"Minister, Khotan urgently reported that Xue Yang's department had successfully left the guard, and Xu Ying led the mountain battalion to defend in situ. In addition, on February 23, Zhang Sheng led more than 50,000 descendants of Zhaowu and nine surnames to arrive in Khotan, and Li Yang in Khotan had already begun to implement the next plan, and asked the headquarters for specific instructions. On the wall of the sandbank, Wang Houchun stared at Cao Rengui's camp in the distance and was silent, and Zhao Si hurriedly walked up beside him and handed him a copy of the latest information received.

"Cao Rengui has been besieging the city for seven days, right? Is there any news from the headquarters of the Western Expeditionary Army? After reading the information from Khotan's side, Wang Houchun nodded and looked up and asked. Cao Rengui finally arrived at the city yesterday after arriving at the outskirts of the sandbar on February 19 after being tortured by the traps and minefields arranged by the Flying Eagle Brigade, and traveled more than 100 miles in six days, but it was this area of more than 100 miles that made Cao Rengui and Shi Jianjiao suffer, if the endless traps only added trouble to Cao Rengui's troops, then the ubiquitous minefields left countless lives of the Guiyi Army and the Shatuo Army along the way. For example, today's mines of the army have undergone the second improvement, and they already have the terrifying strength of mines in later generations, and the Flying Eagle Brigade is a veteran of playing with these mines, and the most inconspicuous existence of this new weapon of the Tiance Army is now exerting its power outside Shazhou City, but everyone shudders, and Cao Rengui's more than 100,000 troops have been killed and injured more than 5,000 people in this hundred mile journey, of which countless people are seriously injured. In the surgical operation, even if Li Xuanqing tried his best to raise the level, but even if the field hospital of the army was still unable to deal with all kinds of external injuries like today, the situation faced by the wounded of the Guiyi Army, who had almost zero medical aid, was that they were slowly dying after wailing and suffering for several days, and this kind of groaning throughout the entire military camp almost lost the morale of the entire Guiyi Army, which was also the fundamental reason why Cao Rengui did not immediately enter the battle after he arrived at Shazhou City.

Wang Houchun's question Zhao Si shook his head, there is no news from Wan Yi's side of the Western Expeditionary Army, but the news from Xuan Yingwei's side is that the Uighur army in Yizhou is marching out of the city to confront the main force of the Tiance Army in the past two days, obviously Yizhou and Cao Rengui have been in contact, so the army will go out of the city to attract the attention of the Tiance army and give Cao Rengui the time needed to attack the city. However, if Cao Rengui's move was to use the Uighurs to attract the main force of the Tiance army to garrison outside the city of Yizhou, then it was Wang Houchun who took advantage of all kinds of opportunities to invite you into the urn and attract Cao Rengui's main force to do his best to find a way to surround and annihilate it, completely eliminate this living force in eastern Anxi, and unite Khotan and Shazhou to reverse the entire strategic situation of Anxi in one fell swoop. The battle between the two sides over the sandbar has unwittingly become the key to the overall battle.

"It doesn't matter, we don't need a large army to come here for the time being, and I'm afraid that Xue Yang will also need time on the Khotan side. Immediately summon Khotan in my name, and let Li Yang immediately reorganize the descendants of Zhaowu Jiu as the Anxi Corps, with Zhang Sheng as the acting general of the Anxi Corps, and take the opportunity to recover the whole of Khotan, and immediately lurk in Khotan after the 15th Battalion and Xue Yang's 3rd Battalion converged to wait for the order to regain Boxian Town and cut off Cao Rengui's back road, and at the same time summoned Su Xiaohu to lead the team to Shazhou immediately after the 3rd Corps arrived at the border. Wang Houchun nodded and calculated the time: "The key to our actions now is when the senior brother's side can send the Modao battalion south, as long as Shi Jian can arrive on time, this battle can completely eliminate Cao Rengui and recover the entire southwest region of Annan, and then the western expeditionary army will gradually recover Gaochang, Yanqi, Qiuzi and Shule from east to west." After the recovery of Khotan, the Anxi Corps could go north from Shule to resist the sandman dynasty and Qarluq, and win time for the main force of the Western Expeditionary Army to recover the major towns on the northern line of the Tianshan Mountains. Wang Houchun said the essence of the entire Northwest Battle little by little, and said with a smile: "Next, we will see Li San'er's movements." And Zhao Si followed his words and saw Li San'er walking to Wang Houchun's side with a few people.

