The mountains stretch out, outlining the intense undulations of the land to the southwest.

Under the surging lead clouds, white snow fell on the ground. From Xiangfan to the direction of the Sword Pavilion, thousands of miles away, some are chaotic, and some are dead.

The gates of the fortified city have been knocked open in the past few months, and the damage caused by the ravages of hundreds of thousands of troops has not yet healed. Among the charred ruins, there are still people in shabby clothes looking for their last hope; In a village ravaged by soldiers and bandits, an elderly couple is dying in a cold home; The displaced refugees gathered outside the few unbreached cities in the land, and when the snow fell, they began to freeze and starve to death in large numbers.

The earth extends to the Sword Pavilion, and hundreds of thousands of troops are densely packed like ant colonies, building new ecological communities on the land that is gradually becoming colder. In the mountains adjacent to the barracks, the trees have been cut down, and every day, columns of smoke for heating rise in the vast barracks, like towering clouds. In some of the barracks, new war materials were made every day, and they were transported by ox carts to the direction of the battlefield at the other end of the Sword Pavilion, and some of the self-sufficient troops were still wreaking havoc on the Han lands farther afield.

In the past autumn, most of the autumn harvest fruits that the army had scavenged across thousands of miles had already been gathered here. Corresponding to this are the millions of Hermes-Epitek who have completely lost their winter food and past savings. This logistics camp used to support the Great War in the southwest has hundreds of thousands of troops, and the warning range of radiation is hundreds of miles.

In November, Wanyan Xiyin had already arrived here to take up his seat, and what he was waiting for and guarding was a black flag team of 20,000 people who had crossed the mountains and mountains from the direction of Tubo Dayang. This is the most elite revenge force of the Huaxia Army that has experienced the blood of Xiaocang River, led by Qin Shaoqian, like a poisonous snake, pointing the blade at the hundreds of thousands of troops outside the Jin Kingdom Gathering Sword Pavilion.

If it weren't for Xi Yin's preparation for several years of preparation for the attack on the Black Flag and his detailed investigation of the situation of this army, the defense of the Jurchen army would probably be crushed by this army with one blow, and the Jurchen elite who had already entered the southwest by that time would probably not even be able to come out of the Sword Pavilion.

So in November, Xi Yin arrived here and took over the command of the tens of thousands of Jurchen elites, which was aimed at this army and fell a heavy blow. Qin Shaoqian understood that his own movements had been discovered, and more than 20,000 people stayed quietly in the mountains, and at this time, they had not made any movements.

There are some things that are hard to believe when they don't happen, but Xi Yin knows in his heart that if the war in the southwest is lost. The 20,000 people who watched the battle quietly and quietly cut the most drastic slash on the back road of the Jurchens.

Will the Jurchens lose? - No one on my side has made this idea for the time being. But the Black Flags, who are waiting for revenge, are clearly thinking about this as a real future.

Not long after the battle in front began, Ning Yi put down this steel knife in the rear, sneak attacked, and speculated...... Or even waiting for the Jurchens to flee and wipe out the entire Western Route Army. This kind of audacity and arrogance made Hee-yin feel displeased.

He calmly reorganized and trained the surrendered Han troops in the rear, selected the available soldiers step by step, and at the same time organized sufficient logistics and materials to support the front line.

The line of sight starts from here, passes the Sword Pavilion, and extends all the way. Between the vast mountains, the sprawling team weaves a long dragon, and there are military camps one by one on the nodes of the dragon's body. Traces of human activity radiated out of the barracks, and in the mountains and forests, there were also scenes of pitch black and baldness, and the fighting and flames created ugly leprosy everywhere.

In December, there was occasional rain and snow under the lead-blue sky, and the roads were muddy and slippery, although the Jurchens organized a large number of logistics personnel to maintain the roads, and the forward transportation capacity gradually became more and more difficult. The marching army slid in the muddy water with ox-carts, and sometimes people crowded through the mountains, and at every point of the transport capacity, the soldiers could be seen sitting in front of the fire shivering.

Ahead of the Sword Pavilion, the figures of people, ox carts, and horse-drawn carts filled the muddy mountain road that stretched for fifty miles. Under the encouragement and mobilization of Jurchen Marshal Zong Han, the advancing Jurchen troops appeared strong, and the Han army that was forced forward appeared numb, but the ranks were still extending. Some of the rugged places in the mountains have even been forcibly carved out by people to open up new roads, some people shouted in the mountains, scouts in strange clothes and different expressions came out of the woods from time to time, supported their companions, carried the wounded, and after resting, they went into the mountains in waves.

