Yu Wenwen watched the troops cross the river by the pontoon bridge downstream of the mouth of the two rivers, and accidentally discovered a situation that seemed inconspicuous at first glance: the water level of this river was strange!

A few miles upstream of the pontoon bridge is the estuary after the confluence of the two rivers is called the mouth of the two rivers, the estuary forks into the word "Ya", the left fork is the water (the white river of the later generations), the upstream is Jingzhou Xinye County, Zhijiaoyang City, the right fork is the water (the Tang River of the later generations), the upstream also flows through the boundary of Xinye County.

After the confluence of the two estuaries is the later Tangbai River, which extends to the southwest and finally joins the Han River about ten miles east of Fancheng.

It's July and it's in the rainy season, so it stands to reason that the water level of this river should be relatively high, after all, the water volume of the two upstream rivers can only increase more after the pool, so why does the river water level look a little low now?

A large amount of muddy soil was exposed by the river, as if it had just come out of the water, although Yu Wenwen had never been to this river, but looking at the wet mud by the river, he always felt that the original water level should be much higher.

Hearing him say this, Xu Shao also agreed a little, but Xu Shao didn't have much experience in marching and fighting, and the most he had seen was nothing more than the Fu River next to Anlu City and the river next to Xiaochang in Yuezhou Prefecture, he didn't know what fluctuation range the water level had reached, so it was called abnormal.

The pontoon guards had no way to answer this question, because the soldiers were all from Anzhou, and no one knew what the normal water level of the river would be at this time of year.

Because the local people knew that there was about to be a big war, they moved to other places with their families to avoid the war, and they couldn't find anyone to ask for a while.

Regarding this topic, Zhang Yu, the former 'cannon fodder' of the Xiangyang Navy Army, has something to say.

He used to be a low-level soldier in the Xiangyang Water Army, everyone lived a difficult life, and the military salary was so poor that he couldn't eat enough after layers of deductions, and he was called by the officials from time to time to do coolies, which consumed a lot of money and had no wages.

Fortunately, there are boats, so the sailors generally work part-time as fishermen, or fishermen work part-time as Xiangyang sailors, and they row boats to fish privately to subsidize their families.

It is said that as a soldier of the navy, he is not allowed to leave the water village without permission, let alone row a boat to leave the water village without permission, but the generals of the navy are blind to this situation.

The soldiers have been tortured hard enough, and if they are forced to continue, they are afraid that they will provoke a mutiny, and then they will lose both, but the favor is human, and the generals will not let go of this opportunity to pluck the feathers of the goose.

Whenever the soldiers came back from clandestine fishing, they had to collect a hush money - to pay for it, so the biggest, fattest and best fish that came back from the net had to be handed in.

If you dare not hand it over, you will be punished for the crime of violating military discipline and leaving the water village without permission, and you will be beaten fifty lashes in public, so that everyone knows what military discipline is!

Ordnance is a naval warship, or a fishing boat that also serves as a naval warship, Zhang Yu was an orphan who was picked up and adopted by his adoptive father by the river, and his family was poor and white, and he didn't even have a share of the broken wooden house on the water village, and lived in a small broken boat as an adult.

Later, his adoptive father died in battle, Zhang Yu was rescued by the team Zhengli brother, and then followed his family to live, the Han River was deep and rapid, and it was inconvenient to cast nets, so the two of them often took advantage of the night to row a small boat across the Han River to the northeast of Xiangyang to fish.

The family struggled to survive by secretly catching fish to eat and the income obtained from selling them in the market, so Zhang Yu was very familiar with the river, but he didn't pay attention to this problem when he crossed the river, until he heard Yuwen Wen and Xu Shao discussing this matter.

"There is a real problem with the water level." Zhang Yu felt that the current water level was at least more than 30% lower than the water level at the same time in previous years, and when the guard general said this, he remembered that when the pontoon bridge was built a few days ago, he remembered that the situation was a little different from now.

The main body of the pontoon bridge is a large row of wooden boats side by side across the river, the two ends of each boat are fixed with iron cables with other boats, and bamboo rows and wooden planks are set up between the wooden boats and the cabin to allow people, horses and cars to pass.

