Just when Wanyan Agu led the army to get out of trouble and galloped south of Helongshan, a tragic siege battle had just ended, thousands of miles away under the city of Xijin Mansion in Nanjing, Daliao.

This is already the fourth siege launched by the soldiers and horses of the Great Zhou. The siege battle that began at the second watch last night lasted six or seven hours, and it was not until three o'clock in the morning that it came to an end. Up and down the city, it was already a tragic scene.

The sturdy southern walls of the province had been changed beyond recognition, and the battlements of the enemy towers on the head of the city had all collapsed and leveled, and there were black flesh and corpses everywhere. All these are the masterpieces of the Great Zhou siege soldiers.

From the beginning of the siege a few days ago, 800 catapults were pouring stones on the top of the city day and night. All the defenses at the head of the city were smashed beyond recognition in this rain of stones. The fortifications built to defend the counterattack were collapsed and rendered useless.

Of course, the catapults of the Great Zhou Dynasty also lost more than half of the number, and when the more than 800 catapults were attacked last night, only more than 320 were still usable, and the rest were all collapsed under the city, piles of rotten wood. It was the masterpiece of the city-head crossbow. The Liao people have already had a large-scale development of city-guarding equipment, and the bed crossbow is one of the weapons for defending the city. Although this kind of weapon originating from the Great Zhou was not in the most perfect state in the hands of the Liao people, because the imitation of the Liao people was not as elaborate and perfect as the manufacture of the Great Zhou. But this does not prevent them from being effective against catapults.

The attack distance of the catapult and the Liao's bed crossbow is about 300 steps, the catapult can throw stones onto the city, and the bed crossbow can also shoot thick crossbow arrows onto the catapult. In this case, Han De, the privy envoy of the Privy Council of Southern Liaoning, issued an order to destroy the opponent's catapult at all costs, and when the large number of bed crossbows at the head of the city and the more than 200 bed crossbows in the warehouse were exhausted, the size of the opponent's catapult was also successfully halved. This is extremely significant, as it means that the tactics of the opponent's tactics of relying on catapults to massively suppress and cover the attack are generally less powerful. The Liao army, which was originally unable to gain a foothold at all, was already able to gain a foothold on it and fight without worrying too much about the coverage of the entire city wall of the catapult.

Of course, the threat posed by the catapult is far lower than that of the siege weapon of the Great Zhou soldiers and horses, the cloud car, which is simply an unstoppable artifact in the eyes of the Liao people to build a passage from the city to the city. After having to accept the situation of the opponent's troops approaching the city, Han De held a special meeting before the war to discuss how to solve the problem of the siege of the city. Finally, after brainstorming, Han De adopted two methods to deal with it.

The first was to carry out a major renovation of the ground beneath the city walls. Originally, between the moat walls was a slightly inclined ground of more than ten zhang wide. In order to prevent the cloud chariot from gaining a foothold here, Han De ordered the people and soldiers and horses in the city to temporarily build a steeper slope under the city. The elevation angle of the ramp is at least sixty or seventy degrees, and it is still difficult for people to stand

Enough, let alone a cloud car. The roller bike is tall and bulky, and has a high center of gravity, so keep the ground slope smooth and not too steep, otherwise the roller bike will tip over. This method is actually very stupid, and it may not work, because the opposing soldiers can naturally dig into the ground, lay a pile foundation to fix the cloud car, and maintain balance. But in this way, it will take more time on the battlefield, and this creates time and opportunity for Han Desui to attack the cloud car by the second method.

The second means is the real attack on the Spike itself. According to the information gathered, the Vapor Coaster is covered in a tin coat and built of heavy logs, and is not afraid of bows and arrows and ordinary crossbow arrows. Even if you shoot an arrow through the iron sheet and shoot the cloud car into a large porcupine, you will not be able to destroy it in a short time. And once the passage of the Arc Carriage is built, it will enter the hand-to-hand siege battle, and there will be no time to take care of the Arc Carriage itself.

Therefore, in order to destroy the cloud carriage before the opponent's attack channel was built, Han De adopted the advice of the craftsmen in the army and created a huge rotating wooden drill with a sharp diamond bit. The principle is actually very simple, when the cloud car enters a few zhang distance under the city, this huge cross-shaped drill bit will stick out from the city head and rotate and drill into the iron gap of the cloud car. The iron coat of the shell of the cloud car is actually not too thick, less than half an inch, and the powerful arrows can penetrate the iron coat. And even if it's a sturdy log, it's wood. More than a dozen people used the axle to drive the axle to let the drill drill through the shell of the cloud car, leaving a hole with a thick bowl mouth. Next, a large number of fire oil bombs were thrown directly inside, causing a huge fire inside the cloud car and burning it.

