The open space in the urn city is very narrow, more than 2,000 soldiers poured in and the formation could not be expanded, and the low wall built by the Liao army temporarily blocked the horse and blocked the way, the soldiers rushed to both sides in the urn gate, and the Liao army guarded the head of the urn city, and kept dropping arrows along the inclined ladder road, so that the soldiers of the Qianning army were very passive, because the march did not bring bows and arrows, and could not return fire. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"Take the city first!" Zhang Quanbin shouted, with more than 100 soldiers holding swords and shields, and rushed to the south side of the Yongdao first, but the Liao army was stationed at a high place, and the back attack was very unfavorable, and the hateful bow and arrow kept shooting, which made the soldiers unable to guard against it, and the casualties gradually increased.

The road at the head of the city is a diagonal step paved with blue bricks, so narrow that it can only accommodate two people in parallel, Zhang Quanbin led more than 100 personal soldiers to rush up, facing the close combat resistance of the spearmen of the Liao army, and a large number of people were reduced when they rushed halfway, and the bricks and stones smacked down from time to time at the head of the city, and the long thin formation was easy to suffer heavy blows.

This kind of terrain is only the front row of soldiers fighting, the back row to keep up with the passive beating, but the soldiers are also angry, although from time to time there are companions to fall down, the follow-up is still a steady stream of shields to rush up, this casualty continues to increase until Zhang Quanbin attacked the city head Yongdao crossing, because the open space there is larger, the soldiers can fight in groups, and the advantage of the Liao army is gone.

In front of the main gate of the city, the more than 1,000 Liao troops who resisted the Zhou army took advantage of the cover of the archers at the head of the city, and slowly detoured to the north under the city wall.

At this moment, a burst of cheers came from outside the city, accompanied by neat footsteps, Zhai Tonghu led the infantry to carry the big wooden ladder into the urn city, with this follow-up force support, but also took advantage of the chaos of the Liao army, a large wooden ladder from the inside to the urn city, several teams climbed the wooden ladder to the head of the city, killed the Liao army infantry retreated, and then joined Zhang Quanbin who came up from the Dengyong Road, along the urn city head to the main city wall to kill.

Although the Liao army defense is not much, after the urn city was conquered, but the main city wall on the horse road is very wide, the Liao army team does not stop with bows and arrows, and with swords and shields with spearmen along the wall defense, mainly concentrated in the urn city wall and the main city wall junction, under the dense troops, pet Congduo and Zhang Quanbin repeatedly attacked and killed several times and failed to rush through, but the casualties were seven or eight hundred people, had to stick to the urn city, waiting for backup.

The two sides were separated by less than 100 paces, and obstacles such as rejecting horses were piled up at the top of the wall to prevent the other side from attacking suddenly, and then each station repaired in place, repaired fortifications, and prepared combat weapons. The soldiers of the Zhou army marched and fought all night, and they were already extremely tired, and the battle stopped for a while, and everyone snored against the city wall, some yawned, rubbed their eyes and ate coarse grain cakes.

In the afternoon, the Zhou army did not attack again, the Liao army did not counterattack, everyone had nothing to do with each other to Shenshi, at this time the main army from Zunhua that morning had almost arrived, the forward Ming Jinpeng, Dong Zunzhi led 5,000 horsemen to the outside of the city to dismount, will bring iron armor, bows and arrows, large wooden ladders to the urn city, this next Zhou soldiers will no longer eat the loss of bows and arrows.

When the battle started again, there were two new forces of Dong Zunzhi and Ming Jinpeng to take the lead, with horned bows and crossbows in the two Hebei concentrated shooting, supplemented by archers, armor cone throwing, with a small team of foot formations from the junction of the two urn cities to storm the main city wall, only a moment, the Liao army left seven or eight hundred corpses and fled.

One side of the main city wall was broken, and the ensuing battle was easy, eight or nine thousand Zhou troops entered the city, quickly seized the military office, arsenal, granary, barracks, and exterminated the remnants of the Liao army, the defender Xiao Han was defeated, and led the remnants of the army to flee to Xifeng Pass. In the evening, Zhang Yue led the main force to arrive and stationed in this Guancheng.

