Chang Shengjun, who was in charge of waiting on the official road, received Tang Chao's instructions and immediately ordered the soldiers left behind to act, moved all the vehicles to the woods next to the official road, and began to unload all kinds of materials on them and carry them to the cottage.

Although the mountain road was relatively rugged, firstly, the distance between Baishizhai and the official road was not far, and secondly, the soldiers who participated in the vanguard were all strong men, and more than 200 strong young men threw off their arms and worked, but it did not take too long to move most of the dozens of truckloads of supplies to the stockade -- the remaining part was to be used by the vanguard troops for the later journey.

Towards noon, all the supplies that needed to be moved to Baishi Village for storage were in place. Tang Chao ordered people to bury the pot for cooking, and set up a radio station to report to the base camp about the capture of Baishizhai. In the telegram sent by Tang Chao to the committee and the military department, in addition to recounting the capture of Baishizhai, he also specifically asked how to deal with the nearly 300 captives who surrendered.

Because in the original Jihua of the Military Department, the resistance of Baishizhai was calculated according to the previous experience of destroying Sanzhai, so the estimated number of prisoners was less than 100. Unexpectedly, because the reputation of the "Flying Dragon Army" has spread far and wide with the progress of the "Operation Tempering No. 1", in the face of such a fierce team, the minions of Baishizhai did not have much will to resist at all, and raised their hands to surrender after the artillery fire. As a result—300 people came after a meal for 100 people—Tang Chao was caught off guard and had to ask the committee and the military department for a charter.

Soon after Tang Chao's telegram was sent, he received a joint reply from the committee and the military department. In the reply, the committee and the military department first affirmed the results of Tang Chao's bloodless capture of Baishizhai, and then asked Tang Chao to establish this military station as soon as possible, so that the follow-up troops could be continuously replenished. As for how to deal with those minions and prisoners, the solution given in the reply is to stay in place and watch carefully, and when the next group of teams arrives, there will be a special person responsible for escorting these prisoners back to Liangxiang, and according to the last treatment of the captured minions of "Zishi Village" and "Feiyun Village", after interrogation, they will be sent to various mines of the team to do coolies.

After getting the exact instructions, Tang Chao had a bottom in his heart. Considering that the number of minions captured is quite large, if there are more guards left behind, it will inevitably affect the actions of the vanguard behind. If you leave only a small number of soldiers to guard the station and wait for the arrival of the follow-up troops, you may not be able to take good care of these captives because of mistakes. After thinking about it, Tang Chao finally decided to modify the operation slightly, postpone the departure time of the vanguard by one day, and then lead the team to leave after the second batch of troops arrived here.

Tang Chao's idea was approved by the committee and the military department, and the vanguard troops rested in Baishizhai for an extra day, joined up with the second group of troops, and handed over the nearly 300 prisoners to the troops responsible for guarding the station—a company of the logistics battalion, and an infantry platoon of the second infantry battalion—before setting off again and continuing in the direction of Feihu County and Lingqiu County.

Before arriving at the border between Liao and Han, Tang Chao's vanguard army successively broke through the Heishi Village on the Heishi Ridge near Feihu County and the Shiming Village on the Heng Mountain near Lingqiu County according to Jihua, and cooperated with the logistics troops who arrived later to establish logistics supply stations in both cottages.

The seizure process of these two cottages is similar to that of Baishi Village, and the name of the "Flying Dragon Army" alone can completely destroy the will of resistance of the leaders and minions in these two cottages, so these two small battles almost ended without blood. However, considering that the distance was getting farther and farther, it would be too cumbersome to take the prisoners back to Liangxiang, so the Committee and the Military Department treated the prisoners of the two cottages differently than Baishizhai. Among them, the Black Stone Village, which was smaller in scale, had fewer minions, and only had more than 100 captives, was more tolerant, and did not send people to take the captives away as coolies, nor did they kill all of them, but imprisoned them all, and when the "Operation Tempering No. 2" was over, the troops of the "Flying Dragon Army" returned to Liangxiang, and these prisoners were released. As for Shi Mingzhai, which was relatively large in scale and had more than 300 minions, and captured more than 300 prisoners, in order to reduce unnecessary trouble, the order issued by the committee and the military department was only one word -- kill. ,

Although in this era, it is felt that killing prisoners is an ominous practice, and it is not possible to kill them arbitrarily. However, time-travelers from modern society do not care about this more superstitious statement. What really cared about them was the so-called humanitarian spirit, so much so that some of the traversers were quite complaining about the committee and the military department ordering Tang Chao to kill all the prisoners in Shimingzhai. However, such traversers were only a few, and they could not change the orders issued by the committee and the military department to Tang Chao's vanguard team. So, on the second day of seizing the cottage, the captured minions of Shimingzhai became ghosts under the knife.

