Yankou Town on the east side of Jialing River is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and all the trails are open from the mountains. It takes a lot of manpower and material resources to open up mountains and build roads, so there are mostly narrow roads along the mouth town that are undulating and rugged, and the main road that can drive and walk is only one that extends to the east.

Because it was once a county magistrate, for the convenience of carriages and horses, the officials of the previous dynasty were stunned and smashed with a hammer, and hard chiseled out this decent main path. said that it is the main path, but in fact, it is still not worth mentioning compared to the serious official road. Just out of the town, this main path is quite spacious, but the farther away from the town, I don't know whether it was cut corners when it was built or there were indeed terrain restrictions, in short, it gradually narrowed. In particular, after crossing the tributary that flows into the Jialing River to the east and the north-south direction of Yuechi water, the width of the trail drops sharply, and the widest part can only accommodate three horses in parallel, until Pu'an Town, after dividing the fork to Yuechi County to the north and to Guang'an Prefecture to the northeast.

Guo Qizhu, who set out from Yuechi County, first went south into Pu'an Town, rested and recuperated, and spying on the military situation, and only then did he feel that the road was obstructive and difficult.

"Turtle son." Guo Qizhu led the horse and walked slowly, looking up from time to time to see the troops in front of him that stretched into the distance. Although he is no stranger to Dingyuan County, he counts on his fingers, and it has been about three years since the last time he went to Yankou Town. At that time, he felt that the road in Yankou Town was not easy to walk, and it was very different from the nearby prefectures and counties, and he never thought that after a few years, instead of widening and repairing, this road would become more barren and abandoned. If he hadn't known where the road leads, and looked at the messy bricks and stones on the side of the road mixed with dead grass and snow, he would have thought that he was walking in a mass grave.

The transportation of Yankou Town mainly depends on waterways, but even so, land routes cannot be so neglected. As soon as Guo Qizhu thought of those businessmen and gentlemen in Yankou Town, who were full of fat brains and couldn't see their teeth when they laughed, he was unhappy in his heart. They are all stingy iron roosters, I don't know where to hide all the money, allocate some of it, and build roads, which can be regarded as the blessing of accumulating yin virtue. No, the road conditions are so bad, delaying the speed of their march, if they can't catch up with them to save them, I'm afraid they will be retributed for their stinginess.

"How far is Salt Flat Creek?" The water of Yuechi is quite long, "Yantan Creek" is another name for this section of Yankou Town, Guo Qizhu is a Sichuan person, and naturally knows that he has seen Yantan Creek, and Yankou Town is also a stone's throw away.

The Tang soldier at the front of the team quickly replied: "The salt flat stream is already in sight, and the distance in front is only half a mile. ”

Although the marching array is basically a long snake type, because of the narrow road, Guo Qizhu's 1,500 people are stretched extraordinarily long, and the distance between the head and tail is nearly a mile, and Guo Qizhu's position is in the middle of the queue and the back, so it can be seen that according to the current marching speed, he still needs at least a stick of incense to see the salt flat stream.

In the past, Guo Qizhu, who had quite a lot of combat experience, would never dare to let the team stretch to such a point. If the enemy had really attacked by surprise, before his own military orders reached the whole army, the troops would have been cut into several sections and lost control.

It is only after careful investigation that Guo Qizhu is convinced that there are only a few "Zhao thief remnants" left in Yankou Town, and he has always asked a 100-man team at the forefront to keep the battle sequence and advance slowly, it is conceivable that even if the "Zhao thief remnant party" is treacherous and insidious, and wants to take advantage of the unstable foothold of his army to take a blow to the head, his army is also capable of resisting and gaining enough time to complete the transformation of the whole army and even counterattack.

The time for a stick of incense came in a flash, and during the period, the Tang soldiers who returned to the ceremony as usual provided news that the port of Yankou Town was calm, and there was no movement of Zhou Pian Jia leaving the port. It can be seen that the "Zhao Thief Remnant Party" is still stranded in Yankou Town, whether they have not reacted yet or plan to fight to the death, it doesn't matter to Guo Qizhu. He never wavered from the outcome of today's reconquest of Yankou Town.

The section of road east of Yantan Creek is the most narrow and difficult to navigate, and Guo Qizhu ordered early on to assemble in advance, and then cross the bridge to cross the stream after reorganization.

The assembly area is a rare small dam in the trail, but it can only accommodate a maximum of 500 people. Guo Qizhu rushed to the dam on horseback and gathered 500 people, while the remaining 1,000 people rested in the rear along the road and stood by.

