My Chinese ancestors

Chapter 656 A two-pronged approach
Smoke and dust floated in the red sky. More than a thousand guards cavalry troops who marched straight in and attacked the siege tower were surrounded by the Qin army and Qingzhou army who arrived, and were stabbed wildly with spears and long spears.

Amid the cries of war horses, even the most skilled knights fell off their horses, covered in blood.

Not far from them, in front of the second siege tower, was a body broken into two pieces, showing the tenacity of life. Kai, with only the upper body left, grabbed the ground with both hands and crawled with difficulty.

Even at his deathbed, he was still staring at the tower that was so close to him.

Soon, two war horses, one white and one red, stopped on both sides and looked at the half body crawling forward like a maggot on the ground.

Ma Chao took the bow and arrow, aimed it at the crawling figure, and shot an arrow.

Kai opened his eyes wide and stared at the tower which was only a hand's distance away without blinking. He clenched his fingers in the air twice, and then his head fell to the ground.

The red glow swept across the western clouds like a tide.

The sky gradually turned into night.

The craftsman who was checking the siege tower frowned and sighed as he looked at the first siege tower that was attacked, then shook his head at the cavalryman who was waiting for news nearby.

"No, we can't fight it. We have to tear it down and use new pillars to support it. If we force it, I'm afraid it won't be able to withstand the pressure and will collapse before it even reaches the city wall."

"These barbarians are finally acting like men."

The cavalry officer said something that was not sure whether it was a compliment or a mockery, and then reported the craftsman's words back to Han Xin in the center of the army.

Later, Su Chen, who was at the back, also learned that the siege tower was damaged and could no longer fight.

"Isn't there another one? Anyway, the secret technique over there has begun to lose its effect. If we hold on for a while longer, we will at least occupy half of the city wall before night falls..."

Wu Zixun interrupted, but was slapped away by Dian Wei: "You know shit."

Su Chen actually had the same idea as Wu Zixun. Although it was a bit risky, it was still a good opportunity.

Just as he was hesitating whether to give the order to continue the siege, the horn for retreat sounded.

The cavalryman who delivered the message came galloping over soon, jumped off his horse, came to Su Chen and half-knelt in front of him and bowed: "Your Majesty, General Han, the Marquis of Huaiyin, has ordered to temporarily suspend the attack and let the soldiers on the city wall withdraw in an orderly manner."

"Ok!"

Su Chen held the whip and tapped his right leg lightly. After a moment's hesitation, he sent the horse away. He smiled at Dian Wei and others beside him and said, "Since the Marquis of Huaiyin has given the order, I'd better not intervene and see how he takes down Nong Ma."

Although the city wall was not captured, there were still some gains today. At least Guan Yu killed an important enemy figure. As for Lancelot on the top of the city wall, he probably didn't have a good time either.

……

The fighting on the city wall, like boiling oil, was gradually fading away.

Lancelot was supported by someone and sat against the parapet on the other side of the city wall. He was surrounded by the sounds of shouting and killing. He felt a little fuzzy and yet very clear-headed at the moment.

Faintly, he heard the sound of the Seres' war drums. He suddenly opened his eyes wide, thinking that the enemy was going to intensify their siege, and immediately tried to stand up by holding onto the parapet.

"Knight Commander!"

Amid the noisy voices, a soldier covered in blood ran towards this side, "Retreat! The Seris people have been defeated by us!"

The smell of blood and burning filled the air. The soldiers rushed to support Lancelot, but he waved them away.

He tried his best to concentrate, focused his eyes and looked around, and staggered to the parapet in front. The vast army was retreating in his sight, and the Seris people on the city wall were sliding down the wall one after another along the ladders, covering each other.

Afterwards, more and more people's voices cheered.

"Hold on, the Seris people have been repelled!"

"God, may we defeat the Seres and keep defeating them."

For a time, morale was high. The surviving soldiers and young and strong laborers waved everything they could get in their hands, and some even sang and danced in a pool of blood.

Heavenly Father?

Ha ha……

Lancelot had a dead look on his face, a mocking smile on his lips, and murmured.

On the top of the city wall, he was the only one who was still thinking about the 2,001 cavalrymen he led to fight their way out of the city. Unfortunately, those heroes would never have the chance to come back.

……

The sky was getting dim.

On the plains, the messy battlefield had already been cleaned up. The slave soldiers and Mongolian light cavalry marched forward, pulling slow horses and the carts behind them.

The rolling wheels crushed over the crimson soil, squeezing out dark liquid. Amid the creaking sound of the wooden axles, a black mass of crows started off from the ground, circling in the sky or landing on nearby branches, blinking their red eyes and making creepy cries.

Wow wow——

The footsteps startled a crow, and the slave soldiers pulling the cart lifted up the mutilated corpse and his companions from the ground and gently put them into the cart.

His expression was solemn, and when he could occasionally not hold back, he would secretly wipe the moisture from the corners of his eyes.

The Shengnu Army was in the first buffer position to resist the charge of 2,000 enemy cavalry. Although they had no formation and retreated early, hundreds of people were still caught up by the cavalry and hacked to death with swords.

