Spring is a season that is pleasing to the eye and exciting, but spring in Shazhou is full of clouds of war.

An army of 20,000 Shatuo entered Shazhou on a sunny morning.

This army is still led by Zhu Xie Jinhai, although Zhu Xie Jinhai has been defeated under Zhangye City, but he still has a high prestige in Zhu Xie, this time the 20,000 army went out, more than half of the army is from Zhu Xie, naturally he is the commander.

Zhu Xie Jinhai also swore in front of the Council of Elders and the Khan that he had learned his lesson and would never let the scene of Zhangye repeat itself.

He himself also wanted to wash away the shame of defeat, and in the past two years, the shame of Zhangye's defeat has pressed on him like a mountain, making him extremely aggrieved.

The first target of the Shatuo army was Shazhou, of course they also wanted to capture Suzhou and Ganzhou, and even Liangzhou, but now Shazhou was the target they wanted to capture the most, Shazhou was close to their old nest, and the presence of the Tang army in Shazhou made them deeply uneasy.

Only by seizing Shazhou and stabilizing the rear defense can the Shatuo army continue to move south and point to Ganzhou.

An army of 20,000 marched towards Dunhuang, carrying a large number of siege weapons, mainly siege ladders, but also trebuchets, ramming rams, and a small number of nest carts.

Zhu Xie Jinhai's face was gloomy, frankly speaking, he didn't like siege warfare, the fiasco of the siege of Zhangye left him too deep a shadow, he hoped that everyone could stand on the field of a horse and a flat river, and fight happily, but the Tang army liked to defend the city, which made him extremely unhappy.

"Ye Hu, why hasn't the information about Dunhuang City come out in the past few days?" A centurion asked.

Zhu Xie Jinhai snorted, "If you can count on those wine bags and rice bags in the war, then what else is there to do with us?" ”

That being said, Zhu Xie Jinhai was also a little worried in his heart, would the spies he sent to infiltrate Dunhuang City last autumn be wiped out by the Tang army?

"Speed up and strive to arrive in Dunhuang City tomorrow!"

Zhu Xie Jinhai gave an order, and the 20,000 army sped up and slaughtered towards Dunhuang City.

.........

The 12,000-strong army of Dunhuang City has been waiting for it, and at the same time, 8,000 cavalry has also set out from Ganzhou and entered Suzhou, ready to aid Dunhuang City at any time.

As early as mid-January, Zhangye Sogdian merchants, including Shi Jia, repeatedly reminded Guo and Song that the Shatuo leadership had seen the Tang split as an opportunity and was likely to attack the Hexi Corridor in a big way.

To this end, the Hexi Army is also actively responding, in addition to transporting a large number of grain, oil, trebuchets and other military camp materials to Shazhou, it also sent three special troops to support Shazhou, one is a firearms battalion, one is a heavy crossbow army, and one is the internal guard battalion.

The strength of the internal guard battalion has been increased to 1,000 people, and it is fully guarded against the intelligence invasion of external forces in Hexi, Wang Yue personally led 300 elite internal guard troops to Dunhuang City half a month ago, and began to clear the spies deployed by Shatuo in Dunhuang City.

At the fifth watch, 300 internal guard soldiers and 1,000 Tang troops surrounded the Yizhou inn in the south of Dunhuang, and they received information from the Sogdians, which was opened by the Shatuo people.

The inn covers an area of at least five acres, with a lot of area and many houses inside, but it was closed ten days ago, but the internal guards found that they were still purchasing a large number of ingredients, which made people suspect that there were Shatuo spies hidden in the inn.

It is likely that the Shatuo army also wanted to capture Dunhuang City with the outside world, which was the least costly way to siege the city after all.

The Tang army did not take immediate action, and the soldiers of the Internal Guard Army were still exploring the possibility of the tunnel, when a soldier ran forward and said to Wang Yue: "General, there is indeed a tunnel, we have found the exit of the tunnel." ”

The tunnel exit was located in the backyard firewood room of the tavern next door, and was covered by a wooden board, which meant that the tavern next door was also opened by the Shatuo people, and it was almost missed, and five hundred people immediately surrounded the tavern.

When everything was ready, Wang Yue made an offensive gesture, and dozens of internal guard soldiers jumped onto the wall.

At this moment, dozens of arrows suddenly shot out of a room, and several soldiers could not dodge and were hit by the arrows.

Wang Yue was furious and shouted: "Throw the canister of oil!" ”

The soldiers threw the thin-skinned clay pots into the room, which shattered on the ground, and in a moment the oil overflowed inside and outside the house, at which point one of the soldiers threw a lit powder stick into it.

