The summer nights are very short, and the sky is already getting brighter just after midnight.

Wang Ziyong, Luo Rucai and other thieves led the vanguard of the thief army, and finally came to the south bank of the Lishi River and came to the vicinity of Qinglongdu.

Wang Zi ordered the army to stop, and prepared to cross the river to attack Liulinbao after a short rest.

The thief army, which had been running for almost the whole night, was already complaining, and when the order from front came, they quickly sat down or lay down to rest.

The team, which was originally like a large cake spread out, immediately loosened up further.

Luo Rucai stood on a dirt slope on the bank of the river, looking back at the large chaotic thief army, anxious in his heart.

This kind of anxiety was not so strong when it was outside Shilou City, but the more north you go, the closer you get to Liulinbao, the more serious this anxiety becomes.

He always felt that there seemed to be infinite murder hidden in this quiet wilderness.

The sentinels sent by Wang Ziyong to the direction of Ningxiang were naturally eliminated by Li Wenyun's troops a long time ago.

At this time, Li Wenyun had already joined up with Wang Chengen, the general soldier of Shaanxi, who led the cavalry to come first.

There were more than 1,400 cavalry officers and soldiers, of which 300 were armed with Chongzhen's flintlock muskets.

Therefore, both Wang Chengen and Li Wenyun felt that when the thief army began to cross the river, even if the main force led by Hong Chengchou could not arrive in time, they could completely launch a battle with the men and horses in their hands.

About half an hour later, the king ordered the army to set out again and began to cross the river.

Hundreds of the defenders in Liulin Fort also rushed out of the south gate and lined up with arrows on the pier on the other side of the river.

Soon, the vanguard of the thief army began to cross the river with shouts, and the officers and archers on the other side of the river who were waiting for them also shot a rain of arrows under the orders of the generals.

In today's Liulin Fort, there are not only hundreds of Shaanxi soldiers left by Hong Chengchou to Hong Qiyin, but fortunately, yesterday evening, the second batch of grain transportation teams sent by Ma Mao entered the fort.

This grain transportation team from Shaanxi is still led by He Xueyong, the garrison of Ganquanyu, and Bi Lieying, the general manager of Qian.

In addition to the thousands of civilian boatmen who transported grain, there were also 500 non-commissioned officers of the standard battalion of the Yansui Town Supervisor.

At this point, these people finally came in handy.

Seeing that the thief army had already begun to cross the river, and the officers and troops in Liulin Fort had already started a counterattack on the pier on the other side of Qinglongdu.

Wang Chengen, the chief soldier of Shaanxi, felt that he couldn't wait for the main force any longer, and when he saw Li Wenyun looking at him with blazing eyes, he finally shouted:

"Killing thieves and making meritorious contributions is right in front of you! Shaanxi Fubiao soldiers! Kill the thief with me! ”

After Wang Chengen said this, he held a strong attack and rushed towards the brigade of thieves two or three miles away, and there were more than 1,400 horsemen who followed him closely!

More than 1,400 horsemen, soon on the way to sprint, formed a wide and scattered fan, and rushed towards his thief army.

If you want to pass through the formation, you have to maintain a dense sprint formation, but this time Wang Chengen and Li Wenyun don't want to pass through the formation, because there is not much after passing through the formation, it is the Yellow River roaring south.

It may be better to drive the thieves from behind and force most of the thieves to the banks of the Yellow River, preferably all the way to the west, and drive them down the river.

The sound of rumbling horses' hooves suddenly remembered a few miles away, causing the thief army that stretched for miles south of Qinglongdu to panic.

The rear team was attacked by cavalry, and the news that the officers and troops were coming from the east soon reached the ears of Wang Ziyong outside Qinglongdu.

Wang Ziyong was shocked when he heard the news, and immediately left Luo Rucai, commanded his subordinates to continue to cross the river, and then personally mounted his horse and rushed to the main force of the thief army, hoping to reverse the chaos and stabilize the team.

Luo Rucai shouted "cross the river, cross the river" in the back, but Wang Ziyong turned a deaf ear.

In desperation, Luo Rucai no longer cared about others, but just drank vigorously and ordered his men and horses to continue to cross the river in the rain of arrows.

After surrendering the thief army, Li Xing, who was assigned to the former Shaanxi army guerrilla in Wang's own camp, also followed Luo Rucai's side closely at this time, and ordered the former Shaanxi officers and soldiers who surrendered to the thief army at that time to run downstream along the Lishi River, hoping to cross the river in a different place.

