Although they did not recognize who Li Mao was, it was inferred from common sense that the one who could have the protection of so many masters was definitely a nobleman, the purpose of their trip was to capture Li Mao, and the purpose of their ambush here was also to capture and kill, so it was necessary to find out whether this Tang nobleman in front of him was Li Mao.

"You are Li Mao, the king of Chengwu of the Tang Dynasty"

"It's just that."

"You are not allowed to lie."

"Monks don't speak."

The Khitan nodded, and a boulder fell in his heart. Their hard work these days has not been in vain, this is a big fish.

Capture, capture, the word "capture" is in front, the word "kill" is in the back, of course, those who can be captured alive should not be killed, and the dead are always not as valuable as the living.

The Khitans unanimously lowered their bows and crossbows, trying to use their scimitars to make Li Mao submit, but Li Mao also discarded the scimitar and jumped off his horse with difficulty. The Khitans looked at each other, wondering what King Chengwu of the Tang Dynasty was going to do, but the act of leaving the saddle made them feel at ease, in their opinion, people leave the horse without legs, and a person without legs is not afraid that he will run away.

Li Mao calmly took off the water bladder and drank saliva, spit on the ground, and swallowed it into his stomach for the second time. He lowered the water bladder and removed a burden from the saddle, then he patted his mount and signaled that it could go. The mount had followed him for less than half an hour, and apparently had no deep affection, so he hesitated for a moment, but decided to leave. Horses are spiritual creatures that sense the imminence of danger.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the leather bag in Li Mao's hand, speculating that what might be contained in it was a big killing weapon, or gold and silver jewelry, or official seals and documents.

The Khitan people tend to be gold, silver and jewelry, and they speculate that the county king of the Tang Dynasty may have to bribe them to find a way out

Li Mao took out a string of red, red, green and green weird guys, that string of things was composed of small cylinders of general size, each cylinder was about seven inches long, the thickness of an adult's thumb, the head of each cylinder had a small braid, all the small braids were tied together by a big braid, Li Mao carried the big braid, and this string of bamboo tubes was in his control.

It was a rarity, and the Khitan knight tilted his head and stared at it without blinking.

Li Mao showed his treasure to everyone, smiled slightly, calmly took out a fire medium from his waist pocket, pulled off the sheath, blew it twice, and sparks appeared.

Several alert Khitan knights picked up their crossbows, aimed them at Li Mao fiercely, and roared, "You stop." ”

Lao Cheng's solemn head of a hundred households waved his hand to stop the stupid movements of his subordinates.

The opponent made a very strange move, and the head of the hundred households was also nervous, but curiosity finally prevailed, and with twenty people surrounding him, he could still fly into the sky with wings.

Under the auspices of Li Mao, the fire matchmaker and the "big braid" had an intimate contact, and the big braid sparked excitedly, and then this strange thing was thrown into the air by Li Mao;;;;;;;;

Earth-shattering explosions came and went, filled with gunsmoke and sparks.

All the horses neighed and roared in an instant, and they were terrified, and a few horses were overworked, and when they heard this loud noise, they actually stumbled and knelt down, and the knights on horseback were also frightened by this sudden loud noise, and they were caught off guard, and fell out of their horses one by one.

The only remaining guard beside Li Mao was already prepared, and with the sound of the explosion, he desperately reined in the horse in his hand, and when the smoke of gunpowder dissipated and everyone had not come to his senses, he first calmed the war horse from the panic, and then he pulled out his knife and stabbed the horse in the buttocks, and the war horse galloped in pain.

The guard stretched out his hand to Li Mao in the smoke of gunpowder, and Li Mao took advantage of the situation to jump on horseback and break out of the encirclement.

By the time the Khitans recovered from their panic, Li Mao and the others had already rushed into the pine forest, and the Khitan knights immediately chased into the pine forest.

In the following day and night of forest chase, twenty elite Khitan knights were killed ninety percent of the losses, only one soldier escaped from the dense forest with a full body of pain and returned to the grassland, his companions were either sniped by Li Mao, or died at the mouth of wolves, insects, tigers and leopards, and three people were captured alive by Li Mao's pro-army guards and taken alive as prisoners of the Tang people.