The dam goes further to the west, and it will pass through the "long ditch", which is said to be the narrowest mountain gorge in the whole road, and after passing the long ditch, you can go to the salt flat stream and cross the stream by taking the existing stone bridge.

Guo Qizhu was good at calculation, he made a slight distribution, selected 100 strong people from 500 people, as pioneers, waited for the salt flat stream, held the opposite bank, and then drew 500 people from the back and then went up. In this case, when the 600 men have crossed the salt flat stream, they will be able to rush straight to the town of Yankou that is close at hand without stopping, and the follow-up troops of 8 or 900 will be able to slowly cross the gorge and cross the stream. There are only a few hundred Zhao thieves in Yankou Town, and with their own six hundred good soldiers, how can they be invincible?

The 100-person vanguard team had already been organized, and it was quickly organized, and Guo Qizhu took the lead with 100 households. He continued to stay at the dam, and the troops who stayed behind were handed over to a commander.

The scouts have reported that in the long ditch that is half a mile long, there are somehow many board carts and sheep's horns, and countless sacks are stacked on top of each other. Poke open the sack and look at it, and most of it is hay, grain or beans. There were quite a few of these cars, and clusters of them almost completely blocked the road that was already not wide in the long ditch.

Faced with many cars of unknown origin, Guo Qizhu was full of doubts at first. He was thoughtful, and the first thing that came to his mind was, "Do the thieves want to attack with fire?" "Dry winters, truckloads of hay, and long and narrow mountain gorges are the three elements of a fire attack. Guo Qizhu had never encountered such a situation, and he was a little undecided for a while. Haven't you ever eaten pork and never seen a pig run? He remembered the well-known cases of fire attacks recorded in the book, one of the key links was the ambush, imagine if there was no ambush suddenly appeared and ignited the hay, how much could he have done with his adequate preparation? With this guidance, he no longer hesitated, and immediately sent someone to carefully search the upper and lower sides of the long ditch. The soldiers searched all over the mountain, lifted up a piece of floating turf and looked at it, and finally determined that there were no thieves in ambush inside and outside the long ditch.

This result made Guo Qizhu a little surprised. Didn't the thieves pile up these carts to carry out fire attacks?

He thought about it carefully, and finally smiled bitterly, secretly mocking himself for being so cowardly. There are only a small number of thieves in Yankou Town, thinking that Zhao thief, can gallop so far, I am afraid that he is still a little bold, but now he is facing it, but he is only a small leader with the size of a sesame mung bean in the opponent's camp. What is a little boss who is a thief capable of? I am afraid that the vigilance work was not in place, and when I temporarily learned that I was leading the army to attack, I was panicked and had nothing to do, so I could only break the jar and come up with a trick to block the road with a grain truck. For what? Naturally, it is not the "high-level" fire attack, but only the "humble" delay time.

Thinking about it like this, I felt a lot of relief in my heart, and then Tang Bing reported again, saying that there seemed to be an abnormal movement in the port of Yankou Town, and the thieves seemed to want to run. Guo Qizhu believes that this situation strongly confirms his thoughts, and the thieves are just a clumsy trick to drag the troops.

Without worries, under Guo Qizhu's instructions, the vanguard quickly cleared a small passage in the piled up cars. This small passage can only be passed by one person, but for the vigorous vanguard, it will pass in the blink of an eye.

It was reported from the front that the vanguard had arrived at the stone bridge by the salt flat stream and was instructed to cross the stream. Guo Qizhu gave the military order to cross the river, and he also began to take the newly adjusted 500 people on the small dam to start the operation. Because he heard the military report that the thieves in Yankou Town wanted to run, Guo Qizhu's heart was slightly anxious, thinking that this work of recovering the lost land, if he didn't bring a few thieves' heads, how could he convince the public? With the idea of wanting to cut off some heads to add to his work, Guo Qizhu very much didn't want to watch the thieves slip away from under his nose - even if he didn't mention his head, these last thieves must have a lot of treasures in their hands, as an official and soldier, they didn't dare to rob in broad daylight, but this thing passed through the hands of the thieves, and if he took it again, he would be at ease, and let them fly in vain, wouldn't it be a pity!

Therefore, as soon as the vanguard crossed the stream, Guo Qizhu, who was "eager to kill the enemy", took 500 people into the long ditch. The long ditch, which was narrow and blocked by many carts, was almost filled with the five hundred men waiting for a return from the front.

Half an hour later, the vanguard had a pond soldier to report that the whole team had crossed the stream smoothly.

