The weather gradually became hotter, but the battle situation in Jiexiu showed no signs of improvement, the number of casualties was increasing day by day, and Chen Qian and Sima Shi added a task every day, that is, to bury the remains of those fallen soldiers.

When the weather became hot, the bodies could no longer be preserved, and in order to prevent the plague, they had to bury the bodies that died that day overnight.

But despite this, there have been many cases of diarrhea and vomiting in the army, and Chen Qian and Sima Shi had to be careful to prevent the spread of the disease.

Due to the hot and dry weather, there has been no precipitation for more than a month, and the drinking water of more than 100,000 troops is basically all dependent on the Fenshui, the largest river in Bingzhou.

The upper reaches of Fenshui are completely under the control of the Bingzhou army, and if the Bingzhou army poisons or throws some cattle and sheep that died of the epidemic in the upper reaches, then the entire river will be polluted, and the possibility of the outbreak of plague in the Sima army will be greatly increased.

This point has to be guarded against for Sima Yi, who is familiar with the military, but the key is how to prevent it, if the Bingzhou army really wants to poison it, any place in the hundreds of miles of rivers can be attacked, and Sima Jun is unable to prevent it.

Once it is found that there is a problem with the river water, then the drinking water of the hundreds of thousands of troops will inevitably become an unsolvable problem, people can go without food for a few days, but they cannot go without drinking water for a few days, especially in this hot and dry weather, the lack of water will cause a fatal disaster.

Of course, Sima Yi was unwilling to withdraw the army, he carefully prepared for a year, and the Northern Expedition ended in a hurry because of the capture of a Jiexiu City, Sima Yi could not accept it anyway.

What's more, Sima Yi has already felt the strangeness of his body, it is irreversible aging, Sima Yi has never felt so powerless as now, Sima Yi was originally a person with strong control, but now he feels that everything is gradually out of his control, and he can no longer do what he wants like before.

Maybe he had already sensed that Lord Yama was beckoning to him, and there was really not much time left for him.

Time is not waiting for me! If Sima Yi was ten years younger, perhaps he would have a deeper level of scheming, a more thorough and detailed plan, and he would be more restrained and forbearing. But he did feel powerless in his old age, he no longer had time to calmly maneuver, and in the face of a difficult battle situation, he had to make a decision.

If Bingzhou is a lock, then Jiexiu is the key to open this lock, Sima Yi knows this, and Cao Liang understands it better, so Cao Liang will use the time of the past few years to build Jiexiu City from an obscure second-class small county town into an impregnable fortress city.

It has been attacking continuously for more than a month, Sima Jun has paid a lot of price, but he has never been able to make an inch, Jiexiu's city wall is almost a desperate existence, Sima Yi has fought for so many years, and he has indeed never encountered such a hard bone to gnaw, even if he uses all his strength, it will not help.

Forced to helplessly, Chen Qian resorted to digging tunnels this extremely laborious way of siege, but unfortunately the state army had already taken precautions, Sima Jun took a lot of effort to dig the tunnel to the city of Jiexiu, and as a result, the state army diverted water to irrigate, hundreds of people were drowned in the tunnel, and the plan to dig the tunnel finally failed.

As for the method of building a soil mountain and erecting a high turret, Chen Qian has not tried it, but in front of the invincible catapult of the Bingzhou army, such a fortification has no chance at all, as long as it is within the range of the catapult, it will be swept miserably, and there is not even the slightest power to counterattack.

As for the outside of the range, it is naturally useless, the catapult is already the most long-range attack weapon, and its coverage is so wide that other long-range weapons cannot reach, so the existence of the catapult is the great enemy of Sima Jun, Chen Qian Sima Shi hates it to the root, but it is helpless.

The protection of the catapults by the state army was extremely tight, and these weapons were placed at the back of the city wall, and the Sima army under the city could only roughly judge the location of the catapult from the flying stone bullets, and so far, no one had been able to see the true face of the catapult, let alone look for opportunities to destroy it.

Sima Yi didn't know how much grain was stored in Jiexiu City, but from the current situation, it was inferred that the Bingzhou army would hold on for more than a year without pressure, and it was obviously impossible for Sima Yi to use the tricks to deal with Wang Ling's enemies, after all, Jiexiu was just a small city on the border of Jiexiu, it was not like Shouchun, it was the capital of Huainan, and besieging Shouchun was equivalent to choking Wang Ling's lifeline.

The siege of Jiexiu had almost no impact on Cao Liang, but made Sima Jun blocked under the city, and the momentum of the offensive was repeatedly frustrated, and hundreds of thousands of troops were trapped here, and the consumption of grain and grass was extremely huge, even if Sima Yi sat on more than ten states in the world, it was difficult to continue.

If the current strategic arrangement is not changed, Sima Jun's operation to merge the state this time can only end without a problem, costing countless money and food, and losing countless soldiers and horses, in exchange for such a result, I am afraid it is difficult for anyone to accept.

Sima Yi decided to take a risk, especially when information came that the main cavalry force of the Bingzhou Army was found in the area of Qi County, which made Sima Yi even more determined to fight.

In the last battle of Shangdang, Cao Liang completely abandoned all the strongholds of the city, led the army to maneuver between the lofty mountains and mountains of Shangdang, and used the high-speed mobility of the cavalry to find opportunities to destroy the enemy, and severely damaged the Sima army.

Therefore, this time to invade and merge the state, Sima Yi deliberately expanded the cavalry team, sparing a lot of money and wasting a year of time to build this cavalry.

But in a siege like Jiexiu, the cavalry team is completely unable to exert its strength, and of course, Sima Yi is reluctant to let the cavalry abandon their horses to fight on foot, so since the Northern Expedition, it is the infantry team that is really responsible for the main attack task, and the cavalry can only watch from the wall, and they are almost tired.

But this is also a helpless move, after all, siege warfare is not the place where cavalry comes in, and the more important role of cavalry is in the field battle.

In fact, compared to Jiexiu City, the cavalry of the Bingzhou army is the real enemy of Sima Yi, this time it was not easy to grasp the movement of the cavalry of Bingzhou, Sima Yi decided to bypass Jiexiu, go straight to Qi County, and start a decisive battle with the Bingzhou army, as long as the living force of the Bingzhou cavalry can be really eliminated, it is possible to win the final victory of this war. Baidu: Read the latest chapter of "The Last Three Kingdoms 2 Xingwei Jiezhong Literature" for free for the first time.