The people of Errong are miserable, and Hunan is close to life. I have no hope of returning to my sins today, and I will go straight to Chang'an Road 8000.

"Wu Guanxi Feng Peiliu Tufan" Tang Hanyu

- I'm the dividing line -

Between the peaks and mountains of the Qinling Mountains, Dou Quan, who described the handsome Quan Shangzhou Thorn Shi Quan, was also standing on the south gate tower of Wuguan, looking at the smoke and dust and beacon fire that were fighting fiercely in the sky in the distance, and was moving towards his side little by little.

The former site of Yaoguan, which is at the northwest end of Shangzhou, is also being attacked by the Guanzhong thief army from Lantian Yu; It can be said that he, the last local warden of Shannan Province who insisted on his duties, was also suffering from the situation of being attacked from the beginning to the end.

The strategic location of Wuguan, which is a river valley in the Qinling Mountains, connecting the Guanzhong Plain and the Nanyang Basin, is too important. Because Hangu Pass is really difficult to fight, the attackers often attack Hangu Pass head-on, and attack Wuguan with surprise troops.

The most famous is the battle between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang at the end of Qin and the destruction of Qin. When the main force of the Qin army fought with Xiang Yu in Hebei, and Hangu Pass was also heavily guarded, taking advantage of the emptiness of the defense from Xianyang to Wuguan, Liu Bang led an army of 20,000 to break through Wuguan, and arrived at Bashang through Bailuyuan, and forced down Qin Ziying.

Another example is the rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of the Han Dynasty, Zhou Yafu did not go to Hangu Pass but went to Wuguan, because the speed of this road can be taken by surprise, and the alliance of kings in Guandong can be broken. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty Yonghe ten years (354), Huan Wen led the army to attack the Di clan in Guanzhong is the Wuguan road.

In the twelfth year of Yixi (416), Liu Yu attacked Hou Qin, and in the fourth year of Tianping of the Eastern Wei Dynasty (537), Prime Minister Gao Huan raised troops to attack the Western Wei Dynasty, etc., and the conquests were mostly on the Wuguan Road. In the third year of Liang Chengsheng (554), the Western Wei Dynasty sent troops from Wuguan, passed through Xiangyang, trapped Jiangling, and captured Emperor Liang Yuan.

In the Sui and Tang dynasties, Wuguan Road was an important passage between Jinghan and Jianghuai in the capital, and many scribes and officials traveled through this road to study or go to work, so some people called Wuguan Road "the road of fame and fortune".

Many degraded officials, such as Han Yu, Lai Chong, Yan Zhenqing, Zhou Ziliang, Yang Zhicheng, Gu Shiyong, Wang Bo, etc., were demoted to Chaozhou, Jingxiang, Lingnan and other places, and they also took Wuguan Road.

Among them, from the Lantian Station in the northwest of Lantian City, which specializes in giving death to foreign officials, to the Yangcheng Station that leads to the mountain (south) east (road) and river (south) Luo (Yang); There are as many as 17 well-known post houses in Wuguan Road.

Nowadays, the five posts in Guanzhong, such as Lantian, Qingni, Hangong, Lanqiao, and Lanxi in Shangbei, and the three stations in Qingyun and Yangcheng in Shangnan, have all fallen one after another; And as a temporary minister, Dou Quan is certainly not the kind of minister who is particularly determined to serve the country.

He is a descendant of the Dou family, one of the lineages of national relatives, and his ancestors also went abroad to serve as important ministers such as imperial historians and scholars. But more often than not, they are elected in shade; and then as a servant, a scholar, and a housekeeper, he accompanied the palace, the secretary, the inner introspection, or the pavilion.

At the beginning, he bribed the ministers and begged the important ministers of the backer, so that he could ask himself to be released as the defender of this military pass; did not avoid the soldiers and the flames of war, and at the same time had the intention of defending a way out for his backers;

As a result, the situation in the court collapsed unexpectedly, and his backers in the capital failed to escape and became a prisoner of the thief army; Then the Shandong Jiedu envoy, who was relied on as the country's Ping Domain, was also unhelpful, and Xingshi went south to fight the thief, but was taken for granted.

It's just that compared to the relatively well-informed state guards in the Nanyang Basin, he got the news of Liu Jurong's defeat in Shannan too late, and found that he had nowhere to escape when the north-south passage was cut off one after another.

