The Cao army marched south and the Tianyi army marched eastward. After several days of standoff, a large-scale battle finally broke out.

Cao Cao had already ascertained that there were only more than 10,000 troops in Xiangyang City, and he wanted to take advantage of the fact that Wen Ping and Huo Jun's reinforcements did not rush back to Xiangyang to capture them, so he naturally wanted to hurry up. And the Tianyi army, which was stationed not far west of Xiangyang, became a trouble that Cao's army had to drive away or solve before attacking Xiangyang with all its might.

Zhao Gang and Lu Xun were very "cunning", although they paid close attention to every move inside and outside Xiangyang, they just didn't take the initiative to attack, making Cao Cao feel like a pin. Everyone knows that if anyone can't help but make the first move, he will give the other side a tongue and become the best excuse for expanding the scale of the war in the future.

When the spies scattered around Xiangyang came to report to Cao Cao that there were signs of a large army in Changsha and Jiangxia, Cao Cao finally couldn't help but take action.

In order to deal with the Tianyi army outside the city, Cao Cao transferred the 20,000 troops stationed outside the north gate and the 10,000 troops stationed outside the east gate and the south gate to outside the west gate, making up enough for 60,000.

With 60,000 troops attacking the 30,000 troops of the Tianyi army, Cao Cao used all his strength as soon as he made a move, like a lion fighting a rabbit.

After receiving the war letter sent by Cao Cao, Zhao Gang and Lu Xun immediately got busy and deployed. Don't look at what these two people said lightly, they didn't take the 80,000 Cao Army in front of the soldiers, in fact, they were still sweating inside.

The Tianyi Army had never participated in large-scale battles before, and although the officers below the middle level were veterans drawn from other armies, the soldiers at the lowest level were real raw melons and eggs. Tianyijun has undergone a year-long training, and his performance in the simulated actual combat exercise is very eye-catching, but after all, he did not fight to the death on the battlefield, and after really facing Cao Jun, how he performed in the end, even Zhao Gang and Lu Xun are not easy to say.

From Hanzhong Nanzheng all the way east to Xiangyang, because the road was full of mountains, the Tianyi army did not send cavalry, but all infantry, which made them very dangerous and vulnerable in the face of Cao's tiger and leopard cavalry.

However, Zhao Gang and Lu Xun are not all helpless, before they came to Xiangyang, they specially brought some new gadgets from the Crouching Tiger Equipment Research Institute, which is said to help infantry against cavalry, and it is very easy to operate, and can play an amazing role in reversing the situation on the battlefield.

Whether this thing is as mysterious as Ma Jun's apprentice said, no one knows before it is officially used.

The day of the decisive battle agreed upon by both sides soon came. Cao Cao really sent Cao Chun as the vanguard, and lined up 10,000 tiger and leopard cavalry at the front of the formation, followed by halberd and spear mixed halberds and spears, sword and shield soldiers and axe soldiers, longbow soldiers, and finally slow thunderbolt and yun chariots.

According to Cao Cao and his strategists' pre-battle deductions, the Tianyi army did not have cavalry to fight against the tiger and leopard cavalry, as long as Cao Chun led the cavalry to attack the Tianyi army's main formation at high speed and completely disrupted its defensive formation, then the Cao army could rely on the numerical advantage to divide and surround the Tianyi army, which had been in chaos, and completely defeat.

In this environment of large corps operations, it is basically difficult for the strategists to play a role, and the main competition between the two sides is the will of the fighters and the level of the commander's command, and some conspiracies and tricks have neither room nor time to be used. Once one of the fighting sides is the first to lose, the rest of the battlefield will be one-sided, and the defeated side will most likely lose without a pair of pants.

In the rumbling drums, Cao Chun led the tiger and leopard cavalry to accelerate from a standstill, and after running a distance of 500 steps, the battlefield was a majestic scene of thousands of horses galloping, mountains and tsunamis, and Cao Cao and the rest of his generals were boiling with enthusiasm. The halberd spearmen and sword and shield soldiers of the Cao army, who followed behind the tiger and leopard cavalry, also moved quickly, although there was a gap between them and the cavalry team, but this was the buffer zone left for the infantry. Once the tiger and leopard cavalry stormed into the phalanx of the Tianyi army, the infantry could then rush in for hand-to-hand combat and melee combat.

Looking at the cavalry of the Cao Army approaching at high speed, Zhao Gang, who was in the middle army, shouted: "The honor guard in front quickly withdraws and gets out of the car formation!"

Yes, the last two words Zhao Gang shouted just now were "car array". Note that it is not a "car shock".

Before the regular troops of the Jin State were about to fight, they had never put the honor guards holding various flags at the front of the ranks. The confrontation between the two armies, of course, is first of all a competition for morale and military formation, and the banner is naturally very attractive, but from the perspective of actual combat, this method is no different from self-harm.

The generals who were born in the Jin State are the most thorough military pragmatists, and they always regard "winning at the lowest cost" as the highest criterion for commanding battles, and who would be bored enough to rank the honor guard at the front of the army?

But this time the Tianyi army obviously had an accident when fighting against the Cao army, and I don't know if Zhao Gang was weak in his heart, deliberately using the flags in front of the formation to strengthen his courage, or Lu Xun felt bottomless, so he let the honor guard line up at the front to deliberately scare Cao Cao, in short, before Zhao Gang did not issue the honor guard to withdraw, the Tianyi army used colorful flags to cover the army tightly, which looked glamorous, and I don't know if it could scare off Cao Jun's tiger and leopard horse?

After hearing the order of the chief general Zhao Gang, the honor guards at the front of the formation holding the flags immediately fell all the flags to the ground, collectively came to a "turn back", and then dragged the flag handle with their hands and quickly ran back to the rear.

In the next moment, the guy that the Tianyi Army used to deal with the Cao Army's tiger and leopard rider was finally completely presented on the battlefield.

I saw a carriage-like object, head to head close together, forming a line of defense that was several miles wide. The heads of these vans are equipped with spears that are very sharp and protruding more than a foot long, looking like hairy hedgehogs, and no one can touch them. Inside and behind the van are soldiers armed with thunderbolts and repeating crossbows, who can throw thunderbolts or arrows in front of them through the specially reserved gaps in the vans.

The exterior of these vans is all made of pure steel, and the wheels under them are also made of steel hubs, even if they are not a "tank", they are not too far from armored personnel carriers, except that they have no internal combustion power.

This kind of van car is Zhao Xing's borrowing from the concept of the main van in later generations, and instructed Ma Jun to make defensive equipment specially for the infantry corps to restrain the cavalry.

If you only use a small number of positive cars, it will not be very effective on the battlefield. However, if thousands of vans were put in at the same time, and these thorny steel armored cars were locked side by side with iron chains, it would be equivalent to building a steel wall in front of the infantry of the army temporarily, which could minimize the damage caused by the infantry from the high-speed impact of the cavalry.

At the beginning, the Tianyi army used the honor guard as a trick to block the carriage that was taller than the horse's head with many flags, and waited until the tiger and leopard riders led by Cao Chun were about to rush over before they suddenly received the honor guard after receiving the car array, but they blatantly "yin" Lao Cao.

No matter how powerful the impact of the high-speed galloping war horse is, hitting the steel van that has been stuck on the ground is tantamount to a suicidal act, not to mention that behind these vans there are soldiers armed with repeating bows and crossbows and thunderstorms......