The difference is simple: the wooden boat that used to be the closest on the east bank was floating on the water, but now the first boat has run aground even to the third, which has passed west.

However, he didn't think so, the pontoon bridge was higher and lower, and the water level was higher and lower, and it didn't all float on the water, and the rich man was rare and weird!

Yu Wenwen, who has always been 'psychologically dark' during the march and fighting, didn't know what to say, but urged the troops to hurry up and cross the river, and saw that all the troops arrived at the west bank and the grain team was about to start crossing the river, so he took Xu Shao onto the pontoon bridge.

As he walked, Yuwenwen couldn't help but think of anecdotes related to this river, the left fork of the upper reaches of the Tangbai River was Shuishui (the Baihe River in later generations), and from the mouth of the river to the top, about eighty or ninety miles by land was Xinye County, Zhijianyang (that is, near Xinye in the Han Dynasty).

Baihe, Xinye I rub, the first time of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Zhuge Liang burned Xinye!

Second brother Guan is a few miles upstream of the Baihe River in Xinyebian, using sandbags to build a dam to curb the water of the Baihe River, Cao Jun, who occupies Xinye City, was burned by a fire, his eyebrows are gone, his mouth is dry, a group of people run to the Baihe River to drink water, and then Liu Beijun upstream pumped the sandbags away, the water of the Baihe River rushed downstream, and Cao Jun came to take it away.

Thinking of this, Yu Wenwen looked at the upstream direction in disbelief, he felt that if the Jingzhou army really came to build a dam to store water and play with water, it would be better to flood the Anzhou army: When more than 100,000 people crossed the river a few days ago, you didn't release the water, so you had to wait until now to break the embankment?

Marching Marshal Liang Shiyan flooded Yuwenwen's 2,000 'army'? Just kidding, Soul Fade!

Yu Wenwen felt that he was thinking too much, so he shook his head and continued to walk forward, and as he walked, he felt that something was wrong: there was a faint roar in the north, and it seemed to be getting louder and louder.

"Could it be that a Taoist friend crossed the catastrophe?" Yu Wenwen looked up at the sky and found that there were no suspicious clouds in the sky, and then his left hand was grabbed, and then the man dragged himself and ran forward.

"Lord Lang is leaving, it's a big flood!" Zhang Yu grabbed the hand of the Lang lord Yu Wenwen and pulled him to the west bank in front of him and rushed to the shore in front of him, and before Yu Wenwen came back to his senses, he saw that Xu Shao also ran away.

"How"

Before he finished speaking, he felt that the pontoon bridge under his feet was fluctuating, as if there was a force to lift the entire pontoon bridge up, he chuckled in his heart, turned his head to look north, and saw a large wave of white flowers rushing towards him.

"Bastard, I don't even have enough for 3,000 people, am I mistaken!" Yu Wenwen understood what was going on, broke free from Zhang Yu's hand and ran forward, he and Xu Shao and Zhang Yu stayed up in the new barracks for five months, their bodies were stiff, their legs and feet were neat, and they ran fast.

But the most important thing is that they are close to the west bank, so when they rushed off the pontoon bridge and ran to the shore with rolling and climbing, the surging water swept the pontoon bridge, and the force of nature actually carried the pontoon bridge away in a wave!

The defenders on both sides of the river were stunned when they saw this scene, and the pontoon bridge, which was still fine, was swallowed up by the sudden flood, and the water level of the river rose sharply, but fortunately, the camps on both sides of the bank were higher and were not affected.

But after the roaring water, the water level slowly dropped and there was no trace of the pontoon bridge, and the two cross-river iron cables that locked the pontoon bridge and the wooden boats that formed the pontoon bridge were gone.

On both sides of the river, the four large wooden piles that had been firmly nailed into the soil to secure the pontoon bridge were gone, leaving only the deep pit with hollow holes, and the two iron cables that had been specially pulled up to protect the pontoon bridge upstream were still there.

