The moon is cold and bright, and the sky is full of stars.

In the southwest, among the mountains on the front line of Zizhou, a strange atmosphere is spreading among hundreds of thousands of people.

The military is also a society, and when unexpected results suddenly occur and the news spreads, people will choose to face it with a variety of different attitudes.

Surprised, angry, bewildered, verified, bewildered, puzzled...... In the end, when it comes to acceptance and response, there will be thousands of manifestations from thousands of people.

After nightfall, the torches still spread in the mountains, and the atmosphere inside the camp was solemn, but in different places, there were still horses galloping, information was being exchanged, and even troops were moving.

Inside the Jin Army, the high-level personnel have already entered the meeting process, some of them went to Shiling in person, and some of the generals are still making various arrangements.

On the Xiukouji front, which corresponds to Shiling, a battle broke out on the northwest side of the foothills, which were still under martial law—the Jurchen troops who tried to make a detour and raid were blocked by a patrol of the Huaxia Army, and then several more units joined the battle. At the front of Xiukou, the Jurchen troops also organized a night attack under the leadership of Saba.

When he hurriedly arrived at the Xiukou military camp, what Ning Xi saw was the scene of fierce battles in the dark night: cannons, grenades, and arrows with fire were flying on the side of the mountain, and the soldiers were running between the camp and the front line.

"Ning Xi. How did you get here? Qu Zhengyan has always frowned slightly, and his words are calm and steady. The two saluted each other, and Ning Xi looked at the firelight on the front line and said, "Saba is still desperate." ”

"Two groups of scouts came down from the north, and they seemed to have been intercepted. The Jurchens' desperate bet is not difficult to predict, the 30,000 people at Wangyuan Bridge are inexplicably folded, as long as they don't plan to surrender, there will definitely be action at the moment, maybe taking advantage of our carelessness, but breaking through the defense line in one fell swoop, then we can still win back a city. Qu Zhengyan looked ahead, "But it's a desperate move, the two teams in the north can't get around, and the frontal attack looks beautiful, but it's actually weak." ”

Ning Xi nodded, he didn't have much contact with the front line, and at this time, looking at the fierce sound of the front line, he was probably adjusting his cognition in his heart: it turned out that this was still weak.

Then he smiled embarrassedly: "After the battle of Wangyuan Bridge is over, my father asked me to come over here to listen to Uncle Qu Uncle Wu's views on the next battle...... Of course, there is another thing, which is Ning Ji, he should be leaning over this way, and I will stop by to see him......"

Qu Zhengyan nodded, looked at the direction of the foothills on the northwest side of the battlefield silently, and then patted Ning Xi's shoulder and led him to the small wooden shed that served as a command post on the side: "In this way, you are at Wangyuan Bridge in the afternoon." ”

"Well, I followed the guard squad and watched from afar, and then I participated in the custody of the prisoners, and I set off here after dark."

"Okay, then tell me more about the process of the battle and the rockets."

In the afternoon, there were naturally other people who reported the battle of Wangyuan Bridge to Qu Zhengyan, but how could Ning Xi, who was at the scene and was Ning Yi's eldest son, know much about the situation passed by the heralds. Qu Zhengyan pulled Ning Xi to the shed and poured him a glass of water, Ning Xi also recounted the situation of the Wangyuan Bridge in its entirety, and roughly introduced the basic attributes of the "Emperor River", Qu Zhengyan pondered for a moment, and discussed the trend of the entire battlefield with Ning Xi, and at this time, the movement on the battlefield had actually gradually subsided.

Sabha, who took risks but never took advantage, chose to retreat one after another. The Huaxia army did not chase after him.

At this time, it was almost midnight, and not long after Ning Xi and Qu Zhengyan finished exchanging with each other, they saw Ning Ji who was half bloodstained in the crowd returning from the battle, this young man who was a head shorter than the others was running forward with a stretcher, on the stretcher was a soldier who was seriously injured and bleeding from his abdomen, Ning Ji moved skillfully and quickly trying to stop the bleeding of the other party.

The camp for the wounded was not far away, but in fact, after every battle, there were always not enough doctors with the army. Ning Xi rolled up his sleeves and walked over to Ning Ji with a basin of hot water.

The stretcher was put down between the sheds, and Ning Xi also put down the hot water and reached out to help, Ning Ji looked up - half of his face was covered with blood, and there were also abrasions on his forehead - seeing the arrival of his brother, he lowered his head again and continued to deal with the wounded's injuries. The two brothers worked together wordlessly.