After completing the construction of the three military stations, Tang Chao did not dare to delay at all, and immediately led the leading troops to continue to advance, and at noon on the 13th day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar of the seventh year of the Ying calendar, he successfully arrived at the "bottle-shaped stone" at the junction of Liao and Han, that is, near the famous Pingxingguan in the time and space where the traversers lived before the crossing.

After setting up camp in a relatively secluded valley near the pass, Tang Chao ordered the soldiers to eat and rest, and at the same time left the camp with Chang Shengjun and several other Northern Han refugees who were more familiar with the terrain in this area, intending to observe the fortress up close.

From ancient times to the present, the bottle-shaped stone is a military important place, its gate is steep, the terrain is complex, there is really a husband when the pass, the feeling of ten thousand people can not be opened, however, although the terrain of the bottle-shaped stone is dangerous, but on the one hand, considering that this stone is the throat of the Northern Han Dynasty, there are heavy soldiers stationed. Tang Chao now only has a vanguard of less than three infantry companies in his hands, and he really wants to fight a big battle with the Han army that is defending the pass, but he is afraid that Zuihou's own soldiers will also suffer heavy losses, on the other hand, such an important border pass, once the "Flying Dragon Army" people launch an attack on it, it is likely to attract the attention of the Northern Han court, and send a large army to fight against him.

Therefore, in the "Operation Temper No. 2" Jihua, the first target of attack planned by the Military Department was not the bottle-shaped fortress, but the Dabaoshu not far from the bottle-shaped fortress - the bottle-shaped fortress was not completely ignored, and when the "Flying Dragon Army" finished fighting the grass valley in the territory of the Northern Han Dynasty, one of the targets of Zuihou before the evacuation of the Northern Han Dynasty was there.

Dabaoshu is an important military stronghold between the bottle-shaped wall and Fanzhi County, and is guarded by 1,000 soldiers all year round. The reason why the military department chose this place as the target, on the one hand, is that the number of defenders is not too small, and in the process of confrontation between the two sides, it can be very good to train the combat ability of the soldiers. On the other hand, although Dabaoshu is located between the bottle-shaped wall and Fanzhi County, because there is no big city or big city around, if it can be surrounded before it sends someone to report the news, then it can form a situation of catching turtles in the urn, so that the "Flying Dragon Army" has enough time to capture Dabaoshu before the arrival of the Northern Han reinforcements, and evacuate safely from there. Although it is only possible to go to the bottle-shaped stone on the return trip, Tang Chao likes to be prepared, so he still took a few personal guards to the vicinity of the bottle-shaped stone, observed the style of the opponent's army up close, and drew a topographic map.

The vanguard rested for the night in a hidden valley, and the next morning the whole detachment was divided into two parts. Some of them are still pretending to be merchants, relying on the official road guide issued by the Liao State to directly cross the bottle-shaped wall and enter the Northern Han Dynasty. The other part of the people disguised themselves as Northern Han refugees, scattered around the bottle-shaped pass, avoided the area patrolled by the Northern Han army, secretly climbed over the path on the surrounding mountains, and waited for the first part of the people to converge, and then marched to Dabaoshu.

The crossing of the border between the two sides proceeded smoothly, and neither the large convoy that came in through the main gate in the open nor the soldiers who crept over the hill met without much trouble, and soon converged about ten miles behind the bottle-shaped barricade.

After the vanguard successfully crossed the bottle-shaped pass, it did not stop at all, and continued to advance towards the big fort not far from it. In the afternoon of the same day, nearly 600 people in the vanguard of the "Flying Dragon Army" arrived at a small mountain village no more than ten miles away from the big fort to rest temporarily. After settling the soldiers, Tang Chao took a few guards to check the terrain near Dabaoshu and prepare for the battle later.

Although the regular soldiers of the Northern Han Dynasty were far stronger than the minions in the cottages that the "Flying Dragon Army" had wiped out in front, the "Flying Dragon Army" with absolute Jishu superiority still did not take the other party seriously. Therefore, although the number of troops in his hands was far less than that of the Northern Han garrison in the fort, Tang Chao firmly believed that this gap could be completely offset by the advantage of Jishu, and still decided not to wait for the follow-up troops to arrive, and only relied on the hundreds of soldiers in his hands to attack the big fort.

Regarding Tang Chao's bold decision, the brothers of the committee and the military department supported it after careful consideration. However, in its reply to Tang Chao, the committee also stressed that once the battlefield situation is unfavorable to oneself, one must evacuate as soon as possible, and must not fall into war to avoid serious consequences.

Tang Chao, who had received the instructions from the base camp, told the brothers of the committee and the military department that he would be careful and would never let the enemy have a chance to counterattack. While seizing the time to prepare for the battle, he was preparing for the next day's operation.

The next day, on the morning of April 15 of the lunar calendar of the seventh year of the calendar, the soldiers of the vanguard of the "Flying Dragon Army" got up early, and after breakfast, they left the camp under the leadership of Tang Chao and headed for the big fort.

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