At this time, most of the thieves were chaotic people who were coerced into slaves, fighting a tailwind battle, or robbing the common people, and they had no power to fight back when they encountered the elite infantry of the official army, not to mention the official cavalry who suddenly galloped from the rear. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

Therefore, when Dong Xueli led a thousand cavalry under his command and roared into the thief camp from behind, the thief army had no time to organize a large array of restrained cavalry and infantry, and under the roundabout charge of the official cavalry again and again, they soon began to flee in all directions.

Liu Wenxi saw that the momentum was not right, so he found a gap for the cavalry to attack in a roundabout way, and led hundreds of henchmen and thieves to abandon the camp and run wildly in the direction of Shikou.

However, unfortunately, when Liu Wenxi had just escaped from the camp with his henchmen, and when he was on the small hill hundreds of steps west of the camp, he found that a large group of officers and soldiers were swarming in his direction on the opposite side.

Liu Wenxi, who fled in embarrassment, didn't know where the courage came from, and suddenly shouted: "Rush me!" Rush over and you'll be alive! ”

After saying this, Liu Wenxi, under the escort of the minions around him, rushed down fiercely, thinking that he could gain the upper hand if he was condescending.

However, with the sound of thumping muskets, Liu Wenxi didn't even see what kind of weapon the opposite officer was holding in his hands except for a white smoke, and fell on the way to charge.

After several rounds of gunfire, none of the hundreds of thieves around him were standing.

Although the mountain road is not wide enough, in this saddle-shaped and sloped place, the rain of bullets fired by the musket team in front of the mine camp under Li Bei is more dense, and after a few rounds of volleys, the hundreds of thieves in front of them are swept away!

That night, when the moon and stars were scarce, Li Banghua had just taken a large group of people to settle down in the camp set up by Lu Xiangsheng and others, and the people and horses that Li Bei and Dong Xueli had taken back to report the news arrived.

On the other hand, the camp of the thieves was broken, and the thieves were killed, and among the three thousand men in the camp of the thieves, one thousand were killed and wounded, and one thousand and two surrendered.

And of the 2,000 men and horses under Li Bei and Dong Xueli, only a few of them were wounded by the arrows of the thief army, and the losses were almost negligible!

When the news came back to the official and military camp, Li Banghua, Lu Xiangsheng, and other officers and generals who learned the news were overjoyed.

Li Banghua asked Dong Xueli's subordinates who came to report the news to return immediately, and ordered Li Bei and Dong Xueli to rest on the spot that night, take care of the prisoners, and then march back to the army at dawn the next day.

The next morning, Li Banghua had just finished washing up in his tent and was about to eat, when he heard Lu Xiangsheng talking to Lu Yuanding, who was guarding the Chinese army, outside the big tent, and asked to see Li Banghua.

Li Banghua heard that it was Lu Xiangsheng's voice, and quickly went out of the big tent in person, and it turned out that Lu Xiangsheng brought Li Bei and Dong Xueli, who had returned to the army, to see him.

Li Bei and Dong Xueli once again briefly reported to Li Banghua about the defeat of the South Road thief camp last night, and Li Banghua also praised and praised the performance of the two.

After seeing these two meritorious generals, Li Banghua asked them to take their subordinates back to the camp to rest, while he and Lu Xiangsheng took a walk near the big tent and discussed the next step.

Lu Xiangsheng said: "Lord Cabinet, the lower official ordered someone to interrogate the prisoners of the thief army last night, and learned that this road has been to the west is Shimen Pass, and then sent a sentry to the west in the middle of the night, and this morning the sentry came back to report and confirm, after the fork in front of him, continue to the west about 20 miles up and down, which is the Shimen Pass, which is the only place to pass through Shikou.

"It's just that according to the report of the exploration horse, the two mountains of Shimen Pass are sandwiched, which is extremely steep, and the thief army seems to be prepared for the pass, and the only entrance and exit under the pass is also blocked by the boulder. Therefore, how our army behaves today, please ask the cabinet to show me! ”

After two battles from yesterday afternoon to night, Li Banghua not only had a new understanding of the strength of his own army, but also had a more intuitive understanding of the strength of the current thieves, so he was also more confident in this march to suppress the thieves.

