Some stone bullets smashed directly on the city wall, it can be seen that this kind of brick city wall is obviously stronger than the rammed earth city wall, and the stone bullet with the size of a human head smashed the wall, but only caused a slight shaking of the wall and some brick chips to collapse, and there was no large-scale collapse.

This first round of stone projectile projection, is indeed a tentative attack by Yanghu, according to the previous information and yesterday's on-the-spot inspection results, Yanghu does feel that the city of Lecheng has become stronger, obviously this is a strange trick that Zhong Hui came up with in order to fight against the catapult of the Bingzhou army, otherwise, in the face of the catapult of the Bingzhou army, the original city wall will become vulnerable.

That would be a disaster for the Jizhou city defense plan.

Therefore, Zhonghui will spend a lot of manpower and material resources to build masonry walls, such a high price naturally determines that it is impossible to upgrade all the cities in Jizhou, but at least it can ensure that the city of Xindu and more than a dozen other counties can all be replaced with brick walls, and other cities, unless necessary passes and important strongholds, are not included in the renovation plan.

It's not that Zhong Hui doesn't want to, but he can't do it, now all the people in Jizhou are soldiers, all the young and strong have been requisitioned, Jizhou's economy has long collapsed, and the tax revenue is close to zero, so the money, food and materials are all from Luoyang's support.

You must know that Sima Shi is not rich now, although he has vowed to fully support Jizhou and keep Jizhou at all costs, but the landlord's family does not have much to spare, and the money and food to support Jizhou are basically tightened and requisitioned from other states and counties.

Therefore, Zhong Hui's plan must make trade-offs, not only to give up some irrelevant cities, but also the secondary cities that need to be defended are not included in the transformation plan, these cities usually have fewer garrisons, and they do not belong to the kind of cities that must be protected.

Even if these cities were eventually conquered and the defenders were completely annihilated, as long as the annexed state army paid a certain price in casualties, Zhonghui's plan would be successful.

Anyway, there are a large number of Jizhou troops, and if you say that one is exchanged for another, even if it is three or five for one, it is a good deal.

Zhonghui, the defense area in the north of Jizhou, was handed over to Lu Zhao to be in charge, and it seems that Zhonghui handed over a large part of the power, but the northern part of Jizhou is the only way for the Bingzhou army to go south, and with Lu Zhao in front of him, Zhonghui's defensive pressure in Yecheng will be less, even if the northern part of Jizhou can't withstand the loss, as long as Lu Zhao can drag more Bingzhou troops to accompany the funeral, then this loss is still worth it.

In fact, Zhong Hui's defensive focus was concentrated in Yecheng, and in order to protect Yecheng, he even strategically abandoned the surrounding counties such as Qinghe Julu in the plains, and concentrated heavy troops, just to defend the impregnable defense line of Yecheng.

The battle of Lecheng is just a prologue battle of the Battle of Jizhou, and Cao Liang sees it more as a tentative battle, to try the skills of Zhong Hui and Lu Zhao, and prepare for the next difficult battle.

Yanghu naturally understood Cao Liang's good intentions, so the battle of attacking Lecheng was only allowed to survive and not to be defeated, and it could not be delayed for too long, let alone cause a large number of casualties, because the Bingzhou army was facing not only the enemy in Jizhou, but also the reinforcements of Sima Division, and the soldiers and horses of other states.

Cao Liang does not have the backing of Sima Shi, this attack on Jizhou, Cao Liang has already transferred all the mobile corps stationed in Youzhou to attack, and even the four infantry battalions in Bingzhou are already ready to fight.

Therefore, it is impossible for Yanghu to launch an ant-attached siege as soon as it comes up, and the ant-attached siege has very high requirements for troops, only their own side occupies a complete force against the enemy.

It is said that if you use ants to attack the city, the number of casualties on your side will be two or three times that of your opponent, which means that even if Yanghu fights all the men and horses in his hands, he may not be able to take Le Chenglai.

Therefore, Yanghu did not intend to use this primitive method of ant-attached siege at the beginning of the siege, and did not use a large number of catapults, unless he was blinded by lard.

The attack power of the catapult is extremely strong, and because of the relatively long range, when the catapult is arrayed, it can effectively avoid the range of the defenders' bows and arrows, which makes the defenders in the city sigh.

The catapult pitchers can also calmly load and fire stone projectiles without worrying that the bows and arrows in the city will call them.

The infantry battalion increased the original 50 catapults to 100 obviously in order to prepare to show their skills on the Jizhou battlefield, and even the previous catapult was equipped with zero catapults, and this expansion also allowed it to add 50 catapults, with the ability to attack the city wall without a journey.

In addition to destroying the enemy tower and causing certain casualties to the defenders, this round of attacks actually did not achieve much in essence, and it could not shake the walls of Lecheng at all.

Undeterred, he ordered the catapults to continue their attacks, moving from volleys to free attacks, putting pressure on the army continuously.

Jiang Xiu was indeed quite embarrassed just now, although he was not directly attacked by the stone bullets, but when the enemy building was blown down, Jiang Xiu was in front of the enemy building, and he was almost buried by the collapsed ruins and rubble.

However, the battle was still going on, and Jiang Xiu didn't bother to think about other things, and the top priority now was to stabilize his position and not give the Bingzhou army any opportunity to take advantage of.

Although the catapult of the Bingzhou army is very powerful, it also has a shortcoming, that is, its mobility is too poor to replace the infantry as the vanguard of the siege.

Therefore, Jiang Xiu concluded that the Bingzhou army did not achieve any expected results in these rounds of stone-throwing attacks, and would inevitably launch a large-scale ant-attached siege, and now what the Jizhou army has to do is to hold on to the rain of stone bullets.