Zuo Helin was assigned to the siege assault team as he wished, because there was no shortage of such miscellaneous people in the general staff, and his combat effectiveness was much stronger than his ability to count shells.

Zuo Helin was assigned to the Sixth Squadron and was counted as a member of the elite selection.

At the start of the battle, he suddenly proposed to the squadron leader to replace the melee men's cuirass with a lighter type of chain mail.

This request was not approved, so he was the only one in the entire squadron who changed into the armor he had brought.

In terms of weapons, except for the two flintlock pistols issued by the Qi army, Zuo Helin chose all the cold weapons he was used to: a joint bow, twenty heavy arrows, two flying axes, and a scimitar in the style of the Western Regions.

This equipment made him different from his comrades in the Draft, and he looked more like a trapper or a Tartar soldier of the Blue Army.

Under the influence of Xu Shiyang, all the generals of the Qi army did not like the trap soldiers composed of prisoners, and the Blue Army Brigade composed of the Tartars was the unit with the lowest status and treatment, and in the eyes of some Qi generals, it was not worth feeling sorry for how many deaths these two troops were.

And as a melee soldier, it is suitable for the most dangerous work such as siege street fighting, so the traps or blues of each assault squadron are at the forefront.

At noon on December 30 of the fifth year of Longdao, a quarter of an hour after the large-scale artillery bombardment stopped, the assault squadrons of the Qi army launched siege operations.

The Blue Army who rushed to the front of the Tartar or Trap prisoners blocked their upper bodies with shields, forming a slightly loose shield array, quickly approaching the slope formed by the collapse of the city tower at the south gate of Liaoyang.

Due to the freezing weather, the moat was completely frozen at this time, and the attackers could directly step on the ice and cross this rudimentary line of defense.

When the first Qi army climbed the dirt slope, the Jin army, which was beaten by the artillery, shot the sparse arrows and resisted, and these joke-like attacks naturally could not hinder the Qi army.

The Qi melee soldiers wearing cuirass quickly crossed the front line of the soil slope, and several Jin soldiers in armor howled and rushed up, fighting with the blue soldiers with broadswords and spears, and several blue soldiers were stabbed by spears and rolled down the slope with screams, becoming the first casualties of the Qi army in the Battle of Liaoyang.

And the Jin army also paid about the same casualties, and both sides had no way to retreat, screaming and fighting desperately at the front line of the slope.

A Tartar of the Blue Brigade jumped over the front line, and the big knife in his hand split a young Tartar in leather armor in half, and the blade was blood-red everywhere, but then a Tartar stabbed the Blue soldier in the chest, and he trembled violently like an electric shock, and his mouth spat out dirty blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, and collapsed weakly to the ground.

Before the Tartar could draw his spear, another Blue Brigade soldier rushed straight at a dying Tartar with his shield against it, knocking the spear-wielding Tartar to the ground, and the Blue Army Tartar stepped heavily on the chest of the Jin soldier, and the sound of tooth-aching bones breaking mixed with screams poured into his ears, and the Blue Brigade soldier swept the Tartar's neck and screams together with a wave of the big knife in his hand.

On the inner side of the city, a Tartar shot an arrow at the blue soldier, but in his haste he failed to fill the bowstring, and the heavy arrow seemed to be a little lacking in strength, although the accuracy was as high as ever, but the arrow hit the heavy breastplate, and only made a soft sound, and was bounced aside.

The Blue soldier was pushed back two steps by the force of the arrow, but he did not fall, and after quickly recovering his body, the Blue Army soldier, who had been a Jurchen Mouke, took out a throwing axe from his waist and skillfully threw it on the forehead of the Tartar archer.

Brutal melee combat cost both sides, but this exchange was advantageous to the Qi army, as the Qi melee soldiers had stronger cuirassal defense than most of the Tartars' armor, which gave the Qi army a big advantage.

What's more, the Qi army still has a strength advantage.

Gongsun Sheng put more Blue Army soldiers into the battle for the Tupo front line with an expressionless face, and one after another group of Blue Army soldiers rushed up the Tupo to exchange lives with the Tartars, and about two quarters of an hour later, the Jin Army, which was absolutely inferior in strength, finally could not support it, gave up the battle for Tupo, and retreated back to the city.

The Qi assault team rushed over the slope and quickly advanced behind the Jin army, and the others set up a long ladder to control a section of the city wall near the south gate that had not yet collapsed, and several signal soldiers occupied the high place, serving as a relay signal station, using flags to contact the Qi army inside and outside the city.

……

At the same time, in the direction of the east gate of Liaoyang, a counterattack by the Jin army was underway.

Pushing the two hundred and fifty shield carts out of the city gate consumed too much time for Zhou Ning and Jiagu Hura, but if the shield carts were not pushed out, Zhou Ning did not have the confidence to break through the Qi army's defense line, even if there were only infantry on the opposite side, and there were no daunting cannons.

From the beginning of the Qi army's bombardment of the south gate, until the Qi army began to launch an infantry attack, Zhou Ning's Ahabs finally pushed all the shield vehicles out of the city and formed two slightly loose offensive lines.

Zhou Ning listened to the fierce shouting and killing in the south, and ordered his subordinates to attack with some impatience.

Then there was a conch horn, and two columns of two hundred and fifty guncars and shield wagons began to move forward at the same time.

Tragically, however, the frozen moat in winter was 2 or 3 feet lower than the riverbank, and it was easy for the new artillery carriages, which were too heavy and had a lower chassis, to climb up than a few emaciated Ahabs could do.

Zhou Ning was annoyed to find that at least half of the artillery carriages were parked in the river of the moat and could not come up, and the Tartar armor soldiers who supervised the battle yelled and forced the Aha to work together to try to push the artillery carriage ashore, but they could not succeed at all.

There was even a gun truck when it was about to land on the shore, because the physical strength of the Aha who pushed it was exhausted, and it fell down directly, crushing three Aha to death at once, and the other two were crushed with broken legs, and the chassis of the gun truck itself was overwhelmed with cracks, and one wheel broke away from the chassis and rolled out along the frozen river.

Enraged, the Tartars howled and hacked to death the two wounded Ahabs who had crushed their legs, but it didn't help—they couldn't find anyone to push the gun carriage, which was practically useless.

"Made, I didn't count the moat!"

Zhou Ning, who has always made himself look gentle and elegant, and considers himself a Confucian scholar, scolded for the first time.

However, just like the Confucian demeanor that he was proud of, swearing did not increase the combat effectiveness of his troops.

The Jin army's own moat alone easily "wiped out" about twenty shield carts.

This not only made the Jin army's counterattack formation sparse and no longer rigorous, but also greatly damaged the morale of the Jin army.

Now, even Zhou Ning is beginning to worry about whether this breakthrough has a chance to succeed.

"What should I do?" Jiagu Hera anxiously shouted beside Zhou Ning: "You have lost so much before you start fighting? What should I do? ”

"What's the hurry? It was just an accident! Zhou Ning roared in a low voice: "The Qi army here has no artillery, and the shield car can block it!" ”

Before the words fell, sixty paces away, the infantry of the Qi Army at the East Gate conducted the first round of firing at the shield car of the Jin Army.