Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1379 Fairness
The people Cao Zhang was talking about were the most powerful leaders of the tribes in Xiliang in recent years. They had always relied on Ma Teng and Han Sui to cause chaos, and their ultimate goal was to turn Liangzhou into a small court.

Since Ma Teng's death, Ma Chao's prestige has been insufficient. Although he inherited Ma Teng's title of marquis and became the nominal head of the Ma family, he did not care much about the Ma clan left behind by Ma Teng. After all, there were still several legitimate sons of Ma Teng. If Ma Chao did not handle the relationship well, he would be criticized by the world, but this was not his forte.

So after some thought, Ma Chao decided to move his own business out of Liang Province and move it to Henei County in Sili Region.

Part of this area originally belonged to Han Sui. In exchange, Ma Chao also transferred many of the Ma family's interests in Liang Province to Han Sui. As for the Ma family's side branches, Ma Chao left them in Liang Province, where there was not much money left, to fend for themselves.

After Ma Chao came to Sili with his own direct descendants such as Ma Dai, he relied on the fact that he had surrendered to Cao Cao and became his adopted son before the Battle of Yecheng, and he lived a prosperous life. In his opinion, Cao Wei occupied the Central Plains, and he was in the rear of Cao Wei's heartland, which was the safest place.

However, Ma Chao never imagined that Cao Wei would decline so quickly. Within just a few years, it lost Jizhou, Yanzhou and Yuzhou, which directly exposed the Sili area and made it the front line of the struggle.

Now Ma Chao was at a loss. He did not want to lose Henei, but he also knew that Jin would attack sooner or later. He was at a loss as to what to do and had to secretly cease fire with Jin. But now that Jin was approaching Chang'an, Ma Chao could no longer pretend and had to bite the bullet and go to support Tongguan.

Han Sui became the biggest winner in recent years. He watched Ma Chao leave Liang Province, and then unified the remaining powerful forces in Liang Province. What Cao Zhang mentioned were the eight powerful family heads who obeyed his orders.

Now, in order to resist the attack of the Jin army, Han Sui listened to Cao Zhang's words and gritted his teeth and said, "Don't worry, Marquis Yanling, I will definitely defend Liangzhou for Wei!"

His words were high-sounding, but of course they were also selfish. Cao Zhang knew that Han Sui wanted to be the local emperor of Liangzhou, but it was not easy to point it out at the moment, so he said, "Okay!"

"If the Jin army attacks, I will also assist the general with all my strength!"

Han Sui knew that Cao Zhang was an extraordinary martial artist, and he immediately said happily: "Thank you very much, Marquis Yanling!"

"Give me ten days to organize the troops and unite the other eight tribes, then I will attack the Jin army and show them the power of the Liangzhou Iron Cavalry!"

On Zhao Yun's side, he was in the commander's tent, discussing matters with Zhang Liao and other senior officials.

He said, "The walls of cities like Wuwei are not very high, but we used cavalry most of the time to fight against the Liangzhou cavalry, so naturally our siege skills are much inferior."

"Now that the Liangzhou army is constantly receiving reinforcements, if we want to capture the city, we must either defeat them completely first, or delay them while Envoy Gao, who is mainly composed of infantry, sends troops to attack the city."

"Which method do you think is better?"

Zhang Liao said, "Western Liang cavalry should not be underestimated. They grew up on horseback, are skilled in archery and horseback riding, and are familiar with the terrain. It will be difficult to attack the city with them surrounding us."

Gao Gan also said, "I think so too. To be honest, the Bingzhou troops under my command are not good at attacking cities. They have been training with cavalry in recent years, and they are more capable of dealing with cavalry charges."

"If the two of you suffer heavy losses in resisting the Xiliang surprise force, even if I lead the troops to capture the city, we will only be surrounded by the Liangzhou army. What's the point?"

Zhao Yun nodded and said, "Since you two agree, let's adopt the first method."

"Envoy Gao, you can pretend that the infantry is attacking the city to lure the Xiliang special forces to attack. Wenyuan and I will take the opportunity to raid the reinforcements and deplete the Xiliang special forces' strength!"

Gao Gan Zhang Liao all accepted the order, and Zhang Liao said: "Then the firearms and equipment we brought with us..."

Zhao Yun said without hesitation: "Use them all."

"With the current strength of Jin, it would only take a year or two to produce these things. If the soldiers of Xiliang want to grow up again, it will take at least ten to eight years."

"What we need to do now is to eliminate the main force of the Liangzhou Army as much as possible, so that they will be stretched to their limits and unable to replenish their manpower. Sooner or later, they will be dragged down."

The area where the two sides are fighting now is the border between Wuwei and Tianshui counties. This area is bordered by the Yellow River to the north and the Wei River to the south. It can be said to be the area with the best natural environment in Liangzhou and the most important gateway to the north of Chang'an. If Tianshui falls and the Jin army occupies the Wei River, they can go downstream and directly approach Chang'an downstream.

To the west of Tianshui is Longxi County, which was always attacked by Zhuge Liang in later generations and was also one of the important passages to Yizhou. If Cao Wei lost this area, it would be equivalent to losing half of Liangzhou. The remaining three counties of Zhangye, Jiuquan and Dunhuang would all become enclaves, so both sides were determined to get this place.

Moreover, this place has another characteristic. It is the construction site of the ancient Qin Great Wall. Although it is now in ruins in many places and cavalry can enter and exit freely, the city behind the wall is well repaired and cannot be taken down in a short time. This is why Gao Gan would rather send soldiers to fight the Xiliang cavalry.

In the next few days, the Xiliang army was reorganized. Han Sui, with the patriarchs of the eight major families and their generals, began to deploy defenses and infiltrate through the gap in the Great Wall, preparing to deal with the attack of the Jin army.

