Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 741 Night attack melee

It was naturally Yuan Xi, not Zhang Xiu, who attacked Cao Cao's camp.

The sergeant who shouted this was a soldier of the forward Zhang Liao, and his words were correct. Zhang Liao also had a surname of Zhang, and the reward was awarded by Yuan Xi.

But in this dark night, it was difficult to distinguish the clothes. Yuan Xi's words were originally suspected of misleading, but now they fell on Cao Cao's ears. The suspicious Cao Cao immediately came up with a series of ingenious poisonous schemes.

Zhang Xiu learned that the two men had secretly accepted the Zou family and secretly bribed their general Hu Che'er, so he deliberately did not contribute in the attack on Xinye, and then returned on the pretext that the war was unfavorable, deceiving Cao Chun.

On the way back, he accelerated his march and arrived half a day ahead of Cao Chun and Yu Jin. At the same time, Jia Xu in the city deceived Cao Ang and sealed off Wancheng, leaving him with nowhere to escape!

Thinking of this, Cao Cao broke into a cold sweat and stayed. This plan was so vicious that it must have been written by Jia Xu!

The other party has been patient until now, and now he suddenly attacks. This is going to kill him!

Cao Cao was so guilty because his plan for Zhang Xiu was exactly the same as what he had imagined in his mind, which was to first weaken Zhang Xiu's troops, then bribe Jia Xu and Hu Che'er in Wancheng, and attack Zhang Xiu when he returned to seize Wancheng. At the same time, Zhang Xiu was killed.

But now the situation is completely reversed. Cao Cao is not sure what went wrong. Is it Jia Xu or Hu Che'er, or did both of them betray him and tell Zhang Xiu?

Cao Cao knew that the situation was extremely critical at this time, and he didn't want to think too much. The most important thing at the moment was how to escape!

The loud shouts of killing from outside kept coming in. Cao Cao forced himself to calm down, strode outside, and said to Dian Wei and Cao Ang: "Let's break out together!"

Cao Ang quickly followed, "Father, which direction?"

Cao Cao thought for a moment and said decisively: "In the direction of Yingchuan!"

The three of them hurried out of the tent without even glancing at Zou under the quilt.

When breaking out of an siege, life and death are uncertain. Even if you are as strong as Dian Wei, you can't say that you will be able to escape safely. When everyone is in trouble, no one will bring a woman with him as a burden.

Ms. Zou slowly sat up and began to fumble to put on her clothes. Now she felt as if she was dead. Although she had been Cao Cao's concubine before, she was abandoned without hesitation when the disaster came.

What's even more ridiculous is that she originally compromised to save the Zhang family, but now it seems that if the caller is really Zhang Xiu, it means that he can't swallow this breath. This is for the Zhang family's face.

However, in this case, Zhang Xiu would not allow this scandal to spread, so the only thing waiting for Zou was death.

When Cao Cao and Dian Wei went out, they saw a strange sight.

The enemy on the opposite side did not light any torches or any lighting objects at all. Instead, they hid in the darkness and poured large rains of arrows into Cao's army's camp. Cao's troops continued to fall down with arrows.

Cao Jun wanted to light torches to illuminate the surroundings to see the situation clearly, but every time a torch was lit, an arrow flew in and shot the soldier holding the torch to death.

Many soldiers were frightened and stopped lighting the fires. Seeing that Cao Cao's camp was about to fall into darkness, Cao Cao shouted: "Keep lighting the fires!"

Cao Ang was startled and then realized that if the camp was completely dark, it would easily fall into chaos. If the camp was bombed at this time, there would be no way to save the day!

He quickly shouted and asked the general to command the soldiers to light fires at the same time. Hundreds of torches were instantly lit in the camp, which exceeded the suppressive ability of the bows and arrows on the opposite side, and the entire camp lit up.

Seeing the soldiers gradually regaining their composure under the bright light, Cao Cao couldn't help but nodded slightly. Cao Ang had grown a lot after following him over the years. Although Cao Cao always said he was dissatisfied with Cao Ang, he was still compared to a ferocious tiger. In reality, Shang Cao Ang is also outstanding among the younger generation.

But Cao Cao was still worried. He discovered something very abnormal from the intensive arrow rain offensive on the opposite side.

The opponent's arrow rain offensive was too intensive and too orderly!

You know, in ancient times, those who could fight at night were only elite soldiers, because many people had night blindness.

In this era, people still don’t know the main cause of night blindness, which is mainly the lack of vitamin A. Food sources rich in vitamin A are meat, mainly animal liver and various meats. Among the Central Plains soldiers, this is considered Basically can't count on it.

The second is certain vegetables, fruits and rice. Since carrots, their main source, were only introduced to China in the 13th century, these were not easy to obtain for northern soldiers who mainly relied on wheat and pasta.

This made many soldiers in Cao Cao's camp intolerant of night battles, so Cao Cao rarely initiated night battles. Of course, he still had some responses to night attacks, which was to select soldiers with normal night vision as leaders in advance to lead others to resist and respond. Now these people lit torches in the dark and stabilized the morale of the army, but this was far from enough. The intensive arrow rain offensive on the opposite side, as well as the approaching horseshoes and footsteps, all showed that almost all the enemies who attacked this time could Night vision!

This made Cao Cao extremely puzzled. How could Zhang Xiu have so many elite soldiers for night fighting?

Did he get other reinforcements?

In fact, Cao Cao's guess was correct. The soldiers Yuan Xi led this time were really specially trained to fight at night.

However, unlike the practice of selecting soldiers with night vision, Yuan Xi had purposefully matched the soldiers' diet to prevent night blindness very early on.

