In winter, the river section above Huaishui Xixian County is only one mile wide in the narrow place, which is also the reason why the Qin army besieging Chengyang can cut off shipping. In order not to affect the navigation of Huaishui in winter, this section of the channel has been specially dredged. The steam engine-powered bucket pulled out the sediment along the river, and the water level was deeper, but the water surface became narrower, and there were about 150 steps left.

Every day for 16 hours, the waterway officials in charge of the smooth passage inspect the water surface, and when they find the ice, they throw a stone of standard weight on it, and the stone falls, that is, there is no ice, and if the stone falls on the ice, it means that the ice is thick enough to break the ice. The so-called icebreaker boat is a giant warship equipped with large iron horns in the bow, which is rowed by manpower and breaks through the ice by weight.

There is such ice-breaking technology, but after all, it is a wooden icebreaker, once the ice is too thick and the frozen river section is too long, the icebreaker is useless. It is even more useless to sprinkle salt on roads, and it is astronomical to sprinkle salt on entire rivers.

Li Xin, don't worry about me, Li Xin ......, as long as you have a little sound military knowledge, you know the importance of Huaishui. E Zhuo of the Transportation Division simply lived in Chengyang and directly listened to the reports of the waterway officials every day. From dawn to dawn, he was always worried, and when the sun came out, he had finished reporting it, so that he could breathe a sigh of relief and survive another day.

When the sun came out, the military discussion in the Li Xin shogunate had ended, and after breakfast, the Qin army pulled out the camp again, as before. The inside and outside of the Nanyang Basin were originally plains, and the thousands of miles of ice were more flat, and there was no need to build bridges to cross the water in winter. From a distance, it wasn't an army, it was a boundless moving forest.

And the Chu army rode like a group of wolves outside the sheepfold, running with the Qin army for miles and tens of miles. Whenever they wanted to get close to the Qin army, the sheepdogs in the sheepfold would gallop out to stop them. The Qin knights who attacked at short distances were all heavily armoured, and they used to drive the Chu army away with several times their strength, so that they could not get close to the Qin army on the march.

The overall advantage brought by the dragon horse is not big, plus the more than 1,600 sweat and blood horses sold by Hu Tanshao, there are more than 7,600 dragon horses in the Chu army. Subtract two thousand mares, one hundred matching stallions, and no more than five thousand dragon horses available.

Of the 5,500 dragon horses, 800 were taken by the artillerymen, 1,080 were made up of the 1st Division of the Heavy Cavalry Division, and 20 percent of the horses were actually prepared, which was another 1,200, leaving 3,500 horses. There are also two light riding divisions in the Yingshi division, and the Xiang division also has a dragon horse light riding division (dissatisfied with the editor), and the rest are more than a dozen or dozens of horses in each division.

Although the cavalry of each division has been concentrated and used as much as possible, the Qin army can fully cope with the hundreds of dragon horses and cavalry, and the sudden advance of the cavalry is not unexpectedly dispersed by thousands of Qin cavalry. Of course, the knights were not reconciled to this result, but the former commander of Wancheng strictly ordered the cavalry to break into the enemy camp at the risk of death, and only asked them to monitor the movements of the Qin army.

The Qin army marched all over the mountains, and the knights of both sides galloped on the frozen snow like hunting. Cheng Kui, who was carrying a longbow, felt very bored watching this scene, he could finally put on his armor again after half a year on the couch, he wanted to fight happily, and this kind of play-like fighting in front of him was really not to his liking.

"Qin geometry?" The marching Qin army could not see its head at a glance, and Cheng Kui, who had only left Fangcheng yesterday, was not surprised by the number of Qin troops. If the Qin army does not have numbers, it is not the Qin army.

"About 400,000, with forty lieutenants." The speed of the Qin army's march was not fast, and the trebuchets drawn by oxen and horses limited the speed of the march, and the horses had to stop and stop after running for a while. From the time the Qin army left the camp in Xiangcheng, Douzang has been following. "Over there! Qin Renwei Banner. ”

Dou Zang pointed to a nearby Qin military captain and said. The Qin army has also become more and more regularized, and the soldiers' uniforms are still mixed, but the banner is becoming more and more distinct. The lieutenant flag planted on the car is spreading horizontally in the air under the north wind, and a Qin character can be seen on the flag: white.

"White?" Cheng Kui, the general of the Bai clan, first thought of Bai Qi.

"Yes." Douzang also thought of Bai Qi. "After the death of Bai Qi, the lord of his relatives was also taken by King Qin Zhao, this person ......"

"Report ——!" A few scouts came from afar, and Douzo thought they had captured the captive, but saw that there was nothing on the horse. When I got to the entrance, I heard the head of the reprimanded cavalry say: "The Qin people are more than fifteen miles!" The Qin people are more than fifteen miles away!! ”

The Qin army marched fifteen miles a day out of Xiangyang, but today it exceeded fifteen miles. Dou Zang looked at the position of the sun, his expression was suddenly stunned, and he shouted: "The Qin people have changed!" Drive——、 drive—"

Douzang beat the horse, Cheng Kui followed the horse, and the two rushed to the forest a few miles away, and all the knights around them followed. The spears in their hands were erected, and the swallow-tailed flags on the ends of the spears were hunting, and the north wind blew the tail of the flag to the left. Douzang was in charge of commanding dozens of scouts on the east side, he rushed towards the Qin army, and the knights who were scouting hurriedly approached him when they saw this, and although some people were far away, there were also more than a dozen knights gathered around him.

