The 300 remnants of the army struggled all the way, although the equipment was reduced, although there was horse meat to eat, but in the cold ice and snow, on the rugged and bumpy mountain roads, the speed was still not much faster. Moreover, the horse meat was nothing to eat at first, and I ate it for three meals a day, and the strange smell of cooking alone made people unappetizing. As soon as they smelled such a smell, some soldiers wanted to vomit, but they couldn't help but eat it.

Day 5, Day 6. Every day was like a hell, and one after another, more than 30 seriously injured soldiers collapsed in the snow and never woke up. They had to bury them in the snow and cover them with branches, because no one had the strength to dig a pit in the frozen sand and gravel to bury them, and that would have taken too much time.

On the evening of the seventh day, several Fan Yang veterans who had fought in the Boulder Pass were pleasantly surprised to find that the terrain in front of them was very similar to the terrain of the Boulder Pass. The beacon tower on the mountain peak on the left is towering, and there is also a faint flag fluttering on the mountain beam, which is the last border checkpoint in the north of Huai'an County. Beyond the pass, the plains were covered with snow and spread to the faint peaks of the mountains looming at the end of the sky. This is the battlefield with the most battles between the Turkic Xi people and the Tang Dynasty outside the Jushi Pass.

But on the ground to the left near the peak, but there are huge stones that are as tall as small mountains, and the tops are covered with thick snow, which is probably the reason for the name of the boulder pass, and I don't know how these boulders fell here.

Before everyone could celebrate, a very bad news came. The soldiers in charge of reconnaissance on the flank spotted a group of cavalry appearing on the snowfield more than ten miles behind, and it was seen that there were thousands of soldiers and horses. There are all kinds of signs that it is the Fan Yang soldiers and horses that have been tracked. These days, they did not send troops and horses to intercept them, but because the route taken by the three hundred men was not what they expected. I thought that these 300 people must be going west, but unexpectedly, they went in a big circle in the direction of the northwest boulder pass, so they pounced on the air and turned around and searched north. Finally let them find the trace.

Liu Dehai and Liu Jun and the others immediately urgently discussed countermeasures, and the other party pursued from the flat wasteland, and the two legs of their own people would definitely not be able to outrun them, and the only way was to immediately find a place to rely on to hold on. Liu Xunzhi proposed that since the outside of the Boulder Pass was the junction of the three families, and Wang Yuan chose to let them come here, it was obvious that entering this borderless land might be the greatest deterrent to the pursuers. Therefore, if you want to choose a place to stick to, it must also be outside the Boulder Pass. As Wang Yuan said, he can use the power of others to deter Fan Yang's pursuers from making mistakes.

Liu Dehai and Liu Jun thought so, so they quickened their pace and immediately entered the snowfield along the side of the mountain, ran all the way north, and found a huge rock before the pursuers arrived, and all the people climbed on top of this boulder as big as a mountain peak. Only one slope in the south is relatively flat, which is why Liu Dehai and Liu Jun chose it, because people and horses must be able to climb up, and there is only one slope that is easy to defend.

This boulder is really large, the whole stone is like an upside-down teacup, and although the top is uneven, the area is large enough for three hundred people to stay on it. The side walls were smooth and steep, and it was absolutely impossible to climb up except for the slope on the side, and although it was not an excellent place to defend itself, there was not much choice for the three hundred people at the moment.

It soon darkened, and Fan Yang's pursuers did not pursue into the valley outside the pass, but set up camp outside the valley. Looking over the boulder, you can see the campfires in the barracks. Liu Jun led the people to count the approximate number of bonfires, and then calculated the number of soldiers and horses according to the number of bonfires, and the figure was at least two thousand soldiers and horses. This caused more than 300 people to fall into silence en masse.

It was a difficult night, there was nothing on the stones except snow, there was no firewood to make a fire, and there was no meat to eat. There were no campfires, no hot food, just biting cold winds blowing from the north after losing the shelter of the mountain peaks. Fortunately, with the experience of the veterans as a guide, the snow on the top of the stone was folded into snow bricks, and according to the terrain of the potholes, it became a wall to block the wind, and everyone except the sentry on duty curled up under the wind wall and struggled to survive the night.

After dawn, the morning sun sprinkles the earth, but the sun has no temperature and cannot provide a little warmth at all. The soldiers who had been frozen all night were shivering from the cold, their bodies seemed to be frozen, and their lips were blue and purple.

