Chapter 473: Counterattack

After receiving the news of the capture of Dalun Mountain, Dai Yun did not wait for the concentrated forces of Dalun Mountain to regroup, with Ruhong's morale and precise campaign planning, in just three days, the Central Route Army drove the Western Route Army for more than 40 miles and captured several small and medium-sized towns. The follow-up will be a little smoother. The Yunzhou army never worried about local cooperation, they did not collect food from the local area, had strict battlefield discipline, and always traveled in groups, always guaranteed to deal with battles of all sizes at any time.

And a day after the attack on all fronts in the middle lane, the Blood Qi Army began to engage the enemy. In the beginning, it was just a small-scale ambush and harassment. In a much more complex road environment than the Middle and Northern Routes, the Blood Qijun needs to be vigilant at all times. In the first two or three days, the Western Route Army actually caused more than 200 casualties of the Blood Qi Army one after another. Except for the thirteen killed and twenty-nine wounded in the first battle, they were all caused by various non-combat means of the Western Route army. Gao Sen Qi made the scout troops of the Flying Tiger Battalion break into pieces, divided into many groups, and set various traps on the road. On the rugged mountain road, a small landslide may be able to reimburse several soldiers of the Blood Qi Army. The combat power of the Blood Qi Army is indeed strong, but in addition to light infantry, archers and cavalry, the most combat-effective heavy infantry and heavy equipment battalions need to rely on the protection of friendly troops during the march, and their combat effectiveness is a mess. And in the mountain march, when those man-made landslides, rolling logs and rocks are combined, and small-scale harassment and sabotage, the Blood Qi army is overwhelmed.

In the days that followed, the Blood Qiqi had to greatly reduce the speed of their marches, relying more on the pre-reconnaissance of airships and the anti-harassment operations of the scout troops. This situation lasted for nearly ten days, until the light infantry battalion of the Blood Qi Army, as the vanguard, finally walked out of the mountains and brought the town of Gongchuan into sight. In ten days, the Blood Qi Army suffered more than 600 casualties. Although the loss of combat power was insignificant, and the belief that the Blood Qi Army firmly believed that it would win did not change, the whole army fell into a mood of irritability. Everyone thought that they would have a good fight in Gongchuan to relieve their depressed mood.

However, Gao Senqi seemed to grasp this sentiment of the Blood Qi Army, and Gongchuan Town was completely undefended. The original 6,000 garrisons in Gongchuan Town were all evacuated a day ago. Gao Senqi only left a small colonel, holding a piece of battlefield handover documents and waiting for the Blood Qi Army. The document stated the population of the entire town and the current situation of food, medicine and other daily conditions, and stated that the transfer of the battlefield was aimed at reducing civilian casualties, and that the local residents of the town would not cooperate with the military operations of the Blood Qi Army, but it would not hinder them, and hoped that the Blood Qi Army would not harm the local people.

This move made the Blood Qi Army more and more depressed. Although Zou Shuangwen has led the Blood Qi Army for many years, in general, he is far more of an administrative general than a general. After Ye Tao led the guards into the Blood Qi Army, he has been acting as Ye Tao's deputy, conveying Ye Tao's instructions to the entire Blood Qi Army. In this strange situation, Zou Shuangwen relied more on Ye Tao's decision.

"For such an opponent, you must not measure it with ordinary thoughts, in fact...... There's not much I can do. I can't figure out what tricks the Western Route Army is playing now. Now, our head-on opponent is indeed Gao Senqi himself. Ye Tao said.

"My lord, you can't help it?" Zou Shuangwen was a little anxious: "It's not a way to go on like this." ”

"Don't worry," Ye Tao said calmly: "There are indeed a lot of whimsy on the battlefield, but the trajectory of these whimsical ideas can be traced. Gao Senqi wants to do nothing more than a few things, either to disperse our forces, so that he can form a local advantage to break through each one, but also to be able to fight quickly, he knows that once the combat power of the Blood Qi Army is exerted, it is by no means easy to solve with the same strength or less than three times the strength. Or, it is to make it impossible for us to accomplish the purpose of the war. This is very likely, if we can't quickly open up the passage to Zhenbei Pass, relying on the supply line through the mountains, it will be difficult for a force like the Blood Qi Army to continue fighting. But he still has faith in us...... I didn't even play the trick of Jianbi Qingye. He has his eye on us, and has always been a gentleman on the battlefield, and always will be. Otherwise, it is to find a way to cut off our supplies and let us slowly consume our combat power. It's not easy either. In fact, if there is really such a danger, we will directly open up the road to Zhenbei Pass regardless of it, plus the response of Qiu Haohui and Xue Yuan, it is estimated that it will be three days. Three days of supplies is nothing. But what about the baggage battalions? It's not that the baggage battalion doesn't have the strength to protect itself, but if it is facing a force like the Flying Tiger Battalion, it's another story. ”