Zhao Yun was not polite about this. After sending spies to investigate, he decisively dispatched superior forces to attack the relatively weakly defended gaps. He and Zhang Liao led troops to attack the two gaps respectively, and also sent a large number of war equipment to assist in the battle.

The Jin army's tactic was to deploy a chariot formation and launch a direct attack. If these armored vehicles were not powered by steam, they would have been extremely heavy and difficult to transport. Fortunately, there were Jin army logistics ships on the Yellow River and Wei River that transported them to the location and were responsible for clearing the way before the cavalry.

These armored vehicles with steel covers completely ignored the dense arrows shot from the gaps in the city walls on both sides. Four or five vehicles, emitting black smoke and flames, lined up in a row and unreasonably broke through the gap in the defense of the Xiliang soldiers. The Xiliang light infantry holding leather shields were completely unable to stop them. They were burned by the flames spewing from the armored vehicles and crushed by the wheels. They had to flee to both sides screaming.

Zhao Yun was in charge of this journey. When he and his people saw the armored vehicles had broken through the defense line, he hurriedly ordered the spearmen to approach the armored vehicles in the blind spot, waiting for an opportunity to stab them through the gaps in the armored vehicles.

Although the armored vehicles had good protection, they were not fully enclosed after all, and the jet flames had blind spots. Seeing that four or five vehicles were about to be surrounded, Zhao Yun rushed up with the cavalry.

A part of the cavalry rushed to the bottom of the city wall and began to climb up, trying to deal with the archers above, while the other part, led by Zhao Yun, directly dispersed the Xiliang soldiers who wanted to besiege the armored vehicles.

Zhao Yun, on the other hand, kept on riding his horse and holding his spear, and rushed directly towards the army where Cheng Yi was. Seeing this, Cheng Yi sneered in his heart and immediately asked seven or eight of his capable subordinates to surround him, shouting, "Are you Zhao Yun?"

"My subordinates would like to have a fair discussion with you. Do you have the courage to do so, General?"

Seeing that the enemy was approaching, Zhao Yun decisively kicked his horse's belly and rushed towards the front. He moved in and out of the crowd, and after dozens of rounds, he had exchanged several moves with most of the generals. Except for one person who was stabbed to death by him, the others were only injured and not killed on the spot.

This was a bit unexpected for Zhao Yun. His martial arts skills had not declined over the years, so the decline would not be so obvious. The only explanation was that the enemy was the real powerful family of Liangzhou, and those who could serve as generals had all made a name for themselves in Liangzhou, and were far from comparable to the deputy generals of other forces.

Zhao Yun knew that he was quick to seize the opportunity. If he got out of the circle and was surrounded by these people, it would be hard to say whether he could break out!
Thinking of this, Zhao Yun frowned slightly and immediately turned his horse to ride away. Seeing this, the generals all spurred their horses to chase him. Cheng Yi shouted from behind: "Keep your distance from him, be careful of his surprise attack!"

After hearing this, everyone tried to slow down their pace. However, Zhao Yun had already taken out the longbow on his back, turned around and shot an arrow, hitting one of the men in the face, knocking him off his horse.

Now everyone else was angry and they all took out the longbows on their backs to fight back, but Zhao Yun sped up his horse and escaped from the range of the arrows. The Xiliang generals were naturally unwilling to accept this, and they rode their horses in pursuit of him, but they saw the advancing infantry formation in the distance passing through the gap and pushing forward.

At first, the remaining six or seven generals did not take it seriously. As Xiliang cavalrymen, they looked down on these infantrymen. With the hundreds of cavalrymen behind them, not to mention charging into the formation, just using their specialty long-range shooting was enough to cause the infantry formation to collapse!
This is what they thought and did. With just one command, hundreds of cavalrymen took out the longbows behind their backs, ready to defeat the Jin army's infantry from the flank.

However, at this moment, the Jin army infantry suddenly moved aside the shield soldiers in front, revealing several soldiers carrying long bamboo tubes on their shoulders. The bamboo tubes had pointed tips in front and were already lit at the back. With a puff, several fire snakes jumped out parallel to the ground, directly shot into the crowd of Xiliang cavalry, and then exploded.

The Xiliang soldiers' formation was suddenly in chaos. They were trying to reorganize the formation when the Jin soldiers pushed out several light crossbow carts.

Compared with the previous bulky crossbow carts, these new crossbow carts are lighter. The bulky base has been removed and can be carried on the shoulders of two soldiers. The driving continuous firing device at the back has also changed from the original bulky steam engine to a rotary spring.

Although this device is not as powerful as a steam engine, it is better in concealment. The Xiliang special forces were only on guard against armored vehicles and had no idea that the Jin army's infantry were equipped with such a thing. They were first blown up by a rocket launcher, and while they were still confused and dazed, they were shot by thousands of crossbow arrows, resulting in most of them being killed or wounded immediately.

The six or seven generals with the best martial arts in the front were the first to bear the brunt of the attack. Almost all of them were killed on the spot by the volley of crossbow arrows. This made Cheng Yi, who was supporting the rear, feel heartbroken. These were the generals that the Cheng family had trained with the whole family's strength for decades, and they were all killed in the blink of an eye!
He roared angrily, "Zhao Yun, you are despicable and shameless. This is not the behavior of a warrior at all!"

"Don't you dare to fight them one-on-one?"

Zhao Yun sneered at this. He just wanted to use words to bully himself for taking on more than one person. Did he think he was stupid?
He ordered his lieutenants: "Attack with all your forces, and use any means you can to make sure that no enemy soldier is left alive."

(End of this chapter)