The range of these bed crossbows was originally more than one hundred and fifty steps, and the straight-line distance from the moat to the city wall was only fifty or sixty steps in the height of the city wall.

In the panic, Cao's army, which was hit by more arrows, was hit by the remaining archers.

"Aim!"

"Put!"

In this way, after four or five rounds of volleys, most of the thousands of Cao troops who had crossed the moat were killed and wounded.

The generals of the Cao army thought that Liu Cong might have a big killing weapon, but they didn't expect Liu Cong to be so well prepared, and one hundred and fifty bed crossbows occupied almost half of the outer wall of the urn city. However, in the case that Cao Cao's army did not have a siege ladder close to the city wall, the bed crossbow was a well-deserved overlord.

Watching the batches of Cao Jun fall, there was thunder of joy on the city wall. They had thought about the effects of bed crossbows, but when it came time to actually kill their enemies, they fell in love with them. There are two reasons for this, in addition to being able to kill a large number of enemies, these pimples also protect them from stray arrows thrown by enemy soldiers.

After holding out in this way for less than two hours, the offensive of the Cao army stopped again, after all, the casualty rate was too high, and in just two hours, the Cao army paid three or four thousand casualties. At this rate, if the onslaught continued for a day, the corpse of Cao Jun under the city wall could fill in a moat dozens of steps wide.

Cao Cao, who got the news, immediately ordered Mingjin to withdraw his troops.

The generals of the Cao army were all summoned together for a meeting.

Now everyone believes that there is a reason why Liu Cong killed Cao Ren's 30,000 pioneers and Xiahoudun's 5,000 tigers and leopards overnight.

Now the main force of the Cao army is attacking the city, in just seven or eight days, including the tentative attack in front, the Cao army has paid the price of nearly 10,000 casualties, and the arrow tower outside Fancheng has not been completely cleaned up.

"The order is to go down, the armies are to suspend the attack, and the Ziyang catapult and other siege equipment must hurry up the progress. Zixiao, Yuan Rang, the two of you will assist Ziyang in building siege equipment from now on. ”

Cao Cao was also helpless, although he had many more soldiers than Liu Cong, but he couldn't afford such consumption, and Liu Cong cut down the nearby trees before the war, and he didn't even have much stone left, so he had to send a large number of troops to cut down trees and carry stones from afar. And the two pioneers, Cao Ren and Xiahou Dun, were also assigned to Liu Ye's department.

Liu Ye's catapult once made miraculous achievements in the Battle of Guandu.

But even so, Liu Ye also encountered a lot of trouble, that is, Liu Pan's cavalry was elusive, often besieging some soldiers who were responsible for cutting down trees, and when Cao's army arrived, they quickly disappeared.

So far, more than 3,000 logistics personnel and soldiers have died at Liu Pan's hands.

With the gradual increase in the number of catapults, the protection of catapults is also a very important job.

Therefore, Cao Cao sent Cao Ren and Xiahoudun to assist Liu Ye, also out of consideration for guarding the catapult.

Waiting for siege equipment, Cao's attack was halted the next day.

Such a stagnation was a rare opportunity for Liu Cong to repair the arrow towers, strengthen the city walls, and continue to hollow out the moat, and the morale of the soldiers stationed in Fancheng was high due to the previous successive victories.

On the contrary, the Cao army, whose camp had moved to the vicinity of Fancheng, only filled the moat that had succeeded in filling dozens of paces in the past few days, but paid the price of tens of thousands of casualties.

The soldiers who were not very willing to march south in the first place were constantly harassed by the enemy cavalry since they entered the new field realm, and with the experience of the annihilation of Cao Ren and Xiahoudun's vanguard troops, an indescribable atmosphere permeated the entire Cao camp.

Cao Cao was also very anxious in his eyes, he never expected that the biggest opponent he had locked up also fell into the hands of Liu Cong. As for this opponent, who is only twenty-four years old this year, Cao Cao himself has to admit that he has ignored it before, so that it is basically difficult to fully understand what Liu Cong has done over the years.

Originally, I thought that the Wang clan in Xiangyang would give me an internal response, but except for Cai Mao, the others were almost untouchable, even if the news brought by the spies who had been ambushed in Xiangyang City early was Xiangyang City's pursuit and trust in Liu Cong.

Cao Cao had no choice but to promise Cai Mao the same status as Liu Biao.

Cao Cao was actually unwilling, when he pacified Hebei, he was concurrently serving as the pastor of Jizhou, including Dong Zhao and others who later proposed to set up the ancient system of Kyushu, that is, the entire Hebei was under the jurisdiction of Jizhou.