Everything was progressing well, Guo Qizhu ordered his 500 men to continue to advance, and when the 600 people had gathered on the west bank of Yantan Creek, the credit for recovering Yankou Town was tightly grasped.

Unexpectedly, Guo Qizhu only took two steps, and the alarms in front of him were repeated, and he couldn't help but be stunned when he listened carefully, the hundred-person vanguard that had crossed the river had been besieged by thieves at this time.

It was Li Yanyi and his 500 soldiers of the Zhao battalion who launched the attack.

At this time, he held a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, and kept shouting in his mouth-

"Kill!"

Yankou Town is very close to here, and the road path between them is quite spacious and flat, so Li Yanyi has reorganized the soldiers in the town, and there is no need to ambush at all, and he has already grabbed the vanguard of the official army with a charge.

Even though the vanguard of the official army had already prepared for battle, they really did not expect that the thieves in Yankou Town had been preparing for a long time. In the past, there were only a few hundred thieves who encountered the Shangguan army, and they all fled in despair, and those who could compete with the fortress by virtue of geography were already considered fat. Those who take the initiative to rush out to fight in the field like this are really unheard of and unseen.

Surprise is surprise, this officer army is the elite of Guo Qizhu's battalion, and naturally it will not be afraid because of this. Under the command of the hundred households who led the team, these hundred people formed a small group of about twenty in groups of five to fight against the soldiers of the Zhao battalion who surrounded and killed them from three sides. They wore cotton armor and their shape was very eye-catching, compared to the soldiers of the Zhao battalion who wore a variety of cotton clothes and jackets, they were much shabby. The rear battalion in charge of Li Yanyi has almost no operational requirements in peacetime, so the requirements for armament are a grade lower than those of the war barracks, and in the middle of winter, warm clothes are considered a luxury, let alone anything else. However, the protection is poor, but these hundreds of people came from three sides, and all kinds of cotton clothes were mixed together, which made it more powerful, making the undecided officers and soldiers unable to figure out the number of people.

Li Yanyi shot down an officer with an arrow in his hand, then put away his bow and drew his sword and stepped forward, and his soldiers also shouted and killed the vanguard of the official army. The vanguard detachment of 100 households, deployed in all directions, and withstood the most impactful first attack of the soldiers of the Zhao battalion, knowing it in his heart, and loudly encouraging the officers and soldiers: "Sons, the thieves of the little, the Japanese immortal banban!" Then he began to slowly regain his earlier disadvantage.

To be honest, the first wave of impact did not work, which was already expected by Li Yanyi. Less than 20 percent of his 500 people have been on the battlefield, and only a handful of them have actually had blood stained on their knives and cut off people's heads. Even if the number of people is several times that of the official army at the moment, it is absolutely impossible to say that the official army will be defeated in a short period of time. Obviously, the hundred households of the vanguard of the official army also realized that the combat effectiveness of the soldiers of the Zhao battalion was not to be feared, so they were calm and wanted to fight steadily and insist on waiting for the reinforcements to arrive.

Li Yanyi, who had the idea of fighting the officers and soldiers, also knew that he naturally couldn't let the officers and soldiers come back, and the officers and soldiers of a hundred people were still so difficult to bite, let alone thousands. The reason why he wanted to abandon the ready-made fortifications in Yankou Town and chose to take the initiative to intercept the officers and troops here was that he had other ideas.

His thoughts are embodied in the current vanguard of the official army, which can be summed up in just one word - drag!

His own strength is only 500, and with the combat strength of these 500 people, he can only hold back the officers and troops of 100 people at most, and judging from the current situation, the soldiers of the Zhao battalion of more than 400 and nearly 100 officers and soldiers are in a melee, which can only be said to be barely with the enemy. If there are fifty more officers and soldiers, I am afraid that I will be at a disadvantage when I ascend. Fortunately, the first batch of officers and soldiers who crossed the bridge, no more, no less, were within the acceptable range.

The vanguard of the 100-person officer army had already left the stone bridge for more than 20 steps, and the soldiers of the Zhao battalion deliberately put pressure on them from three sides, slowly forcing them to a farther position, and the 100 officers and soldiers were a clever master, and soon found that something was wrong, and shouted: "Don't let them cross the bridge!" ”

But it was too late, his hundred people were suppressed by more than 400 enemies, and it was difficult to take a step forward in the direction of the stone bridge, not to mention that when the words fell, there was already a force behind the Zhao camp, and a hurricane was like, and it had already been inserted horizontally and grabbed the bridge.