Youzhou is a place where wild animals often roam, and rice is mostly grown. Adding foods rich in vitamin A such as animal liver, purslane, amaranth, eggs, and crabs to the diet can greatly reduce the incidence of night blindness.

Therefore, with just a little selection, Yuan Xi was able to select a considerable number of elite soldiers for night fighting. Under the current situation, he exerted absolute suppression on Cao Ying's soldiers!

In less than half a moment, the gates in both directions of Cao's camp were broken. The incoming enemy troops were mixed with Cao's army, and the enemy put out the torches in a targeted manner. As a result, the camp began to darken, and Cao's army began to be visible to the naked eye. panicked.

When Cao Cao saw this, he immediately judged that something had happened and nothing could be done. If this continued, the camp would be breached sooner or later!

He made a decision instantly, called Dian Wei, and said: "Find someone to pretend to be me, then escort him to break out, and at the same time use your banner."

Dian Wei understood immediately and said: "The general will take orders, but my lord..."

Cao Cao said: "Don't worry about me. As long as you can attract the enemy alive, I will have a way to escape. When the time comes, I will let Cao Chunyu come to rescue you!"

Having said that, everyone present knew that these were words of comfort. How could they run into Cao Chunyu when they fled in the direction of Yingchuan?

Dian Wei cupped his fists and accepted the order, then strode out immediately.

He made arrangements, immediately put on his armor, raised his halberd, shouted angrily, and led his soldiers to rush towards the broken north gate of the village. When the general arrived, he was already standing up, his halberds were spinning like fans, and his whole body was like a fan. Like a violent bear, it rushed into the enemy formation!

The clanging sound of weapons and armors sounded. Dian Wei relied on his courage to spin dozens of times in an instant. However, it was as devastating as he expected. The enemy's limbs were scattered one after another. The scene was different. The opponent seemed to have attacked Dian Wei earlier. In response, he used a long weapon to press against his body to prevent him from getting close!

And what surprised Dian Wei was that although his halberds also hit several people, those people all fell down. Not only did they not die, but they were trying to get up. Apparently they were all wearing armor!

Dian Wei instantly realized that these people were so well-armored that there was no way they could be Zhang Xiujun!

But it was too late for him to go back and report the news at this time, because the enemies had already surged up and surrounded him and the soldiers behind him.

And at the same time, under the leadership of Cao Cao, the east camp gate gathered almost half of the camp's troops and launched a deadly assault!

After this attack, Cao Cao found out that there were not many enemy troops surrounding the camp. It was obvious that the enemy was hiding their whereabouts and making long-distance raids, so they could not bring too many troops. Cao Cao was overjoyed and quickly ordered people to escort him out. .

As a result, as soon as they entered the main road, a dense rain of arrows from both sides struck again, instantly shooting down a large number of Cao soldiers. Cao Cao felt bitter in his mouth. It turned out that the opposite side was waiting here!

However, he could not turn back at this time, so he had to mobilize the soldiers to protect himself, and everyone fled in a hurry towards Yingchuan.

Yuan Xi found a tall tree in the distance. He was standing on a branch with a rope tied around his waist. He was observing the situation of Cao Jun's camp through a telescope. He already knew the two armies that Cao Jun was attacking.

The most ferocious counterattack in the north was obviously led by Dian Wei, and the north was indeed a good direction, but Yuan Xi guessed that Dian Wei was just a decoy, and the one in the direction of Yingchuan was most likely Cao Cao, although Yuan Xi An ambush was arranged in advance, but the soldiers did not have the advantage, and he did not know whether he could stop and kill Cao Cao.

Because his arrangement was mainly to prevent Cao Cao from entering Wancheng, he deployed a part of his troops in advance on the passage between Cao Cao's camp and Wancheng to prevent Cao Cao from entering the city, so that his success was almost defeated.

But to Yuan Xi's expectation, Cao Cao did not choose to escape into the city, but fled to Yingchuan. This made Yuan Xi a little stunned, because this meant that Cao Cao fell into his rather clumsy alienation plan?

At that time, he just wanted to be lucky and let the soldiers shout casually, making Cao Cao mistakenly think that it was Zhang Xiu who was making a sneak attack. He did not expect Cao Cao to fall into the trap. He just thought that if he could delay it for a while, he would achieve his goal.

What I didn't expect was that Cao Cao seemed to take it seriously and broke out immediately, without seeming to find out whether the attacker was Zhang Xiujun!

Yuan Xi underestimated Cao Cao's suspicion. When he saw that his prediction was wrong, he immediately asked Lu Lingqi beside him to light the fireworks in his hand. A fire snake jumped out and struck diagonally to the northeast of where Yingchuan was. He was directing the soldiers to siege Dian. Upon seeing this, Zhang Liao of Wei immediately led hundreds of cavalry and chased directly to the northeast without hesitation!

Yuan Xi's meaning was obvious. Dian Wei in front of him did not escort Cao Cao, and the northeast was the direction for Cao Cao's escape!

Compared with Cao Cao's life, Dian Wei was insignificant. Zhang Liao held the crescent halberd and accelerated his horse to the maximum speed. A sharp light flashed in his eyes. This time he must avenge Wen Hou!

At this time, on the west side of the camp, on the passage leading to Wancheng, Xu Huang looked at the exploding fire snakes in the sky, feeling extremely depressed.

The person on the other side did not flee to Wancheng, but chose the opposite direction. Does this mean that he seems to have nothing to do?

But he didn't dare to leave without permission. After all, reinforcements would come to help Cao's army in Wancheng at any time. Xu Huang could only stop him at that time.

At this time, Jia Xu in the city had learned about the changes outside the city, and immediately began to think about it.

He has to make a choice.

(End of this chapter)