At the same time, considering that yesterday's repeated marches and battles of the officers and troops were very hard, and there were nearly 2,000 prisoners of the thief army, which needed to be properly arranged and placed, at the same time, the weather was getting hotter and hotter, and a large number of the corpses of the thieves were not buried deeply, which was not only easy to rot and emit a foul smell, but also easy to cause an epidemic of disease and labor, and it would take time to deal with these affairs.

Therefore, after Li Banghua listened to Lu Xiangsheng's report, he first ordered Chen Tan's subordinate of the Tianxiong Battalion to set off first and march in the direction of Shimen Pass, on the one hand, to open the way for the army, and on the other hand, to set up camp outside Shimen Pass.

After Chen Tan's troops set off after a full meal, Li Banghua ordered his army to continue to rest in place, waiting for the weather to be a little cooler in the afternoon before heading to Shimen Pass.

Taking advantage of the gap during this period, Lu Xiangsheng asked his younger brother Lu Xiangguan to lead his men and horses to register the names and hometowns of more than 2,000 thief prisoners, and then set up a battalion formation, and appointed the meritorious veterans of the Tianxiong Battalion under his command as officials, and temporarily incorporated the more than 2,000 surrendered and escaped thieves into the army, and used them as coolies in the camp.

Lu Xiangsheng settled on this idea, asked Li Banghua for consent, and handed over the task of integration to his younger brother Lu Xiangguan to lead his subordinates to complete.

On the afternoon of the ninth day of the fifth month, the army marched westward.

Li Banghua ordered Dong Xueli's department and Lu Xiangsheng's younger brother Lu Xiangguan's department to continue to stay in the camp here, leading the army to guard the army's grain and grass baggage, while continuing to organize the thieves' prisoners, supervising the newly organized baggage craftsmen to make the thieves prisoners in the camp to renovate the camp, digging pits and burying the corpses of the dead thieves.

At this time, Liu Guoneng, the "King of the Collapsed Heaven" who was in Shikou, had already learned the news of the arrival of the official army from the thieves who had fled back, and also knew that the official army was carrying a very sharp artillery that could fire continuously.

Therefore, on the night of learning the news, he ordered Liu Guocheng, the guard of Shimen Pass, to close the only gate of Shimen Pass, block all of them with huge stones, and then wait anxiously for the arrival of the official army.

The situation of Shimen Pass is dangerous, but its danger is not the kind of steepness of Huangluling, but the situation of Jinsuo Pass, and it is different from the terrain of the trumpet-shaped valley mouth of Jinsuo Pass, the terrain before and after Shimen Pass is similar to the shape of a wine gourd, that is, the two ends are wide and the middle is narrow.

The two ends of Shimen Pass, that is, the east and west sides of the city, are relatively open valley areas, only the place where Shimen Pass is located is the narrowest, and the cliffs on both sides are sandwiched, like two huge stone gates standing between heaven and earth.

And the wall of the stone gate is like a stone threshold in the middle of the stone gate, blocking all the comers.

It's just that this threshold in the valley is more than 120 steps long and more than five feet high, which can be regarded as a super threshold that is very difficult to overcome.

Chen Tan led more than 1,000 people from the front army of the Tianxiong Battalion to this place, and when he saw Shimen Pass from afar, he saw such a super threshold between the two mountain cliffs.

There are several flags planted on the stone gate, all of which have the word "Liu" written on them.

The former army led by Chen Tan set up camp on a slightly higher flat ground in front of Shimen Pass, about a mile away from Shimen Pass.

The thief army guard of Shimen Pass is also surnamed Liu, and his big name is Liu Guocheng, who is the brother of Liu Guoneng, the king of the collapsed sky.

Liu Guocheng was standing on top of Guancheng at this time, of course, he had seen Chen Tan's team coming, but he had just received an order from his brother that he would not let him go out of the city to engage in battle easily, but let him take advantage of the steep Guancheng to stick to the reinforcements and wait for help.

Although Liu Guocheng has a bit of brute strength, he does not have any extraordinary talent, and the reason why he rebelled from thieves is the same as Liu Wenxi's generation, which is completely a choice of last resort.