Three Kingdoms: My Strategy Simulator

That night.

Zhou Xin personally led his personal guards to carefully approach a certain range of Yangxian City, observing the patrol movements of the defenders on the city wall, preparing to find an area with relatively weak defense as the main direction of attack.

What made Zhou Xin's heart beat faster unconsciously was that the situation on the Yangxian city wall was almost the same as he expected.

Although there were garrisons stationed at regular intervals on the walls of Yangxian, there were not many soldiers patrolling back and forth. This was enough to show that Jia Xu had indeed mobilized a large number of Wujun garrisons to concentrate in Yangxian, but they were obviously quite relaxed in their vigilance.

What goes up goes down…

Naturally, the frequency and density of patrolling soldiers are not high.

The only thing that made Zhou Xin feel a little regretful was that he did not find any obvious areas of weak defense.

However, Zhou Xin was not surprised by this, and it could even be said that he had been prepared for it.

Even if there were no areas with obvious weak defenses, they could mobilize Xu Gong, Zuo Rong and a group of the family's personal guards or confidants to get close to the city wall under the cover of night.

Then, they would climb up the city wall in one go, occupying a certain area to allow subsequent allied soldiers to climb up the city wall.

With the absolute numerical advantage of the Allied soldiers, the outcome was decided at that moment.

As Zhou Xin's news spread back to the anti-Wu coalition, most of the anti-Wu coalition began to act according to the established surprise attack plan.

If a head-on battle were to take place, the anti-Wu alliance would naturally appear to be fighting on their own with their own thoughts.

However, acting separately, with each leading their own soldiers to attack a section of the city wall, is actually an advantage.

Time passes by little by little.

When it was midnight, the anti-Wu allied forces gathered almost all of their elite troops and secretly approached Yangxian...

It was not until the anti-Wu coalition forces were less than twenty steps away from the city that they were discovered by the defenders, who issued a shrill warning.

"kill!"

Immediately, most of the anti-Wu coalition forces that had been staying at a greater distance moved, carrying more siege equipment and rushing towards Yangxian City.

The elite allied forces who had already reached the foot of Yangxian City quickly built ladders and attacked the city walls of Yangxian first.

Faced with the sudden sneak attack, Zhou Xin saw that the reaction of the Yangxian defenders was very similar to that of the allied soldiers who faced Gan Ning's surprise attack a few days ago. They were almost in chaos.

"The situation has been decided, it's done!!"

At this moment, Zhou Xin had only this one thought in his mind, and he was filled with ecstasy.

Compared with the chaos and shouts of killing that suddenly broke out from all directions in Yangxian City, the Yangxian County Government Office was brightly lit at this moment.

Jia Xu, sitting on the main seat, was holding a teacup and sipping tea happily, as if he was oblivious to the noisy shouting and killing outside the city.

On Jia Xu's left and right were Gan Ning, Jia Mu, and some military captains and minor officials.

Among them, Gan Ning was shirtless, with several thick bandages wrapped around his left shoulder, and was chewing meat in big mouthfuls, as if preparing for an upcoming fight.

Soon, soldiers came to report that a large number of enemy troops were attacking the north gate, south gate, and west gate of Yangxian City, and had occupied a part of the city wall.

In the case of a siege, the next step is for the allied soldiers to storm the city walls and stabilize the situation.

Then they would take down the city tower little by little and open the city gate from the inside, which would mean that one side of the city wall would be breached.

However, Jia Xu did not even raise his eyelids for such critical news, nor did he have any intention of sending troops to support. Instead, he leisurely picked the snacks on the table and put them into his mouth.

The rest of the people in the county government office also had no intention of asking for orders, only Jia Mu spoke up.

"Father, the enemy is attacking the city from the north, south and west sides. Should we break out from the east gate later?"

Surrounded by three towers.

This was a fairly conventional siege tactic, and in order to prevent the defenders from having no way of retreat and having to put up a desperate resistance, brutal street fighting was required in the end.

Therefore, in order to avoid heavy casualties, the attackers would often leave an obvious retreat route for the defenders, thereby undermining the defenders' will to fight to the death.

