The people and horses stationed in Zhao Ying include Hao Shaoqi and Hui Dengxiang, of which Hao Shaoqi has 2,000 people and Hui Dengxiang has more than 1,000 people. The county is not big, with more than 3,000 people guarding the palace at least in terms of numbers, but the opponent is Hong Chengchou, who is famous for a long time, Hao Shaoqi is fat, and at this moment, he still feels a little weak-hearted. Hui Dengxiang was not shocked, anyway, he had lost countless times under Hong Chengchou, and his psychological endurance had been effectively exercised.

Although he knew that his main force would never sit idly by, Hao Shaoqi still sent several requests for support to Zhao Dangshi, and Zhao Dangshi's reply was to make him hold out at least until April 10. The army of Hong Chengchou in Luoyang is gathering one after another, when he will act, Hao Shaoqi has no bottom in his heart, and the soldiers and horses within a radius of nearly 100 miles in the county have been gathered by him into the city, so that he has gathered his own strength, but has lost access to the official army. In order to further understand the current detailed deployment and intentions of the official army, Hao Shaoqi and Hui Dengxiang decided to send an advance force out of the city to test it, on the one hand, to find out the movements on the opposite side, and on the other hand, to disturb the mind of the opponent of Luoyang.

The destination of the advance troops was to the north of Feixian Ridge, and then dozens of miles to the west, that is, Luoyang, where the officers and troops were heavily concentrated, and the danger factor of action was quite high. Fortunately, there are still tough guys under Hao Shaoqi's men who are not afraid of death, and Cui Shuqiang, the general commander of the right battalion, is the best among them. This person was originally from Sichuan, but because he was born at the junction of Sichuan and Shaanxi, he spoke Hanzhong fluently. He was originally a bandit in Shaanxi, but he was defeated and incorporated when Zhao Dangshi passed by last year, and quickly climbed to the general position by virtue of his courage and good fighting.

Cui Shuqiang has a round brain, his body is not tall, long at the top and short at the bottom, and even a little thin, but some are ruthless, and the eyes of people in the past are a little murderous, and he also has a nickname called "Cui Stinky Mouth", which means that this person's mouth is extremely unclean, and there are often a lot of dirty words in a sentence. He saw that the generals on the left and right, especially Wheden, were afraid of the relative attack and temptation, and scolded in his heart: "In the end, it is the willow baby rolling in the mountain col, who can't get on the stage, and everyone is afraid of fighting to the death." Thinking about it, with a straight chest and a step on his legs, he took over this job with a posture of giving up on me.

Because it was a tentative attack, Hao Shaoqi was reluctant to make a big show, so he drew 300 people and handed them to Cui Shuqiang. Cui Shuqiang didn't look at his 200 people, and before leaving the city, he suddenly took his 300 people and moved forward quickly, throwing Hui Dengxiang's 200 people out of the way. It wasn't until Yang Zhaofeng drove his horse to catch up and talk to him that he stopped his rapid march. Although the prejudice against Whedeng is still greedy for life and afraid of death, he is still interested in official affairs and no longer jokes.

There are not many people of 500, and Cui Shuqiang has been a mountain bandit for many years, this set of concealing his whereabouts is still very good, at least he sneaked into the vicinity of Feixian Ridge, and did not encounter any enemies.

Between Luoyang County and Chu County, Feixian Ridge is the most dangerous, because of Hao Shaoqi's strategic abandonment, there is no Zhao Ying's power entrenched here. Cui Shuqiang is not stupid, he knows very well in his heart, but if the officials and soldiers of Luoyang have some brains, they will not ignore such a critical place and ignore it. In other words, he had a hunch that if he continued to advance, it was very likely that he would encounter the officers and soldiers at the foot of the Feixian Ridge.

It's been cloudy these days, and no one can touch God's temper, but Cui Shuqiang believes that there will be no rain in the near future based on his feelings. When he went out of the city this time, the whole army only brought two days' rations, and it was estimated that after the trial, he would just run out of food, and if the rain made them damp and moldy, then he would have to return early.

After wading through a few babbling streams, the sky began to sink, Cui Shuqiang led five hundred soldiers and horses to pass by two or three small mountain villages, without exception, all he saw was a piece of ashes, and occasionally a few black rotten headless charred corpses scattered in the collapsed ruins.

"Officers and soldiers of dog days." Cui Shuqiang kicked a short piece of wood in front of him and flew away, scolding and looking around at all this. Needless to say, such a tragic situation must be the result of harsh plunder, and who else will be the initiator of everything, except for the officers and soldiers who scattered out from Luoyang to sweep and investigate?

