"General, 50,000 light infantry have been assembled outside the city, as well as 50,000 spear heavy infantry, it seems that these fanhairers plan to officially attack the city today." On the seventh day of the sixth month of the fourth year of the Apocalypse, Xiaobolu in the south of Khotan was also in the northern part of the Green Ridge Mountains, and Zhang Sheng led two battalions of the Anxi Corps to rush here from Khotan City in the starry night to join Qinkong, who was sitting here. But at this time, the protector was already surrounded by the army of the Safavid Dynasty, and Qin Kong also brought the latest news.

"Is the communication channel between our army and the city still functional?" After June, the northwest region has begun to turn into summer, although relying on the snow of the Green Ridge Mountains, the small Bolu area began to enter the prosperous period of the year, but Zhang Sheng did not see the slightest spring in his eyes, the strength of a battalion of the Anxi Corps was stationed in the city, equipped with fifteen artillery, but if the opponent's more than 100,000 troops attacked the city defense day and night, the defenders in the city who faced the division of troops must be controlled everywhere, once the city was broken, it was equal to the southwest gate of Khotan would be opened by the other party. In the future, relying on the Green Ridge Mountain Range, almost except for the grassland oasis, is Khotanese City, which is very beneficial to the advance of the opponent's large corps, and although his own Anxi Corps is sharply equipped, it has a total of only 50,000 people, and it is necessary to divide troops to guard the Ya'er City in the north to guard against the Anxi Uighurs, so the other party must not be allowed to break through the secret protection.

Qin Kong knew what Zhang Sheng's plan was, but he still shook his head with a wry smile and said, "The large-scale march passage has been completely occupied by the other party, and our army can't enter the city at all. Qin Kong's words made Zhang Sheng's face darken, but then a trace of hideousness appeared, "Since you can't get in, just fight all the way, we have 20,000 people now, and if you are caught off guard by the advantage of artillery, you will definitely be able to suddenly attack when the opponent's siege battle is halfway through, and completely crush the army of the Safavids, maybe it will have a miraculous effect." ”

The reason why the Third Corps was able to break through quickly was because in winter these rivers were basically cut off and covered with ice and snow, and the Third Corps came all the way from Tibet, along the Kunlun Mountains to the Green Ridge Mountains, which caught the other side off guard. At present, our army does not have the suddenness of the Third Corps' initial dispatch, and the most important thing is that it is now summer, and these three rivers are in a period of abundant water, although the width and depth of the northwest rivers are not the same as those in the interior of our Central Plains, but our army still needs a large amount of equipment to cross the river on a large scale, so its whereabouts cannot be concealed in any case. Qin Kong shook his head and continued: "For today's plan, the only way to do this is to give up supporting the city of Humi, and without contacting the defenders in the city, rely on the existing strong firepower of our army to defeat the siege troops first, and then rely on the city walls to start a field battle with the other party under the city guard, if our army can win, then Safar's will not be able to support it, and it is even more difficult for them to transport troops to the city of Humi than us, and it took several months to transfer troops from the Tiaozhi Prefecture and the Fengdu Governor's Mansion, If we can defeat the invading department this time, it will be equivalent to cutting off the main force of the other party's invasion of Khotan, then it will take a lot of time and energy for Fanmaozi to redeploy troops, and we will be able to achieve our goal. "The Safarid Dynasty and Khotan are currently separated by the huge mountainous area of the Green Ridge Mountains, and most of the mountainous areas of the Green Mountains are in each other's territory, so it is very difficult to transfer troops from south to north, and there are countless lofty mountains to cross, to be honest, the Safar Dynasty can be very efficient in early June. During this time, Qin Kong focused on rectifying and deploying the secret guards to penetrate into the Safarid Dynasty, and he knew a lot more about the other party than before. In fact, most of the land occupied by the Safavid Dynasty is still within the radiation range of the Tang Dynasty according to the previous statement, similar to the capital of the Safarid Dynasty, Xiliuzhou, which is what they call Kandahar, or the Guanmo Prefecture under the original Anxi Metropolitan Protectorate, that is, the subsidiary forces, and according to the understanding of Qin Kong and others, the farthest distance of the Anxi Metropolitan Protectorate even extended to the distant sea in the south, and the Persian Governor's Mansion was a Metropolitan Governor's Mansion under the Anxi Metropolitan Protector back then. Therefore, Qin Kong has always been dismissive of the forces of this Safavid dynasty, believing that this is a rebellion by these local forces against the central power.

