Yang Zhai, Chengnan and Sifang, inside a private house.

Sima Yi, who was dressed as a domestic servant, had a hint of pride in his eyes, and said to Cao Hong, who was dressed as an outsider: "So far, no one among us has been recognized, and the brothers in the camp have also been contacted, they will steal weapons in the middle of the night, create chaos, and take the fire in the camp as a sign, we should cooperate with the outside world, and we will definitely be able to break the Chu army, hehe, the general has achieved this great achievement, breaking the myth that this person has not tasted defeat in his life, and since then he has become famous all over the world, and he will be rewarded by the lord, but don't forget to mention some of the lower officials." ”

Cao Hong was very proud when he heard this, as if he had already won the victory, and as if he had received a large bounty, he said with a smile: "Mr. Zhongda, please rest assured, if it were not for your clever calculation, it would be absolutely difficult for us to win this time, and I will never forget that Brother Jì Mengde asked for credit for you." ”

For Sima Yi he is out of the heart of admiration, although he is the cousin of the dignified King of Wei, the right general, both identity and status are enough to make people look up, but Sima Yi was looked down upon by Sima Yi, when Cao Cao sent him to lead the troops to garrison Yangzhai, he knew that he was short of wisdom and difficult to take on the big responsibility, so he proposed to let Sima Yi help him, but despite his respectful attitude, Sima Yi still did not want to follow, pretending to be on crutches, saying that he had a foot disease and could not go, and then Cao Hong had no choice but to go to Cao Cao, and when Cao Cao's order arrived, Sima Yi immediately gave up his crutches to obey his fate, which made his face flush.

Although he was coldly rejected by Sima Yi, Cao Hong did not have the slightest resentment against him, humbly asked for advice and listened carefully to Sima Yi's advice, Sima Yi saw Cao Hong's attitude so humble, and knew that now was the time of crisis, and the strength of the Wei army was originally inferior to the Chu army. If there is any contradiction between the main general and joining the army, there will be absolutely no hope for holding Yang Zhai, so his attitude towards him can be regarded as gentle.

And Sima Yi saw that Cao Hong did not forget to repay the peach, and he was quite satisfied in his heart, although this Cao Hong was stingy and vulgar, but he was also quite sophisticated. It's not bad for himself, so he couldn't help but lift his spirits, and then nodded and said: "It's almost time, the lower officials heard that the Chu army is holding a celebration banquet, this is our opportunity, the general quickly went to all the places to contact the soldiers, we used an hour of work to assemble, two hours later is the time of the child, presumably the banquet has already ended." Most of the Chu army has fallen asleep, and this is a good opportunity for us to recapture Yang Zhai's big break Liu Qi, maybe if we are lucky, we can capture Liu Qi alive. However, Liu Qi's personal soldiers are too strong, as long as a hundred and ten people get together, they can protect him and break out of the encirclement, so the hope of capturing him is too small, let's not be too persistent. ”

Cao Hong naturally knew that he wanted to capture Liu Qi alive from the heavy protection of the Praetorian Guards and the Xiao Guards. It's almost a fool's dream, an impossible dream. Therefore, although he was greedy for money and merit, he definitely didn't dare to think about it, he just thought that he could defeat Liu Qi, recapture Yang Zhai, and let the enemy lose his troops and lose his generals, and he was satisfied that he couldn't launch a large-scale attack for a while, because he knew that Cao Cao must be urgently transferring troops from Hebei at this time. As long as there is another month or two, Hebei reinforcements arrive, Luoyang will be safe, and then Cao Cao will be rewarded for meritorious deeds, and he will bravely resist Liu Qi's 120,000 army. It will definitely be the first merit, and when the time comes, what a glorious thing it should be?

Thinking of the pride, Cao Hong couldn't help laughing, and immediately ordered the generals under his command to gather urgently and act according to the plan.

This time the assembly of the army was very fast, less than an hour, nearly 20,000 troops were assembled, they were all brightly dressed, holding sharp blades, with an excited look on their faces, because they had not done this kind of sneak attack, but with their years of experience in war, they all knew that the possibility of such a sneak attack to win was very high, not to mention that they also knew that there was still their internal response in the battalion.

Under the personal leadership of Cao Hong, the 20,000 army was divided into four ways to surround Liu Qi's camp, because the city wall still needs to be guarded by military garrisons, there should not be many Chu troops left in the city, plus Liu Qi held a celebration banquet, the soldiers were drunk, this time there is no reason why they will not win.

After a short time, he saw that the fire in the camp was on fire, Cao Hong was overjoyed, and immediately ordered the army to attack, only to hear the desolate trumpet sound, and the 20,000 troops rushed in with shouts.

But when they came to the camp, they found that the sergeants in the camp had already stood there like mountains, with neat faces and indifferent expressions.