Seeing the knights of the Chu army rushing, the Qin cavalry guarding this direction also rushed at full speed, and intercepted the dozen or so cavalry of Dou Zang outside his own queue. Dou Zang didn't want to break into the ranks of the Qin army, and when the two sides were fifty paces apart, he suddenly turned his horse's head and galloped south. He turned to Cheng Kui and the others behind him, even if he intended to fight, he could only follow the turn.

The cavalry of the Qin army was also very knowledgeable, and they also turned their horses. They are not greedy for the head of the Chu army's reprimand, and the head of the Chu army's rebuke is not easy to take. Outside the scope of the tacit understanding between the two sides, as long as one of the Chu soldiers is killed, they will be frantically retaliated. If the reprimands are not enough, the light horses will be transferred to retaliate; If the light rider can't do it, the heavy rider will be transferred to retaliate. can't even say revenge, when he dismounts and cuts off people's heads, he will be stabbed to death by other Chu army scouts.

The task of the cavalry general of the Qin army is to ensure that the enemy cavalry does not break into his own ranks, and if the cavalry of the Chu army is really pressed, others will not be able to save him. The key is that the exchange ratio is ugly, killing one dragoon of the Chu army, you will have to kill three or four people, and you may not be able to grab the head; When you encounter a dragon horse riding again, you will die ten people, and the other party may not die a single person. When you win, you lose everything, and you are demoted to guilty.

Therefore, as long as the other party does not forcibly advance and drive away, it is the safest. The cavalry of the Chu army turned fifty paces away, indicating that it had no intention of breaking through, and the cavalry of the Qin army breathed a sigh of relief, and also turned southward, and the two cavalry galloped parallel fifty paces apart. After galloping for several miles, more and more knights from the two armies gathered, and just when the Qin generals were worried that the assembled Chu army was about to break through, Douzang turned his horse's head again and headed east, leaving the Qin army.

"The Qin people must give up today." Running five miles away, Dou Zang suddenly stopped his horse and said a word to Cheng Kui.

"A house?" Cheng Kui heard that the Qin army had been marching half-way a few days ago. "What do you want?"

"In this way, we can go to the city the day after tomorrow." At this time, the Qin army was still more than 70 miles away from the juancheng at the northern end of the dumb mouth, and there were still 90 miles away from the Zhangguan in the south of the dumb mouth. As far as he knew, there were not many soldiers stationed in the city, and he didn't know much about the situation of the fifteen-mile pass behind the city, as well as the situation of the dumb city wall and the forts inside and outside the wall.

"Someone!" A worried Douzang shouted. "Tell the city that the Qin army will do one or two today, and you must be vigilant."

"Yui!" The knight who came up shouted, and he repeated the content in front of Dou Zang: "Tell the scroll city, the Qin army must go to one house today, or two houses, be on guard." Seeing Douzang nodding, he beat his chest with his right hand and rode his horse to the rolling city more than seventy miles away.

The same repulsion appeared in the Qinling Mountains west of Shangluo, and in Hanzhong in the Ankang Basin. Without exception, these news reached Ji Ying's Great Sima Mansion, and the flying officer took the news and shouted: "The Qin people are here!" The Qin people are here! ”

Such a shout did not make the Great Sima Mansion panic, but made people happy. The situation in Huaishui today is the same as yesterday, frozen only at the place where the Rui River bends or joins, and if the Qin army is determined to attack the Chu state, then the Chu army can complete the last maneuver and the main force can be transferred back to Fangcheng.

"The Qin people are moving in all three directions, attacking me." Li and Xiang Nao was a little frustrated when he complained to him, he had misjudged.

"The Qin army has only been moving for a day, how do you know that it must be attacking me?" Nao slyly frowned and spoke. Although rationally, it was beneficial for the Qin people to attack Fangcheng before Huaishui froze the country, but emotionally Nao was cunning and did not want this result.

"Yu Fu Yin," I coughed and handed over a message. "Xianyang pigeon news."

"What?" Nao looked at him slyly. The news of Xianyang pigeon was transmitted to Shouying first, and it could only be transmitted to Ji Ying after dawn, which should be the latest news.

"He said that the King of Qin had been out of Xianyang the day before yesterday," he said, "I will go to Luoyang." ”

"Luoyang?" Nao was cunning. Luoyang is Sanchuan County, the south of Sanchuan County is Yingchuan County, and the south of Yingchuan County is Fangcheng, and Li Xin's army set off from Xiangcheng, Yingchuan County. Of course, King Qin didn't go to Luoyang to fish, this was to press Li Xin.

"Why did the Qin people attack me and not Qi?" Nao was still not convinced, and asked the doubts in his heart.

Or ...... Or ......" and looked at me, and stopped talking.

"It should be the sin of the subordinates." Don't let me smile bitterly. In Xiong's words, this is called lifting a stone and shooting oneself in the foot. If you don't use that counter-plan, the king of Qin will not be angry, and if the king of Qin is not angry, he will not order the Qin army to attack Chu......

He thought so, and looked at him slyly but strangely: "If the Qin people originally wanted to attack Qi, but now attack me, Dongjun is more than a thousand miles away from Xiangcheng, and the army can only arrive in a few days?" ”

Don't be stunned by the cunning question. If the Qin State really attacked Chu on a large scale because of the anti-plot and abandonment of Qi, it would be too late to move the Qi army to the west in those days. As long as there is no news of Wang Qian's army moving westward, it cannot be judged that the Qin army has changed its strategic direction, at most it is said that the Qin army was originally going to attack Chu, and the counter-plot made the Qin state attack Chu in advance.

"Probe!" Nao cunning slapped the news on several cases, so ordered.