However, Qin Kong's suggestion made Zhang Sheng thoughtful, although Zhang Sheng's understanding of the Safar Dynasty was not as detailed as Qin Kong's, but as a general with troops, he still saw at a glance that Qin Kong's plan was very suitable for the current secret protection. Therefore, after the detailed arrangement, the two immediately waved their troops towards the protection of the secret, from Xiaobolu to the protection of the secret about 500 miles, Zhang Sheng took five days to complete the whole process, the whole army at the source of the Tita River. At this time, the city has been besieged by the Safarid Dynasty for four days, at the beginning of the city, the defenders in the city used cannons to bombard the opponent's attack formation, and the fierce artillery fire blew up the Safarid attack phalanx, and there was almost no result on the first day, the Safarid people were completely stunned for the first time in the face of this epoch-making weapon, and there was no countermeasure at all, and the cost of the onslaught for a day was not even touched by the wall of the city in addition to being killed by the other party nearly 10,000 people. This made the opponent's commander furious, and the next day began to order a full-line attack, attacking in all directions around the Protector City, and the Protector City was originally different from the Central Plains City, similar to the Western Castle, although the multi-diamond shaped city wall is more conducive to concentrating firepower for defense, but this requires more troops, and this is precisely the biggest flaw of the Tiance Army in the city at this time. Under the division of troops, even the reserves in the hands of the main general were all sent to the city wall, and the main general Pang Lingming even ordered the local logistics troops in Khotan, which had been serving as auxiliaries, to follow the main force on the city wall, and moved a large number of old siege tools that were abandoned in the city to the city, and those stones and countless bows and arrows also began to appear in the city defense battle. Pang Lingming didn't care how lethal they were, and smashed all of them under the city wall. He even ordered his troops to dump oil directly into the city at the most dangerous time, and then set it on fire, using the sea of fire to block the pace of the opponent's attack and delay time. However, this kind of rush to the general action of rushing to the hospital has played a good effect, originally the Anxi Corps has been fully equipped with formal rifles, but because the number of the opponent is too large, and their own number is too small, so there will be a precarious situation, after these messy city defense weapons do not want money to throw down, the defenders under the city were beaten in a hurry, taking advantage of this rare opportunity, all the Anxi Corps soldiers began to fire with all their might, Some of the soldiers who didn't have time to shoot even took out explosive packets that they hadn't used for a long time and lit them and threw them down, and the rumbling explosion sent countless pieces of rubble scattered in all directions, accompanying the defenders through the most difficult moments of the two days. On the fourth day, the Savavid army finally began to storm the city defenses, and many soldiers even broke through to the city walls at one point and fought at close range with the soldiers of the Tiance Army. Although the siege soldiers could not wear heavy armor to the city because of the speed and weight of the problem, the bravery of the Safarid people still made the Tiance army pay a heavy price, and the Khotanese auxiliaries who had been assisting the Anxi Corps to defend the city on the city tower were beaten and even endangered the entire southern city defense for a time, until Pang Lingming led his personal guards to arrive and kill all the Safars and the scattered Khotanese people who fled to the city wall to stabilize the situation. In the fierce battle, Pang Lingming even did not hesitate to be slashed by the other party, constantly throwing explosive bags out of the city, relying on this powerful weapon to open the way, and with artillery, he forcibly overturned the opponent's offensive and ended this difficult day.

After the Safarids withdrew, Pang Lingming ignored his own injuries and ordered the city defense to be reorganized overnight, repairing the wall that had been smashed by the opponent's catapult, and pacifying the wounded soldiers. During the four days of fierce fighting, Pang Lingming's provisional battalion lost more than 30 percent, half of which was lost today. But Pang Lingming, as Zhang Sheng's henchman brought out from Anxi, naturally understands that he is guarding secrets, and Zhang Sheng will have one more day to prepare. What's more, Qin Kong told him when he left from Humi that it would take at least five to ten days for reinforcements to arrive at Humi. Therefore, Pang Lingming looked at the Safar camp outside the Protector City, and a touch of hideousness suddenly appeared on his face blackened by the gunsmoke. He was originally born as "Tang Kou" like Zhang Sheng, and they were all outlaws, and there was no difference between life and death for them at all. But now that he finally waited for hope, the newly-born Datang tried his best to go west to restore the glory of the empire of the year, and the place he occupied at the moment was so dangerous, even if all the people died in battle, it was impossible for the other party to succeed. What's more, I have already witnessed with Qin Kong these days, the land occupied by these Safavids was the territory under the protection of the Anxi capital back then, and even the capital of the other party was the homeland of the year, which is simply unforgivable for these Anxi orphans. After so many years of Datang's sinking, it was powerless to look west, but now it is different, Datang has returned, and these places will sooner or later be taken back and become their own land.

