Ji Han Da Sima

Chapter 97 Letters
December, Pengze City.

The walls made of rammed earth have holes made by arrows.The female wall on the top of the city changed from rammed earth to a wooden wall, with obvious sword slashes on it.There was a smashed assault vehicle under the city tower. Several people on the left and right were unable to dodge and their heads were smashed open by the wolf fangs.

Since Sun Quan and Zhou Yu began to besiege the city, they used various methods, but they could not do anything about Peng Zecheng.Using a ram to hit the city gate, Huo Jun drilled holes into the boulder, wrapped it with wolf teeth, made a wolf fang racket, tied it with a kudzu rope, and used the principle of leverage to smash it down from the city tower. Under the boulder, the car was destroyed and everyone was killed. No one was spared. , and can be pulled back with the kudzu rope.

Using cloud ladders to attack the city, Huo Jun sent people down to throw weeds, pour kerosene on them, and burn the ladders.Most of the Jiangdong soldiers who attacked the city were burned to death. The city was hit with arrows and stones, and the soldiers suffered many casualties.

Of course, Huo Jun was not without counterattack. At night, he sent [-] elite men to be hung from the city tower with ropes, attacked the Jiangdong camp at night, and broke through the outer camp.The next day, Sun Quan adopted Zhou Yu's suggestion and built a long siege outside the camp, and sent soldiers to guard it at night, thus disrupting Huo Jun's night attack strategy.

In this short period of two months, Huo Jun relied on the city and Zhou Yu relied on the army, and the two sides attacked and defended each other.

Today, the ladder truck built by Zhou Yu was completed and another wave of siege was launched.

What is a ladder truck?
It uses a big log as a bed, with six wheels underneath and two teeth on top. The teeth have long ladders that can be stretched and folded to fly in the air. There is a long hook at the head, which can be used to pillow the city wall. There is a wooden warehouse below, where soldiers can be hidden.A long ladder was built to support the wall, and the sergeant climbed up the ladder to reach the city.

Thousands of sergeants surrounded ten ladder trucks, and amid the scoldings of the officers, they approached the city with wooden curtains.The crossbowmen relied on their shield chariots to shoot at the archers on the tower. Arrows flew across the air, and from time to time some soldiers screamed as if they were hit by an arrow.

At the northeast corner, nearly a hundred Jiangdong sergeants from the army formed a shield wall. Against the rain of arrows on the tower, the ladder truck slowly moved forward. From time to time, the screams of the colleagues beside them who were hit by arrows could be heard.

Soon, the ladder passed through the ditch they had filled in in front of the city and approached the city tower.

"The ladder truck is coming!"

The Jingzhou soldiers on the tower shouted at the top of their lungs.

The commander urged his soldiers and asked nervously: "Is it done?"

"not yet!"

Zhang San wiped the sweat from his head, hurriedly filled the iron cage with kerosene, and said, "It's almost here!"

"Boom!"

Under the city tower, the ladder truck arrived at the bottom of the city, stretched out the double-tooth ladder, and blocked the city wall with iron hooks.The Jiangdong soldiers in the car were already eager to fight, holding swords and shields, ready to climb the ladder and fight on the city.

"All right!"

"lift it up!"

"ignition!"

At the same time, Zhang San finished loading the kerosene. He and Tongshi's soldiers lifted the wood and ignited the kerosene placed in the iron cage at the end of the wood. The flames suddenly rose.

At this time, Jiangdong's soldiers had climbed up the ladder and were almost approaching the city wall. There were soldiers on the city tower waiting for a hand-to-hand battle.Zhang San and his colleagues lifted the wood and stretched it into the hole in the city wall that Huo Jun had ordered people to dig.

If you look from outside the city wall, you can see the burning iron cage protruding from the hole and slowly extending to the middle part below the ladder of the ladder truck.The wooden ladder encountered a fierce fire and was quickly ignited. Under the aggravation of the wind, a fire broke out on the ladder.

The Jiangdong soldiers who were already climbing on the ladder were horrified when they saw their own ladder on fire. However, how could the ladder that was already on fire withstand the strength of everyone.

"what!"

There was a creak, and the advanced soldiers who were preparing to fight on the ladder saw this, let out a panicked cry, and were instantly thrown heavily to the ground.Falling from a height of four to five meters, and wearing heavy armor, these warriors who were the first to ascend were either dead or disabled.

"Pour golden juice!"

As the ladder was burned down, the sergeants on the tower who were preparing for close combat lifted up the hot and stinking golden juice and poured it down from the tower, burning the warriors who had not yet died to the point of wailing.

Not only in the northeast corner, the ladders of all ten ladder trucks were burned off, but more than a hundred elite pioneer warriors were either burned to death, fell to death, or were scalded to death with gold juice before they could reach the city wall.

Outside the city, Zhou Yu watched his carefully built ladder truck being destroyed by Huo Jun, and shook his fist angrily to show his dissatisfaction.

That day, Pan Zhang and Quan Cong led their troops to attack the mountain. Due to the Yuanyang Formation and the steepness of the mountain, Gao Xiang and Huo Yuan suffered an astonishing battle loss ratio of 10:300, beheading them at the cost of 10 casualties. There were more than 300 people, hundreds of them were injured, and the main general Pan Zhang was shot by an arrow and retreated.

