Liu Jiexuan stood on a small mound behind the array, crossed the mandarin duck array in front, and looked at the officers and soldiers who were approaching. The distance between the two sides soon approached about 100 paces. The officers and soldiers on the opposite side all stood still, and Liu Jiexuan knew that this was the officers and soldiers planning to use bows and arrows to attack.

"Raise your shield!" Liu Jiexuan shouted.

In front of the Mandarin Duck Array is a row of large square shields, these shields are more than half a person high, and the person behind the shield can hide the whole body behind the square shield as long as he shrinks his neck, so the threat of direct bow and arrow shooting to the Mandarin Duck Array is limited. However, seeing that the opponent stopped a hundred steps away, Liu Jiexuan knew that the opponent was going to use the tactics of light arrow throwing. The light arrows that are thrown fall from the air in a large arc, and they can pass over the large shield in front of them and injure the personnel behind.

Light arrows have a long range and can cross frontal obstacles to kill targets behind, but there are also drawbacks to using light arrows to shoot, that is, the lethality of light arrows is quite limited, and they are only suitable for dealing with unarmored targets. If used against armored targets, it will have little effect. However, the rebels against the kings did not have any decent armor. Therefore, the officers and soldiers have always been accustomed to using such light arrows when fighting against the rebels.

Now the armor of these soldiers brought by Liu Jiexuan is also not good. Although they were already the elite of Huang Zide's army, less than a third of them wore so-called "cotton armor", a type of armor with pieces of iron and leather sandwiched between two layers of compacted cotton.

These cotton armors were all captured by the previous battles between Huang Zide's righteous army and the official army. Theoretically, such cotton armor, used to defend against the projectile of light arrows, should be no problem. Its defense is no less than that of the Iron Armor. However, the cotton armor equipped by the Jokhang Dynasty cut corners quite badly. According to the rules, between the two pieces of cotton in some critical parts of the cotton armor, there should be a certain thickness of wrought iron sheets that have been folded and forged at least five times. But in fact, most of the cotton armor, in which the wrought iron pieces have been replaced with barren iron sheets (unwrought, sponge iron full of pores), and many places where iron sheets should be used have also become leather, and where leather should be used, nothing is clamped at all. In fact, one of the important reasons why the officials of the Ministry of Industry of the Jokhang Dynasty liked cotton armor so much was that cotton armor was easier to cut corners.

This makes it impossible for even soldiers with armor to ignore the projectile of light arrows, and for those soldiers who simply do not have such cotton armor, they are naturally in a more dangerous situation in the face of such a projectile. For this reason, during this time, Liu Jiexuan equipped the other soldiers in the Mandarin Duck Formation with small shields. This small shield is about the same size as a hat, and it is made entirely of wooden planks, and the planks are not very thick, and if they are fired directly at the heavy arrows of the Shangjin army, such shields are probably of little use. But it was enough to defend against the light arrows that were thrown at you.

Following Liu Jiexuan's order, the soldiers squatted down one after another and raised the round shield like a hat above their heads. Almost at the same time, there was a buzzing sound from the enemy's side, and Liu Jiexuan knew that it was the sound of the enemy's bowstring vibrating. Then he saw some small black dots like locusts slowly rising upwards until they reached a certain position, and then they stayed there for a while, and then they fell headlong.

Tuk, tuk, tuk...... Light arrows rained down on those round shields. These weak round shields successfully blocked the light arrows that were also lacking in power. However, some arrows were shot in from places where the shield was not well covered, wounding two soldiers.

The enemy troops on the opposite side fired three more rounds in a row. However, these three rounds of projectiles did not cause any effective killing. The officers and soldiers on the opposite side apparently noticed this, so the projectile stopped, and they began to continue to approach again.

Liu Jiexuan's vision was blocked by the pikemen of the officers and soldiers walking in front, and he couldn't see that the archers behind him didn't follow. So at this time, he did not give the order to lay down his shield and prepare for battle. The enemy archers may remain in place, ready to continue their projectiles, and if they drop their shields at this point, they may suffer losses.

However, Liu Jiexuan's worries are actually unnecessary. He Chang did not let the archers stay where they were to prepare for the next round of throwing, but asked them to also take their swords and shields and move forward. In He Chang's opinion, it was not difficult for a hundred families to defeat a mere fifty thieves head-on. Once their resistance has been crushed, a pursuit is required. At this time, the archers, who were not wearing heavy armor and could therefore run faster, would become the main force in the pursuit. If you leave them a hundred paces away, it will be too inconvenient to pursue them.

The enemy forces are getting closer and closer. From 100 steps to 50 steps, from 50 steps to 30 steps, from 30 steps to 20 steps. Liu Jiexuan knew that the enemy's surprise attack was just around the corner, and there was no need to worry about the enemy's projectile at this time. Then he ordered: "Get up! Assault! ”

The warriors threw away their round shields and stood up with their weapons in hand. Then, according to the formation, they met the enemy troops on the opposite side.