Therefore, he was also trapped here in disguise, and became a model of loyalty to his duties in the midst of danger, which is a great irony and sorrow for him. Fortunately, he is not without support at the moment.

In addition to the 2,000 regimental training from Shangluo County, there were also more than 1,000 Shannan defeated troops who retreated into Wuguan one after another; Coupled with a Shence town soldier who retreated from Guanzhong, it constituted all the guarding forces in Wuguan City today.

And outside the city of Wuguan is the valley road that is stacked and heavy, twists and turns, and there is Danshui surrounding under the wall before the gate, forming a narrow passage and the ground; Therefore, if the foreign soldiers and horses want to attack the city, there is not much room and space for them to deploy;

On the contrary, it is necessary to be exposed to the baptism of more than ten rounds of long arrow rain on the closed city, and endure the continuous casualties and persist unwaveringly, so as to arrive at the city gate safely.

Then, he collected materials from Shangluo City, requisitioned people's husbands, and repaired and strengthened the parts of Guancheng that had fallen into disrepair. And behind the wall they built many arrowtowers and sentry towers for guarding, and laid fences, horses, and moats on the narrow roads outside the city;

It also recruited those travelers and merchants who were stranded between the two passes, and selected the strong ones and placed them in the camp behind the pass, as a backup choice for guarding the pass.

Although he is not good at military affairs, he at least knows how to leave things to those who know how to do it; For example, Li Jicong, the captain of the Honzhou thief hunt and Sima Li Jicong, who was born in the Shuofang border army, and Lu Guangxuan, the general of Fengtian Town of the Shence Army who retreated into Shangzhou.

It is to make one of them in the north and one in the south to guard the key points of the pass and the military pass; In Shangluo County, he urged the local government to raise money and grain, Ding Zhuang, thinking that he would stick to the plan for a long time. However, it is true that people are not as good as heaven.

Just yesterday, he suddenly got an urgent report in the city of Hezhou, but it was Lu Guangxuan, the general of Shence Town who guarded Wuguan in the south, and he didn't know what he was crazy about; He actually decided to take the initiative to attack the vanguard of the thief army, and led a group of men and horses to set up an ambush on the steep Pantuo Ridge.

As a result, Dou Quan, who was the assassin of the history, also had to hurry over from Shangluo City to personally sit in Wuguan to avoid any mistakes and mistakes; Just before it was completely dark, he reconfirmed the location of the beacon fire in the distance, and then returned to his residence to rest with a full stomach.

Just when he tossed and turned kimono asleep for an unknown amount of time, he was suddenly woken up in an anxious and panicked voice:

"Mingfu, wake up quickly."

"Fujun, things are not good."

"Fuzun, Lu Zhen has already been defeated overnight and retreated."

In the cold night breeze that made people shudder, Dou Quan, who was dressed in obviously ill-fitting heavy clothes, hurriedly climbed to the head of the torch-lit pass; I saw that under the closed door was still a crowd of shouts and shouts;

The fences, horses, and pits where they came had been toppled and filled in, and there were many miserable corpses. Dou Quan couldn't help but sink in his thoughts, and hurriedly asked in a loud voice to the city:

"Where is General Lu, why did he fall back in defeat."

His words were like pouring hot oil on the crowd under the city, stirring up more gossip

"Because there is a demon law to attack the thief army. Call out the Taiyin during the day,"

"Why did they endure the wind blowing on the mountains for most of the day, but it was useless at all."

"Those thieves discovered our ambush from afar, and before they could get closer, they went to the sons and women to guard the hill and shoot arrows and set fire."

"Many of the boys were driven out before they could engage in battle, and the ambush was destroyed."

"Lu Zhen will personally lead people to kill the thieves, but if those thieves have demon magic to summon thunder, they will be terrified and out of control at the moment."

"We worked hard to come back to report to Mingzun. Poor God, open the door quickly. ”

"Open the door and let them in."

Dou Quan heard this, although he was still a little unclear, but he commanded left and right,

"Fuzun, I'm afraid this is going to mess up the morale of the army, and you have to be careful of spies getting involved."

A subordinate state official hurriedly persuaded.