Cui Shuqiang has no sympathy for these tragic deaths in his heart. In troubled times, he is as strong as a tiger and a wolf, or as cheap as a mustard. If you can't protect yourself, it has to be someone else's meal sooner or later. What he was worried about was that he didn't know which official army had sacked this place, and he didn't forget to cut off the heads of the villagers and go back to ask for credit.

The composition of the officers and troops gathered in Lüyang is complex, and Hong Chengchou can suppress them with the prestige he has accumulated over the years, but he will definitely not be able to prohibit them. The cheat sheets in the official army are already a well-known unspoken rule, and he wants to manage it? Okay, first make up the arrears. Unable to do this, Hong Chengchou, who had a request from the leaders of the various armies, had to turn a blind eye. The law does not blame the public, and when evil deeds have become a common practice, and the power is as strong as Hong Chengchou, he has to make compromises and concessions.

Cui Shuqiang wandered around a village for a while, and there was a fiasco, blackened rubble everywhere, how could there be a suitable place to temporarily settle down? He cursed in his heart the official army that had plucked the feathers of the geese, and wondered if he would find a sheltered col near Feixian Ridge tonight and sleep in the open all night.

Zhao Yingbing just left the entrance of the village, and the two horsemen in front of him arrived in a hurry, and Cui Shuqiang wanted to get on the horse, but when he saw that the faces of the two scouts were wrong, his heart tightened, and he said, "What's wrong?" ”

Yiqi blurted out: "The two of us encountered the enemy army on the road ahead, so please prepare for it!" ”

"Waste ......" Cui Shuqiang was furious, and the dirty words came to his mouth, but he didn't say it. The distance between these two horses is five miles, which means that even if the officers and soldiers come from behind, during this time, he still has plenty of time to start the battle sequence.

Cui Shu made a strong move, several Tang soldiers immediately began to run, the flag of the Chinese army began to shake, and then the flags of each team were raised high in response - they are all old brothers of Zhao Ying, and they have long been accustomed to seeing wind and waves. Then, the noisy and loud various wrestling bowls and horns began to shake the sky. In just a few breaths, the 300 soldiers of the right battalion of the Zhao battalion began to gather to the side, while the 200 men of Hui Dengxiang were arranged to the right rear position.

Seeing that the queue began to change in an orderly manner, Cui Shuqiang was slightly relieved, and in a blink of an eye, he saw that the two scouts were still cramped and uneasy, and scolded: "Two killers, do you want Lao Tzu to invite you to the back row?" ”

One of them said sadly: "The Doma army in front of the enemy army, I'm afraid it's ......"

Before Cui Shuqiang finished listening to what he said, a thick "rumbling" sound suddenly appeared not far away, and he was "groaning" in his heart, and he didn't need to look to know that it must be the enemy army coming from the front.

"The officers and soldiers are coming!"

There was a commotion among the Zhao battalion soldiers who were still nervously arranged, Cui Shuqiang's face sank, and the supervisor dragged the shouter out and killed him. He then stared at the crossing, only to see a few hundred paces away, and suddenly countless horse troops turned out, and the road behind him was completely covered by black clusters.

If it was Ma Jun, then Cui Shuqiang's estimation of time had a big mistake. It stands to reason that he shouldn't change his formation on the spot, but he has to retreat to the village and even find a slightly dangerous terrain and then slowly arrange. Thinking like Zhao Ying at the moment, although the conversion speed is quite fast, it is still difficult to complete the formation before the official army and horse team come.

The wood is already in the boat, Cui Shuqiang has no time to feel sorry for himself, he also has a lot of combat experience, and such a situation has not been encountered. The most effective and simple countermeasure is nothing more than "a strong man breaking his wrist". That is, send a handful of death squads to withstand the impact in front and buy time for the large army.

There is no shortage of daring to die in Zhao's camp, especially under Hao Shaoqi. Perhaps because of his own personality, Hao Shaoqi especially likes to choose those men from the poorest and hardest backgrounds when picking soldiers. In his words, this kind of person may be a little weak or defective in physique due to long-term malnutrition, but he can still survive on the line of life and death, and there is no doubt that he has tenacity and endurance beyond ordinary people. The poorer people tend to take their lives lightly, because they are used to having nothing, so in their concept, "fighting for what can't be done" is deeply ingrained. In other words, they are the best source of so-called "dead soldiers" or "light soldiers".

The situation was urgent, Cui Shuqiang casually threw out some sweetness, and when dozens of people came out enthusiastically, they almost didn't line up under the leadership of several officers, and they rushed to the front in a mess. Cui Shuqiang ordered the rest of the men and horses to continue to hurry up and set up the formation.

