"Brother Wuwu, why are they retreating?"

On the way to retreat to the east with the Dangshan army of the Wei State, Una asked her brother Wuwu with a worried face: "Is it that the Qianjiao tribe has sent a lot of troops, and Ji Run can't win the battle?" ”

"Retreat without a fight...... How is that possible!'

Secretly laughing shamefully, Wu Wu turned his face sideways and looked at the nearby Dangshan soldiers, only to see that the Wei soldiers looked indifferent, as if they didn't care why they retreated to the east, but what made Wu Wu care more was their fighting eyes, and the kind of calm that "didn't care whether the road ahead was a way of life or a dead end".

"No matter how many times you watch it, it's a creepy army...... Dangshan Army.'

Wu Wu glanced at his goosebump-inducing arm and quietly stroked it with his other hand.

"Brother Wuwu!"

"Huh?" Wu Wu came back to his senses, and only then did he notice that his sister Una was looking at him dissatisfiedly.

Seeing this, Wu Wu smiled slightly and said with relief: "Don't worry, Una, the army of Wei State did not retreat because it could not win the Qiangjiao tribe. ”

"Huh, isn't it? Why is that? ”

"Why...... It's a sign of weakness, right? Show the enemy weakness, arrogance of the enemy, and unpreparedness for attacking the enemy...... The art of war that was widely spread in the Central Plains countries.

Wu Wu pondered to himself.

"Did the Dangshan Army take the initiative to withdraw because it lured the enemy? …… The tribal warriors of the Qiangjiao tribe were lured to abandon the slave army and chase after the Dangshan army lightly...... Is this the plan of Ji Run and that General Sima An? If Bitatu really hits the scheme...... It's going to be swallowed, Bitatu. The tribal warriors you send in pursuit will be swallowed up by this terrible Wei army!"

Wu Wu looked up at the clear sky of the land of three rivers.

He had a vague guess that he hadn't actually guessed all the intentions of the Wei people, but even if he only guessed one of them, it was enough to make the Wuwu Ti Kajiao tribe feel sorry: if the Bitatu people really underestimated these Wei people because of this. The Horn tribe will then be at a heavy price for this.

I have to say that Wuwu is indeed a Qiang people whose brains don't seem to match his honest appearance.

He guessed right, the reason why the Dangshan Army chose to take the initiative to retreat was for three purposes.

First of all, converge with the merchant water army.

Previously, due to the large gap between the speed of the Dangshan Army and the Shangshui Army every day. As a result, even if the Dangshan Army took another roundabout route, it still surpassed the Shangshui Army and reached the sphere of influence of the Qiangjiao tribe ahead of schedule.

In other words, at this moment, the Shang Shui Army is coming towards the retreat route of the Dangshan Army, and it will take about ten days to half a month to reach the location where the Dangshan Army was encamped before.

However, if the Dangshan Army took the initiative to retreat to the east, then it would not take ten days or even half a month at all. According to the marching speed of the Dangshan army, they could join the merchant army in three or four days.

And once he joined up with the Shang Shui Army, with the help of the new repeater crossbows developed by the Metallurgical Bureau carried by the Shang Shui Army, Sima An did not need to worry that the Dangshan soldiers under his command would be sacrificed in the battle of the more than 200,000 slave troops who were cannon fodder in the Qiangjiao tribe.

The second is to cast the "bait".

In order to deliberately create an unfavorable situation for the Wei army to fight against them, to test or test the Qiang people and the tribes of the Qiang people in Gong and Yu.

As the saying goes, adversity sees the truth, if these tribes see that "the Wei army is not in a good position" and turn to the Kajiao tribe. Then I'm sorry, these tribes. They will also be included in the list of 'eradication' and 'expulsion'.

As for the third purpose, it was to seduce the tribal warriors of the Kajiao tribe.

According to Wu Wu's disclosure, the "tribal warriors" and "slave army" of the Qiangjiao tribe are completely two armies with worlds of different abilities.

The former is made up of the brave warriors of the tribe, all of whom are skilled warriors with bows and horses.

These people often have three horses per person. One horse carries the baggage and rations, and the other two horses exchange rides, and can travel hundreds of miles a day.

This is the standard configuration of the nomadic cavalry.

And Wei, as an agrarian country, was far inferior to the other party in terms of the number of cavalry, and. The cavalry in the army was not extravagant enough to be equipped with multiple war horses by one person, and it was for this reason that Wu Wu reminded the Wei army not to try to sneak attack the Qian, because it was very difficult to sneak attack the nomadic cavalry, and once the sneak attack failed, the army sent out would be dragged to death by the Qian's cavalry.

Even if they are also cavalrymen, they will be dragged to death by the cavalry of the Qiang tribe equipped with three horses.

But this is only the cavalry of the Qiang people, and as for the slave army, there is no such treatment at all.

The slave army of the Qiang people, the only equipment on the whole body, is only a spear, and even sometimes, the slaves often hold sharpened wooden sticks and rush to the battlefield, after all, they are just consumables as cannon fodder in the eyes of the Qiang people, and there is no need to equip too many too good weapons.

Therefore, while the cavalry of the Qiang people marched forward with three horses, the slave army had to rely on their legs to hurry. Even, he may still be half-starved and half-fed and hurrying on his legs.

This means that there is a huge gap between the marching speed of the cavalry and the slave army.

In normal times, those cavalrymen of the Qiang tribe might have followed the slave army far behind, and they would have traveled slowly.

