Zhang Qi adapted to the situation this time and launched the Xuzhou Raider, but he planned to solve the Lu Bu forces in Xuzhou in one fell swoop. In the pre-arranged plan, he planned to use an army of 100,000 or even more to conquer Xuzhou in one fell swoop and eliminate Lu Bu's forces with the overwhelming momentum of Mount Tai. The two armies of Yu Ban and Xie Xun, who have already been dispatched in a big way, can only be regarded as partial divisions. The real main force of 50,000 men will be under the personal command of Zhang Qiang, from Qingzhou and then south to Xuzhou.

However, when Zhang Madness assembled the main army of the headquarters, Jizhou accidentally made some trouble, which almost made him temporarily change the battle plan.

Zhang Qi knew that Cao Cao's level of war was very high, but he still underestimated Cao Cao's strength. He deliberately sent a large-scale attack on Yanzhou on the border of Yanzhou, which was used to confuse and deter the Yanzhou army, but he was accidentally annihilated by Cao Cao's troops!

In order to form the Xuzhou Raiders Army, of course, Zhang Qiang had to fully gather troops from all over the country. At this time, Jizhou can be described as extremely empty, except for Julu, which has an elite army of 3,000 people who must not move, the mobile forces of various counties and counties have almost been adjusted by insolence, leaving only the necessary security forces. This time, Cao Cao boldly broke into the territory of Jizhou, almost unblocked by the Jizhou garrison, which is the best manifestation of Jizhou's emptiness.

When he got the information that Cao Cao had conquered several counties in Jizhou in a row, there was a moment when Zhang Qiang really wanted to send a large army back to Jizhou, so as not to make Jizhou too chaotic by Cao Cao. However, after calming down and thinking about it carefully, he still tried to resist this impulse.

It is not easy to dispatch the army, and the storage and deployment of grain and heavy baggage require a lot of manpower and material resources. For this Xuzhou strategy, Zhang Qi has been secretly preparing for half a year. At this moment, if he is out of order because of the sudden changes in Jizhou, he may cause great trouble to the future Xuzhou strategy. Once the opportunity is lost, you have to wait for an unknown amount of time. will come again.

Moreover, Zhang Qiang really didn't believe that Cao Cao dared to go deep into Jizhou to make trouble. Comparing his heart to his heart, he knew that he definitely didn't have such courage. Unless Cao Cao really plans to gamble, otherwise, winning this kind of victory will only slightly damage the strength of insolence. If you lose, you will be wiped out, and if you are a wise person, you will not enter the game.

Clearly, subsequent intelligence showed that the arrogant estimate was correct. After Cao Cao successfully conquered several counties in southern Hebei, he thought twice and finally decided to return to Yanzhou in order to rescue Xuzhou as soon as possible. After Cao Cao withdrew from the Jizhou boundary, a group of thousands of people sent back to Jizhou from Qingzhou by Zhang Mad was biased. Following the enemy's recovery of Yuancheng County, it was regarded as closing the door for the Yanzhou army to invade Jizhou again.

Due to Cao Cao's dispatch of troops to Jizhou, the plan of arrogance to assemble the main force was still affected to a certain extent. Therefore, when Zhang Madness decided to move south to Tanxian according to the plan according to the development of the war situation, the troops around him were only 40,000, instead of the planned 50,000 troops.

But. An army of 40,000 is enough. Insolence thought so.

Dealing with a county that is not guarded by too many troops, there is also a mediocre Cao Bao. With the arrogance of a few "10,000 enemies", he didn't think there would be any difficulties.

At the end of July, when the combined forces of Cao Cao, Liu Chong and Sun Ce had just begun to return from Jizhou, the arrogant army of 40,000 had already arrived at the city of Tanxian.

As the county governor of Xuzhou. Tan County is the base camp of Lu Bu's army. However, because Lü Bu took most of his direct troops north to deal with Yu Ban's attack, there were only more than 2,000 people left in Lü Bu's direct army who remained here. These two thousand can be regarded as the defenders who are mainly old and weak, by Lu Bu's brother-in-law. Or that the former brother-in-law Wei Xu is in charge of guarding.

Wei Xu, like Wei Yue, is Lu Bu's original cousin. This person has been by Lu Bu's side for a long time, and under Lu Bu's teaching, he can be said to be proficient in mounted archery and skilled in martial arts, but his ability to command troops is not strong.

Since Lu Bu's original wife was helplessly lost in Chang'an City, the status of Wei Xu and Wei Yue in Lu Bu's heart gradually began to decline. However, these two people can be regarded as veterans who have followed Lu Bu for a long time, and Lu Bu still trusts the two of them. The appointment of Wei Xu to guard the base camp of Tan County can fully reflect Lu Bu's trust in him.

With the more than 2,000 miscellaneous defenders under Wei Xu's command, if an enemy suddenly appeared under the city, it was obviously impossible to hold Tanxian. Fortunately, after Cao Bao of Pengcheng went north to meet the enemy, he quickly mobilized 5,000 county soldiers to settle in Tan County, which greatly strengthened the garrison of Tan County and guarded the old nest for Lu Bu.

Cao Bao is not only Lu Bu's father-in-law, but also Lu Bu's most trusted local tyrant in Xuzhou, and the relationship between the two sides is extremely close. It was precisely because of Cao Bao's presence that Lu Bu dared to rest assured and boldly take time out of the directly governed troops and go to the north to fight the Jizhou army.

Maybe Cao Bao's ability to command troops is very average, but with the tall and strong city walls of Tan County as protection, plus the thousands of people mobilized in the city, Tan County, which has no less than 10,000 people to defend, has become not so easy to attack. If any of the princely forces in the late Han Dynasty were to attack, such as Cao Cao or Sun Jian, it would be difficult to capture Tanxian, which was abundant in grain and grass and well-garrisoned, in such a war situation. Only when encountering arrogance will the garrison of Tan County not become a difficulty.