"If I don't let them in, I'm afraid the hearts of the people in the city will be in turmoil. Just put it in first, and then do the supervision and screening."

Dou Quan looked at the defenders on the city wall with panicked faces and said categorically.

After this wave of routs rushed into the city gate, the sky began to slowly reveal a faint whiteness in the distance: at this time, on the view position on the mountain walls on both sides of the city, someone shouted loudly again, and at the same time sounded the big gong and the cymbal of the guard;

Only a moment later, all the officials and generals in Guancheng led by Dou Quan also saw the cyan banner that slowly opened out from between the mountains, embroidering a hideous winged fish-shaped giant beast, and the vast army that shimmered like a large area of swimming scales under the early rising sun.

But what made them smell even more was that it appeared on the Danshui with this army, and there was no need for any people and animals on the shore to pull the fiber, and it sailed against the current in the rippling water.

And on one of the strange ships, the gunsmith Bai Duolu, who had just finished reciting a prayer "May the enemy pass away and go to hell", also recited again:

"Artillery is truth, range is justice."

- I'm the dividing line -

In the faint roar and vibration, Du Guangting was ordered to flee south but was trapped in the local worship of the Lin De Temple; He also looked up in confusion in a bureau in the city, but saw that the notice he had written was painted with a large piece of ink because of the wrong pen.

He is actually still a Taoist priest, the word Shengbin, and the name Dongyingzi. Because he learned Confucianism in his early years, he was admitted to the Shizhong Dynasty and failed to enter the Shizhong Dynasty, so he escaped the world and entered the Taoist in Tiantai Mountain. As a result, with his reputation in the monastic, he was appreciated by the current polo emperor, and he was recruited to become an official.

It's just that compared with his usual poems and book-making, and his little-known achievements in green words, it is a different way in another field of literature. He has written Taoist classics such as "Guangcheng Collection" and "Taishang Laojun Says Changqing Jingjing Commentary".

But what is even more famous is that he once wrote "The Biography of the Bearded Guest"; It is the "Legend" (Tang Dynasty style is called Legend) and is known as the "Legend of the Tang Dynasty" with another servant who is now driving into Shu to worship Pei Quan, and the "Kunlun Nu" and "Nie Yinniang" are also known in the world.

It's just that no matter how well his "Legend" is written, no matter how thoroughly the classics are studied, it can't change the result of the fall of the Son of Heaven Xixing's capital; It can't change the status quo that he is currently trapped here and is requisitioned to some people's notices.

It's just that when he finally wrote a notice and took it out, he found that Zuo was already in a mess, and the market in Wuguan was already full of panicked figures; His fellow clansmen even slammed into the door and shouted loudly when they saw him.

"Oh no, big brother, it's the Taiping thieves in Shannan who attacked overnight."

"It is said that there is a thunder and fire method passed down by the demon monk in the army of his generation, but whenever there is a thunder, the city will be shattered, and the flesh and bones of the defenders will be turned into mud."

"The place where the stabbing history is located is buried under the rubble, and the guards have begun to scatter and flee."

At the same time, mixed among the defeated soldiers behind the city gate, Zhang Dong, a soldier of the Long March in Jinzhou, Qianshannan, who was waiting for the inspection; He also quickly lit a wine gourd filled with gunpowder and pieces of broken iron and threw it in the densest place in the crowd.

Like him, there were several people who acted and behaved, and there were also objects like water bladders and clay pots that were thrown out. I only heard a boom one after another, and between the gray smoke and the waves of air rolled, the crowd that was caught off guard suddenly overturned.

After the smoke and dust were blown away, all that was left was left lying on the ground. Although it didn't seem like anyone had died directly because of this, it was the bloody struggle and moaning all over the ground that was even more terrifying. Those who were still able to stand also rushed to trample on them and scattered.

Then, Zhang Dongcai blew the whistle and shouted in unison

"The city is broken."

"Thorn Shi is dead."

"Everybody's gone."

While playing with ease, under the cover of smoke and dust, he picked up the abandoned sword soldiers and touched them towards the gate.

After another half a day, Du Guangting, who had fled out of Wuguan and fled to Shangluo County, had not had time to catch his breath under the crowded gate when he saw the pale battle flag chasing by light horses in the distance of the main road.

Then he was pushed by the panicked crowd and squeezed into the trench under the city wall.