But now, when the Dangshan Army is deliberately showing weakness and creating a situation of 'retreating without a fight', will the cavalry of those Qiang tribes abandon the slave army and speed up the pursuit in order to chase their Dangshan Army?

And this is exactly what Zhao Hongrun and Sima An wanted.

As long as there are no more than 200,000 slave troops to stir up the situation, Sima An and the Dangshan army under his command are not afraid of the cavalry of the so-called "tribal warriors".

A few days passed like this, and in the blink of an eye it was the fourth of August.

"Note: I made a mistake in the timeline of the previous chapter, and I'm sorry that the Horn tribe should send troops at the end of July instead of the end of August."

On this day, the cavalry sent by the Dangshan Army to search for the Shang Shui Army has successfully found the latter's location. At the same time, not only did he hand over the letter written by Zhao Hongrun to Wu Ji, the general in charge of the Shang Shui Army, but Wu Ji also asked the messenger to bring back the message.

"General Wu Ji asked the villain to reply to His Highness, and he said, 'I respectfully obey the orders of His Royal Highness King Su. The last will be on guard.'" ”

The cavalry of the Dangshan Army, who acted as a messenger, clenched their fists and spoke.

Hearing this, Sima An frowned and asked, "General Wu Ji only asked you to send a message?" Don't have a handwritten reply? ”

It's not that he doesn't believe in the cavalry under his command, he just thinks it's strange, after all, it stands to reason that Wu Ji should write a reply letter by himself.

"Reply? Then you have to know the words......

Zhao Hongrun secretly laughed bitterly.

Yes, the dignified merchant and water army is the general. Wu Ji is quite brave, but because he was born in a poor peasant family in Chu State, he is illiterate, and it is rare to recognize even the script of Chu State, let alone the script of Wei State.

By the way, Zhao Hongrun's letter to Wu Ji was actually written in Chu Seal. After all, even if Wu Ji can't recognize all the Chu State seal characters. But the generals in his account, his guards, will always be literate.

But then again, if it were Wei Zhan, I'm afraid Wu Ji's gang would be dumbfounded.

"General Wu Ji, haven't you learned my Great Wei's seal characters?" Sima An may have seen a clue, and asked with a strange expression.

"Hmm...... Still trying to get the hang of it. Zhao Hongrun explained with nice words.

Speaking of which, the generals from the Chu State. Unless you are from an aristocratic background, you rarely have the opportunity to learn the language of your country.

But on the side of the Wei State. As a general, you are not required to have any style or write any kind of articles, but you must at least master the most basic common words, otherwise, you will not even be able to understand the art of war? Can't even read the documents sent by the imperial court?

It was with this in mind that Sima An smacked his lips. couldn't help but say: "I hope it will be mastered as soon as possible, otherwise, it will ...... It's not like that. ”

"Huh." Zhao Hongrun smiled bitterly twice.

In fact, this is what Sima An, Bailiba, Xu Yin and other generals from Zongwei are qualified to say, in fact, in the Wei State, there are still many generals who are "obviously in charge of the army but do not know how to read big characters".

"After returning home. Do you want to set up a private school for officers and teach those generals who can't read big words?"

Zhao Hongrun thought to himself.

It's a pity that it is very difficult to implement this matter, after all, almost all the generals are stationed in the frontier, recall them back to Daliang, run schools and teach writing together, do you want to defend over there?

After thinking about it, the safest way is to first recruit a group of literati with a strong literary foundation, teach them the tactics that Zhao Hongrun thinks are quite effective, and then let these people go alone to teach the generals and leaders of the border defense, provided that the warriors and literati get together and there will be no contradictions.

"Forget it, let's deal with what is in front of us first."

After coming back to his senses, Zhao Hongrun turned his head to look at Sima An and said, "General, if you go further, it will be 'Yudi'." ”

"Hmm." Sima An responded, his expression looking a little disappointed.

After all, up to now, the Qiang and the Qiang people in Gong and Yu have not yet shown signs of "betraying" the Wei State, and the cavalry sent out has not yet delivered back the news that the Qiang Jiao tribe sent an advance cavalry team, which makes his plan of "killing three birds with one stone" Except for merging with the Shang Water Army, the other two goals have not been achieved.

And just when Sima An secretly regretted that the Qianjiao tribe was not fooled, Ji Yan, one of the two generals of the Dangshan Army Cavalry Battalion, rode a horse close to Zhao Hongrun and Sima An on the way.

"Your Highness, General, 'they' are back. …… As the general estimated, the Qiang people really sent a large number of cavalry to chase our army. ”

Glancing at Zhao Hongrun, who also had a solemn face, Sima An asked in a deep voice, "How long will it take?" ”

"About half a day."

"......" Zhao Hongrun and Sima An glanced at each other.

They didn't blame the cavalry who inquired about the news at all, "why did they send the news back to the army so late", after all, to find out whether the Qiang tribe had sent an advance cavalry, it meant that the Wei army scouts set off almost at the same time as the Qiang advance cavalry.

The other party is one person with three horses, and the cavalry scouts of the Wei army are single riders, in this case, it is already a very remarkable thing to be able to transmit this news back to the army about half a day in advance.

It is not difficult to guess that in order to widen the distance between them and the advance cavalry of the Qiang tribe, most of those scouts worked day and night, sleeplessly, desperately trying to transmit this precious news back to the Dangshan army.

Beat? Or not to fight?

Sima An took out the map of Sanchuan and silently looked at the terrain on the map. (To be continued.) )