This is the firearms battalion in the development of the fuse rope invented gunpowder stick, the gunpowder particles with rosin resin bonded on a short wooden stick, basically no explosive power, but the combustion effect is excellent, much stronger than the oil arrow, can burn quickly and durably, by the internal guard battalion, take over the past, become the internal guard battalion arson weapon, in fact, not only the internal guard battalion fancy it, the ordnance department also fancy it, made a large number of gunpowder arrows, has replaced the rocket.

The gunpowder stick ignited the oil at once, and the room burned rapidly, and dozens of Shatuo spies hiding in the room fled in fright, and the internal guard soldiers who were ambushed at the head of the wall fired arrows in unison, and the Shatuo spies screamed and fell to the ground.

At this time, the internal guard soldiers broke open the door and killed them.

After a while, the soldiers pulled out the innkeeper, who was the hidden stake left in Dunhuang when the Shatuo people were defeated by the Tubo and withdrew, and he was also the intelligence leader of Shazhou.

His face was covered in blood, one of his ears had been cut off, and the shopkeeper was so frightened that he kowtowed repeatedly, "I said...... I said, "I just want to spare my life." ”

"Say it! In addition to your inn, where is there Shatuo Neiying? ”

"Kangdal's house in the east of the city, his house also has twenty Shatuo soldiers."

"What else?"

"No, I have forty people here, twenty people from the Condal family, a total of sixty people."

"There should be a hundred people in total!" Wang Yue said coldly.

"Nope! No! There were only sixty people in all, originally there were only forty people, and before the snow came, twenty more people came with Condal's caravan. ”

Wang Yue threw him aside and asked, "How is the situation?" ”

"It's over, more than 30 people were shot, and a few more people were hiding in the tunnels and were burned to death by us."

"How many people are there?" Wang Yue asked again.

"A total of forty Neiying, as well as five men, who are also their people, have all been killed."

Wang Yue waved his hand, "The first battalion will stay to fight the fire and clean up the items, and the rest of the brothers will follow me!" ”

He then led 250 soldiers of the internal guard and 500 soldiers of the Tang Army to the east of the city, and soon surrounded the mansion of the Sogdian merchant Condal.

The internal guards didn't have much concern, and directly smashed open the door and killed in........

At dawn, the fire in the inn had been extinguished, and the main general, Yao Jin, came to the scene to learn about the situation last night.

"A total of sixty Shatuo spies, in fact, sixty elite soldiers, their task is to open the city gate at night and let the Shatuo army enter the city."

Yao Jin was annoyed in his heart, this was the way they were best at attacking the city, but they were learned by the other party, and they sent people to plant in the city in advance, if they were not discovered, the consequences would be unimaginable.

At this time, Zheng Enping, the general who participated in the encirclement and suppression of the inn, whispered to Yao Jin: "The first time I used a gunpowder stick last night, it was very easy to use, and the burning ability was very strong, far exceeding that of rockets!" ”

Yao Jin nodded, he had been a little contemptuous of gunpowder weapons before, and now he also realized that he should reacquaint himself with gunpowder weapons.

The firearms camp is located in the northwest corner of Dunhuang City, which was originally the City God Temple, after the City God Temple was abandoned, it was overgrown with weeds, rats and snakes, but this land is very large, covering an area of 50 acres, and it happened to be used by the firearms camp as a test ground and research and development site.

Surrounded by high walls, Yang Jun accompanied Yao Jin, Wang Yue and other more than a dozen generals to the test site, last night's gunpowder stick actual combat made many generals in the army have an interest in gunpowder weapons.

On the test ground, there is a nest car that has been doubled in size, except for its slightly smaller size, there is no difference between it and the official nest car, and several donkeys pulling the nest car are moving slowly, gradually approaching a city wall.

When there were still more than a dozen steps away from the city wall, at this time, a tall and strong soldier on the city wall accurately threw a porcelain fire mine weighing about twenty catties into the nest car, the nest car exploded, the top was blown to pieces, more than a dozen straw men were blown out, and the iron nails in the porcelain bottle burst out.

The generals immediately understood, applauded together, Yang Jun said to everyone: "The key to this tactic is to grasp the timing, when the nest car is not close to the city wall, throw the fire and thunder into it, since it can't kill the other party, the poisonous nails that burst out are enough to kill the soldiers inside, and the top of the nest car is surrounded by baffles, and the poisonous nails can't hurt the defenders on the city." ”

Yao Jin asked, "Is that also fire oil?" When we were fighting Xue Yantuo in Fengzhou, we used fire oil to deal with the nest car, and the effect was also good. ”

Yang Jun smiled slightly: "The fire oil has a disadvantage, that is, it is easy to fall into the bottom of the nest car, and our porcelain fire mine is basically guaranteed to explode on the upper part of the nest car, of course, there is a difficulty in this, that is, the timing of the throwing, if the throwing is late, the porcelain bottle will explode in advance, but it will hurt the city, so it must be operated by the soldiers of the firearms battalion, they have undergone strict training, and they can basically do it foolproof!" ”