Just when Pang Lingming was imagining waving his army to sweep the Safarid people while arranging for soldiers to be on duty, Zhang Sheng had already led the army to arrive. The source of Tidoho was less than twenty miles north of the city of Humi. Originally, such a close distance could not hide the eyes of the Safarids, but these four days of fierce siege battles caused them heavy losses, but there were almost no results. Finally, he succeeded in attacking the city wall today but was driven down by the other party, which made the commander of Safar begin to study moving the main force in other directions, preparing to open a second siege route.

In fact, the Safarid people were right, and they accurately grasped the current situation that there was a serious shortage of troops in the city at this time, and they could not invest many troops in more than two main attack directions. And the most important thing is that due to the insufficient number of artillery, Pang Lingming concentrated all the artillery in the southern city, that is, the main attack direction of the Safavids, and the other five city walls only relied on fifteen mechanical crossbows to assist in defending the city. It can be said that if Zhang Sheng did not arrive in time, then Pang Lingming would inevitably pay a heavy price in the next battle because of his own arrangement, and unlike the continuous reinforcements coming from outside the city, there was nothing to supplement the troops in the city, and there was no way to solve the fundamental problem by integrating all the brave and faithful and reliable soldiers among the few Khotanese auxiliaries into active service.

However, at this time, Zhang Sheng didn't know the layout in the city, and he didn't know that the Safariads decided to open up a second battlefield after four days of fruitless siege, intending to deal a heavy blow to Pang Lingming. At this time, he let the troops rest for a short night, and then immediately began to make pre-war deployments. However, Qin Kong hurriedly set off with the Xuanying Guard's people last night, ready to discredit and find the secret passage he left at the beginning and enter the city.

However, as soon as Zhang Sheng summoned two battalion commanders and several commanders to prepare to give orders, a deafening shout of killing began to be heard from the distant Humi City, and the sound of shell explosions accompanied by this killing sound was also announcing how fierce the battle to defend the city was.

"Brothers, I don't want to say more nonsense, Lao Pang is fighting bloodily in the city today is the fifth day, this is not the era of our previous small fights, we are now wearing military uniforms on behalf of my Tang Dynasty, the first thieves are trying to attack my city, kill my robe, I am waiting for the Tiance Army soldiers, since we should guard the country and protect the country as our own responsibility, today there is no retreat. All the kings will fight into the city with me, rescue the robe, kill the enemy and serve the country, don't live up to the glory brought to us by our ancestors. Zhang Sheng didn't bother to talk about the pre-war mobilization, and immediately began to charge with more than 20,000 people from two battalions, and countless auxiliaries behind him pushed a cannon and followed the large army under the drag of the war horse.

From the Tido River to the north of the city of Humi Zhang Sheng led the army all the way away, and at this time the city of Humi is experiencing the most difficult moment since the start of the war, because of the artillery support in the south of the city, fifteen cannons are constantly spitting shells, one after another explosions make the Safarid army outside the city unable to gather a large-scale offensive at all, relatively speaking, it is much more stable than yesterday. But the northern city was facing great pressure at this time, more than 50,000 Safarid infantry with huge siege ladders swarmed up, and more than a dozen catapults were constantly throwing boulders on the city wall in the rear, and people were constantly being hit by boulders and screaming miserably, although the mechanical crossbows that were hurriedly mobilized were doing their best to bombard these catapults, but the other party was obviously prepared, and the number of catapults was not fifteen at all, but a full fifty catapults hidden, So one was caught off guard and even a mechanical crossbow was smashed by a boulder whizzing from afar.

"Quick, quickly go to the south city to draw five artillery pieces to support, and the other four reserves on the city wall to rush to the north city to reinforce. Tell everyone that the city is in the people, and the city is destroyed and the people are dead. Pang Lingming roared angrily, raised the rifle in his hand, and killed one of the generals of the opposing party who was afraid of the cloud ladder in the distance, and began to decisively adjust the deployment halfway. Behind him, more guards began to hold explosives bags and threw them down, and many Khotanese people carried cans of oil onto the city wall and threw them directly down. The remaining Khotanese were now largely able to adapt to such a tragic battle, and one of the leaders even picked up the rifle of a fallen regular soldier beside him and began to shoot downward.

"Boom" A fire finally ignited outside the city, many Safard soldiers in the fire were burned into burning people, several ladders were even ignited, and the pressure in the northern city was suddenly relaxed, but Pang Lingming's face showed a more solemn look, and the Safariads in the distance began their best siege tactics.