"The bandits are not only targeting Yangxian, they are also eager to destroy the few remaining troops in Wujun, so there must be an ambush outside the east gate..."

Jia Xu smacked his lips, chewed the tea leaves in his mouth, swallowed them, and said.

"So we can't go through the east gate. We have to wait patiently for the other three gates. We can break out from the gate where the attack is the weakest and we will be safe."

When he said this, Jia Xu did not forget to look at Gan Ning, showing a caring smile, and said.

"Xingba has not recovered from his injuries yet, so he can stay in the central army for a while. He must not charge forward again. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, I will have a hard time explaining to Zikun."

Hearing this, Gan Ning paused chewing his meat, raised his left shoulder, and said, "Chief Jia, my injuries are no longer serious. I don't need to stay in the central army. Please allow me to lead the way for the retreat..."

But Jia Xu naturally didn't really care about Gan Ning. He evacuated in the dark night. Even though Jia Xu had made many preparations, he undoubtedly felt it was more reassuring to keep a powerful general by his side to keep watch.

Therefore, without waiting for Gan Ning to finish speaking, Jia Xu silently took out Li Ji's seal from his sleeve and placed it in front of Gan Ning.

Gan Ning was a free-spirited person, and even dared to kidnap his uncle and lead a hundred cavalrymen to raid the camp...

But when he looked at Li Ji's seal in front of him, Gan Ning's eyes twitched violently and he swallowed back the rest of the words.

After a while, he felt that the meat in his mouth was as sweet as chewing wax, so he simply spat out the meat that he had not swallowed yet, and responded in a low voice.

"Gan Ning, obey your orders!"

Upon seeing this, Jia Xu put Li Ji's seal back into his sleeve and couldn't help but smile.

Zikun's seal is still the best...

Jia Xu suddenly realized that in the land of Wujun, as long as he took out this seal and placed it in front of others, no one would dare to speak loudly to him.

"Taking advantage of others' situation... it's really addictive..."

Jia Xu stroked Li Ji's seal and said secretly, "Before Zikun comes back, I have to find a time to hold this seal and get more good tea."

Influenced by Li Ji, this new style of tea ceremony first spread within Liu Bei's group, and then gradually became popular among the noble families, scholars, and merchants under his rule, and finally even the common people were crazy about it.

This also led to the fact that roasted tea could be considered a luxury item during Liu Bei's rule. People without a certain status and position could not get it at all, and countless aristocratic families and scholars regarded it as elegant.

Jia Xu was certainly aware of the scarcity of tea. On the one hand, the current production was indeed limited. On the other hand, it was a means of making money that Li Ji had developed through the Mi family.

Luxury goods are not scary, the scariest thing is the consumption of luxury goods.

Of course, Jia Xu didn't care about any status symbol or elegance. He really liked and was used to drinking tea. He felt uncomfortable if he didn't drink tea for a day.

Some rare and fine tea leaves were even rarer in Wu County, and even Jia Xu could hardly get them through normal channels...

Just when Jia Xu was daydreaming and racking his brains to figure out how to use this seal to hide some good tea from Li Ji...

Several more soldiers came to report the latest battle situation.

Most of the city walls on the north and south sides have been captured...

At this point, Jia Xu did not wait any longer. After drinking the remaining tea in the cup, he stood up slowly, straightened his clothes, and asked his personal guard to bring a set of armor and put it on quickly, then said.

"Break out from the west gate and follow your plan!"

"Yes!"

Immediately, everyone who had been waiting in the county government office for a long time also took action.

Treasury, granary, county government office...

These important places in the city soon caught fire raging.

Most of the defenders in the city were trying their best to break out towards the west gate.

Jia Xu's prediction was correct. The allied forces deployed on the west side to fight against Wu were undoubtedly the sparsest, and most of them were vagrants and scattered warriors.

Zhou Xin's plan was to attack the north and south sides, and to deploy ambushes outside the city on the east side in order to eliminate Wujun's manpower as much as possible.

