strongholds in front of him.

This is completely inconsistent with the intelligence Cao Cao had previously received. Cao Cao must have gone through a lot of reconnaissance before sending troops. After obtaining the information, he formulated a detailed route and response strategy, and then made a decision. If he knew that there were such dense camps in the Dabie Mountain Pass, he would definitely Wouldn't choose to take this path!

Xia Houyuan next to him looked ashamed and said: "When I sent people to investigate a month ago, this place was still white and there were no obstacles to the road leading in and out of the mountain pass. How did it become like this!"

Cao Cao looked at the color of the tree stumps cut around the camp and said, "It's not your fault. This camp should have been newly built in the past half month."

He then paused and said, "Liu Bei is one of them. He has changed a lot in the past two years. He seems to have understood something. But for his offense, he relies entirely on Guan and Zhang. If I could conquer Guan Yu back then."

Xun You, who had been silent for the whole time, spoke up: "In that case, there is still a possibility of being attacked by the Fierce Tiger Navy. By then they will cooperate with the infantry in the camp and attack from both sides, and our food route will definitely not be preserved."

Xia Houyuan had a headache and said, "What should we do?"

"The location of this camp is obviously very clever. It is not suitable to attack from anywhere. If we attack by force, our losses will definitely be considerable."

"Everyone in the world thinks that Fierce Tiger is good at sneak attacks, that his timing of sending troops is always unexpected, and that he is good at strategy. But in my opinion, what this man is most powerful and good at is defense!"

Cao Cao sighed: "I am not like this."

"So I speculate that the number of troops defending here should not exceed 10,000. However, judging from the number of fortresses built, Fierce Tiger mobilized at least 30,000 to 50,000 civilians. Otherwise, hundreds of fortresses would not have been built in half a month."

"From Gongsun Zan to Sun Ce, everyone was frustrated by his defense of the city. I fought with him several times in Qingzhou, Xuzhou. This person always built a city defense that was watertight, and at the same time waited for an opportunity to go out of the city to counterattack, and then suppressed me!"

Xia Houyuan said: "How about going north over the mountains and taking a detour to the north bank of Huai River?"

"According to the intelligence from half a month ago, Sun Quan is advancing by land and water, one at Chaohu and the other at Hefei. Fierce Tiger is originally at a disadvantage in terms of military strength. Can he still put heavy troops to guard this place?"

Cao Cao said: "We can only try to attack and see if the opponent is bluffing or is determined to defend here."

Having said this, Cao Cao shook his head, knowing that this was no longer possible, "Liu Bei is not here yet, but it will be hard to say in the future, so this time I will drive the fierce tiger out of Jianghuai no matter what, and then go back and completely Only by destroying Liu Bei can we peacefully compete with the fierce tiger for hegemony in the Central Plains!"

"I still underestimated Fierce Tiger. He had people attack me along the way. He didn't really want to win, he just wanted time to build a camp."

Xia Houyuan said with a bit of grit in his teeth, "I'm not afraid of fighting the fierce tiger in the field, but I really can't find a good countermeasure to the fierce tiger's approach of forming a stronghold and retreating to defend."

"It is not terrible in my eyes not to defend the city, or to attack rashly after leaving the city. I have been fighting for many years and have strategies to deal with them. However, among the people I have met, no one has ever been able to attack like a ferocious tiger. And the defense did a great job.”

Xia Houyuan doubted: "Looking at the many camps across the way, Fierce Tiger really put so many people here, Shouchun doesn't want it anymore?"

Cao Cao pondered: "It shouldn't be like this. After all, Chaohu and Hefei are the key points of Shouchun. Even if we rush out of the mountain pass, we still have to face the ferocious Youzhou cavalry. It's not just what we promised."

"It's too far to go south, and the route is unclear. If we delay for a few more days, who knows whether Sun Quan will have conquered Shouchun by then!"

In the next few days, Cao Cao's army launched attacks on Yuan Xi's soldiers from all directions, using methods including fire attacks, smoke attacks, and night attacks, but they were all blocked.

Once, Cao's army invaded the camp, but was embarrassed by the tunnels and traps inside. Yuan Xijun's counterattack killed many people, and Cao's army had to retreat in embarrassment.

After two days of stalemate, Cao Cao's face became more and more gloomy as he watched the battle. In his opinion, the quality of Yuan Xi's soldiers this time was obviously not as good as the last battle in Jizhou. Among the ten men, there were only two or three veterans, and the rest were combat veterans. Jianghuai soldiers with average strength are not much different from Cao Jun soldiers. But the difference between the two sides lies in the siege equipment.

This time, Cao's army traveled by land and was lightly armed, so naturally they would not carry siege equipment. If they really wanted to attack Shouchun, the siege engines and trebuchets would have to be made by logging nearby.

On the other hand, on Yuan Xijun's side, the camp was equipped with stone archery, towers and chariots. When Cao Jun attacked the camp, he felt like he was facing a hedgehog. Wherever he hit, he would be stabbed and unable to bite.