Seeing this scene, Qu Zhengyan turned around and left here.

In fact, Ning Ji followed Mao Yishan's team, and yesterday he was still further north, and he made contact with this side for the first time. At the same time that the news was sent to Wangyuan Bridge, Qu Zhengyan also issued an order here, allowing the team to quickly converge in the direction of Xiukou. Mao Yishan, Ning Ji and the others should have rushed towards Xiukou quickly, and when the Jurchens were first discovered in the northwest mountains, they also happened to be nearby, and they quickly participated in the battle.

When Ning Xi came over, Qu Zhengyan was not completely sure whether Ning Ji could come back safely.

After following the military medical team for nearly two years, Xiao Ning Ji, who has also been taught by a good teacher, is not much inferior to other military doctors in healing, and Ning Xi has also received special teaching in this regard, and it can also play a certain role in helping. But the wounded in front of him were too seriously injured, and after a while, the other party's gaze finally gradually dimmed.

In the past few years, Ning Xi has followed Ning Yi, Chen Huozi and others to learn to strategize in a larger direction, and such cruel practical operations are very rare, he originally thought that his brothers would definitely be able to save each other if they worked together, but when he saw the wounded gradually dying, there was a huge sense of frustration rising in his heart. But Xiao Ningji, who was kneeling on the side, was only silent for a moment, after testing the deceased's snort and heartbeat, he touched the other party's eyes, and then stood up.

"Brother, let's go over there and help."

Ning Xi reacted and followed.

The brothers, as partners, have since rescued a seriously wounded man and bandaged a lightly wounded man, and the barracks are full of military doctors and nurses walking around, but the tension has subsided. Only then did the two of them go to the side to wash their hands and faces, and slowly walked towards the side of the barracks.

The night sky is full of stars.

Ning Xi looked at his younger brother, who was more than four years younger than him, as if he knew him again. Ning Ji turned his head and looked around: "Brother, what about the first sister, why didn't I come with you?" ”

"She is leading the female soldiers to help on the Wangyuan Bridge, and my father asked me to come over and talk to Uncle Qu about what happened next, by the way, see you." Ning Xi said, then remembered something, and took out a small package from his arms, "By the way, the rice cakes I asked me to bring you on the first day of the new year are already cold...... I'm hungry too, so let's eat half of it all by ourselves. ”

"The first sister gave it to me, how can you eat half of it?"

"I brought you all the way, and there is no merit and hard work. Now, do you want half the big or half the smaller? ”

"I'm a martial arts practitioner, I'm growing my body, I want to be big."

"Don't you know the reason why Kong Rong made pears?"

"I know, brother, if it's you, do you want a big one or a small one?"

"Of course I said it's small."

"So I'm going to be big, hahahaha......"

"Hahahaha......"

The brothers laughed when they said this. This kind of speech is one of the classic jokes of the Ning family, and the original source may also come from Ning Yi. The two of them each held half of the rice cake and sat down in the open space next to the barracks.

"Brother, I heard that Dad made a move at Wangyuan Bridge?"

"Well, Dad turned over all the belongings, 6,000 people overturned 30,000 people in Xianbao, and we didn't suffer many casualties. The Jurchens are going to have a headache. ”

"It's so powerful, how did you fight?"

Ning Ji was marching all night, and later participated in the battle, and only listened to a few words about the news of Wangyuan Bridge in bits and pieces, so Ning Xi recounted it to him in detail:

“…… I heard that in the evening, my father had already sent someone to the Jurchen military camp to talk to Zong Han. The 30,000 elites fought all the time, and the Jurchens actually had nothing to fight. ”

As he spoke, the two brothers had already finished eating the rice cakes, and at this time, Ning Ji raised his head to the north where he was still fighting, frowning slightly: "It seems that the golden dogs don't plan to surrender." ”

"There will be a period of time to digest the message of the Wangyuan Bridge, and the Jurchens may be desperate at first, but as long as we don't give them flaws, after they come to their senses, they can only choose between advancing and retreating. The Jurchens came out of the white mountains and black waters, and for thirty years, they took advantage of the victory of the brave who met on a narrow road, not without the danger of advancing forward, but in general, the greatest possibility is that they will still choose to retreat...... When the time comes, we will bite him and swallow him all the way. ”

Ning Ji has been on the battlefield for a while, and although he has made quite a few achievements, he is not yet old after all, and it is difficult for him to speak on matters at the strategic level in the general direction.

