High-spirited, surprised, angry, calm, desperate. Within a day, the five flavors of sweet, sour, bitter and salty life seemed to have been tasted all over this place, looking up at the slowly dimming sky, Wang Guangen felt that there was no reason to stay any longer.

The sound of horses' hooves, Wang Guangtai, who was full of sores and armor, threw the horsewhip to Ben Cong, scolded and strode in front of Wang Guangen, tilted his head and sighed, half angry and half helpless: "Brother, I have been defeated again." ”

The last brilliance on Wang Guangen's face came to an end with his words, his hands propped up on the table in front of him, shook his head and said: "I didn't think that my Wang Mou would be planted in front of a few fences, a few ravines and other dead things one day......

"From the early morning to the present, including my headquarters, all the departments have successively attacked the fortifications of Fang Yuan Zhao and the thieves no less than ten times, but each time to no avail, but the soldiers have been lost, and the fighting spirit has been lost. Hu Ke has been screaming and tired by the turtle grandson I don't know how many times, and the generals in my headquarters have also complained a lot, and if it drags on, the army's heart will inevitably be shaken. Please prepare early, brother. ”

Hearing this, Wang Guangen lowered his head and was speechless for a long time, until there were a few clangs in the distance, and he suddenly turned his head and asked, "Who is going to work again?" ”

Wang Guangtai said indifferently: "It must be Liu Xiyao's house." He was eager to regain Fang Yuan, and he was so positive. It's just that the soldiers under his hands also broke a lot and hit the stones with eggs. ”

"Whew-"

Wang Guangen let out a long breath, as if he wanted to expel all the grievances of the day, Wang Guangtai saw that his eyes flashed a little bit of fine light, a little surprised, and asked, "Brother, ...... Do you want to try again? ”

"Try again." Wang Guangen looked up, the sky was not completely dark, "Before sunset, try again." As he spoke, his spirits perked up, "If I don't try this last time, I can't be at ease." Liu Xiyao rushed to the front and was available, and ordered Hu Keshou to hide him immediately...... You lead your headquarters behind and wait for an opportunity to support. ”

Wang Guangtai was puzzled: "The little brother can go to get it, but that Hu can accept it...... I'm afraid I'll push him into a hurry......"

"I'm afraid of a donkey!" Wang Guangen said angrily, pulled out the knife and slashed into the edge of the table with a "poof", and the blade penetrated into the wood very deeply, which showed its fierceness, "Lao Tzu can swallow Bai Yunsheng, can't he swallow him?" Go, and if he does not obey, he shall slash him with a sword, and drive his soldiers to fill the ditch." ”

Wang Guangtai rarely saw his brother's fierce face, and his heart was shocked, but he said straightly: "Little brother can save it!" Little brother saves! "After saying that, he pulled his legs and left.

After walking two steps, Wang Guangen stopped him and said: "If you send a message to Yang Youxian on the east bank of the Shahe River, you will be treated the same, if you don't do anything, you will wait to be knifed!" It's a dog's day, watching the fire from the other side for a long time, and treating Lao Tzu as a monkey? Lao Tzu couldn't beat the wall today, so he slaughtered Hu Keshou and Yang Youxian first! ”

Yesterday, Wang Guangen had already sent a message to Yang Youxian, the "Broken Mountain Tiger" stationed in Tianjiayao a few miles on the other side of the Shahe River on the east side of Fangyuan, hoping that while he was attacking the fortifications on the north side, he would rush to cross the tidal flats of the Shahe River and intersperse them with the unrepaired fortifications of the Zhao camp in the eastern section of Fangyuan, so as to divide the Zhao camp. Yang Youxian said yes to the messenger, but today was a few hours later than the agreed time, and it was not until noon that he dragged his troops to the east bank of the Shahe River. Then for the whole afternoon, he only led his troops to stand on the east bank of the Shahe River, confronting the defenders of Zhao Ying across the river, and did not take any action. Wang Guangen was able to take down the Zhao Ying fortifications by himself alone, so he didn't pay attention to him, but as a result, he didn't make any progress until now, and his mentality changed immediately, and he resented Yang Youxian's inaction.

"You immortal banban, a turtle son is here again!" On the other side of the north fortification, Chang Guoan, whose face was flushed, scolded.

The strength of the Zhao battalion stationed in Fangyuan consisted of 500 people from Xiong Wanjian and 1,000 people from the Chang State Security Department. Xiong Wanjian Sentinel was in charge of defending the fortifications, and the 500 men were distributed layer by layer according to the structure of the fortifications.