Ye Tao's explanation was also to clarify his own thinking, and he immediately ordered his guards to reflexively enter the mountains to help protect several baggage battalions to strengthen their defenses, and to clear out small groups of enemies along the way. Although it was in the mountains, after all, there were many small and medium-sized villages, and the troops stationed along the way strengthened their vigilance to assist in the delivery of supplies. Gao Sen Banner's old deployment of the suspicious array in Gongchuan can be regarded as having achieved the desired effect, and the Blood Qi Army has indeed slowed down the speed of its advance to the southeast because of the harassment in the early stage and the increasing caution now, but Gao Sen Banner's idea of seeking an opportunity to eat a baggage battalion and a part of the auxiliary troops in the mountains has not succeeded. He never expected that when the whole army of the Blood Qi Army was assembled in Gongchuan, the troops stationed in the mountains actually wanted to withdraw on both wings, and the baggage battalion completely gave up the work of transporting materials and withdrew to Yunzhou. After sealing off the two wings of the mountains, the deployment of the Gao Sen Banner in the mountains suddenly became a joke.

Such a deployment, for Ye Tao, is just for the sake of prudence. Maintaining a supply line without full protection for ten days is not in line with Ye Tao's war aesthetics of seeking stability and perfection. When Gongchuan had an airship station and an advance base, and the Blood Qi Army had twenty days of rations, it was enough for Ye Tao to complete the initial tactics. Ye Tao immediately ordered the Blood Qi Army to attack, and successively captured Tiemen Town, Daxing Town, and Yongxing City, and in five days, the Blood Qi Army marched to a place only two days away from Zhenbei Pass. As long as Xiangning City is conquered again, the passage on the whole road will be opened. The Blood Qi Army will be able to obtain supplies directly through Zhenbei Pass.

And when the time comes, with the Blood Qi Army covering the flanks, the Tianxuan Army, which has not yet completely completed the war preparations, the Zhenbei Pass Army and the Forbidden Army can also successively put the part that has been prepared into battle one after another.

At this time, bad news came: Rim River was lost!

After the departure of the Blood Qi Army, stationed in the Rim River was a battalion composed of tribes on the Wolf Plains, a Invalids Battalion, plus those technical units that maintained the airship station, and a baggage battalion of the Blood Qi Army. In total, there are more than 5,000 people, and 6,000 is less than a little. When it comes to combat effectiveness, it's pretty good. However, what I didn't expect was that Gao Senqi actually concentrated the 70,000 troops that the southern front itself had retained to prepare for the final decisive battle with the Blood Qi Army, plus more than 10,000 people who had just been reorganized from the middle road, and threw them into the attack on Gongchuan at one time. With a ten-fold superiority in troops, a large number of divine arm bows used to block air power, overwhelming ballistas, a deadly attack method, continuous rotation of attacks without gaps, and the response of the "people" in the city of Gongchuan, a large number of enemy troops rushed into Gongchuan seven hours after the attack began. The Invalids Battalion fought to the death, and finally gave the Grassland Battalion a chance to fight a bloody way, rushing out of the Rim River with baggage soldiers and airship technicians, and evacuating to the south. And all the 1,200 soldiers of the Invalids camp were killed...... They finally ignited the hoarded oil bombs and burned half of the Rim River. The so-called battlefield handover of the Takamori banner turned out to be a trap in the end. If it weren't for the hundreds of dead soldiers who had been hiding among the people and had been well covered, they would have had a good chance to hold on to Gongchuan and hold out until reinforcements arrived.

At the time of the attack, there were four airships in the airship station at Gongchuan, and two broke through the enemy's air defense array. In this battle, small airships and rockets with explosives were hung with anti-aircraft weapons that Ye Tao had "predicted", which proved that the craftsmen of Northern Liao were not vegetarians. One airship flew to Yunzhou to report to Dai Yun, while the other went south to report to Ye Tao.

The change of hands in Gongchuan also means that the Blood Qi Army has been temporarily cut off from the ground access to Yunzhou, and for the time being, except for the airship station in Zhenbei Pass, which can continue to airdrop all kinds of materials to them, they have no way to obtain large quantities of supplies. Gao Senqi seized this opportunity, and after capturing Gongchuan, taking advantage of the fact that the troops on the Yunzhou side did not restore this ground passage, Gao Senqi plotted to fight with the Blood Qi Army. He felt that the nearly 100,000 troops in his hand were not enough, and at the risk of a complete retreat in the middle of the battle with Dai Yun's army, he actually transferred more than 20,000 elite troops from the middle route to the south, and in addition, transferred more than 20,000 troops from the general reserve of the Western Route Army. In total, there are nearly 150,000 people, most of whom are well-trained elite soldiers. And Gao Sen Qi led them to the south, seeking to fight the Blood Qi Army......