Without him, the arrogant plan was to sacrifice the big killer weapon that conquered Ganling City and killed Zang Hong - a counterweight stone thrower.

A long time ago, Zhang Qiang created this siege weapon according to the memories of later generations. It was only because of various considerations that it was not until the attack on Ganling City a few months ago that Zhang Qiang brought the counterweight stone throwing machine to the battlefield for the first time. And the debut of this siege weapon did not live up to the expectations of arrogance.

In just one day, the powerful stone throwing machine helped the arrogant army conquer Ganling City, which is known as the "Hebei Jiancheng", and forced the defender Zang Hong to commit suicide. Since then, the arrogance has stopped looking at the humble walls of the present era.

In the eyes of insolence, Tanxian is just a slightly larger city with slightly more defenders. This time, he went south from Qingzhou, but he brought with him the main iron parts of a full fifty stone throwers. In the face of this epoch-making siege weapon, Zhang Qiang is looking forward to Tanxian being able to hold on to the stone bullets of the stone throwing machine for a long time.

Of course, Ganling City is advertised to the outside world as "going down to the city in one day", but before the official siege of the city, the preparation time spent in advance is actually quite a few days. Therefore, when the arrogant army came to the city of Tanxian County, they successively built siege camps, selected the base position of the stone thrower, and assembled the stone thrower, and the time was already early August.

And just when the arrogant army was about to stop and plan to attack the city in a big way, an army from the southern region of Xuzhou suddenly appeared ten miles outside the city of Tanxian County. The large army set up a large camp, which happened to form a corner with Tanxian County, and posed a considerable threat to the siege activities of the Zhang Crazy Army.

This army, which suddenly appeared in front of Zhang Qijun's eyes, came from Guangling County in the south of Xuzhou.

Originally, in the arrogant consideration, the enemy reinforcements from Guangling County should have arrived in Tan County a few days ago. You must know that although Cao Bao and Mi Zhu, the two local tyrants in Xuzhou, are more powerful, they are not the strongest local forces in Xuzhou. That guy named Chen Deng is the most powerful local armed force in Xuzhou.

Why did Chen Deng's army come later than expected?

Obviously, it won't be because Chen Deng wants to play some trick of "sitting on the mountain and watching the tiger fight". With Chen Deng's wisdom, he would not have known that Lu Bu's strength was much lower than that of the arrogance who was in charge of the four states of the Northland. If he wants to engage in infighting when he is at an obvious disadvantage, Chen Deng is not worthy of being called a well-known wise man in Xuzhou.

For this problem, when Zhang Qi saw the document reported by the scout, it was considered to have a result.

"Fifteen thousand to twenty thousand?"

Seeing the estimate of the number of enemy troops obtained by the scouts, the arrogant brow jumped. No wonder Chen Deng came later than expected, it turned out that he had spent his time on recruiting troops.

Zhang Qi didn't say much about this somewhat unexpected piece of information, but handed the information to Guo Jia, who was sitting on the side.

"Chen Deng, this is going to be desperate! Sure enough, he is a smart man. ”

This was Guo Jia's first reaction after reading the information.

According to the Guangling spy report, although Chen Deng vigorously trained troops in the county, Guangling's financial resources were limited, the land was humble and wet, and there were floods from time to time, and the grain output was never high. The total number of county soldiers in Guangling County should be between 22,000 and 26,000. Among them, many of them are old and weak, and they are unbearable to go into battle, so they can only be tuntian. According to the estimated number of intelligence, Chen Deng has done his best, and almost even the remaining soldiers have been dispatched! ”

After listening to Guo Jia's analysis, Zhang thought about it and said with a smile:

"If that's the case, why don't you send a light army south and take Chen Deng's nest first?"

This idea is typical of avoiding the real and attacking the false. However, Guo Jia did not approve.

"Chen Deng is not a man without strategy. Guarding the territory has always been its strength. At that time, the Futu thief Zhenrong refused to accept Lu Bu, rebelled according to Xiapi, sent troops to Guangling, and killed Zhao Yu, the Taishou of Guangling. It was Chen Deng's Tuntian soldiers who defeated Zhenrong and drove him south. After this incident, Chen Deng was able to serve as the Taishou of Guangling. Later, Yuan Shu invaded Guangling with more than 20,000 Yangzhou soldiers, but was defeated by Chen Deng, which shows that he is a tiger sitting on the ground and is good at guarding one side. ”

Futu is the ancient name of Buddhism. Zhenrong was the largest propagator of the Futu religion in China at that time, so he was called the Futu thief by his enemies. And Yangzhou Mu was originally Liu Xuan, and after Liu Xiang died of illness, this official position was taken over by Liu Bei, a general. But Liu Bei's strength is limited, and the territory of Yangzhou that he can control is only Wujun and Huiji and other counties. The other richest counties in Yangzhou, Jiujiang County and Lujiang County, were occupied by Yuan Shu early, so there were many Yangzhou soldiers under Yuan Shu.

After reviewing Chen Deng's past achievements, Guo Jia concluded:

"With Chen Deng's habit of valuing the foundation, how could he be unguarded against the homeland when he sent troops? Therefore, sending more troops will weaken the main force, and sending fewer troops may not be enough. ”

Guo Jia's analysis is clearly plausible. Although he didn't know how Chen Deng was going to defend the imperial territory, Zhang Madness still dismissed the plan to send thousands of people to boldly go south and attack Guangling County. (To be continued......)