The snowy night march should have been cautious, but because there was an official road from Shu County to Hefei, by the time dawn, Xu Chu's army had crossed the boundary of Jiujiang County, and it was more than 50 miles away from Hefei City.

Hefei is the throat of Jianghuai, the place where soldiers must fight, the famous battle in the history of the Three Kingdoms: the battle of Xiaoyaojin, is the Xiaoyaojin ferry that took place in Hefei City. Driving southeast from Xiaoyaojin, you can directly reach Xiang'an County in Lujiang County by waterway, and then cross the Yangtze River and enter the hinterland of Danyang County.

It is precisely because Hefei is so important that Xu Chu has long found out that Lu Jun, the governor of Jiujiang, personally sat here a few months ago, first, to watch the battle between Xu Chu and Zhou Xin, and secondly, to prevent Xu Chu and Zhou Xin from suddenly launching an attack on Jiujiang County, mainly to prevent Xu Chu.

Xu Chu also knew that Chen Wen, Liu Miao, Lu Jun and others were very jealous of him, not only because of his fame, but also because of the geographical location of Hefei. For the enemy army coming from the southeast through the waterway, Hefei City not only has Xiaoyaojin, but also has the natural barrier of Chaohu Lake, and there is a whisker mouth on the mouth of Chaohu Lake, which is built by the mountain, so that even if someone will sneak attack from the waterway, the generals who guard Hefei will still have enough time to slowly arrange defenses.

If the waterway can do this, the land route will not work, because there is no danger to rely on for dozens of miles in the southwest of Hefei City, and they are all low-lying flat land, or Kangzhuang Avenue. This hidden danger in Hefei City in history was not solved until Cao Cao appointed Liu Fu, a famous scholar in Runan, as the assassin of Yangzhou and supervised the military administration of Jiujiang, and when this problem was solved, the Cao Wei regime and the Sun Wu regime held each other in this Hefei city for 60 years.

This allusion, Xu Chu, who loves the Three Kingdoms, knows, he is glad that today's Hefei is not Zhang Liaowei's Hefei of Xiaoyaojin, and after consulting with Guo Jia, Xi Zhong and other strategists, he issued the first military order after the expedition: ordered to fold the commander Li Quan, and the cavalry Sima Zhang Fei led the headquarters of thousands of cavalry to go first, and pulled out the troops that Lu Jun arranged in the southwest of Hefei to defend the field.

After Li Cheng and Zhang Fei took the order to go, Xu Chu ordered the infantry army to rest in place after a night of marching.

Everyone sat down, Xu Chu said in a deep voice: "Chen Wen has been ill for a long time, it is difficult to see things, most of the military and political affairs of Jiujiang County are led by Liu Miao, the commander of Jiujiang and Zhu Hao, Hefei is extremely important, Lu Jun personally guards this place, although I don't know the number of soldiers under his command, I expect that it should be around 5,000." ”

Xi Zhong counted his fingers and nodded: "The jurisdiction of Jiujiang County is similar to that of our county, and it can't raise too many elite armor soldiers, even with the support of Wu County's Taishou, it will be less than 20,000 in the sky." Although Hefei is heavy, as the lord guessed, it should be at most 5,000. ”

With a total of about 5,000 troops, it is necessary to garrison the city, and to defend the two crossings of Weixukou and Xiaoyaojin, and Lu Jun will arrange for the troops to be stationed in the field, which must not be very sufficient.

In this way, Li Cheng and Zhang Fei will have no accidents on this trip, and they will complete the task very smoothly.