Liu Dehai and others all knew that if they didn't give the soldiers some hot food and soup as soon as possible, the soldiers would probably not be able to survive. So after a brief discussion, the last tent for Qingyun'er and Ziyun'er to live became a firelight, and the ash guns of hundreds of spears became firewood. Five horses were slaughtered, and the meat was stewed half-cooked in snow water, but in a moment even the soup was drunk.

Finally had hot food to eat, the soldiers recovered some energy, with the rise of the sun, the temperature in the shelter was also warm, and the symptoms of low temperature on everyone's body quickly disappeared, which made Liu Dehai breathe a sigh of relief. But then, the grim truth came to mind, and the two thousand pursuers had already begun to form a team, and it seemed that they were about to attack immediately, and this was the biggest threat.

Sure enough, from the beginning of the day, the pursuers began to enter the rocks, and they did not need to charge, because the other party was on the top of the boulder, and had no intention of escaping at all, just slowly drove into the siege and besieged them. Two thousand Fan Yang soldiers and horses quickly surrounded the boulder, and the generals led by them were not Yan Zhuang and An Qingxu, but it was not surprising that the two of them should not be willing to endure this hardship and chase here for a long time.

"On the top of the cliff, are Wang Qin's envoys and their subordinates? In Xianai, Fanyang Jiedu belongs to Chang Youde, who is stationed in Wende County. Hearing that Wang Qin's envoy was attacked by the Xi people's soldiers and horses, he came to meet the order, please don't worry about Wang Qin's envoy, lead the brothers down, and escort you out safely. A tall general with a white face and a black beard rode forward and said in a loud voice.

There was no sound on the top of the stone, and no one answered, but the whirring of the wind.

The general shouted again with a gloomy face, and his tone was already quite impatient. This time there was a response, but this response made him thunderous, and his mouth cursed endlessly.

When he finished shouting for the second time, Liu Jun stood up and bent his bow and shot an arrow at him, the general was startled and hurriedly dodged sideways, and a guard next to him was unlucky, and the arrow was shot in the face of the guard, and he immediately fell into the snow.

"Damn, toast and don't eat and drink. Attack me. Chang Youde scolded and turned his horse back into the formation and gave the order to attack.

The archers quickly set up their bows and shot several rounds of arrows at the top of the stone, and a group of soldiers and horses touched in the direction of the slope, intending to attack the top of the stone along the slope. But the people above could not allow them to succeed, although the rain of arrows whizzed overhead, and from time to time some people were hit by arrows, but hundreds of soldiers who touched the slope shot back with a rain of arrows, and dozens of people who were hit by arrows rolled down the slope and fell into the snow, dyeing the snow into patches of red flowers.

He tried to attack three or four times, but he was shot down by the remnants on the top of the stone, killing and wounding more than 200 soldiers, which made Chang Youde a little intolerable. He frantically ordered the archers to shoot more than a dozen rounds of arrows at the top of the rock, trying to suppress the remnants of the cliff in this way. Of course, he also had an effect, dozens of people were killed by arrows, but there were potholes on the top of the rocks to dodge, so that most of his arrows could only make close contact with the stones and ice.

After another attack was frustrated, and forty or fifty people were shot by the soldiers on the top of the stone, Chang Youde suddenly found that this matter seemed to be a little difficult to handle today. I thought I could easily conquer these desperate people, but it doesn't seem to be like that.

Just when Chang Youde was carefully considering how to take down this hard bone, a piece of news came that was unfavorable to him. The scouts sent to the north to monitor brought disturbing news that there seemed to be signs of Turkic cavalry activity on the snowfields twenty miles to the north, which Chang Youde was the last thing he wanted to hear. There are often battles in this three-junction land, the Turks will come to go around from time to time, and the Xi people will come to go around from time to time, and in recent years, An Shuai has strictly ordered ** not to wade into this troubled water, only to hold the pass, and ignore the struggle between the Turks and the Xi people. But today I had to set foot here, and the Turkic activities in the distance must have been informed of the news of ** involvement.

The Turks have always been brainless creatures, and they have long regarded this place as their territory, and whoever sets foot here will come to clean you up, and this may be a sign that they are coming.

Chang Youde obviously didn't want to be targeted by the Turks, and when he was anxious about whether to withdraw his troops quickly, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration in his mind, and he actually thought of a clever plan, and couldn't help laughing out loud.