Mao Yuanyi returned the salute to the guards at the door, then stepped over the threshold and entered the house.

Compared with Xinxiang's house, the house here is much darker, even if it is the original Yamen of Gaomi Zhizhou. Because of the cold weather, the windows around were closed, and even so, the downright chill still made people shiver.

Therefore, not only did the house burn a lantern, but also a fire.

The horse lantern is the product of the combination of Xinxiang iron and glass industry plus grease, in fact, this is still different from the horse lantern imagined by Yu Guozhen, because it is just a candle in the horse lantern, and the brightness of the flame is still limited. There is no oil on the territory controlled by Yu Guozhen now, and of course there is no kerosene, so he can only make do with this.

"Lord ......"

Mao Yuanyi saw Yu Guozhen at a glance, carrying a lantern and taking a picture on the map pasted on the wall. He said the words to his lips, but swallowed them back again, Yu Guozhen looked too focused, he didn't want to interrupt Yu Guozhen's train of thought.

The strategy of mobilizing the main force of Jian's right flank and attacking its rear army was first put forward by Yu Guozhen, and Mao Yuanyi and other staff officers helped to perfect it. This not only reflects Yu Guozhen's thinking of employing troops in the sea and the sky, but also reflects the important surname of the staff team in the Tiger Guard military system. Looking back now, Mao Yuanyi feels that she has done something amazing, and her heart is full of joy of success.

It is a little regrettable that Du Du, the owner of the Red Flag Banner of Jianyu, escaped, but when he thought of the gratitude of the tens of thousands of people who were rescued to the Tiger Guard, this regret disappeared.

As a soldier, being able to protect your own people is a more important thing than killing the enemy.

The words that Yu Guozhen often said in the Tiger Guard suddenly floated in Mao Yuanyi's heart. There are many people who say big things in this world, from Donglin to the eunuchs, and even Emperor Chongzhen, they are rarely allowed to say some impassioned big words, but only Yu Guozhen can really turn his words into reality.

"Mr. Mao, come and see." Yu Guozhen looked back and saw him and beckoned him over, Mao Yuanyi settled down and followed him.

"What is the lord looking at?"

"Which path will Jianyu choose next, you can help me refer to it in detail." Yu Guozhen pointed to a black circle on the map: "The scouts have just reported that Du Du has retreated to the south of Weixian County, set up camp here, and plundered the surrounding villages. Du Du fled in a hurry, and all the baggage and supplies were taken from us, and his five or six thousand men were no longer able to fight. I expected that Yue Tuo must be in a hurry to meet him, and he should bypass Gaomi, but now the nerve-wracking thing is which way he will go through. ”

"You're trying to intercept halfway?" Mao Yuanyi was stunned and asked.

"No, I'm not arrogant enough to use 20,000 people with only 5,000 tiger guards as the core to fight a decisive battle with 40,000 or 50,000 Jianyu, even if I win in this way, our army will suffer heavy casualties, and the ammunition supply may not be able to keep up." Yu Guozhen shook his head: "I want to let Jianyu taste the difficulty of moving an inch, at least let them delay more than two days on the road from Gaomi to Weixian!" ”

"Huh?"

"There are more than two days to go, we can calmly arrange, and the place that really makes Jianyu's right side suffer a big loss should be here!" Yu Guozhen pointed to another point on the map.

But it's Qingzhou.

"What does the lord mean?"

"We kept harassing along the way, fighting for the camera to eat Yue Tuo's supplies, more than 40,000 people, relying on looting villages along the way, it is absolutely not enough, and we are delaying him here, and there can be people to clear the people of Shangtu - as long as they bury the grain and fill the well water, what is lost, we Huwei will compensate!"

When it comes to compensating the people, Yu Guozhen can be described as domineering - he has nothing else, only money and food!

Mao Yuanyi couldn't help but bow to Yu Guozhen: "The lord is true and benevolent!" ”

It's not polite, it's sincere. For this matter, I have only heard of the requisition of people's power and money, but I have never heard of compensating the people who were damaged by the war!

"It was originally to protect the people, but if it is used as an excuse to infringe on the people, it will be no different from the old army." Yu Guozhen said: "Don't talk about this, let's come and give me a staff officer!" ”

Mao Yuanyi was familiar with Jianlu's style of acting, and in the battle against Jianlu, his opinions were very valued by Yu Guozhen.

As expected by Yu Guozhen, Mao Yuanyi and others, Jianyu did not dare to attack Gaomi, but Yue Tuo hoped that Yu Guozhen would be carried away by victory and come out to fight him in the field, so when he returned to the army, he still passed outside Gaomi City. From Jiaozhou to Gaomi, the straight-line distance is only more than fifty miles, if he marches with all his strength, he will not need a day, but in order to avoid being taken by the tiger guards, Yue Tuo only dares to travel thirty miles every time. He left Jiaozhou early in the 11th morning of the 12th year of Chongzhen, and the army on the 11th night camped on the bank of Zhangnu Water. After the camp was erected, Yue Tuo went to the riverbank, looked at the frozen surface of the river, and sighed slightly: "It's a pity that it's not cold enough—if the ice can be frozen, we won't need to build a pontoon bridge to cross the river." ”

"Brother, are you worried that the Ming army will attack?" Ma Zhan asked cautiously.