In order to reduce the pressure on the road, the wounded on the front line basically stopped moving to the rear at this time, and the dead were burned near the battlefield. The wounded were also left on the front line for treatment.

On a clear day, hot air balloons rise high in the sky, and when it's rainy and windy, people watch out for possible skirmishes in the woods.

The Huaxia army sneaked up on the Jin troops, and the scouts of the Jin State sometimes raided the Huaxia army.

The chaotic road stretched for fifty miles, and on the battlefield a little to the south, the front of the small city called Huangming County was full of corpses, the land was riddled with cannonballs, the scattered catapults left traces on the ground, and the remains of all kinds of siege equipment and even iron cannons were mixed with the corpses and stretched forward.

Several huge siege shield wagons large enough to withstand artillery fire collapsed all over the battlefield. The shape of the shield cart was like a right-angled triangle at the height of the city wall, with a thick shell-resistant surface in front and a slope of the rear beveled enough to climb the city, and the besieging soldiers pushed it to the side of the city wall, and the besieging soldiers could ascend the city in groups from the slope to gain the advantage of the formation. Today, these shield carts are also scattered on the battlefield.

In the past month or so, the Jurchens have relied on various equipment to fight several times in the city, but it does not make much sense, the stragglers will be set on fire by the Chinese soldiers, and they will only encounter grenades thrown by the other side when they rush up in groups.

Before the Chinese soldiers on the city walls died, it became a completely unrealistic attempt to ascend to the city and then win it in one fell swoop. During this period of time, the only things that could really cause damage to the defenders on the city wall seemed to be bows and arrows, fire mines, catapults, or iron cannons that were forcibly pushed forward and fired at the city wall, but the Huaxia army still had an absolute advantage in this regard.

For the Pullaway Speed, who is presiding over the war here, there are even more devastating things ahead.

The assault on Huangming County began in early November, during which hot air balloons from both sides were watching the movements of the opposing positions on a daily basis. As soon as the attack began, the soldiers in the hot air balloon reported to Bali that a new wall was being built dozens of feet behind the city, and that in the small city, a new wall was being built dozens of kilometers away.

The Huaxia Army organized a large number of engineers to demolish the buildings in the city at a jaw-dropping speed - some of the preparations had already been made, but they were only camouflaged with the buildings in front of them - they quickly erected the iron and wood frames, built the foundations, and threw in the earthwork and stones that had been removed from other houses, and poured gray "mud...... In just half a month, Huangming County resisted the onslaught of the Jurchens in front, and then built a new city wall several feet high.

In the process of building the new city wall, the head of the Huaxia Army named Ning Yi even appeared at the construction site several times, and participated in the construction of some key places.

This is a terrible slap in the face for the pull-out speed.

But this also made this Jurchen celebrity calm down and give up many illusions. By mid-December, the first city wall in Huangming County had been shattered and crumbling, and the teams that took turns participating in the attack under the command of Tu Lisu suffered tens of thousands of casualties, of which the Jurchen lineage, which was regarded as the main force, also suffered more than 5,000 casualties.

Waves of oil tactics on the city wall and forward under artillery bombardment will have higher casualties. However, if the attack is sustained and saturated by virtue of manpower superiority, the exchange ratio will be shortened. In a month and a half, he organized several rotational attacks that lasted up to eight or nine days, and he spread the battlefield with scattered Han soldiers, reducing the efficiency of the opponent's artillery as much as possible, occasionally feints and strong attacks, and a large number of Han prisoners were driven out in the early stage, which made the nerves of the Black Flag Army on the city wall completely unable to relax.

In the early stage of this battle, the Black Flag Army on the city wall was obviously high-spirited, but later, the city gradually fell silent, and it endured wave after wave of onslaught. Under the premise that the Jurchens paid huge casualties, the number of dead and wounded on the city was also rising, and the artillery array and catapults occasionally set fire to the city head, and then ordered the soldiers to take the city, but each time it was also recaptured by the Chinese soldiers.

The Yushuixi battlefield in the north, the terrain is relatively low-lying, and the offensive position has already turned into a muddy ground at this time, and the Jurchen attacks often have to cross the blood-stained mud to fight with the Huaxia army, but the nearby woods are relatively easy to pass, so the defensive front is stretched, and the rhythm of attack and defense is a little weird.

