The next day, Zhao Dangshi was squatting on the side of the mountain stream to rinse his mouth, and the Tang Ma reported urgently that the enemy was coming.

He shook his spirits, stood up and asked carefully, and learned that Yuan Tao's front had reached Fengguo Temple at the eastern end, and the soldiers of the Baijiaolong Department in Baipozi and Pengjiaya had begun to fight with them sporadically.

The war has begun, Zhao Dangshi returned to Hongshan Temple and ordered the flag to be changed. In an instant, a soap-colored flag replaced the previous plain flag and slowly rose to the top of the pole. The morning breeze hunts, and the flag is waving in the wind, which is very clear against the background of the blue sky and blue forest.

Soon, several mountains visible in the distance were also replaced with soap flags. More than a dozen battle flags fluttered and echoed, indicating that a tragic war was coming.

Yuan Tao's department took the lead in the "Tuotian King" Chang Guoan. In the first year of Chongzhen, this person was mixed with 100,000 Ma Jinzhong, Zhang Yichuan, the king of sweeping, and Wang Guangen, the king of Xiaoqin, who were opposed to Shaanxi, and then the king of Zijin Liang used his own troops. Wang died by himself, but he was attached to Zhang Xianzhong, but he was not willing to do so because he was not a descendant, so he stayed in Sichuan. He has been in trouble for many years, wandering all over the world, and there are hundreds of veterans under his command, and his combat effectiveness is by no means comparable to Wang Youjin and Wang Gao, so he is pointed out as a pioneer.

At that time, the main force of the stick thieves was still near Fengguo Temple, and he first marched to the area of Baipozi, and was soon attacked by the soldiers of the Baijiaolong Division.

Although there were as many as 3,000 soldiers in the White Battalion, their combat effectiveness was weak and they could not block Chang Guoan head-on. Its battalion of 3,000 people was divided into zero, forming a team of 100 people, and dozens of sentinels were set up on both sides of the mountain road several miles long from Baipozi and Pengjiaya to Fengting and Lezi River, and attacked the stick thieves passing on the road at any time.

At the beginning, Chang Guoan didn't care about this, these miscellaneous soldiers hid between the mountains, forests and ravines, fought and ran, and did not dare to resist themselves, advancing one mile, and their subordinates only lost a few people. But gradually, he realized that something was wrong. As they progressed, the intensity of the attacks on the troops increased explosively, from scattered at the beginning, to now with dark arrows and darts flying out of the trees almost every two steps. This kind of harassment and blows are continuous, and it seems to be weak, but over time, the impact is significant.

Not to mention that the casualties have increased a lot, the mentality of the soldiers has also begun to be impatient, and they are always suspicious, quite a bit of a soldier. Chang Guoan was not stupid, he quickly figured out the reason: those enemies who were expelled and fled did not just leave, but came back when they were unnoticed, and the further their own army went, the more enemies they encountered because of the earlier laissez-faire.

Having said that, he made a mistake. It is easy for these stragglers to defeat bravely, but it is difficult to annihilate. They walked along mountain trails under the cover of dense forest rocks. If the troops are divided to pursue and suppress, then it is certain that within a short time, there will be no soldiers available on their side. In other words, now I am like walking on a chopping board full of fine needles, and every step I take has to be pricked painfully, but it is unrealistic to bend down and try to pull out all these sharp needles one by one.

Under the headache, Chang Guoan scolded his mother loudly. Thinking of Yuan Tao's order to quickly march into the army, it is impossible for him to withdraw his troops temporarily, and now it has become a tiger riding a tiger, it is difficult to advance, and it is impossible to retreat. In desperation, he sent someone to report Yuan Tao's situation here, and on the other hand, he forced the soldiers to move on.

However, the guerrilla attack of the white camp made Chang Guoan fall into a deep swamp, half an hour passed, the journey was less than two miles, and the casualties surged, and the soldiers under him mourned.

The Tang soldiers who had been sent to Yuan Tao to report the news returned and conveyed the edict of the King of Heaven, but he asked Chang Guoan to pass through several miles of narrow roads as soon as possible to set up a formation in Tuyabazi, regardless of the side attack.

To put it lightly, Chang Guo'an was both shocked and angry in his heart, and the reason was very simple, if he hurried according to Yuan Tao's request, it would be to completely remove the queue and let the soldiers go on their own. This is okay on weekdays, at most a hundred or ten people are lost, but at the moment the enemy is in ambush, in the state of slowing down in formation, slow is slow, but it can effectively suppress casualties, once the establishment is released, let the soldiers scatter and clash, casualties will definitely increase sharply. Not to mention whether we can successfully reach the dam located in the south of Tuya, that is, if we can't restrain and gather the stragglers in time, the enemy will take the opportunity to attack, and I will only lose a big defeat.

