An hour later, Cao Wenzhao made people suffer the loss of the previous night attack.

I have to say that the troops under his command are indeed strong, and they still successfully counter the night attack when they encounter night attacks, especially those that use powerful firearms.

It's just half an hour to count, and only more than 2,000 of the remaining 3,000 remnants are still able to continue fighting, and the opponent's firearms are still too powerful. Fortunately, a lot of them were captured before and could be used in the next battle, and Cao Wenzhao even sent them to the rear to try to imitate them.

Grenades were not absent in the Ming Dynasty, in fact, they appeared at the end of the Song Dynasty, but they were grenades, and it was better to say that they were large firecrackers. That thing is thrown out to injure and deter the enemy, and it can't be effectively killed at all. The gunpowder formula at the end of the Ming Dynasty has not yet reached its peak, especially when the granular gunpowder has not yet appeared, and the pure black powder grenade is very limited in power.

Cao Wenzhao has already seen the combat effectiveness of the Salvation Army, and at this moment he is also silently thinking about whether to continue to fight the Salvation Army or withdraw the army.

No, in fact, at this point, there is nothing more to say...... Withdrawal, the question is how to retreat safely. The Salvation Army fought with itself before, and it was definitely only the vanguard force, and thousands of people almost ate tens of thousands of them. What Cao Wenzhao couldn't understand the most was what kind of demon method was used for redemption to make every soldier fearless of death and fight to the last drop of blood, the last person?

You must know that 30% of the casualties in the Ming Dynasty still did not flee, which is already a rare strong army, and his side is better, and he can only insist on 40% not to flee. The reason why there has not been a big rout now is mainly because the opponent's attack was too fierce at the beginning, and many people were already involved in the tide of death before they could react, and later it was reduced to 3,000 people, but because of their many henchmen, it was easier to control it.

The soldiers of the Salvation Army are a bunch of crazy people who don't want to die...... Cao Wenzhao initially gave such a comment, and the most terrible thing is that there are more Salvation soldiers in the back, waiting to compete with him, and he obviously has no basis for competing with the other party now.

"Change Jiao, prepare to retreat, rest in the rear for half a year before launching an attack on the Salvation Army." Cao Wenzhao called his nephew and instructed him.

"But if you leave like this, the court will ......," Cao Bianjiao expressed his worries.

"It doesn't matter, we came all the way to recover Yan'an Mansion and Qingyang Mansion, and wiped out the thieves inside, which is a great merit. Not to mention, the powerful firearms I sent to the Salvation Army, as long as these things are tried by the imperial court to determine their power, they can be imitated, and the combat effectiveness of my Ming army will inevitably go to a higher level. Cao Wenzhao said calmly.

"It's just that I'm going like this, and the little nephew is still a little unwilling......" Cao Bianjiao didn't insist on anything, but he still had to complain verbally.

"If you want to say that you are unwilling, I am not reconciled. However, when I came here, I realized that the information we had gathered, or the information we had entrusted to those civilian officials to help collect, was obviously very wrong. Because of this wrong information, we lost nearly 10,000 soldiers. Fortunately, as a precaution, I left half of the old soldiers in the rear, and let half of the newly surrendered soldiers go south with us, otherwise the losses would be heavier.

Those literati are simply unreliable, and we need to rely on other means to thoroughly investigate the situation of the Salvation Army before we can really attack them. Besides, if we give us half a year, the lost part of the soldiers will be able to be replenished, and the most important thing is that the part of the soldiers who were still novices will also grow into veterans. Because I don't plan to wait in the rear, I'm going to fight the bandits while preparing for the next battle! Cao Wenzhao saw that there were no outsiders around, so he said his true words.

"Yes, if we go to the book and report the misinformation provided by the literati, maybe we can reduce our responsibility a lot?" Cao Bianjiao suddenly thought of something.

"Forget it, don't say that we martial artists don't have much right to speak in Daming. Besides, the relationship between these literati is complicated, you don't know who is standing above them, if a person accidentally offends someone who should not be offended, then it may not embarrass us, but if it stumbles us in money and food or even in other aspects, then we will lose more than we gain. Besides, the officials protect each other, are you sure that you can go up to the sky to listen to your recitals? Cao Wenzhao regretted his nephew's immaturity.