"How about it, San'er, your commander is not here, you can really be the king of the mountain this time." Zhao Si couldn't help but smile when he saw Li San'er's eyes, these people in the Flying Eagle Brigade are all the same virtue as Su Xiaohu, they belong to the kind of typical person who is afraid that the world will not be chaotic, and they have always had the mentality of Lao Tzu being the first in the world, so for these guys, letting them fight by themselves may be more effective than making any plans, these people are making trouble on the battlefield, and they can definitely rely on the small number of troops in their hands to make Cao Rengui suffer. At this time, the Guiyi Army had just experienced the ambush of the nightmare minefield before, and its morale was about to reach its lowest point, and if the Flying Eagle Brigade came again, I was afraid that Cao Rengui would have the heart to die.

"Starting tonight, the entire Flying Eagle Brigade will be transferred out of the city, and the city defense will be handed over to the city defense army in the city, and your task is to hold Cao Rengui for at least five days no matter what method is used, so that he has no way to attack the city defense." Wang Houchun turned his head and stared at Li San'er, with a serious expression, and pointed to the undulating camp of Cao Rengui's Guiyi Army outside the city: "The other party has the light cavalry of the Shatuo people, as long as Cao Rengui's army attacks the city, then Shi Jianjiao will definitely personally lead the Shatuo light cavalry to attack our back, so as to cut off the logistics supply line between Guazhou and Shazhou and even the front line of the Western Expeditionary Army, so we must find a way to limit Cao Rengui's army to a corner outside the city, so that Cao Rengui will not dare to send the light cavalry out to attack our rear road in order to deal with you." Wang Houchun looked cold and said, "You must delay for at least five days, so that the main army can rush to the outside of Shazhou City in time to carry out the plan, and at the same time, give the third corps enough time to enter Boxian Town to cut off Cao Rengui's final way back." Wang Houchun said again and asked the guards behind him to open the simple map around the sandbar he carried with him: "When the time comes, the Modao battalion will go south from the northern line, and the third corps will go from west to east, plus the local strength of our sandbank will be equivalent to encircling Cao Rengui here, and all the goals will be achieved in one battle, do you understand?" ”

"Please rest assured, Li San'er understands, leave it to me, and guarantee that Cao Rengui will not have a single soldier near Shazhou City within five days." Li San'er understood that Wang Houchun explained so much to himself just to make himself understand the importance of the thousands of people in the third brigade in his hands at this moment, so he nodded directly and took over the general without hesitation, and then hurriedly went down the city wall to prepare without saying much, the equipment that the Flying Eagle Brigade needs to carry in combat is very different from that of the regular army, Wang Houchun simply opened all the logistics baggage warehouses and let them choose by themselves. Now in addition to the small number of troops, the rest of the sandbank is very large, and the materials transported from the rear to prepare for the headquarters of the Western Expeditionary Army are basically piled up in Shazhou and Guazhou, and because the sandbank has to face Cao Rengui's attack, it has stored a huge amount of grain, grass and weapons, just in case the defenders in the city can rely on the strong weapon reserves to resist the arrival of the main force of the Tiance Army.

After Li San'er left, Wang Houchun also took advantage of Cao Rengui's failure to attack the city defense and began to make urgent adjustments, including shrinking the power of the counties under Shazhou to the city, and some officials began to call the people for evacuation. Fortunately, the Guiyi Army is also considered to be the local force of Shazhou, so the impact on the people in Suoyang City, Dunhuang and other places is not great, at most, they are afraid that the land allocated to them by the new officials of Shazhou during this time will be taken away by Cao Rengui.

On the night of February 23, the fourth year of the Apocalypse, the huge force of 4,000 people of the Flying Eagle Brigade disappeared from Shazhou City, at this time even Wang Houchun himself did not know how much trouble Li San'er made later, after 4,000 people left the city, they were immediately divided into a team of 500 people, a total of eight brigades, Li San'er dismantled the original team of his original third brigade into these eight brigades, so that the original relatively bloated establishment instantly relied on the addition of these basic personnel of the third brigade to become tacit. The plan formulated by Li San'er was to divide the eight brigades into two groups, one group would be placed on the surface to harass and attack, while the other group would hide in the dark and dig pits. The two played a big role that night.