Thinking that although he is not Yuan Tao's descendant, he is willing to be a pawn of the horse and provide him with a gallop, and there is no merit and some hard work, but the other party still regards the lives of himself and his soldiers as mustard, and has no heart to cherish, which is really chilling.

Suddenly, Chang Guoan's mind suddenly flashed the faces of Yao Tiandong and Huang Long, thinking about their situation and then looking at himself at the moment, he couldn't help but feel a little sad.

However, a few screams instantly pulled him back to reality. He patted his breastplate and raised his whip and shouted: "Don't panic, the left and right are just a little small, don't worry." Listen to my orders, those with thick armor are outside, and those with single clothes are inside, and those who retreat recklessly will be killed! The implication is to ignore Yuan Tao's unreliable orders.

Compared with other thieves, the Ministry of Security of Chang has hundreds of veterans to lay the foundation, so the discipline is very good. Those old pawns and Qin people are all out of the sea of swords, mountains and fires, and their fighting skills may be wild, but some of them have a fierce and fierce spirit. They have followed Chang Guoan for many years, are loyal, and are the backbone of every battle. At this moment, after receiving the order of the palm of the plate, he and the others continued to use words and gestures to intimidate the six gods and masterless chicks around them, and the effect was remarkable, and the originally somewhat wavering military spirit quickly calmed down.

However, the attacks and harassment of the Baiying guerrillas still made the Chang Guosecurity Department physically and mentally exhausted, and in the face of these enemies who came and went without a trace, they were really powerful and had nowhere to go, so they could only be beaten passively, and everyone was on fire. At present, although the order of the march is barely maintained under the strong suppression of the old soldiers, everyone is inevitably impetuous.

Fortunately, the opponent's forces were scattered and could not stop the advance of their own army, and when the Chang Guosecurity Department broke through several miles of narrow roads at turtle speed, and finally arrived at the dam south of Tuya, the sun was almost overhead.

After passing the Fengting at the southern end of the narrow road, the guerrilla offensive slowly converged. Chang Guoan was discouraged, dismounted and sat on a big bluestone to rest, not only him, but the whole army as the vanguard was also undecided. Dozens of soldiers ran back and forth holding all kinds of small flags, shouting loudly to the soldiers under their own team - even if they tried their best to restrain them, but for a long time, the strength of the bullet pressure would always be relaxed, and there were still many soldiers who lost their establishment in a panic and ran around, and the first priority at this moment was to put the formation into the ranks.

There are several villages distributed on the plain dam in the south of Tuya, the scale is not very large, now the sword soldiers are approaching, the people in the village have long been scattered and fled, people go to the village empty, the roads are all empty, only some pigs, sheep, chickens and ducks are too late to take away, and they are calling to themselves.

Before the buttocks were hot, Yuan Taojun ordered him to find him, asking him to find a position on the dam and wait for the arrival of the main force. Chang Guoan led the army to find a village on slightly higher ground, stationed in the village, and prepared to bury the pot to cook first. Raising soldiers for a thousand days is used for a while, Chang Guoan is not a careless person, and knows how to treat his soldiers well. On weekdays, the officers and men of their battalion must have two meals in the morning and evening, but when they are in a state of war, they are even more required to eat three meals a day and nourish their spirits to ensure the combat effectiveness of the troops.

He was cautious by nature, and did not forget to send out sentry posts to reconnoiter the situation near and far between the rest of the troops. Before the troops were stable, they heard that the Zhao Ying's army and horses attacked from the north and south sides of the Jiangou and Jishan Liang.

Because he didn't know the truth on the other side, Chang Guoan first sent 200 people to the north to investigate, but within a quarter of an hour, some defeated soldiers fled back, saying that the 200 people had been "scattered". The so-called "scattered" refers to the fact that one's own people were only scattered, but not annihilated, and there are usually two reasons for this situation, one is that the opponent has fewer troops, and the other is that the other side is eager to advance.

From the reconnaissance of the patrol posts ahead, it can be known that the enemy army in the north has about 300 men, while in the south there are only 100 men. With 300 men against 200 men, it seems that it is not impossible to be able to win in less than a quarter of an hour, and it is not impossible to be determined to annihilate his own 200 men, but the intention of the other side is obvious, that is, to quickly defeat his own army.

Chang Guoan pulled away his wet hair and put the hood back on, his face pale. He had heard of Zhao Ying's previous achievements, and although he had always despised the rest of the bandits, he still felt that this opponent was extraordinary. Thinking about the situation on the narrow road, he basically affirmed the opponent's tactics. It was through continuous guerrilla attacks on the line from Fengguo Temple to Fengting to contain and delay Yuan Tao's main force, and at the same time quickly defeat himself who had already come to the dam.

