The wind rises at the end of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 192
"Chen Wang..."

On the mountain, Li Zicheng held the whip tightly, his expression was cold, and a cold light flashed across his eyes.

The sound of shouting and killing was boiling down the mountain, and Li Zicheng watched the soldiers under his command retreat again like an ebb tide, his expression became more and more gloomy.

Although attacking Hanzhong is only a false move, it is naturally better to be able to attack.

There are not many places to plunder in Gongchang Mansion, and most of them are poor. On the other hand, Hanzhong Mansion is different.

Most of the cities in Hanzhong Mansion are still relatively intact. Once they invade Hanzhong Mansion, they can get a lot of grain, grass, gold and silver in a short time.

But right now, it was Chen Wang again.

Starting from Qiutou Town, Li Zicheng planned for a long time, and both Ai Wannian and Liu Chenggong were defeated by his hands.

Just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit away, Cao Wenzhao and Cao Bianjiao will be besieged and killed by him in Qiutou Town.

But this Chen Wang seemed to have jumped out of a crack in the stone, and suddenly appeared in the ranks of the Ming army, disrupting all his deployments.

And when he was in Chunhua, he could have captured Chunhua in one go.

But that fire burned all his schemes and everything he had accumulated for a long time.

In the end, he fled Chunhua with less than a thousand people, and even separated from his nephew Li Guo because of this.

But when Li Zicheng received news of Li Guo again, it was the news that Li Guo had been beheaded.

Li Zicheng stared at the situation of the entire battlefield down the mountain with dark eyes.

After the first battle in Chunhua, he devoted part of his attention to Chen Wang.

He saw Chen Wang's progress all the way to the sky, but he himself was chased almost without a way to go to the sky and nowhere to go to the earth.

The last time I received news about Chen Wang was the news that Chen Wang killed Gao Yingxiang in the Heishuiyu formation...

This Chen Wang seemed to be his nemesis.

"Ugh——"

The low horn sounded again from the bottom of the mountain. Li Zicheng looked at the watchtower behind the Ming army camp in the distance. He knew that Chen Wang was on the watchtower just like him observing the whole battle situation.

The offensive has lasted for nearly a month, and Mian County is close at hand, but the last hurdle cannot be crossed no matter what.

Here Li Zicheng had already left more than [-] corpses behind, but he failed to push the battle line even a step forward.

With the intensification of casualties, successive defeats and no progress, the morale of the army is now terribly low.

"Brother, it's not an option to fight like this..."

Although Liu Zongmin was reckless in his daily life, and he also had deep hatred for Chen Wang, he also knew that this battle could not continue.

"That guy has excellent guns and guns, and he has raised a thousand heavy armored soldiers under his command. They can't be cut by knives, and they can't be pierced by spears. Then he was killed by the heavy armor of the officers and soldiers in the camp."

During so many days of attack, it is not that they did not climb over the wall, but every time they climbed over the wall, they were quickly driven out of the camp again.

Those who retreated from the front line reported that there were a large number of shield vehicles behind the camp of the officers and soldiers, and many officers and soldiers hid behind them. They were wearing heavy armor and holding strong bows, waiting for them.

The armor on those officers and soldiers was thick, and the bows and crossbows in their hands were powerful, which was completely different from the Kaiyuan bow held by ordinary officers and soldiers. The arrow was like a small spear.

Being shot by an arrow, whether armored or not, would result in loss of combat power or death on the spot, with no strength left to support.

Sometimes, officers and soldiers will suddenly open the gate of the village and launch a counter-charge.

They were wearing heavy armor, and firearms such as three-eyed guns and bird guns could not do much harm to them, let alone ordinary bows and arrows.

The heavy armored soldiers of the Ming army approached as close as [-] paces and opened their bows and arrows. Their shooting skills were extremely precise, and they almost never missed a shot.

After a few rounds of rapid shooting, they launched an assault forward together, and the soldiers in the front line couldn't stop them at all, and they were often defeated for thousands of miles.

Li Zicheng's eyes were fixed slightly, and he had naturally obtained all the information Liu Zongmin had obtained.

I also heard a little about Li Zicheng, the heavy armored soldier under Chen Wang. His generals were not only Han Chinese, but also Mongols.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were actually quite a few Mongols among the Nine Sides. Mengruhu and Hu Dawei were the Mongols who joined from the North, and they both became general soldiers in the end.

Gao Yingxiang also has a considerable number of Mongolian cavalry under his command. Chang Ziyu of the military department said: "There are hundreds of thousands of rogue bandits, and the strongest is none other than Chuang Wang. Many Han troops have surrendered, and the generals have died. It is unstoppable."

Li Zicheng naturally had many Mongolian soldiers under his command, and many of these Mongolian soldiers had fought against Hou Jin.