The speed at which the two sides approached was fast at first, but when they really got within range of their weapons, everyone slowed down. The pikemen of the officers and soldiers stood at the front. They were facing the big shields of the Mandarin Duck Formation. If these shields were erected on the ground, they would be close to the shoulders of the soldiers. The wide, large shield covered the soldiers behind them tightly, with only their heads exposed.

At this time, the pikemen of the official army were already able to attack these soldiers with large shields in both hands, while the pikemen of the rebel army were arranged behind the large shields, and the spears in their hands could not reach the pikemen of the official army, and the spears in their hands were obviously shorter.

The pikemen of the officers began to raise their spears upwards, allowing them to pass over their shields and stab them into the heads of the shield-bearers opposite. However, just as several spears stabbed from above, the shield-bearer on the opposite side squatted down sharply, roared at the same time, and lifted the shield upwards with both hands, taking a big step forward. The top of the V-shaped shield immediately pushed these spears upward. Because the shield-bearer took a sharp step forward, the spears were pushed even higher, and they could not be retrieved for a while.

At this moment, from behind the large shield, the spearmen of the rebels also took a big step forward, and now their short spears were able to reach the enemy, and the enemy's spears were still in the air by the shields, and could not be recovered. In front of them, the pikemen of the official army could be said to be completely empty, defenseless. Several spears stabbed out in a lightning-fast way, easily piercing through their opponents' cotton armor and into their chests, before shrinking back with lightning speed, bringing out a large canopy of blood. In an instant, the pikemen in the first row in front of the officers and soldiers were swept away.

If it is not He Dalong's family who takes the lead, but the ordinary officers and soldiers. This thunderous blow should have been enough to bring their morale to zero. With a little more pressure, a curtain can be formed, forcing the enemy troops in front of them to break back in a panic, and then use the scattered enemy forces to continuously disperse the enemy forces behind them, and draw them into a rout—just like the Jin army outside the pass and the Jokhang army fought each other.

But after all, the family raised by lamb wine is different from ordinary officials and soldiers who can't even eat. Their morale was much higher, and their ability to bear casualties was much greater, at least, the casualties of more than a dozen people were not enough to reduce their morale to zero, and even, perhaps, provoked their anger, relying on the corpses of the fallen pikemen of the first row, the pikemen of the second and third rows had already drawn their spears from the opponent's large shield. At this time, the opponent was still approaching with his shield, and the spearmen in the second and third rows knew that they could no longer attack from the shield, but in the process of approaching, the opponent also let the spearmen behind him show some from the left and right. The pikemen roared and stabbed their spears from the left and right sides of their shields.

In the Mandarin Duck formation, at the front is the big shield, behind the big shield are two pikemen, and behind the pikemen are two warriors using a peculiar weapon. This peculiar weapon is the wolf.

The weapon that Qi Dashuai used back then was actually a bamboo with a lot of branches, at most it was just a two-tael spear head added to the top of the main trunk. Because the branches are all there, this thing is not light, and it is heavy in front and light in the back, so it is very inconvenient to use it as a weapon alone. Of course, there are not so many big bamboos in Shangluo Mountain, which is located in the north, so the wolf whisks in the hands of the soldiers are actually made of small trees that have been cut down. It's just that these small trees are denser than the hollow bamboos, and in order to be able to use them, Xuanyi and they had to shorten the length of the wolf whizzale a little. However, even so, in the mandarin duck array, it still has an irreplaceable role, which is to artificially create a "push spear".

In the confrontation between two phalanxes also armed with spears or super-long spears, it is very easy to have a phenomenon called "spear pushing". The dense spears of the two sides dialed each other, everyone wanted to push the other's spears upward, and at the same time, the queues of both sides continued to move forward, and as a result, the spears in everyone's hands were stirred and pointed to the sky, and then the pikemen collided face to face, and at this time their spears were already pointing to the sky like flagsticks, and they could not function at all, at this time, the pikemen could only drop their spears and draw daggers to fight.

Obviously, "pushing the spear" is not a good thing for pikemen. When two pikemen phalanx are close to each other, their proximity rate becomes very low, and one of the main reasons for this is to avoid the phenomenon of "spear pushing". But in the Mandarin Duck Formation, the situation is different. There are many branches of the wolf, each of which can hold a spear, and the soldier who uses the wolf's lance meets the opponent's spear with the wolf's lance, and then lifts it upwards. At the same time, the entire mandarin duck array quickly approached, and a wolf lance could make several spears lose their threat because of "pushing the spear", and at this time, the rebel soldiers with shorter spears could quickly assassinate the pikemen on the opposite side with the spears in their hands.