Li San'er personally led four brigades into Cao Rengui's rear army camp in the second half of the night, quietly stole thousands of war horses, and then tied torches to the tails of these war horses, and then drove these war horses to attack Cao Rengui's camp, so that the entire Guiyi army camp was in chaos, countless soldiers ran out of the tent in a panic, and those crazy war horses were not controlled at all to bring the flames all over their bodies to all directions, and countless tents were also ignited in an instant. Flames began to spread throughout the camp. The generals of the Guiyi Army had no time to react under the sudden upheaval, and many of them were knocked to the ground by these frenzied war horses, and then trampled to death by the rebels. At this time, Cao Rengui was originally discussing with Shi Jianjiao how to attack the city, Shi Jianjiao was originally a famous general of Shatuo, so he had already made up his mind to use the advantage of light cavalry to cruise around the sandbar to block possible reinforcements when Cao Rengui raised troops to attack the city, and cut off the rear supply line of the sandbank, and cut the sandbar out of the ruling sequence of the Tiance army. But what I didn't expect was that my side had just begun to discuss how to act, and the opponent's attack had already arrived in an instant, and it hit on his own weakness, and he saw that his morale was low, and at this time he began to attack the camp which meant that the already low morale would inevitably continue to decline after this battle, so if Cao Rengui forcibly attacked the city, once the attack did not go well and returned to the righteous army, there would really be a big problem at any time.

Therefore, Cao Rengui and Shi Jianjiao glanced at each other, and then hurriedly walked out of the tent and began to send orders to their own soldiers to lead the team to integrate the troops to besiege the attacking Tiance army, and began to arrange manpower to kill those crazy war horses. Speaking of which, this trick arranged by Li San'er is easy to crack, but many times in the face of noisy and chaotic scenes, no one can stop the behavior of those chaotic soldiers in a short time, resulting in the irreversibility of the situation in the end.

The appearance of Cao Rengui and Shi Jianjiao allowed the Guiyi Army and the Shatuo Army to find the backbone, and soon the chaos began to come to an end, but before the two could breathe a sigh of relief, they suddenly found that the location of their rear army's heavy camp suddenly had thick smoke billowing and fires, which looked like the grain and grass were burned. Therefore, Cao Rengui didn't care about the fact that there was still Xiao Gu ahead, and the riot was not over yet, and he began to hurry towards the back camp. It turned out that when Li San'er led the team to drive the war horses to attack other places, after attracting all the attention, the second group that was hiding in the dark took the time to lurk at the location of the rear army's baggage camp, and immediately began to set fire after killing the guards, and after the food in the five big tents was ignited, the fire began to spread wildly along the pace of these people, and the entire rear camp began to jump up. Although Cao Rengui arranged 30,000 elite troops around the baggage camp for the safety of grain and grass to surround the baggage camp in the middle, he still could not stop the infiltration of the Flying Eagle Brigade. The chaos in the rear camp after the fire was more obvious than in the front camp, and the panic and anxiety caused by the burning of grain and grass were more obvious.

"Haha, fire smoke rockets and order everyone to retreat immediately. Cao Rengui will definitely not be able to sleep tonight, and tomorrow we will give them another big gift. Li San'er looked at the busy figure of Cao Rengui and smiled, waved his hand and asked his subordinates behind him to launch smoke rockets to inform everyone to retreat, but after these people withdrew, they did not find a place to hide, but began to plant various mines in various key places like a flock of sparrows. Moreover, these unscrupulous guys began to bet that they had planted mines and killed more people. The result of this was that the next day, when the Shatuo cavalry came out of the camp to carry out Shi Jianjiao's plan, they kept striking mines on the road, and the continuous explosions made everyone tremble, and those frightened war horses gradually deviated from their respective routes with these Shatuo cavalry, and then were shot and killed by the various teams of the Flying Eagle Brigade lying in ambush. Moreover, compared with the ordinary soldiers of the Tiance Army, the Flying Eagle Brigade was more proficient and sharp in the use of formal rifles and guerrilla tactics, and the light cavalry of Shatuo had no room to fight back at all, and the cavalry brigade of more than 10,000 people was beaten and unable to move soon after leaving the northern city of Shazhou. The ambush arranged by Li San'er is one ring after another, covering each other, so the result is that if the number of Shatuo people is too small, they will be killed directly on the spot, and if the number is too large, these Flying Eagle Brigade soldiers often shoot two or three rounds and then quickly evacuate back with the help of various covers around them, and the men and horses in the rear will immediately shoot to cover the retreating men in front, and the people in front of them will immediately reflexively start to re-aim and cover the people in front after crossing the ambush point behind for a distance. In this way, one ring after another, the people and horses pursued by the Shatuo people are also rapidly decreasing. Li San'er's tactic was like a dense and deep roller, directly devouring the Shatuo cavalry that followed his movement on this wasteland little by little.

After a whole day of fierce fighting, the Shatuo cavalry finally had to give up and return to the camp, and when he returned to the camp, Shi Jianjiao almost fell to the ground when he saw his troops coming back, and when he set off, the whole 10,000 cavalry came back not only fewer in number, but also all the cavalry were depressed, like frost-beaten eggplants, losing their spirit.

"Looks like the sandbar is ready." Shi Jianjiao sighed as he looked at the towering Sandbank City in the distance, and felt faintly uneasy.