The west side is the direction of Danyang County. Zhou Xin guessed that Jia Xu would not dare to break through to the west, so he adopted the method of pretending to be strong and only deployed some scattered soldiers.

Unfortunately, Jia Xu had already seen through Zhou Xin's thoughts and understood that the west gate was the best way to break out.

Therefore, when Zhou Xin learned that a large number of defenders broke out from the west, it was too late even if he wanted to stop them.

More importantly, the allied forces against Wu were already in an exhausted state, and the siege tonight was a forcible boost to their morale by the generous rewards promised by the county governors and aristocratic families.

As for wanting the allied forces to attack the city and then pursue the defenders who broke through, even Zhou Xin knew that it was impossible to do so.

"hateful!"

Zhou Xin couldn't help but whip the ground hard with the whip to vent his anger.

"That Jia Xu is so incompetent, yet he managed to escape by luck. How hateful!!"

However, after Zhou Xin vented his anger, he could only quickly order his soldiers to occupy the city as soon as possible, then make a fire, cook, and rest in the city.

It only took half an hour from the night attack on the city to the complete occupation of Yangxian.

Zhou Xin was quite unwilling to let a large number of defenders escape, but he finally took over Yangxian, the gateway to Taihu Lake. This made Zhou Xin and other county magistrates and aristocratic families happy.

The allied soldiers arrived in Yangxian after many days of exhaustion, and then set up camp, built siege equipment, and even forcibly attacked the city at night...

Not to mention the lower-level soldiers, even Xu Gong, Zhou Xin, Zuo Rong and a group of representatives from aristocratic families felt exhausted and didn't even have the heart to hold a celebration banquet.

Instead, he kept urging the food to be delivered as soon as possible so that he could have a good sleep after a full meal.

If Xu Gong and his men were like this, one can imagine the state of many allied soldiers...

Jia Xu, who had already broken out, did not go far at all. Instead, he stood not far from Yangxian, staring at the large amount of smoke from cooking fires in Yangxian City that could be vaguely seen even in the dark night.

"It seems like you are really hungry..."

Jia Xu had a harmless smile on his face, but his tone was full of pity.

"Confucius said: Heaven has the virtue of loving life, and gentlemen have the virtue of helping others to be good. I am not someone who does not know how to be compassionate. You should eat well, and you will die well-fed on your way to the underworld."

The smoke continued for a while...

Just when the smoke from the cooking stopped, Xu Sheng led 50,000 soldiers stationed in the rear of Yangxian and arrived outside the city of Yangxian. There were also twenty catapults slowly approaching along the smooth official road leading to Yangxian.

(PS: Some people believe that the catapult was invented by Liu Ye. In fact, it was Liu Ye who improved the catapult and renamed it "Thunderbolt Chariot".

Catapults had already appeared during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and Li Xin once led 200,000 Qin troops to attack Chu, but was attacked by catapults for the first time in Chinese war history, resulting in the defeat of the 200,000 Qin troops on the spot.)
Soon, under the command of Xu Sheng, 50,000 soldiers were divided into three groups and lined up outside the south, north and east gates of Yangxian City. As for the west gate, Gan Ning led the garrison troops that had just broken through to reorganize the army.

Different from Zhou Xin's trivial tactic of surrounding three sides and leaving one side open, Jia Xu did not have the merciful idea of ​​leaving a way out for the other side.

"This is... the attack and defense change form."

Jia Xu put his hands behind his back and spoke with a smile.

The next moment, not only Jia Xu, but also the more than 100,000 allied soldiers who were wolfing down their food in the city heard the thunder-like sound of the twenty catapults moving in unison.

"Bang!!!"

However, these twenty catapults, which were carefully built in advance by Wujun craftsmen, did not release stones, but cans of kerosene bombs made using the principle of oil lamps.

At this moment, all the civilians in Yangxian City had been evacuated in advance, and there were only the anti-Wu coalition forces who had just entered the city.

Of course, in Jia Xu's opinion, if some people were left in the city, the plan would be more perfect. Even if a top wise man entered the city, he would not doubt that this was a "furnace" prepared in advance. (End of this chapter)