This kind of tactics that Cao Cao hates the most is inherited from the Jizhou Army. Jizhou soldiers are good at fortifications. When attacking a city, they use a saturated number of fortifications to gradually collapse the defenders. When defending the city, they can also force the attackers to attack by force. , turning the battlefield into a pure war of attrition.

This would be okay in normal times. After all, Cao Cao's army is known for its strength in numbers, but this raid on Shouchun is different. Cao Cao's purpose is to capture Shouchun before Sun Quan. To achieve this goal, he can only concentrate all his forces to Break through the defense line of the camp in front of you as quickly as possible.

But the question is, at what cost?

This time Cao Cao led more than 50,000 people, but including the logistics and civilians, there were only more than 30,000 regular troops. If ten thousand men were consumed here, how many people would be able to fight Shouchun?

Then again, even if you rush out, how can you know that there is no second line of defense behind you?

According to the worst-case scenario, when Cao Jun arrived in Shouchun, he already did not have enough troops to attack the city and could only slowly waste it outside the city. At that time, Sun Quan arrived with an army of 100,000 people. The strength of the two sides was so disparate. , the status of primary and secondary is reversed, it is not certain whose Shouchun belongs!

Moreover, in Cao Cao's view, if he were Sun Quan, holding an army of 100,000, and seeing only 20,000 or 30,000 friendly troops, why not annex and destroy them together?
This was Cao Cao's previous approach to dealing with Yuan Tan. Cao Cao was naturally afraid that Sun Quan would use this trick on himself, so he had hesitation and anxiety in the past two days.

Was it wrong to send troops this time?
Is Fierce Tiger really his natural enemy?
At this time, the messenger came in and asked Cao Cao about the military order tonight. Cao Cao was chewing chicken ribs and casually said: "Chicken ribs."

Everyone in the army had received military orders, and the counselors were gathering together to discuss the war. After hearing this, Yang Xiu smiled and said, "I'm afraid Ming Gong wants to retreat."

Xun You asked: "Why?"

Yang Xiu smiled and said, "It's a pity to throw it away, and it's tasteless to eat."

Xun You listened and remained silent. Nothing happened that night. When Cao Jun was preparing to continue to attack the camp the next day, news from Xu Du made Cao's camp uneasy.

When Xun You was mobilizing his troops, he was urgently called to Cao Cao's camp. He found that Xia Houyuan, Cao Hong and others had arrived. Cao Cao, who was at the head, had a solemn face. Everyone was holding their breath and concentrating. Only Yang Xiu, who was fighting behind, had a strange look on his face.

Xun You's heart skipped a beat, he was afraid something big was going to happen.

Sure enough, Cao Cao came out with an urgent report. After everyone learned the content, they were like a bolt from the blue. Liu Bei actually sent troops at this time and dared to attack Cao Cao's hinterland with all his strength and threaten Xudu!
This time Liu Bei was in charge of the Chinese army, with Guan Yu as the commander and Zhang Fei supporting him on the flanks. In just ten days, he stormed hundreds of miles and defeated Xinye Fancheng. Zhang Xiu and Cao Ren sent troops to stop them, but they were all defeated by Guan Yu's army and forced to retreat to Xuzhou. All.

Guan Yu, on the other hand, pointed his sword at Xu Du, attacking the city all the way and pulling out the Cao army's strongholds hundreds of miles around Xu Du. Looking at the momentum, sooner or later they will hit Xu Du's walls!

What's even more frightening is that Guan Yu won consecutive battles and Guanzhong was shaken. Forces in various places who were dissatisfied with Cao Cao rebelled one after another. Now the Guanzhong area of ​​Sili Yuzhou around Xudu is full of rebellions and constant wars. Cao Cao's camp is in a state of distress. The situation is extremely critical!
Cao Cao's face was extremely ugly. The time mentioned in the letter was already half a month before Guan Yu sent out troops. The reason why it arrived in Cao Cao's hands at this time was that the previous Xinye Fancheng did not even have the chance to send someone to ask for help or send a letter. He was defeated by Guan Yu!

Seeing that everyone was afraid to speak, Xun You knew that he was the only one to speak at this time, so he said: "Then shall we continue to attack Shouchun now, or return to the army to rescue Xudu?"

Xia Houyuan hesitated and said: "Xu Du is very tightly defended. It can't be defeated in a short time, right?"

"Withdrawing troops at this time would mean that all previous efforts have been wasted. If Jiangdong is allowed to capture Jianghuai, it will definitely grow in power and create an extremely large navy. By then, it may not be easier to deal with than the fierce tiger."

Cao Hong said: "Then if Xu is lost, the emperor."

Xun Yu said: "Didn't the letter also say that Zhong Yao has asked Ma Teng to lead troops to rescue him?"

"Besides, Cao Ren is in Xudu, so holding on to it won't be a problem, right?"

Cao Hongse said: "But the other party is Guan Yu."

As soon as these words came out, everyone fell silent.

(End of this chapter)