Songting Guancheng is not big, there are only two gates in the east and west, the circumference is only six miles, in fact, it is also a large military city, smaller than Luanhe County, that is, the city wall is higher, the defense facilities are more complete, but with the ordinary local army stationed, it has not fully played the effect of this Guancheng. That night, Zhang Yue convened a meeting of the generals and rearranged the defense.

On the morning of the 21st, the morning mist was shrouded in the mountains, and the dawn stained the sky red, as if the sky was clear after rain. Zhang ordered Zhai Tonghu to lead his troops back to defend Luanhe County, and ordered his pet to lead the soldiers to urgently repair the fortifications, and sent sentry cavalry to spy on the military situation in front of Xifeng Pass. In addition, Yao Keding led 500 people from his headquarters to garrison at the mouth of the Great Wall of Heitinghai in the northwest of Guancheng.

At midnight, after 10,000 horses of the Liao army's vanguard Yelu Yarisi rode through the Tiemen Pass, they entered the Xifeng Pass, but did not advance again. By noon, the main force of Xiao Haili's 35,000 cavalry was also stationed in Guancheng, and a large number of probe horses were sent to Songting Pass to reconnoiter and inspect.

Zhang Yue ignored this situation, and sent a sentry to intercept the province, with 20,000 steps to defend the city, Xiao Haili wanted to go south unless he made a detour to the west for five or six hundred miles, and entered Changping from Ruzhou, but there was also Yuan Yan's department there, and the distance was too far.

However, you can also go south along the Great Wall for two or three hundred miles, from Qinglong Pass to Pingzhou, but there are Madu Mountain and Qianshan Mountains there, and it goes around to Pingzhou, and it is too far away from Youzhou, which is also unrealistic. Based on this situation, Zhang Yue guessed that Xiao Haili would attack Guancheng nine times out of ten.

Early in the morning of the 22nd, sure enough, there was a sentry cavalry report, Xiao Haili's whole army went out of the city, went to the west gate of Songting Guanxi Gate five miles to ride a large array, and sent Yelu Yalisi to lead 10,000 palace tent cavalry to the city to invite battle, Zhang Yue still chose to ignore it, and did not go out of the city.

This dragged on until the afternoon, Xiao Haili ordered Yelu Yarith to lead his troops to withdraw, and ordered Yelu Huali and Xiao Han to lead 20,000 infantry to two miles below the city to line up.

Because Songting Pass was built in the Sui and Tang dynasties, the main purpose was to resist the Hu people from going south to Koubian, and the design of the west city gate towards the pass was relatively simple. And the east city gate is different, although there is no pier platform horse face, but the urn city is semicircular, this is also called the moon city, the three gates of the urn city is not a suspension bridge type, but like the main city gate, there are two gates inside and outside. There is also a ramp outside the door, and it is much steeper, making it difficult to push it up and secure it even with heavy equipment.

So when the car went up, there were heavy casualties, and then continued to face the blow of the strong crossbow rocket, and the car quickly caught fire and burned, but the Liao army was fully prepared, and kept rotating for half an hour, the outer door was broken and not falling, and the inner door was intact.

Limited by the terrain, too many troops can not spread the formation, 5,000 infantry carrying a big ladder to the head of the city, can meet the experienced Zhou army in defending the city, ordinary wooden ladders fall in rows, plus rolling wood stones and hail like falling, smacking the ground full of plasma, occasionally pour a few buckets of boiling water down, scalding the Liao soldiers cry wolf.

It was only a tentative attack on the city for an hour, but more than 3,000 casualties, and even the urn city was not taken, Xiao Haili had to order the retreat of the troops, and Zhang Yue did not send troops to pursue, and in the following days, the two armies were separated by a pass city for ten miles, and only the sentry horses would encounter a small fight with the enemy from time to time, which was considered to have their own gains, but the main force fell into a confrontation.