After the Dong discussion, Xu Chu returned to Lujiang, although it was a large-scale reduction of the troops, but the layoffs were all foot soldiers, for the cavalry, not only did not reduce, but because of the capture of a lot of Dong army's war horses on the battlefield of Dong Dong, Xu Chu's cavalry strength has increased by half a step. When the number of cavalry under Xu Chu's account was the largest, it also reached nearly a thousand, but there was an essential difference between the thousand cavalry at that time and the thousand cavalry today, one is the fierceness of the war horse and cavalry, and now these more than 1,000 cavalry have not only been baptized by Dong, but also because of the addition of Dong Jun's war horse, it is much stronger than before; The second is the increase in spare horses, when the Dong is being discussed, the establishment of a cavalry army is still stretched, how can there be more horses as a backup? At that time, except for cavalry officers, more than ninety percent of the knights were one man and one horse, and even some heralds in the battalions could only give orders on foot. Intuitively speaking, taking the most elite Zhang Fei under Xu Chu as an example, the soldiers of the department count 200 people, half of which are the most warlike bearers, that is, riding archers, but there are more than 300 war horses, although it is not possible to do one person and two horses, or even one person and three horses, and it is impossible to carry out a long-distance attack day and night, but at least in this battle, it can greatly increase the probability of a successful raid.

It was because of the improvement of the cavalry strength that Xu Chu handed over the task of clearing the enemy troops guarding the field outside Hefei City to Li Chuan and Zhang Fei alone.

At the bottom of the tent, the military Sima Zifan suddenly asked for orders: "Stay under Hefei City, please let the last general attack first." ”

Seeing this, the rest of the generals also asked for the first attack, and in their eyes, it seemed that the victory of Li Chuan and Zhang Fei was a sure thing. No matter how the generals came to this conclusion in their hearts, Xu Chu glanced at the tent, but felt that the morale was available, and he was happy in his heart.

"Gong Su and Zifan listen to orders."

"The last general!"

"Then the two of you will attack first in the city."

The two were overjoyed and took the military order to return to their seats.

However, it was said that Li Chuan and Zhang Fei led their troops first, but after driving more than ten miles, they encountered a small group of enemy reconnaissance cavalry.

Without Li Quan's order, Zhang Fei raised his spear, pointed at the enemy cavalry dozens of steps away, and shouted to the six or seven best bearers around him: "The enemy is in front, follow me to attack it!" ”

With that, he clamped his legs around the horse's belly and led the six or seven bearers to gallop out.

At this time, the goose-feather snow was still under the ground, and the visibility was much lower than usual, so both sides only noticed each other's traces when they were dozens of steps closer.

Yangzhou is located in the Huai River and Yangtze River basins, and the old man fights ships and walks away, not a horse-producing land, and the war horses owned by Jiujiang County cannot be compared with the good horses captured by Xu Chu from Dong Jun. The horse under Zhang Fei's crotch is even more of a leader, it is a good horse specially rewarded by Xu Chu as a reward, less than ten breaths, Zhang Fei caught up with the enemy horse first, and the enemy rode back to the horse to fight, but which is Zhang Fei's opponent, one photo broke two people. The enemy cavalry was terrified, and at this time, the bearers arrived and shot several horsemen with crossbows in the ice and snow.

The number of this group of enemy horsemen was only a dozen horses, and after nearly half of them died, the rest of the people turned their horses and ran away, Zhang Fei laughed twice, and led the bearers to catch up, and easily killed them, leaving only one alive for interrogation.

Seeing that Zhang Fei had made a lot of gains and came back with a living mouth, Li Quanzan said: "Sima is really brave, the prince ordered an attack, and in less than an hour at this time, you will take the lead!" ”

Zhang Fei smiled heartily: "Thanks to the trust of the captain!" ”

Lee's head was straightened. Because of Xu Chu's special explanation, Li Cheng observed Zhang Fei every day, and through getting along, he knew that although Zhang Fei seemed rude, he was solemn in governing the army, bravely crowning the three armies, and was indeed a good general. There are only two disadvantages - it is not good for soldiers, and there is a drunken addiction.

Li Cheng followed Xu Chu for a long time, knowing that Xu Chu intended to make Zhang Fei loyal to him, so in order to comply with Xu Chu's wishes, he often reminded Zhang Fei to control his emotions, treat his soldiers well, and strictly ordered him not to drink alcohol. At present, although Zhang Fei still beats and scolds soldiers and drinks all night, it is much better than when he first came.