"It's not the Ming army, it's Yu Guozhen's Hoi An army." Yue Tuo glanced at his brother again: "No wonder you, it's Yu Guozhen who is extremely cunning, no wonder the emperor wants us to definitely sweep away his stronghold in the east of the mountain." If this stronghold is not cleared, every time we go south, we will have to guard against him. ”

"Then why don't you go directly to the east and take his Qingdao mouth?" Ma Zhan asked again.

Capturing Qingdao Pass is indeed one of the options, but Yue Tuo does not think that Yu Guozhen will be defenseless against this. Now he can roughly judge that Yu Guozhen should have more than 20,000 men and horses in his hands, and if he suddenly has 10,000 troops guarding the Qingdao Pass, Yue Tuo will not feel strange.

This guy is like a trickster, conjuring red beans under an empty cup!

Moreover, although Yue Tuo has now taken some grain from Jiaozhou, the amount is not much, and the total number of people, horses and livestock in his hands is 60,000 or 70,000, and I don't know if this grain and grass can last for ten days. If he failed to conquer the mouth of Qingdao within ten days, or if he did not conquer it but found nothing, how could he cross the mountain and the eastern peninsula and return to Gyeonggi?

The camp went down, and in order to avoid accidents, he camped on his back and set up camp about a mile away from Zhang Nushui. The camp of tens of thousands of horses is also a few miles away, and all of a sudden, people shout and horses are noisy, and the banks of the Zhangnu River are booming.

Night soon fell, and in order to save food, Yue Tuo cruelly ordered that all the Ming people captured in Jiaozhou City be executed, so they had no women to play with. All the prisoners went to bed early, but Yue Tuo was still not at ease, so he rode around the company camp again before going to sleep.

When he returned to his tent, he took a breath, and was about to drink hot soup brought to him by Baoyi, when suddenly he heard a roar in the west, and then the ground under his feet shook slightly.

"Artillery!" Yue Tuo suddenly changed color.

He jumped up and walked out of the camp quickly, and then he heard a whining screech, and with a bang, a tent less than twenty paces away from him was smashed, and several flagmen ran out of it!

"Someone, someone!" Yue Tuo ordered: "Go to ......"

When he was about to send people to attack the enemy's artillery, he suddenly realized that the opponent's artillery was on the other side of the Zhangnu River!

"Hit!" Meng Fang put down the binoculars and happily reported to Yu Guozhen.

Yu Guozhen was also using a telescope to observe, and the torches and bonfires on Jianyu's side not only provided targets for the Huwei artillery, but also allowed Yu Guozhen to vaguely see the chaos. In this row of shelling, at least three shells hit the camp.

"School cannon, go on!" Yu Guozhen ordered.

The artillery battalion of Xinxianghuwei is a special force subordinate to the teaching regiment, and there are a total of 2,000 people in the whole battalion, of which a considerable part of them were originally rescued Denglai soldiers like Meng Fang, who existed as the head of the artillery battalion. However, Meng Fang himself has always been the head of the artillery battalion, and in less than two years in Xinxiang, there was enough artillery for him to use, and he has also greatly improved in commanding artillery battles.

The land artillery used by the Huwei is a short cannon weighing about 400 catties, each shell weighs 8 catties, and the effective firing range is about 800 meters. Although the range of this short cannon is not long, it is better than the ease of movement, and a large cart, plus four or five artillery pieces, can easily remove one of them.

The first round of shelling can only be considered calibration, and it is the second round that really constitutes great damage. Yu Guozhen carried a total of twenty eight-pound short cannons this time, and he didn't expect that Jianyu would give him such an opportunity, otherwise he would definitely bring more cannons. In the second round of shelling, half of the shells hit the target and hit the camp of the prisoners. Although the red-hot cannonball was not a flowering shell, it was enough to smash all the broken copper and iron in the camp tent of the Jianyu, and after it bounced on the ground, it could also bounce and roll out for twenty or thirty meters.

Yue Tuo's big tent collapsed in this second round, not because the Tiger Guard Artillery Battalion was deliberately aiming, but because his big tent was located in the middle, it was naturally the concentrated target of the bombardment!

Fang Cai, who was still holding the hot soup, crawled out of the fallen tent screaming, but he only crawled out halfway, he dragged his fleshy lower body, climbed to Yue Tuo's feet, and hugged Yue Tuo's feet: "Master, save me, save me ......"

Seeing that his intestines were dragged out, there was no way to save him. Yue Tuo pulled out his knife and slashed him to death, giving him a hard time.

Twenty guns were firing into the enemy camp without stopping, and the captured soldiers could not cross the river to stop them. Yue Tuo is also worthy of being the general in the Jianyu, and after realizing this, he did not hesitate to order: "Pull out the camp and retreat two miles!" ”

Jianyu, who had just fallen asleep, had to drag his tired body, brave the bitter cold wind, and withstand the artillery fire of the tiger guards, dismantle the built camp, and then transport it to two miles away. Moreover, in order to prevent the tiger guards from dragging artillery across the river to continue the attack, Yue Tuo also had to send soldiers to patrol the riverside.

When the new camp was erected, it was already the second half of the night, and although he was exhausted, Yue Tuo knew that he could not sleep again this night.

(To be continued)