Luo Rucai naturally did not prohibit this situation when he saw this, after all, there was an arrow array of officers and soldiers in front of Liulin Fort on the opposite side, and if he wanted to cross the river from here to attack Liulin Fort, he would have to pay a heavy price.

And at this time, Wang Ziyong was not on the scene, so Luo Rucai would not launch a strong attack on Liulinbao, this was not his way of playing.

From the beginning, his idea was to avoid the real and the false, where there were few officers and soldiers, he would flow in which direction, and the officials and soldiers would not be in front of each other, but unfortunately, his words could not be listened to by the king and other leaders.

And the reason why he finally followed the north, instead of choosing to go south, was because of this Li Xing, who had surrendered to him before.

Li Xing came from Tongguan and knew that in the south, whether it was the Tongguan line at the junction of Shaanxi and Henan, or the Hanguguan line at the junction of Henan and Shanxi in Shaanxi, there were heavy troops deployed at this moment, and they could not be easily offended.

Because, whether you Luo Ru wants to enter Guanzhong through Tongguan or Henan through Shaanzhou, first of all, the Yellow River is not easy to pass.

Secondly, even if you cross the Yellow River, you will not be able to enter the Tongguan Pass to the west, and you will not be able to enter the Hangu Pass, which has been rebuilt for more than a year, and it is very likely that you will be sandwiched between these two passes and be wiped out.

Li Xing had followed Hong Chengchou, Zhang Guoxing and others all the way through this line before, and knew that now the road from Tongguan to Hanguguan, or to put it mildly, the ancient road from Xi'an to Luoyang is definitely a trap and a dead end for any thief army without heavy artillery and cannons.

Luo Rucai listened to Li Xing's statement, and soon gave up his plan to lead the army south to Henan, although his heart was full of doubts and uneasiness, but he still followed Wang Ziyong to the north.

At this moment, he suddenly found that there was also an "ambush" of the official cavalry outside Qinglongdu, and his heart was even more frightened, at this time, don't say anything about crossing the river to capture Liulin Fort, that is, there is a gold and silver mountain on the other side of the river, and he doesn't want to fight, and he only has the word "escape" in his heart.

His judgment was correct.

Just as he also followed Li Xing, who was unwilling to meet with the official army, and began to move west along the river, that is, to the lower reaches of the Shihe River, the sound of shouting and killing was also heard not far from the upstream direction of the Shihe.

The main force of the official army led by Hong Chengchou finally arrived when it was dark!

As soon as the thief army entered the field of vision of the official army, Hong Chengchou immediately ordered, Li Bei's musketeers and Shaanxi archers were in front, and other sword and shield men and pikemen followed closely behind, rushing towards the thief army that stretched for miles.

The chaos continued until the sun leaped over the eastern horizon.

The cavalry team led by Wang Chengen, the general soldier of Shaanxi, no longer carried out the previous harassment and grappling tactics at the moment when they found that Hong Chengchou's main force had arrived on the battlefield, but began the most important tactics that the cavalry should execute, that is, high-speed sprinting and roundabout cavalry.

The 300 mounted infantry musketeers under Li Wenyun's command also dismounted one after another, and under Li Wenyun's command, they began the tactics that musketeers should most execute, that is, the three-stage gun rotation tactic.

The thief army, which has been running on the road for a day and a night, is still stubbornly resisting at this moment, but most of them are powerless.

Although he knew that the number of officers and soldiers was limited, and his own team was several times that of the officers and soldiers, it was still difficult to launch a strong counterattack, and there were constantly people on the periphery or thieves who rushed in front of them, and they were shot dead by the archers and musketeers of the official army.

The king rode through the ranks of the thieves who were several miles long, shouting loudly at the leaders under his command to fight hard, constantly using the fact that the number of officers and soldiers was small to cheer up the thieves under his command.

Although most of the thief army was barely maintained without collapsing, it was difficult for the thief army to muster up the courage to rush forward in the face of the muskets and bows of the official army.

And soon, deserters began to appear in the original rear team of the thief army, and a team of fugitives began to flee south from the brigade.

However, it didn't take long for him to find out to his horror that the group of minions who had fled south suddenly fled back from the south with their armor thrown away, followed by a red army of officers and soldiers!

Wang knew at a glance that this was the defender in Shilou City, and even they dared to go out of the city to fight their own attention?

Wang Ziyong was about to order his minions to divide his troops to defend, but suddenly found that the front of his entire team, that is, the part of the minions that were already located on the south bank of the Shihe River, was retreating westward.