"What's going on? Did the enemy know about our plot? But how is this possible? Our soldiers who surrendered to the enemy yesterday were all pro-soldiers, and their loyalty was unquestionable. But since this is the case, why is the camp of the Chu army so neat, and there is no sign of riots? Where have all our soldiers gone? ”

Cao Hong looked incredulous, looked at Sima Yi who was expressionless in front of him, and asked slowly.

I saw Sima Yi shake his head bitterly, and then sighed softly: "If the subordinates expected it to be good, I'm afraid that our own soldiers have been killed by the Chu army, alas, pity the more than 2,000 loyal and brave soldiers and soldiers, they were strangled by the Chu army in such a short period of time, and they didn't even turn up a wave..."

"What? What did you say? That's impossible! Cao Hong stared at a pair of blood-red eyes, gritted his teeth and said: "We also have two thousand soldiers, these are our pro-soldiers, they are definitely not much worse than Liu Qi's pro-soldiers, how can so many elite pro-soldiers be killed in such a short time?" Unless Liu Qi knew our plan in advance. But the question is, how could Liu Qi know about our plan in advance? Our deployment is already very tight, even those soldiers deployed in the private house have no chance to contact the enemy alone, not to mention that their families are all in my hands, how can they have the courage to betray? ”

Sima Yi was also silent, because Cao Hong's question was also his question, but fortunately, he was more intelligent, and he quickly figured out the key, so he said: "I'm afraid it's not our soldiers who betrayed, otherwise, I'm afraid Liu Qi will directly lead the army to break into the house and slaughter us, because we are relatively scattered, I'm afraid it will be much easier to die than now." According to what the lower officials can see, it should be Liu Qitong who judged our intentions by some signs, so he made preparations in advance, and the so-called celebration banquet of Liu Qi's army may actually be secretly deployed against us. ”

"But how did Liu Qi judge our intentions? Could it be that he is an immortal who can pinch and calculate, and know the past and the future? Cao Hong couldn't help but be a little impatient, and asked in a deep voice.

Sima Yi was silent when he heard this, because he really didn't understand this matter, where did Liu Qi see their problem?

Of course, Sima Yi couldn't guess that what Liu Qi saw in his plan was the defeated soldiers he had arranged to escape yesterday.

The defeated soldiers who fled quickly could not see any problems from a distance, but when Liu Qi took a closer look with clairvoyance, he clearly saw that the fleeing "Cao army" was not an orderly defeat, and it was difficult to maintain even the most basic formation, so that this army was like a refugee fleeing the famine, and it was definitely not a defeated army.

Many of the "soldiers" wore not armor, but the cloth worn by civilians, and flags became decorations in front of them, and many of the simplest flags were ignored.

At this time, Liu Qi had doubts in his heart, because Cao Jun took the initiative to retreat and leave, strictly speaking, it was not a rout army, not to mention that there were Cao Hong, Sima Yi and others in the army, they would definitely restrain the soldiers, and there would never be a strange scene where military discipline was so loose that Cheng dù would be scattered.

Therefore, Liu Qi judged after looking at it for a while, those who fled to the north gate were definitely not the real Cao army, this must be Sima Yi's strategy, although it was not difficult for him to really find out the whereabouts of Cao Jun, but he knew that this would definitely cause panic among the people in the city, so he came to a plan, and took the opportunity of the celebration banquet to quietly deploy the order, so that everyone looked like usual on the surface, but in fact quietly strengthened the vigilance, especially for those Cao troops who had just surrendered, and used elite soldiers to take care of them.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for the soldiers to quietly escape, or set fire to the camp, or run around, claiming that the Wei army was coming, creating chaos in the army, or taking the opportunity to break into the military armory, ready to steal weapons there.

However, to the surprise of those surrendered troops, the entire Chu army promised that there was no confusion in the slightest, and the soldiers patrolling the camp quickly arrived, saying that those who were running around shouting loudly and those who set fire to the enemy army to create chaos were all killed, and those who broke into the army armory did not expect that hundreds of crossbowmen had already been laid around.

Although Sima Yi didn't know what happened in the dark night, he obviously felt that things could be unfavorable to him, so he didn't dare to delay more, and immediately ordered Cao Hong to retreat.

Just when Cao Hong was hesitating slightly in the delusion of obtaining military merits in order to be rewarded, he only heard a sharp sound of breaking the sky, and many soldiers fell to the ground with screams.

The joy of making meritorious service suddenly turned into a bloody death, and in just a moment, thousands of the 20,000-strong army fell, and this huge psychological gap made these soldiers who lived in private houses and pretended to be ordinary people no longer bearable, and fled in panic.

In this way, the 20,000 troops that Cao Hong painstakingly assembled turned into a real rout. (To be continued......)