For several days in a row, Zhou Tai and Chen Wu went into battle and led their troops to attack the mountain.Thousands of Gao Xiang and Huo Yuan relied on Haoshan and relied on the Yuanyang Formation to behead more than a hundred people, with only a few casualties themselves.After the failure of the attack on Haoshan, Zhou Yu and Sun Quan were helpless.So he gave up the plan to attack the mountain and only sent people to block the road down the mountain and closely monitor Gao Xiang's troops.Then they turned their target to Pengze City, which was guarded by only 2000 people.

Zhou Yu tried his best and used various siege equipment, but almost all of them were destroyed by Huo Jun.Today, he saw that the ladder truck he spent more than a month building was destroyed without even approaching the city, and more than a hundred elite soldiers were killed and injured for no reason. How could he not be angry anymore.

"Withdraw!"

Sun Quan looked at the 'Huo' flag standing on the top of the city. He felt numb all over, and in the end he could only hold back a sentence.

"promise!"

As the retreating bugle sounded, the soldiers under the city retreated like a tide, leaving behind a messy battlefield.

"My Lord, our sergeants picked up a letter outside the city!" When Sun Quan returned to the army, his attendants presented him with a letter shot from Pengze City.

Sun Quan opened the letter out of curiosity and saw the content on the letter, with a smile on his face.

"Pengze City can be broken!"

……

In the camp, the generals were sitting in rows, and their morale was a little low.

Sun Quan looked at Zhou Yu beside him with a scrutinizing gaze. His performance in the past few months made him doubt Zhou Yu's ability.It took [-] troops two months to conquer the small city of Pengze.

Sun Quan coughed lightly, calmed down, and said: "Gong Jin, Cheng Gong's troops were blocked by Guan Yu, and the troops were not allowed to enter Yuzhang. Liu Bei is an old revolutionary and is good at using troops. Sun Yuzhang and Sun Luling retreated from Xingan. If they continue If we can't break Pengze City, I'm afraid Yuzhang and Luling will fall!"

Guan Yu was limited by the fact that he had just arrived in Jiangdong and his troops had just expanded, so their combat effectiveness was not strong.They faced off against Cheng Pu, with each other winning or losing, and were in a deadlock.

Liu Bei annexed Taishi Ci's men, and made Taishi Heng his halberd bearer, so that the surrendered soldiers could return to his heart.With Gan Ning and Zhang Fei as the vanguard, Liu Pan and Wenpin as their wings, they fought a victorious battle with Sun Bi and Sun Fu and captured Nanchang. They had no choice but to retreat to Xingan.

Judging from the current situation, as Sun Quan said, if he no longer finds a way to capture Pengze City, Yuzhang and Luling counties may be gone.

Zhou Yu felt the questioning looks of everyone and said calmly: "Huo Jun is not an ordinary person. He is brave and intelligent. The soldiers under his command are brave and good at fighting. He is especially good at defending the city. He should not be underestimated. Yu thought that he could take advantage of Huang Zu's unpreparedness and attack Chaisang to intercept it. Liu Bei Liang Dao."

"Switch to attack Chaisang?"

Hearing this, everyone in the tent was talking a lot. In their eyes, it took so long to fight in Pengze City, killing several generals and thousands of people. They gave up after fighting half way, and turned to attack Chaisang, who started from scratch. It's hard for them to accept.

Coupled with Zhou Yu's previous operation of abandoning the attack on Haoshan and attacking Pengze City after seeing that the attack on the mountain was unfavorable, they had to doubt Zhou Yu's military capabilities.

Faced with everyone's doubts, Zhou Yu said: "My subordinates, our army has been hindered by Peng Ze for a long time. Huang Zu did not see the enemy coming, so he must have slacked off. Peng Ze arrived at Chaisang for only a few hours. He went out early and arrived at night to attack Huang Zu's navy. When It can be done!”

Zhou Yu's desire to attack Chaisang was not just a whim.He had insisted on attacking Pengze City before and underestimated Huo Jun's ability. He did not expect that Huo Jun could defend the city so well.Now the army is in Pengze City, with no results for two months. If it drags on any longer, he is really worried that something will go wrong in Yuzhang.

At the same time, as Zhou Yu said, Huang Zu did relax when he saw that Jiangdong's troops and horses were blocked by Peng Ze.If they lead the navy to attack the Jiangxia Navy, there may be unexpected surprises.

Sun Quan took out the letter from his arms and said: "Gu Yu received the letter of surrender at the foot of the city. It was presented by a descendant of the local wealthy family in Pengze. He said that he was a descendant of the Zhou family in Pengze. He was forced into the army by Zhao Yun. He is now the commander of the village and is willing to serve for me. The army opens the north gate to surrender. I wonder if you think this person is trustworthy?"

"Send the North Gate to surrender?"

"Pengze Zhou family has always heard that the head of the family, Zhou Mansion, sent grain and grass to our army a few days ago for the purpose of laboring the army."

Sun Quan looked at the two of them expectantly and asked, "How are Dongfang and Gongjin doing?"

Zhang Hong pondered for a while and then said: "My subordinates, why don't you order someone to bring Zhou Mansion and ask a few questions to see if he is indeed there, in case the enemy invaders pretend to surrender."

"My subordinate, this is a plan for the enemy to surrender in a false way. It cannot be trusted!"

ps: there is one more chapter

(End of this chapter)