Ning Xi smiled: "Speaking of which, one thing may be certain, if you are not recalled to Xiukou, it is estimated that by tomorrow you will find that the Han army of Li Rulai's department has been rapidly retreating." Whether it is advancing or retreating, for the Jurchens, this Han army has no value at all, let's bombard it with rockets, it is estimated that it will completely defect and rush to the Jurchens. ”

Ning Ji blinked, and his move suddenly lit up: "At this time, the whole army retreats, as long as we charge a few times behind, he shouldn't be able to bear it, right?" ”

"That being said, but the next most important thing is to concentrate on catching the Jurchens' desperate bets and breaking their delusions. Once they begin to evacuate, the time has come to cut the meat. Also, Dad is planning to show off in front of Sticky Han, don't be caught by the Jurchens at this time. Ning Xi said this and added: "So, I'm here to keep an eye on you." ”

Under the starlight, Ning Ji's eyes were melancholy, and his face flattened.

At this time, it was already the early morning of the first day of March of this year, and while the brothers were talking at night next to the military camp, in the mountains on the other side, the Jurchens never chose to surrender after a sudden fiasco. On the side of the Wangyuan Bridge, thousands of Huaxia troops were guarding the newly defeated 20,000 prisoners, and in the mountains more than ten miles away, Yu Yu had already led a team to set off towards this side at night.

Waiting in front of them was another round of blocking by the Huaxia Army led by Han Jing and others.

In the dark woods of the front line of Shiling, there are also sporadic but treacherous scout conflicts, which continue to erupt in this night, and the Jurchens are anxiously trying every means of breakthrough, corresponding to a squad of the Huaxia Army secretly advancing on the east side of Shiling.

At night, the wind swept through the mountains with a whimper.

The mechanic team, accompanied by elite scouts, set up iron armor at the edge of the foothills, and someone had already calculated the direction.

“…… Test the horizontal...... It was forty-three degrees to the west, and the elevation angle was thirty-five degrees, and the predetermined distance was 350 zhang...... Two ......"

The hot air balloon floated on the peak of Shiling, and standing on the hot air balloon in the darkness were already several high-ranking officers of the Huaxia Army such as Pang Liu'an, each of whom had a telescope, and some people rubbed their hands, quietly waiting for the moment when the weapons were displayed.

In the barracks of the Jin people, the lights were lit, and at a certain moment, rockets dragged their bright tails and rose from the mountains on the east side of the barracks.

The explosion overturned the tents in the camp and ignited a fire. The camp of the Jin people was lively, but it did not cause a large-scale disturbance or bombing of the camp - this was a sign that the other side had prepared for a long time, and soon after, several rockets whistled down on the camp of the Jin people, although it could not have the effect of a decisive mutiny, but the momentum caused was amazing.

The Jurchen scouts reacted, and the two sides fought briefly in the mountains, and after an hour, two more rockets flew into the Jinren's Shiling camp from the other direction.

Under the shroud of stars and moons, a seemingly peaceful night, there are still many conflicts and malice about to erupt.

As long as there is a glimmer of possibility, neither side will give the other any breathing space.

Zong Han, Gao Qingyi, Han Qixian, Bali Su, Wanyan Sheyema, Da Cheng and others gathered in the camp behind Shiling. People were calculating the variables and possibilities of the next battle, and Da Cheng Li rushed into the Chengdu Plain in a desperate manner, and pulled out the speed and others to try to calmly analyze the role and flaws of the new weapons of the Huaxia Army.

Zong Han didn't say much, he sat on the chair behind him, as if in half a day, this lifelong Jurchen veteran had aged by ten years. He is like an old but still dangerous lion, recalling the countless hardships and dangers of this life in the dark, looking for strength from the difficulties of the past, and wisdom and determination alternately emerge in his eyes.

Decades ago, when the Jurchens had only a few thousand supporters, everyone was afraid of the huge Liao State, but he and Wanyan Aguta insisted on their determination to oppose Liao. They grasped the key to the rise and fall of the ethnic group in the tide of ups and downs of history, and thus determined the prosperity of the Jurchens for decades. At this moment, he knew that it was the same time again.