"Uncle, I was wrong...... Cao Bianjiao was not stupid, and soon realized that he was strict about his ty.

"People always have a young age, but this officialdom is the most sharpened person, you just have less experience, give you ten years, and your political wisdom will not be inferior to me. It is ironic to say that the duty of soldiers such as us is only to protect the family and defend the country, and the dirty affairs of the imperial court are not what we should be concerned about, let alone the intricate political connections. But our military attachés are soft-spoken, and a seven-grade county order can shout at me, if you don't feel at ease thinking about it, you don't know in the end that you will be killed by those literati. In the final analysis, we soldiers have to study those things about politics, and we are still forced by this world. Cao Wenzhao sighed.

"Uncle, how are we going to retreat, you must know that the other party is only afraid that they are also paying attention to our every move!" Cao Bianjiao simply changed the topic.

"Leave the remnants of the army and let them spread the banners here, while lighting a large number of bonfires to make it a sign that we have not yet retreated. We retreated lightly overnight! Cao Wenzhao already had an idea in his heart.

"Well, my nephew will arrange it immediately!" Cao Bianjiao said in his heart: This can only be the case.

Leaving those who could not continue to fight, and brought the remnants of the army who could only drag down the army to arrange the suspicious army, Cao Wenzhao was betting on whether the Salvation Army was really the army that had always saved the world and helped the people as their slogan. If it were, then at least it wouldn't kill the remnants.

With the men and horses of the headquarters, they left the camp lightly, and the two thousand people cautiously escaped into the night and quietly went north.

In the end, they came to a place of choice.

Yes, this is a two-way street, one is that there is no movement in front of the official road; On one side is a trail, but there is thick smoke, as if to indicate that there are people there.

"It seems that the thieves knew that we were leaving, and deliberately set up an ambush waiting for us to take the bait?" Cao Wenzhao looked at the two forks in the road and said with a smile.

"Uncle, how should we deal with it now?" Cao Bianjiao asked anxiously.

"Don't worry, since the other party has gone around behind us unconsciously, it means that there will not be many of them. If it weren't many, it would be very difficult to deal with our 2,000 cavalry. Therefore, it is obvious that one of the two paths is a trick, and they deliberately deceived and lurked in the bait. And the other is the way of life, and that is the way we should go......" Cao Wenzhao analyzed.

"Which way is our way of life?" Cao Bianjiao's uncle's analysis was very interested at this moment.

"If it is a normal plan, it is natural to set up an ambush in a place where there is no smoke, after all, as long as you are not a fool, you will not break into the place where there seem to be people, that would be very unwise. But there is a paragraph in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", that is, Cao Cao walked Huarong Road, and Zhuge Liang designed to set up an ambush on the side with smoke, but Cao Cao was fooled. The terrain here is the same as the choice of Huarong Dao, but the other party uses the same strategy, and I don't know if I saw that "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" learned some fur, so I think I can use the art of war? Or do you really think we haven't watched "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"? Cao Wenzhao snorted coldly.

"So we're going to take the avenue?" Cao Bianjiao seemed to understand.

"Dadao, go!" Cao Wenzhao nodded and gave the order.

Ten minutes later, when everyone was about to come to a wider area, seeing that there were still no enemies around, Cao Wenzhao laughed.

"Sure enough, they really underestimate me Cao Wenzhao!" Cao Wenzhao smiled proudly.

After laughing for a few moments, there was a rumbling sound, and then a large number of iron balls fell in the middle of their ranks, accompanied by a loud boom.

Qi Lang directly knocked him and Cao Bianjiao to the ground, and more soldiers were directly killed.

"Artillery, the damned Salvation Army actually has artillery!" Cao Wenzhao, who had eaten a mouthful of soil, realized that the situation was not good.

"yes, we have artillery, are you weird?" The main force of the Salvation Army led by Zhang Hongbin of 5,000 people appeared in front of Cao Wenzhao.

"Good strategy, actually use the general's self-made cleverness to general's army?" Cao Wenzhao said that he was convinced, and the other party actually set up an ambush here.

"This ...... Actually, I don't know where you're going, so I set up ambushes in both places......" Zhang Hongbin said embarrassedly.

At that moment, Cao Wenzhao wanted to retract his previous sentence......