The Chang Guoan Department was divided into two, with 500 men deployed in the western section of the fortifications to prevent Cao's battalion from taking advantage of the weakness, while the other 500 men squatted at the east end to block the gap and prevent the river. He had been defending the Shahe tidal flats, but seeing that Yang Youxian's troops, who were not moving, obviously had no fighting spirit, he successively withdrew his troops to assist Xiong Wanjian in defending the fortifications. At this time, even he himself had already come to the south side of the fortifications, and there were only more than 100 people standing along the shore by the Shahe River, pretending to be.

Chang Guoan's scolding fell, and Xiong Wanjian, who had a wide body, walked over, put his hand on his shoulder and said: "The sky is about to be dark, and the enemy army is unfavorable in several battles, so it will be tired." Now it is unreasonable to make a comeback without thinking about rectification. Then he said, "The brothers of the Wang family are still dying at this time, and they may not be without strange soldiers." The north of the fortifications is not enough to worry about, but Yang Youxian's troops on the other side need to be guarded against. ”

As they spoke, their eyes swept to the northeast at the same time, and not far from the northeast, the three big flags in the formation of Wang Guangen's army waved and danced. Chang Guoan said: "The language of these three flags is different, maybe it really gives my brother what he said." After that, he nodded with his sword, "Brother, don't worry, the sand river will be handed over to me, and Yang Youxian won't be able to drill through half of his son!" ”

Xiong Wanjian nodded, watched him leave, and turned his head back to the front. There was shouting and killing, and Liu Xiyao, the pioneer of Cao Ying, was in a hurry. After a day of fierce fighting, repeated tug-of-war, although Cao's soldiers suffered many losses, the outermost three-layer hedge and a trench of the northern fortifications were also destroyed and conquered under the stacking of their lives. At present, most of the soldiers in Xiong Wanjian Sentinel retreated to the outermost low wall, and relied on the wall and the intervals of the earthen ramparts to form a cross-fire network to defend. They constantly fired sporadically from the holes or buttresses of the guns, and even if they were not as powerful as a uniform volley of guns, they were relatively more stable than mobile field warfare. Without the conditions that can be prepared in advance when encountering a platoon of guns, in the face of this kind of cold gun shooting, Cao Yingbing is still very uncomfortable, and there are many casualties on the road.

Xiong Wanjian's right outpost, which belonged to the Wuqi Army, was not considered elite in the Zhao camp, but it was not weak, but in a fierce battle, he faced several times the Cao battalion soldiers in one day, and the five hundred soldiers also suffered more than 100 casualties one after another, and the two or three hundred people who were originally placed in the rear waiting to be called were sent to the front line and put into battle. The construction of hedges, ditches and even walls is like creating a natural danger on the plain, Xiong Wanjian knows very well in his heart that if there is no fortification, he will definitely not be able to hold on to the present.

In this offensive, without the obstruction of hedges and trenches, Cao's battalion troops advanced with their heads in a hurry, and soon approached the first wall. The closer the enemy gets, the more tricky the angles of the horizontally spread wall are available for the shooter. Xiong Wanjian immediately made a decision and ordered all the crossbowmen and bird gunners to immediately abandon the wall and retreat through the corridor. Behind the first wall, there are two hedges, two trenches, and a low wall, allowing ranged units to move to the final low wall, allowing them to continue to be effective.

However, Xiong Wanjian did not simply give up the first low wall, he found that the distance between Liu Xiyao's department as a pioneer and Hu Keshou's department who followed up was too large, so he thought that Zhao Dangshi had mentioned "elastic defense" many times. For him, it is difficult to fully understand "elastic defense", but in a narrow sense, it can be interpreted as "defending the center and leading the attack", which is similar to the expression "defending the city and defending the field first". So, under his organization, dozens of soldiers of the Ming Armor Zhao Battalion armed with broad axes and heavy sticks came out around the wall and attacked the soldiers of the Cao Battalion who had not yet gained a firm foothold - it is difficult to compare with the Jie Army without firearms, but as the head of the field army, the armor rate is the highest among the battalions - the soldiers of the Cao Battalion also fought back, but they were stunned to find that their swords and guns were difficult to penetrate the heavy armor of these officers. It is called "dark armor" and all kinds of iron armor such as cloth armor with exposed and reflective armor are collectively referred to as "Ming armor". Although the Zhao battalion was poor, after several months of painstaking management, it still had the ability to equip each outpost of the Wuqi Battalion, which was the main force in the field battle, with the ability to equip each outpost with dozens of heavy armors. All the sentry officers basically use these Ming armor officers as their guards, and now Xiong Wanjian himself is rushing to the front line, and these Ming armor officers naturally have to come in handy. The iron armor with heavy iron pieces as the quality is more than enough to deal with ordinary swords, slashing and stabbing guns, and as soon as Zhao Yingming's armor officer appeared, Cao Yingbing was suddenly outstretched.