The light of dusk swept across the field. The flag representing the Sakpruit Empire, which had been brought out intact by the cavalry, was now tattered and stuck crookedly in the ground, with holes everywhere from arrows and blades.

When the evening breeze blows, the tattered pieces flutter in the wind.

The flag extends forward and backward.

The bodies of two thousand Royal Guards cavalrymen were lying along a path paved with blood. Many of them had their armor stripped off and their weapons taken away.

However, some of the corpses were entangled with those of the Yuezhou Army or Qin Army soldiers who died in the battle.

Some of them were still biting each other's necks until they died, some of them were staring at the sky with bared teeth, tightly grasping half of the knife, and blood was coagulating in their abdominal cavities.

Then someone came over, separated the two bodies, and gently closed the angry eyes of his comrade.

"…I am fortunate to share the same robe with you."

Wu Anjun withdrew his hand and murmured as he watched the closed-eyed corpse being carried onto the cart by two slave soldiers. "The wind will carry your heroic souls back to your hometown."

There were still a small number of bodies of the two thousand cavalrymen that had not yet been loaded onto the carts and taken away. At the edge of the nearby woods, flocks of crows grew impatient and flew down from the trees to peck at the remains of flesh on the ground.

Soon, the bodies of two thousand cavalrymen were taken away.

"These damn barbarians want us to collect their bodies. We should just throw them back and pile them up at the gate of their city to make them stink to death!"

"Stop complaining. I heard it was the commander's order."

"Grand Commander? That's the one..." Two soldiers, one driving a slow horse and the other holding the cart, were talking to each other in a low voice. The soldier who spoke first looked around and lowered his voice, "Is that the black-hearted and cruel fox Jia?"

"That was His Majesty's call. If you dare to yell, be careful or I'll hang you up and beat you to death when we get back to the camp."

"Hehe, I am just a small soldier, but I was killed by the current general himself. Maybe this will go down in history."

"You are beautiful!"

The voices passed through the battlefield littered with corpses, and the dim yellow clouds from the west burned out the last ray of afterglow.

In the military camp that stretched for dozens of miles, bonfires had been lit in piles. The soldiers surrounding the bonfires stared quietly at the boiling rice porridge. Someone came over, diced dried meat and threw it in, and the aroma of meat wafted in the air.

These are the horses of the two thousand barbarian cavalrymen today. They belong to other people, so it would be a waste if we don't eat them. "You damn barbarians, you don't know. Today on the city wall, I killed three of them by myself. I don't know where the arrow came from. It hurt my butt. If it had been half-shot, it would have cut off the incense of my Qin family."

"Who do you think you are? I was stabbed twice, but he was still trying to kill me. Fortunately, I practiced hard and reacted quickly. I chopped off his hand with my sword and opened a hole in his belly. Then I twisted it and pulled out a long piece of intestines. It was hot and steaming."

"Hey, have you noticed that the barbarians are much more powerful this time than before? Did the barbarian emperor move all his elite troops to the city walls?"

"Humph, our Tang army is fighting against the elite!"

Unlike in the past, there was no dejection from failure in the military camp. Instead, there was a lot of noise, with everyone talking about their shortcomings during the siege and why they were unable to gain a foothold.

In the wounded soldiers' tents, which were ventilated on all sides, there was a burst of cursing.

He probably felt that it was wrong for these barbarians to have hurt him, and he wanted to get back at them next time.

After a while, a military medical officer came over with several army doctors, and the soldiers who had been cursing just now suddenly let out howls and screams like pigs being slaughtered.

Around them, there were many soldiers carrying copper basins filled with blood, or military doctors carrying needles, thread, and herbs moving back and forth among the wounded.

There are always casualties in war, not to mention that there is huge wealth in return. From recruits to veterans, they have long taken life and death lightly.

The wind blew across the fields, and the sky and the earth fell into darkness.

In the center of the noisy and bustling military camp, the tent cloth swelled and swayed in the wind. Zhang Fei waved his fist angrily and followed his second brother Guan Yu, shouting and yelling.

"Second brother, you don't know how suffocating it is to be locked up in that tower. And being squeezed together with that brat Li Yuanba is simply torture."

"That's nothing." Guan Yu walked in front of him, stroking his beautiful beard with one hand and pressing the handle of the ring-headed sword at his waist with the other hand, "It's just right to shut up your bad temper."

"The more I'm locked up, the worse my temper gets!"

Zhang Fei seemed to have opened up his chatterbox, and he kept on talking all the way, "I guess my father-in-law is laughing so hard, and I guess other people are also laughing at me."

"Nothing. Everyone is watching the barbarian cavalry. Besides, Xu Huang and Le Jin are also imprisoned in another tower."

"Of course you are fine. I let my second brother chop off another enemy general's head."

Zhang Fei uttered a "huh" sound, folded his arms around his chest, and followed Guan Yu to the largest tent in front.

Over there was the emperor's tent and Han Xin's general tent, side by side, with soldiers from the Tiger Guard Camp and the Shenji Camp on both sides. There were more than ten checkpoints and garrisons set up in front, behind, left and right.