He had already sent people to the Fengting area several times to investigate the news, but several people were intercepted and killed, and the few Tang soldiers who escaped back by luck reported that they had not seen any trace of Yuan Tao's main force. It can be roughly judged that Yuan Tao and Jing Keqin, who are not as elite as their own army, must be in a hurry now.

The enemy army is menacing, and Chang Guo has no bottom in his peace of mind, but he has no way to retreat, the only thing he can do is to hold the line and wait for Yuan and Jing to arrive. After the plan was decided, he did not hesitate, and immediately ordered the battalion to organize six lines of defense in the north. Each of these six lines of defense has one or two phalanxes in teams, totaling about 1,000 people. The enemy army from the north is only 300 people, so it can resist for a while. To the south, two lines of defense were also laid out, and he himself lived in the village to control them.

Xu Hui led 100 people to sit in the south of Pingzhai, and the 300 soldiers of the Zhao battalion from the north of the ditch were all subordinate to his Zuo Division, and they were divided into three hundred generals to lead the troops, among which the hundred generals Guo Hutou were the mainstay.

Guo Hutou is twenty-four years old this year, born with five big and three thick, vicissitudes of life, like a forty-year-old. His father was a private school gentleman, and he originally gave him a literary crepe name "Guo Ruke", hoping that he could enter the government from Confucianism. But he never liked to read, he was stubborn and abnormal since he was a child, and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he almost beat people to death because of a dispute with his fellow villagers. After the thief, he disliked that his original name was too soft, and others called him "Tiger Head" because of his big head, so he called himself "Guo Hutou" from then on. After a few years of fighting, the original partner died cleanly, and he was the only one left to continue to work in Zhao's camp. Speaking of which, he was one of the few people who followed Zhao Dangshi in Jinlingchuan at the beginning, and he relied on his old qualifications and courage to fight, and now he has also mixed up with the status of a hundred generals.

He has always been known for not wanting to die in wars, but the more he is not afraid of death, the less he will die, don't say anything fatal, after more than 100 battles, he has not lost half of the slightly more serious arrow sores and scars on his body. Xu Hui liked his bravery, and he liked him even more, so he took the three sentinels under the president's left division to take Chang Guoan.

Zhao Ying's artillery ammunition consumption was relatively large in many previous battles, and before a major replenishment was carried out, the artillery still had to be spared. Among the 300 people under Guo Hutou, most of them were cold soldiers such as swords, guns and arrows, dozens of guns, seven or eight guns, and there were basically no heavy firearms such as the Franc machine, and only two tiger squat guns were allocated.

There are not many firearms, and it does not affect the combat effectiveness of 300 people. Take Guo Hutou as an example, although he has studied under Xu Hui for a period of time, he is not very proficient in the use of firearms, in contrast, he still likes real knife and gun hand-to-hand combat. In order to ensure the combat power of Xu Hui Zuosi, who is the main force, Zhao Dangshi deliberately collected the armor of the whole battalion, no matter the thickness or simplicity, or the first armor of each person, in this regard, it is much stronger than the "elite of stick thieves" Chang Guosecurity, who has a rate of less than forty percent.

On the battlefield, there is armor and no armor, and the combat effectiveness is far from the same. No matter how much the protection ability has improved, just seeing the rows of black-pressed armor of all kinds can make most of the stick thieves who can only cover their bodies in horror.

The two tiger squatting cannons shook the sky, and the earth seemed to tremble slightly. The cannonballs landed in front of the stick thief, kicking up puffs of dust that dispersed with the wind. The stick thieves in the first line of defense were terrified, and the front soon began to be messy. After that, seven or eight guns were raised, and the smoke was overflowing, and the soldiers of the Zhao battalion advanced through the smoke, shouting loudly and crashing into the stick thieves, and immediately tore a big hole.

The stick thieves in the first line of defense were quickly defeated, and Guo Hutou carefully followed Xu Hui's instructions, gathered the winning soldiers, and did not chase after them. His 300 people were like sharp cones, and after noon, they boiled over the snow and seemed to break through the three lines of defense of Chang Guoan. By the time Chang Guoan received the latest military report, the fourth line of defense had already begun to fail.

Chang Guoan's men had only 2,000 men in total, of which more than 1,000 were deployed to the north, 400 were stationed to the south, and 5 or 600 remained in the village. He cursed as he gathered the remaining troops to reinforce the north. The first four lines of defense are good to say, these last two are their own carefully selected defensive positions, if there is another loss, the headquarters will have no danger to defend.

When the 200 reinforcements arrived, Guo Hutou had already broken through the fourth line of defense. In front of him, a gentle slope appeared, and there were more than ten acres of winter paddy fields on the gentle slope, but at this time, it was already a mess because of the garrison of the four hundred permanent national security subordinates.

After breaking through the four enemy armies one after another, Guo Hutou and the soldiers not only felt tired, but became more and more excited. Seeing the stick thieves waiting on the slope, he once again gave the order to attack.