Yang Jun did not expect such a countermeasure from the other party at all, and when the first attack was launched, under the suppression of 800 catapults, the army advanced to the city, and the thirty cloud chariots also smoothly advanced under the city wall, Yang Jun once thought that Xijin Mansion had become a bag. However, while the stragglers were busy fixing themselves, the soldiers dug the earth and rocks on the slopes with bows and arrows and stones from the head of the city, and laid the foundations. The iron drill bit poking out of the city successfully drilled through the sturdy shell of the cloud car. What happened next was a human tragedy. The inside of the cloud car caught fire, and the soldiers of the Great Zhou who were huddled on the platform and wooden ladder inside the car and prepared to attack the city at the moment of opening the suspension bridge suddenly became a pot of braised pork. After the oil burns, it quickly evacuates the air inside, releasing a black poisonous smoke. The opening passage below inhaled upwards like the air intake of a furnace, causing flames and black smoke to billow, and all the Great Zhou soldiers inside died in a very short time.

More than 30 cloud carriages were scrapped in this way, burning the city's rolling beacon towers on one side of the city walls. This scene made Yang Jun scold and feel heartbroken.

And the siege that had been successful was also declared a failure. Yang Jun thought that his dream of capturing Xijin Mansion that day would be shattered.

Both sides, so to speak

In this battle, he fought wits and courage and exerted a very high combat quality. Yang Jun is certainly a famous general of the Great Zhou Dynasty, and Han Desui is not a vegetarian. Although siege warfare was the strength of the Great Zhou soldiers, Han Desui's actions in defending the city were not inferior in the slightest. In fact, both sides have a firm belief, one is determined to take Xijin Mansion, and the other is to resolutely defend Xijin Mansion.

For both sides, Xijin Mansion was the key focus of the campaign, and if the Great Zhou soldiers and horses took Xijin Province, it would mean that the southern land with the richest resources of the Liao State would be pocketed, and the passage between Xijing Datong Mansion and the mainland of Liao would be cut off. The next step is to capture Datong and completely push the front to Zhongjing and even Shangjing.

For the Liao people, the Xijin Mansion was lost, and the door was wide open. Xijing was in an emergency, Zhongjing was forced, and faced a complete collapse. The only way may be to retreat to the Gobi steppe in Shangjing Province. But in that case, it means that the five capitals of Daliao will lose four of them, and the important places for money and grain taxes will be lost, and Daliao will actually exist in name only. This is a life-and-death battle.

Because of this, the offensive and defensive battles of the two sides in Xijin Province were extremely fierce, and in the past few days, Yang Jun launched several siege operations for a long time without distinction between day and night, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses took turns to fight, and all the siege equipment was used. The entire city head of Xijin Mansion was riddled with holes, and it was almost flattened by a few feet. The number of dead and wounded soldiers on both sides is also uncountable. After several fierce attacks, the besieging side suffered more than 60,000 casualties. The number of dead and wounded on the defending side also exceeded 40,000. Among them, there are thousands of their own soldiers and horses killed by both sides. Whether it is the besieging side or the defending side, in such a tragic battle, there will always be people who will collapse and flee because of fear, and these people will be mercilessly killed by the commanders of both sides, that is, to tell all the soldiers and horses participating in the battle that they will not want to flee until the moment of victory. Without victory, there is only a dead end.

The sun is rising and the weather is getting scorching. The battle was interrupted, and the two sides finally ushered in a short break in the morning.

Looking at the battlefield, the corpses of the city were strewn all over the field. A few days ago, Yang Jun also ordered the collection of corpses of soldiers who died in battle, but he soon found that it was too energy-consuming work. There were so many deaths that it took even more time to clean, identify, and bury the bodies. Therefore, Yang Jun gave up the idea of collecting the corpses of the soldiers who died in the battle, and changed to the practice of counting the names of the squad before the battle and counting them again after the battle. Those names that were not counted after the war were obviously killed on the battlefield. This was also done so that the soldiers who died in battle could be compensated after the war.

However, the corpses had begun to decompose, emitting a foul smell. The flesh and blood of the battlefield had begun to taste bad in the hot early summer weather. There were flies flying all over the place, crawling with corpses. In the middle of the battle, countless vultures in the sky would fall and peck at the corpses on the ground. The entire battlefield under the city is actually as terrifying as hell on earth.