The Pingbabao Blockade ended in a disastrous victory for the Tang Army, and the 123rd Battalion of the Left Chamber, who had followed Li Mao for many years, was completely lost, and more than 1,200 soldiers were buried in this lonely fort.

However, it was their bravery that gave the Khitans the illusion that Li Mao was nearby. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain why the Tang army has to put up desperate resistance, and the Khitans suspect that Li Mao is still in the fort, and the person who fled to Yanshan is a stand-in, although it is dangerous to hold on to the lonely fort, it is much better than acting as an arrow target on flat ground.

The defensive battle of Pingbabao lasted for three days and three nights, and just when the defenders were desperate, the Khitans suddenly began a major retreat.

What the defenders didn't know was that Chang Mucang of the Western Route Army and Zhu Jiu of the Eastern Route Army had quietly completed the roundabout encirclement of the Khitans when they were fighting bloodily, and the mobility of the Tang Army was far less than that of the Khitans, but they came prepared and occupied a geographical advantage.

The Khitans could only choose to retreat, and while the encirclement of Changmucang and Zhujiu had not yet been encircled, they rushed out of the gap to survive.

The Khitans acted quickly, and left as soon as they said they wanted, the main force withdrew, and the wounded soldiers stayed, and they rushed out under the noses of Chang Mucang and Zhu Jiu, but they obviously underestimated the strategy of the Tang army, and Yan Qin set up an ambush outside the perimeter, fierce like a wild bull, and slammed into the Khitans' ribs, which forced the Khitans to change direction and gallop north along the tributaries of the Sanggan River, so that they had to pass through a forested swamp area with many lakes before they could go to the camp to meet the headquarters.

Two hundred and twenty miles north of the Sanggan River, the general crossing has become the life gate of the Khitan people, and if this gate is closed, the Khitan people will die without a place to be buried, and this door will be opened, and Li Mao's adventure of using himself as a bait to coax the Khitan people will be reduced to a complete joke.

Li Mao didn't think too much about his face, he was worried that once the tiger returned to the mountain, there would be endless troubles.

When Shi Xiongjun received the order, it was still 230 li away from the general's crossing, but the Khitans were only 160 li away.

"Discard all baggage, the target will be crossed, quickly."

Shi Xiong didn't have time to greet the infantry brigade, so he only led 800 light cavalry, discarded all his baggage, and rushed to the general.

What Li Mao gave him was a death order, and he must carry it out to the letter.

Tsunekikura was well aware of the importance of the shogun, and in order to buy time for Ishio, he sent out the only fresh army he had, which numbered about 2,000 and was extremely disciplined, well-trained, and well-equipped, with only one flaw: he had never fought a tough battle before.

The officer corps has always been regarded by Li Mao as a baby bump, which is the source of strength for tens of thousands of troops in the three towns of Liaodong, Youzhou, and Yingping. Their existence has given the Three Towns Military Horses an inexhaustible supply of high-quality command talents, and no matter what setbacks they have encountered, they have the ability to quickly get back up from failure, make a comeback, and burst out with endless light.

The officer team nailed the Khitans like leeches, stalking them, frantically biting them, the Khitans couldn't get rid of the entanglement, and they didn't want to die with them, so they had to be divided into two, the elite went first, and the old and weak were behind.

The Tang army is so stubborn, the purpose is to drag them down, this Khitan people see very clearly, the Tang people have a saying called "give up the car to protect the handsome", the Khitan people understand very thoroughly, if they can't get rid of the Tang people's attack, they may be wiped out. The survival of the grassland is extremely difficult, only the strongest can survive, and for the continuation of the race, they can only "give up the car to protect the commander".

After the division of troops, the Khitan people's marching speed was significantly accelerated, and when they came to the general's crossing in the dust, it happened to be a dusk, the sky was full of sunshine, the forest was silent, and the woods in late autumn were colorful, colorful, and the beauty made people intoxicated. The fish on the surface of the water are bubbling, rippling in circles, reflecting the afterglow of the remnant sun and dotting the stars.