In the dark night, bonfires spread out in piles on both sides, and it seemed that there was no end in sight.

The largest tent in the middle did not have too many decorations. Su Chen did not take off his armor. He just sat in the first seat, looking at Nongma's map.

Below were a group of generals who had arrived early. They were either sitting on folding stools talking with their colleagues, or standing in twos and threes in front of the hanging map, pointing at the map with their fingers.

Soon, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei also entered the tent, and the generals consciously returned to their folding stools and sat down.

The people in the tent immediately began to summarize the reasons for the failure of today's siege, and discussed the details of the attack tomorrow or in the next few days.

The Satsuma Emperor Adar and Budares tried hard to grasp the key points from the words of the translation team and remember them in their minds.

"From today's battle, the enemy's defense is remarkable and much stronger than the Sakprut army we encountered in the past. However, the Tang army's siege force is also not weak, and its combat effectiveness is even higher than that of the enemy. If it weren't for the enemy's barbarian general using strange secret techniques, we might have already lived in the palace of Nongma City tonight."

The flames crackled in the brazier.

As Su Chen continued to speak, the soldiers who were measuring the map put away the measuring tape, marked on the map, and then left the tent.

Li Jing frowned slightly: "Your Majesty, what should we do tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?"

"Continue the attack!"

Su Chen looked at the city gate on the map and tapped it heavily with his fingers: "Then we will fight them in a round-robin battle. I will beat this Nongma City into a lower position!"

"Your Majesty, there is no need to do this!"

At this time, Jia Xu, who was sitting in the shadows of the crowd, suddenly spoke up in the corner: "We must not let the barbarians hold the mentality of dying, the dog will jump over the wall in desperation."

In fact, Su Chen had been waiting for Han Xin or Jia Xu to speak. After all, they were the ones who chose to withdraw their troops today, and it was time to explain the reasons to the generals.

"So we are withdrawing our troops and stopping the fighting today just to give the barbarians some time to catch their breath?" Although Xiahou Dun was known as a general who was often defeated, he had been marching and fighting for many years and still knew the principle of striking while the iron was hot.

He looked at his former colleague in the corner, his tone was a little stiff and his attitude was also unhappy with the other party.

"Our soldiers fought desperately and finally suppressed the enemy. We suddenly withdrew our troops, giving them a chance to catch their breath. How can we still have the face to say that we will not give them a desperate opportunity?!"

Jia Xu did not argue with him, but just smiled slightly and looked at Han Xin in front of him. Although the latter did not look at Jia Xu, he could feel the other's gaze.

Then he stood up and explained to everyone the reason for withdrawing the troops.

"The war should be fought alternately. Although we have a chance to take down the city wall today, it is already night. The enemy has lived in the city for a long time and has the support of the people. If they take advantage of the night to drive us off the city wall, their morale will be greatly dampened!"

Han Xin put his hands behind his back, raised his face slightly, and looked at the map hanging on the side.

"The enemy sent out death squads to attack the siege tower. I believe that they not only intend to destroy and delay our siege, but also intend to provoke the soldiers of mourning. If the barbarians on the wall become soldiers of mourning, with no way to retreat, they will be filled with grief and anger, which will make the siege more difficult."

Su Chen did not respond. The generals in the tent, including Xiang Yu, Lu Bu and others, did not speak either. They just looked at him quietly.

Han Xin then continued speaking.

"As long as people have a way out and hope of survival, they will not fight to the death."

As soon as the words fell, Jia Xu's voice took over.

"Let the soldiers rest for a few days, and let...the bodies of the two thousand barbarians ferment for a while, and then send them home."

In the flickering firelight, Jia Xu stroked his long beard, his smile flickering in the shadows of the lights.

Su Chen's mouth twitched.

My goodness, this is spreading a plague in Milantel and creating an addiction.

……

The stars and the moon spread out a long Milky Way, and the silvery-gray moonlight illuminates the foothills below.

A team leading war horses meandered through the mountains. A young general wearing a red helmet tassel and two-piece armor pulled the reins, walking across the rugged terrain and stepping over tree roots protruding from the soil. He raised his head and looked into the gaps between the crossed branches. The night sky outside was filled with stars.

This is the sky of a foreign land, and it feels somewhat different.

Scouts are coming back from afar.

The scout excitedly followed the guards who led the way and came to the rock where Huo Qubing was standing.

"General, I saw a road that people often take. It should lead us down the mountain."

"Let everyone rest for a while. We will go down the mountain in half an hour!"

Huo Qubing withdrew his gaze, lowered his head, said something softly, and then sat down on a huge moss-covered rock to rest.

Soon after, the moonlight gradually disappeared behind the clouds, and in the deep foothills, the sound of light footsteps and the "crunching" sound of fallen leaves and dry grass began to spread in the forest.

The sky gradually brightened. In the mountains south of Nongma City, just as the golden morning light fell between the clouds, a sudden cavalry galloped through the fields and villages.

The Yulin Cavalry from the Han Dynasty galloped on their horses, holding up the Han swords in their hands. That morning, the cavalry charged wildly, covering a distance of 800 miles.

(End of this chapter)