This moment was sudden, and even the people gathered around him, such as Gao Qingyi, Han Qixian and others, may not be able to realize this at the first time. But Zong Han is a person who has borne the rise and fall of the clan for many years, as if in the dark, the feeling of trembling and goosebumps has descended, and the real horror is not even the capture of his son Xianbao, the defeat of those 30,000 people is an omen that will fundamentally determine the future fate of the entire Jin Kingdom.

Zong Han couldn't even fully comprehend this omen, he saw in the dark the rockets that flew into the barracks and then exploded, it was true that it might have such and such weaknesses, but when it came to the big battlefield, even if it had such weaknesses, the distance between the Jurchens and the Huaxia army might have become an insurmountable moat.

Even this distance may continue to widen.

Xi Yin once told him about the possibility of Gewu Zhixue that the southwest was studying, but Zong Han didn't fully understand it—even Ceres himself probably didn't expect this scene to happen on the battlefield in the southwest. His mind flashed the original intention of the Southern Expedition: the next generation of the Jurchens had begun to indulge in pleasure, and perhaps one day they would even become the same as the Wu Dynasty of the past, and he and Xi Yin and others maintained the last glory of the Jurchens, hoping to solve the great trouble of the southwest before the afterglow was gone.

Is it too late? How much hope is there for moving forward?

If you go back, maybe Jin Guo will lose the opportunity forever......

“…… But all firearms must first be afraid of rainy days, so if you want to deal with such firearms of the other side, the first thing you need is still a rainy day...... Now into spring, the southwest is rainy and rainy, if you can seize this opportunity, it is not impossible to win...... In addition, Ning Yi only took out such things at this time, which may prove that he doesn't have many firearms, we can't fight the southwest this time, and if we fight again in the future, these firearms may be overwhelming......"

“…… I don't know if the other party deliberately brought us in......"

“…… If that's the case, they didn't keep the rain and Huang Ming at the beginning, and we won't come in too. If his firearms are endless, when he arrives in the city of Zizhou, what is the difficulty of a battle, and how many hundreds of thousands of people can stand him? ”

“…… There is some truth to this. ”

Everyone is still talking, in fact, they can only talk about the status quo, they have to face the reality, they want to withdraw from the army, and so on, they don't dare to take the lead in saying it after all. Zong Han leaned on his chair and stood up.

"Since the beginning of the war last year, it has been as much as four months, and our army has been moving forward all the way to the southwest. But as for the method of not being able to beat and exiting the Sword Gate Pass all the way, it has not been done from beginning to end. ”

When Zong Han said this, his gaze slowly swept over everyone, and the tent was almost suffocatingly quiet. I just heard him say slowly: "Let's do it...... As soon as possible, let's do the method of retreating. ”

Gao Qingyi, Ba Lisu and the others looked at each other, as deep as an ancient well, but they didn't speak, Da Cheng clenched his fists, his body was trembling, and he lowered his head. After a while, Shiyama came out and knelt down in the middle of the tent.

"Erchen, I am willing to be the queen of the army."

The pale breath is descending here, this is a taste that all the generals of the Jin Army have never tasted, countless thoughts, mixed tastes, surging in their hearts, any meticulous decision is naturally impossible to make in this night, Zong Han did not answer Shiyama's request, he patted his son on the shoulder, and his eyes only looked at the front of the tent.

"When the sky is bright, let people report back to the Huaxia Army, I want to talk to Na Ning Yi."

For the first time in decades, the air around the Jurchen barracks was already slightly cool. If we look back and forward, in this dark night of conflict, the signal of the change of the times has caught many people off guard, and some people have clearly felt the huge gap and change, and many more people may have to chew on all this slowly for dozens of days, months or even longer.

At dawn, the remnants of the army's attempt to rescue the Wangyuan Bridge were found by the army that blocked it, and they returned home, and the front line of the Huaxia Army was still guarded like golden soup, and there was no gap to be found. The Jurchens replied to the message that Zong Han and Ning Yi met to "talk", and almost at the same moment, there were other news that reached the camps of both sides one after another during this day.

In the early morning sunshine, Ning Yi carefully read the news that came urgently, and when he put down the information, he let out a long, long sigh. In this news, there are both good news and bad news.

Over the years, the nature of good news and bad news is actually much the same, and good news will inevitably be accompanied by bad news, but bad news does not necessarily bring good news. War can only be impassioned in it, and in reality, there may only be a difference between hurting people and hurting more.

The battle of Changsha was won.

(End of chapter)