The defense on this side did not rely on the flawless walls, but occupied several high ground at key points, controlled the main road leading to the rear, and there were three lines of defense in front and behind. In fact, there are many small roads in the nearby streams and woods, and the vicinity of the position has not been completely blocked, but if you ignore the forcible breakthrough, you will be trapped in the narrow mountain road and step on mines in the back, and then be attacked by the living forces of the Huaxia army, you will die faster.

Because of this situation, there was a huge ecstasy array between the nearby hills, and the Huaxia army often had to take the initiative to attack at the right time to create results, and the Jurchens had more and more tactics to choose from. For more than a month, the two sides came and went, and the Jurchens suffered several losses, and they also forcibly pulled out a position on the front line of the Huaxia Army.

Yu Zhongdao of the Fifth Division of the Fifth Army of the Chinese Army was responsible for guarding this position, and in a combat strength in early December, the two sides fought each other in the muddy and icy muddy water, and each side suffered many casualties. Qu Zhengyan of the Fourth Division led a team of less than 500 people from half a regiment through the mountains and mountains to carry out a counter-assault, and smashed the periphery of the Jurchen military camp on this side of Yushuixi.

The movement of the accident in the rear spread to the front, the front line of the Jurchens was in chaos, and there were heavy casualties.

His advance was so resolute that he took a head in his hand and shouted, "Lie is dead!" Attack them before and after! "There are thousands of Jurchens who have withdrawn from the front line and want to rescue the main general, but at first glance, I really thought that I had been attacked from the front and back, and after a little hesitation, I was rushed out of the center of the team by Qu Zhengyan.

The smell of blood permeated the winter air, and the fight and hedging continued to spread among the mountains every day.

Yushuixi and Huangming County go further southwest, and you can see stretcher teams and reinforcement teams running by from time to time on the mountain roads. Pack horses carried supplies on their backs, pulling cannonballs, gunpowder, grain and grass and other supplies, and sent them to the battlefield every day. From time to time, screams and shouts could be heard from the camp for the wounded soldiers, and the heat and black smoke from the boiling water in the huts seemed to be a strange mist over the camp.

Ning Ji ran out of the tent, poured the blood water from the wooden basin into the ditch at the edge of the camp, and without the slightest rest, he turned to the hut and poured boiling water into the wooden basin, and ran back. The wounded battalion at the rear of the battlefield is theoretically not safe, the Jurchens are not soft persimmons, in fact, it is not impossible for the front-line battlefield to suddenly rout one day, and it is even quite likely. But Xiao Ningji still came here stubbornly.

In a sense, this is also the bottom line that he can accept.

In November, most of the prisoner of war camps were left in the camp of the prisoner of war who had survived the battlefield, and in December, the Han troops who had broken through into Yushuixi were surrounded and surrendered, and they were sent here.

These people are not trustworthy, the Han army units that can be selected by Zong Han to join this war are either outstanding in combat power or relatively "reliable" in the eyes of the Jurchens, they are not the kind of team that was driven into the mountains in turn during the Xiaocanghe War, and they are basically impossible to absorb in a short period of time.

These people will not be able to stay in the vicinity for a few days, and the biggest reason why they cannot be moved quickly is also because of road problems. The staff of the Huaxia Army, who were in charge of guarding them, would conduct a quick round of review of them, and the missionary work would be carried out as soon as possible. Hou Wu, who had left the main army earlier to participate in the security work in the rear, was one of the responsible persons here, and Hou Yuanxuan, who was involved in the management of battlefield intelligence at this time, was able to come over to see his father several times.

The winding road stretches all the way to Zizhou and to the Chengdu Plain in the southwest. In winter, the clouds on the Chengdu Plain are extremely low, and the sky looks like a cover of oppressive lead green. The workshops are operating in full force in the city, the large and small blast furnaces are spitting light and flames under the hazy sky, and the people driving ox carts, pushing wheelbarrows, and even carrying burdens are also continuously converging all kinds of materials in the direction of Zizhou and the direction of the Sword Pavilion, which is a similar scene to the transportation of materials outside the Sword Pavilion.

This is also the scene of two giant beasts fighting under the winter sky......

**************

December 19, the new year has not arrived, and it is rainy.

For more than a month, every rain would bring about the most tragic fight, because on the Jurchen side, the rain would take away the gap in firearms, and now is the time when they can take advantage of it.

On the fork in the road near Yushui Creek, in the direction of the eagle's beak rock, where the road is not wide, Mao Yishan let out hot air in his hand, clenched his fists, and in his field of vision, the black figure was advancing towards this side.

A decisive battle is about to break out at this moment......