It can only be said that it is still there, and the two iron cables are broken at one end each, and only the other end is attached to the stake on the shore.

"The resistance of the pontoon bridge is too great, so it was carried away by a wave of currents" Looking at the smooth river, Yuwen muttered to himself, and the people around him were all looking at the river in a daze, and no one asked what the Xiyang County Gong meant by 'the pontoon resistance is too great'.

Confirm that it is a water attack! But what does the other party want to do?

A few days ago, the Anzhou army crossed the river from here, if more than 100,000 people came to such a water attack just over halfway, then they could stop the Anzhou army, and then the Jingzhou army in ambush on the west bank could take the opportunity to attack the Anzhou army that also remained on the west bank.

However, this did not happen, it can only show that the Jingzhou army did not arrive nearby to ambush at that time, and now this flood must be artificial, that is, the upstream Jingzhou army built a dam to hold back the water for a water attack.

Yu Wenwen felt that there were two possibilities: the first was to attack the pontoon bridge, and the second was that the Jingzhou army built a dam and broke the embankment.

He didn't think he was lucky, so a comprehensive judgment was the first possibility, and Fifth Brother Chen, Yang Ji, Xu Shao and others also agreed with this opinion.

An important node of the Anzhou Army's land grain route is this pontoon bridge, through which the grain and grass transported from the east have to cross the river to support the Anzhou Army on the west bank.

Because the Anzhou army also needed to go north on the west bank to attack Jingzhou Xinye County to govern Jianyang and Jingzhou to govern the city, it was necessary to ensure that the pontoon bridge was unimpeded until Anzhou captured these two important places and defeated the imperial army.

It may take more than a month, so it is very important to protect the pontoon bridge, if the bridge is broken, if it is rebuilt, it will only take a few days, during which the army itself can ensure self-sufficiency, and it can afford to wait.

So the other party wants to make this bridge impossible to repair after it is broken, so what they have to do next is obvious.

"There are enemies, there are enemies in the northwest!" The sentry on the enemy tower on the west side of the camp beat the gong and shouted desperately, and then the sentry on the enemy tower on the east bank also shouted the same message.

Yuwen Wen asked the army lord Chen Wudi to organize the soldiers to prepare for the formation, and asked the building lord Xu Shao to organize the auxiliary soldiers to push all the baggage into the camp, and he entered the village together to meet the guards.

The pontoon defenders have a total of 20,000 people, divided into east and west villages, because the west village is facing greater pressure, so the main general led 15,000 troops stationed in the west village, and the east village 5,000 people are responsible for the response.

The main general is another Sima of the Anzhou Governor's Office: Zheng Wanqing, who was the Assassin of Wenzhou in July last year because he is considered the confidant of the Governor Yu Wenliang and has now been promoted to the Sima of the Governor's Office, and the heavy responsibility of guarding the pontoon bridge this time will be borne by him.

Zheng Sima and Yuwenwen are very familiar with each other, and when Yuwenwen recruited troops and started training in February this year, the relevant military affairs were handled by him, and the two did not care about greeting each other as soon as they met, so they hurriedly climbed the enemy tower together to observe the enemy's situation.

The northwest direction was dusty, and there seemed to be thousands of troops coming over here, but it was not very clear from a distance, but for Yu Wenwen, this was not a problem, he took out the clairvoyant mirror and looked at the northwest direction, and then his face was solemn, Zheng Sima next to him took the clairvoyant mirror he handed over, and looked over there, his brows were also tightened:

Among the mighty army, the flag is like the sea, and one of the big flags is very conspicuous with black background and gold edge, and there are seven gilded characters on it: Marshal Liang of the Southern March.

Excluding the trick of pulling the banner as a tiger's skin, the opposite should be the main force of the southward expedition to the south, the commander is the marching marshal Liang Shiyan, and the troops under his command together with the Jingzhou army will be at least more than 150,000 if they are all in front of them.

It stands to reason that the main force of the southern army, which did not arrive so soon, appeared in front of them, and although it was now close to noon, the scorching sun was in the sky, but the pontoon defenders felt a chill on their bodies.