Li Zicheng also learned some news about Houjin from these Mongolian soldiers, such as how those people fought...

Chen Wang was using Jiannu's tactics.

Li Zicheng's eyes sparkled. The defeat on the battlefield did not affect his mood too much.

Anyway, the attack on Hanzhong Mansion from the beginning to the end was just a slap in the face, in order to hide his real intention-to attack Sichuan.

Li Zicheng is thinking about one thing now. He had never really seen Jiannu's tactics before. He only heard it mentioned several times by the Mongolian soldiers under him during the conversation, so he didn't have a detailed understanding.

Therefore, they have always adopted the old tactics of when they were in the border town, fast horses, light knives, soft bows and long arrows.

After many years of fighting, this set is really useful. The reason why I can survive until now is because of these four things, and I am still undefeated after fighting thousands of miles.

But seeing Chen Wang use Jiannu's tactics this time with his own eyes, he feels that the tactics used by Jiannu do seem to have merits.

Heavy armor, heavy arrows, shield car artillery, are indeed very powerful for the improvement of combat power, and they are used to attack fortifications, and they are almost invincible in field battles.

Perhaps, this method of warfare can also be extended to the army.

Select fine cavalry, one person with two horses, or three horses, and then equipped with three layers of heavy armor, strong bow and heavy arrows.

Riding to the front on horseback, opening the gap with a strong bow and heavy arrows, wearing heavy armor and directly rushing through the enemy's formation, the follow-up horse army immediately went up to expand the advantage.

It’s just that the shield car is a bit difficult to make. How to do the shield car that is hard to hurt is still a problem, and if you bring the shield car, the speed of transfer will inevitably slow down. If the Ming army encircles it, it will be too late to take it away. I can't have a car.

The shield car cannot be carried, but the hungry soldiers can be used as a substitute, and the hungry soldiers can be used as human shields to resist the guns.

Li Zicheng's thoughts were spinning rapidly, he could not compare with his uncle Gao Yingxiang in many aspects.

But there is one thing that Gao Yingxiang can't compare to Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng is good at learning, accepting many new things faster than ordinary people, and can often draw inferences about other cases from one instance.

At the beginning, Chen Wang in Qiutou Town used bursts of fire to cover his retreat with the instantaneous firepower of the burst of firecrackers and Francophones.

Li Zicheng quickly summed up a set of tactics suitable for his own army after the war. He used a small amount of bird guns as a supplement for medium and long-range firepower. Most of them used three-eyed guns. Franc machine.

It was precisely because of this set of tactics that Zhang Waijia went out of the city to fight without knowing what to do, and suffered a lot from Li Zicheng's men, which indirectly led to the subsequent defeat in Sanshui.

Holding the whip in his hand, Li Zicheng walked a little forward, looking up at the defense line built by Chen Wang.

The tactics are one aspect, and he feels that the camp Chen Wang set up at the intersection is also desirable.

In the past month, after going through the initial temptation, and now organizing crowd attacks, many attacks in a row have failed to achieve any results. A large part of the reason seems to be because of the strange building set up by Chen Wang. camp.

Different from ordinary square camps, or simple concave-convex camps, this camp set up by Chen Wang has many protruding sharp corners, as many as eight or nine densely packed, like a thorny bouquet with sharp edges and corners.

Between those big sharp corners there are some small sharp corners, which are all piled up with earth and wood.

The wall of the village is not vertical, but has a certain degree of slope.

From the top of the mountain, Li Zicheng could have a panoramic view of everything on the battlefield.

He could see that the soldiers charging forward were not only difficult to climb and browse through such a camp, but they would also suffer from multiple attacks while attacking.

The sound of gunfire from officers and soldiers did not stop for a moment. According to reports from the generals who had retreated from the front line, when they were in the front line, they could only feel the sound of gunfire in all directions, and there were enemies on their stomachs and backs, and there was almost no room to hide.

Perhaps, it can also be used for defense in the future...

It's just that some of the details still need to be observed, and Li Zicheng still doesn't understand many things, and he hasn't figured out the key points.

"For the next wave of attack, let the Ma Jun bring some of the military craftsmen to the positions of the front army, let them observe how the officers and soldiers' barracks are built, and let them remember it in their hearts. I will be of great use in the future."

Li Zicheng raised his whip and gave an order to Liu Zongmin who was beside him.

"Don't worry, brother, I will handle this matter myself."

Liu Zongmin didn't dare to be negligent, so he received the military order and walked straight down the mountain.

Intuition told him that the matter that Li Zicheng cared about was not a trivial matter.

When Liu Zongmin was walking down the mountain, he happened to meet Gao Yigong who was hurrying up from the bottom of the mountain.

Gao Yigong's expression was solemn, as if he had received some bad news, but Liu Zongmin didn't ask.