The opposite side of the official army horse team came quickly, Cui Shuqiang left and right, anxious from the forehead and even the palms of the sweat, he took time to glance at the opposite side, only to see the far bend of the road, turned out a number of battle flags, these battle flags are held by the knights, for the wind to blow out, the first few are long leopard tail flags, and the last flag is white on a black edge, among which a "ancestor" word is like water ripples violently moving with the wind.

Cui Shuqiang hadn't come back to his senses yet, and there was already a commotion in his own death squad, and some Tang soldiers immediately came to report: "The enemy cavalry is eighty steps away, and the heavy arrow will be released first!" ”

Cui Shuqiang, who was born and grew up in the northwest, actually didn't know much about the outside world, but even so, because he had made preparations before, he still clearly knew that the person who came must be the "ancestral army" in the famous "Guanning Iron Cavalry" in Liaodong. According to the intelligence, although the army that came to the aid of the general soldier Zu Dale has a tendency to gather in Luoyang, it is still galloping in the north of Gongchang Mansion at the moment, so the commander of this Guanning iron cavalry, needless to say, is the current Ningxia general Zu Dabi.

Earlier, Zhao Dangshi put Zu Dale, the commander in charge of the reinforcement and suppression, in the first place in the battle, because he was out of the Guanning Army system in Liaodong, so the pre-war preparations for Zu Dabi were relatively sufficient.

With information provided by veterans who had served and fought in Liaodong such as Han Gon, Cui Shuqiangshi and other Zhao Ying generals probably knew the composition of the 3,000 people under Zu Dabi's command. Generally speaking, the Guanning Army is the Liaodong Army, and the Guanning Iron Cavalry is part of the Guanning Army and is the elite of it.

Unlike the ordinary Guanning army, which was mostly Han Chinese, the soldiers of the Guanning Iron Cavalry mainly came from the Mongol tribes. At first, the earliest Guanning Iron Cavalry was formed by Zu Dabi's elder brother Zu Dashou, and its soldiers were all Yi people in the area of Liaoyang in the north of Shandong, these Yi people were sandwiched between the Ming army and the forces of Manchuria, and were forced by Manchuria to surrender to the Ming army, called "surrendering to Yi". Zu Dashou relied on these brave and good riding and shooting people as his arms and treated them as private soldiers. And these Yi people only obey the orders of the ancestral family who give them benefits. At this point, in fact, Li Chengliang, Li Rusong, father and son, and even Ma Gui, the former general of Xuanda, who guarded Liaodong decades ago, all had a store for the Yi people, but they did not have an independent name.

Zu Dashou set an example, and the generals of the Guanning military system later began to widely recruit Yi people as henchmen, such as Zu Kuan and Zu Dale combined nearly 6,000 Guanning iron cavalry, which is subordinate to the left and right battalions of the Guanning army. And Zu Dabi, as Zu Dashou's younger brother, naturally will not be far behind, with these people from Mongolia Sangang, Namuqi, Chataiji and other tribes as the backbone of the army, making the combat power of Guanning Iron Cavalry much stronger than that of the general Ming army.

Contrary to the widely speculated situation of firearms, in fact, nearly half of these Guanning iron cavalry, who are proficient in mounted archery, still use bows and arrows as their main long-range weapons. The Guanning Iron Cavalry is divided into left and right shi, basically the left Shi carries firearms such as three-eyed guns, and the right Shi is all bows and crossbows.

The three-eyed guns have a short range and poor accuracy, and they can often only produce a relatively ideal killing effect within twenty paces on the horse, so in order to ensure the expansion of the strike range, bows and arrows are indispensable for these Guanning iron horsemen. These knights from the Mongol tribes were good at shooting, and often used horned bows, and occasionally had to dismount and shoot large bows as a supplement to their output, and archery was more convenient for them than firearms.

At the moment, the dozens of Guanning iron horsemen who rushed to the front began to shoot sharp arrows continuously after entering a hundred steps according to their usual combat habits. On horseback they can't stretch their arms to the extreme, so they use extremely fast rapid-fire, often loosening the bowstring when it is less than two-thirds of the way through. And the initial kinetic energy of these arrows, combined with the momentum support provided by the horse's speed, still has a good penetrating power.

The rushing arrows shot more than a dozen Zhao Ying death squads on the spot, and the remaining Zhao Ying soldiers sobered up and hurriedly pushed the shield bearers to the front under the dispatch of the officers, forming a defensive surface, hoping to resist the next attack of the officers and soldiers.