Today's Jingzhou is also a vast land, and it can even be compared with Jizhou.

handed over such a position to Cai Mao, and Cao Cao was only after Cheng Yu and Dong Zhao were stopped outside the city, Cao Cao made up his mind to seize Liu Cong's rare shortcoming and spend a lot of money to oppose Cai Mao.

It's just that now Cai Mao has been slow to move, and if he continues to consume it like this, Cao Cao actually has the idea of retreating.

Of course, this thought was only fleeting.

Years of experience in conquest told him that he had encountered a difficult opponent, and Liu Biao's eighteen years of operation in Jingzhou were not useless, on the contrary, it made the people fully trust the court and trust Liu Biao's father and son.

Although he didn't know how Liu Cong did it, from the fact that Liu Cong chose to stick to Fancheng, preferring to give up the natural advantage of the Han River rather than lead the war to Xiangyang, he didn't know how many times higher than Liu Bei, who gave up Xinye and coerced the people into defeat.

Even if he can successfully capture Fancheng, Liu Cong can still return to Xiangyang to continue to organize the defense, and he will face more enemy troops and hundreds of thousands of Xiangyang people.

Cao Cao avenged his father and sent troops to fight against Tao Qian, but Lu Bu almost took the old nest, and the other princes in the Battle of Guandu were almost not optimistic about Cao Cao, including Liu Bei, who had received Cao Cao's favor, all caused chaos to Cao Cao in Runan, but Cao Cao persevered in the company of his subordinates and strategists.

But now Cao Cao is fifty-three, and the official is the prime minister, if you want to say that Cao Cao is still the Cao Cao of the Battle of Guandu, I am afraid that Cao Cao himself will not believe it.

Liu Cong didn't believe it either. Liu Pan and Huang Zhong lived up to Liu Cong's expectations, and 4,000 people, with the cooperation of Jiang Qin, appeared in the upper reaches of the Han River today, the lower reaches of the Baihe River tomorrow, and the rear of Cao Ying the day after tomorrow.

The harassment has been ongoing.

Five days later, a new round of attacks finally began, and with the efforts of Liu Ye and others, Cao Jun finally built ten catapults, two rushing carts, and countless ladders.

However, when they reached the moat, they found that all the arrow towers had been repaired. This meant that the towers had to be re-breached before attacking the walls.

This time Cao Cao personally commanded at the front, and ten catapults were pushed to the moat. As soon as the morning dawned, he began to shoot stones into the city of Fancheng. Of course, most of them were adjusting the distance, and they did not cause much damage to the defenders of Fancheng.

Liu Cong was not worried about these stones thrown in, but worried that Cao Jun would throw fire bombs into the city and destroy the bed crossbow.

So after receiving the information that Cao Jun was attacking the city, Liu Cong came to the city wall for the first time.

"All the bed crossbows are covered with tarpaulin, and they are covered with slate!" Liu Cong understood that Cao Cao's catapult had been built, and the first target was the arrow tower outside the city, and the second target was definitely these big killing weapons.

The loss of the arrow tower could not be avoided, but the bed crossbow could have been used only when Cao Jun was preparing for a cloud ladder siege.

Now that Cao Cao has prepared the catapult, his own catapult can't be hidden, and when the soldiers hide the bed crossbow, Liu Cong immediately called Wei Yan and Jiang Wan to his side: "Wen Chang, Gongyan, you two go down now, tell the soldiers, and give Cao Thief a surprise!" ”

Wei Yan and Jiang Wan understood what Liu Cong was talking about, the enemy's catapult was out of battle, and the catapult in his urn city could no longer be idle.

Immediately, Wei Yan and Jiang Wan each took 2,000 people down to the urn city and lifted the catapults one by one.

The inner city gate of Fancheng was also opened.

The 4,000 soldiers were quickly divided into two parts, 1,000 of them manning the catapults, and the other 3,000 marching back and forth between the urn and the inner city, and began to carry stones to fight the enemy.

There are sixteen catapults staggered throughout the urn city, and each catapult needs at least 30 people to operate, but Liu Cong has allocated 60 people to each catapult, in order to ensure the launch speed and quality.

If the personnel are tired and the stones sent out can't hit the enemy, it will be equivalent to helping the enemy fill the moat, and Liu Cong certainly doesn't want to appear in such a thing.

At this time, Cao Jun's catapult had already been debugged, ready to take the arrow tower on the periphery of Fancheng in one fell swoop.