Liu Zongmin didn't want to think too much about troublesome things. Anyway, Li Zicheng came to pay attention to important things. There must be no problem. His trust in Li Zicheng was already deep in his bones.

"Chuangwang..."

Gao Yigong looked embarrassed and walked forward.

Li Zicheng frowned slightly, he had already noticed Gao Yigong's expression was wrong.

He sent Gao Yigong to collect intelligence, Gao Yigong's face now, probably something went wrong in some important link.

"Whatever, but it's okay to say."

Li Zicheng stabilized his mind. He knew that at this moment, he had to keep his mind as calm as possible.

Gao Yigong thought about looking around, but didn't speak immediately, but stepped forward again, and said in a low voice that only Li Zicheng could hear.

"Testing the horse and reporting back, the officers and soldiers in northern Sichuan have gathered at Qipan Pass, and the surrounding area of ​​​​Qipan Pass is already on full alert."

"A troop of about 2000 troops passed through the south of Mian County, went to Ning and Qiang, and galloped towards Qipanguan. After checking the banner, they became generals..."

Gao Yigong hesitated to speak, his voice trembling slightly.

"who is it?"

Li Zicheng was somewhat dissatisfied with Gao Yigong's attitude, he saw the fear on Gao Yigong's face.

Gao Yigong settled down and said.

"Check the banner and the battle, it seems to be the Datong soldiers under Cao Bianjiao..."

Li Zicheng's hand holding the whip was stagnant in mid-air, and he had already recalled some bad memories when he heard Cao Bianjiao.

"Seven passes..."

Li Zicheng's complexion changed slightly, and he was a little embarrassed.

"Didn't Hou Liangzhu lead his troops back to Guangyuan, why did he get to Qipan Pass again?"

In order to attract the attention of the Ming army, he stormed Hanzhong Mansion, and let King Zhanshi lead his troops to attack Xihe and Lixian County from Jiezhou and Chengxian County.

The chess he played had already played a role. In May, Hou Liangzhu retreated from Qipanguan, defended Guangyuan, and began to suppress bandits in the province.

But now, less than a month before the planned launch, the Ming army suddenly increased its troops towards Qipanguan.

It wasn't just Hou Liangzhu who led the troops northward to station at Qipanguan, Cao Bianjiao, who was originally under Sun Chuanting's command, entered the Hanzhong Mansion early, and then rushed to the north of Sichuan via the Hanzhong Mansion.

Qipan Pass was easy to defend and difficult to attack. In seven years, Li Zicheng entered Ningqiang of Hanzhong Prefecture once. At that time, he saw the defense of Qipan Pass with his own eyes.

The terrain of Qipanguan is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack. It is located at the mouth of the lower mountain of Qipanling. The pass road is winding and winding, so it is called "Qipan".

Hou Liangzhu has more than 2000 people under his command, and Cao Bianjiao has brought more than 2000 people. Now there are more than 4000 people guarding Qipan Pass.

Hou Liangzhu and Cao Bianjiao are both first-class fierce generals. With them guarding Qipan Pass and so many soldiers following them, it will be much more difficult to defeat Qipan Pass without going to the sky.

Li Zicheng looked gloomy, and looked up at the distant battlefield again.

It is still a trivial matter that Qipanguan is difficult to attack, but this action of the Ming army undoubtedly means that he has seen through his original plan and known his real intention to attack Sichuan.

The road to Baoning Mansion in Sichuan was cut off, and the heavy defenses set up by Chen Wang in Hanzhong Mansion were also insurmountable. Hong Chengchou in Gongchang Mansion in the north had already set up a net.

To the west is Minzhou Wei, which is desolate and mountainous, with fierce folk customs.

The original path to Xi'an Mansion was also discovered after being used, and now it has been blocked by troops sent by Sun Chuanting.

In the Tang newspaper that I received not long ago, I heard that Sun Chuanting is already leading the Supervising Biao Battalion, Huitong Luo Shangwen, Li Yuchun and other generals, and thousands of guards are heading south through Fengxiang Mansion, heading towards Feng County Suppress and go.

You can't go to the south, you can't go to the east, you can't go to the west, and you have no way out in the north.

The current situation seems to be in a dead end, like being in the carriage gorge, falling into the siege...

Li Zicheng narrowed his eyes, and a cold look appeared in his eyes.

He didn't fall into a panic because of this. Since the First World War in Chunhua, he has become more cautious. Gao Yingxiang's defeat also sounded the alarm for him, so he always has a backup when making plans.

Going south is not without a road through Qipanguan, he also knows a road that can enter Sichuan.

It is not a bad thing for the Ming army to increase its troops at Qipanguan and gather troops.

On the contrary, it's still a good thing...

　I will draw a picture of the situation for everyone tomorrow, otherwise I may not understand it.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)