"Huh." Xiong Wanjian saw that dozens of officers under his command were overturned in more than ten times the enemy's army, and only then did he really understand the meaning of the sentence "soldiers are not expensive", and he actually regretted transferring most of his troops back to the rear. At the same time, he was glad that he did not rashly send these Ming Jiacai officials. The so-called "good steel should be made on the blade", the number of these Ming armor officers is too small, if they appear too early, they will inevitably give the enemy army with high fighting spirit to give special attention, but it is difficult to show such a miraculous effect.

Dozens of Ming officers fought hard, and the front of hundreds of Liu Xiyao's soldiers retreated more than ten steps. Xiong Wanjian looked at the array from afar, and had a premonition that Liu Xiyao and Hu Keshou were about to converge, and they were about to accept it when they saw it, so that the Ming Jiacai officials retreated.

"This is ......" Xiong Wanjian was shocked, not knowing where the soldiers and horses on the other side came from. Chang Guoan arranged 500 people in the western section of Fangyuan, and those 500 people were no more than the soldiers in his own sentry, and they could only assume the role of bluffing. There were several times when the fighting in the eastern section was tense, and he wanted to send people to the western section to draw some manpower, but Wang Guangen arranged hundreds of suspicious soldiers in the western section, roamed back and forth, and even organized several feints. Although Xiong Wanjian knew the role of the hundreds of suspicious soldiers, he could not tolerate the slightest carelessness in marching and fighting, and in order to ensure the stability of the western section, he could only give up the idea of transferring troops. At this time, seeing the hundreds of soldiers and horses that suddenly came, he naturally thought that Wang Guangen probably wanted to transfer the suspicious soldiers back and attack the eastern section of the fortifications with all his might.

"This thief is a thief. With such a move, I'm afraid I still want to fight at night, it's really crazy. ”

Xiong Wanjian cursed in a low voice, headache for Wang Guangen's perseverance. Turning to order the whole army to be ready to continue to insist, a pond of soldiers trotted over along the road and said, "Sentry officer, Xu Commander has led his troops back." ”

"What?" Xiong Wanjian couldn't help but be stunned. He was engrossed in the fierce battle for a day, and he didn't know that in the south, Xu, Han, Guo and others had already overcome Maozi Chong and captured Wang Long.

Xu Hui ordered all the Cao Ying camps in Maozichong to be burned, slaughtered many prisoners, and waited for a meal to be opened soon in the afternoon, and immediately ordered the whole army to quickly return north. At that time, there were still some generals who did not understand their meaning, and when the army drove out of Sili, they heard that the old camp of Cao Ying, the city of Zaoyang County, had sent the old battalion leader Zhao Yingyuan and the general of the middle battalion, Zhu Yangmin, to command the horse infantry army of 3,000 to kill Maozichong.

Fang Yuan is only seven miles away from Maozi Chong, there is no obstruction, and when the sun sets, Xu Hui has already led the army to arrive at the Fang Yuan fortifications.

"King Xiao Qin, Hua Guan Suo, King Zhengshi, King An Shi and other departments are attacking the eastern section of the fortifications and are very urgent."

Xu Hui listened to Tang Bing's report and immediately discussed with Han Gon and Guo Ruke. In his plan, next, Zhao Ying's army will turn the whole line from offensive to defensive, using Fang Yuan as a blade to cut off Wang Guangen and other troops in the north and Luo Rucai's troops in the south. Therefore, the top priority is to assist Xiong Wanjian and Chang Guoan in repelling Wang Guangen and others, so that they can make arrangements for the next step.

Han Gon took the initiative to ask: "The Cao thief soldiers gathered in the eastern section to fight, and they were defenseless against us. I took the children of the Feijie battalion to attack in a roundabout way, and the thief was depressed and would retreat. ”

Xu Hui thought for a while and said, "Now that it's dark, the brothers of the Wang family are only holding on with one breath, and they want to do something like a boat. Our army is only in a new battle, the infantry army is tired, and the horse army is also sluggish. If you fight, the gains outweigh the losses. Only horsepower can be used, breaking his breath, and he can win without a fight. ”

Han Gon nodded, "That's exactly the truth. Then he led hundreds of horsemen out through the fortifications.

Hundreds of suspicious soldiers of Wang Guangen's department on the outside of the western section of the fortifications never thought that Zhao Yingbing would dare to attack and counterattack. Han Gon had no intention of pursuing, turned eastward, and rushed straight to Liu Xiyao and Hu Keshou's backs, and when Xiong Wanjian heard about Xu Hui's return to the army from the mouth of the Tang soldiers, the Cao Yingbing, whose morale had plummeted due to the counterattack of the Ming Jiacai officials, finally lost control completely because of Han Gon's unexpectedness.