This is the general ferry, the surrounding 100 miles of swamps are dense, dangerous and dangerous, this is the only ferry, through this to the north through a birch forest is the grassland, the grassland is boundless, that is the home of the Khitan people, the immortal heaven favors their heaven and earth.

What kind of risks will there be under the tranquility on the surface, the Khitan people have no bottom in their hearts. They were cautious by nature, and a pathfinder team waded across the water to reach the other shore and planted signs in knee-deep water.

The Khitan people's exploration went very smoothly, after the front team crossed the river, they conducted a reconnaissance in the woods on the bank, and found nothing abnormal, before they began to cross the river, and first sent the leading army to test the water, the leading army was composed of the weaker tribes in the eight tribes, and in the Khitan culture where the strong were respected, it was reasonable for them to act as cannon fodder.

This point is not only agreed by the Ministry of Yili Sumire, but also by the cannon fodder himself.

The leading army crossed the general's crossing safely, unscathed, everything looked normal, the large group of men and horses immediately stepped into the river, and the Khitan leader Yelu also came to ride the horse halfway, when the dense forest on the opposite side suddenly frightened the birds, showing a terrible doomsday scene against the background of the sunset.

The soldiers who were crossing the river stopped, huddled together, panicked, Yelu also came to retreat for shouting, and the empty river suddenly flew like locusts, and the Khitan people who were crossing the river were caught off guard, and fell into the water one after another, and the people were neighing, and they were in a mess.

The Khitan pioneer army who crossed the river first also encountered an ambush by the Tang army in the pine forest at this moment, and was dizzy for a while, seeing that the road ahead was impassable, so they turned around and retreated into the river, they came out too suddenly, and the Khitan soldiers in the chaos in the water thought that the Tang army had launched a charge, and shouted and shot an arrow of revenge.

When they learned that the flood had washed away the Dragon King Temple, they all stopped, and the river beach was already densely covered with corpses, and the blood stained the dirty muddy water into a sauce-red color.

When Yelu came, he had already retreated to the shore, and he didn't care about the soldiers struggling and wailing in the water and the layers of corpses, and the difference was only how many people died, and too many people died was just a number for the commander. He is more concerned with the outcome.

Soon there were no living Khitans in the water, and Yelu also came to give a wave of the handle, and the first death squad jumped into the water and rushed towards the other side of the river. The Tang army's hard crossbows were as dense as a wall, and the arrows in the charging military horses were generally more than fifty, and a mountain of corpses was piled up on the water.

The second death squad of the Khitans immediately stepped on the bones of the martyrs and went on the road, and they were never returned.

The third, the fourth, the fifth

Finally, someone crossed the sea of blood and stepped on the land on the opposite bank, and before they could stand firmly, the fierce counterattack of the Tang people began, and the Khitans were quickly pressed back into the river.

The sky gradually darkened, and the Khitan army was filled with frustration, and the night march was so dangerous that the Khitans could only stop attacking for the time being.

Shi Xiongchang, who was hidden in the birch forest on the opposite bank, breathed a sigh of relief, his department was only seven or eight hundred people, and he arrived in the afternoon of this day, and the soldiers wanted to build fortifications on the spot, he did not agree, but ordered all the soldiers to hide in the woods, and the sky fell and did not care, the soldiers carried out his orders unscrupulously, they lurked in the dead leaves and grass, so strong as a rock, so that the birds that returned overnight were deceived, and when the Khitan horses searched the woods, they saw a burst of birds flying in shock, and thought that there was no ambush in the forest.

After nearly an hour of melee, there were few arrows left for them to carry, and if the Khitans insisted on attacking, they could only retreat, but fortunately it was dark at this time, and the Khitans could not figure out the battlefield situation, so they cautiously chose a temporary truce.

After nightfall, Ishio ordered the collection of arrows, but still did not allow the construction of fortifications on the shore, and the clever commander of the battlefield could see the strength of the opponent at a glance from the scale of the fortifications, and Ishio did not want to expose himself.

Early in the morning of the second day, the sixth death squad of the Khitans began to storm and cross the river, but encountered a more dense rain of arrows than at dusk the day before.

The crowd was shocked and hurriedly retreated.

...