From Sun Quan's reply, Zhou Yu read the true meaning that Sun Quan wanted to express.

First, Sun Quan may not be able to reinforce Zhou Yu in time, because he is still in Chaisang, arguing with the clans and asking them to send reinforcements.

The reinforcement should have been said in advance before the war, but now Sun Quan is still arguing, which shows that the Jiangdong family has temporarily changed their minds.

This kind of thing is not common in other places, but in Jiangdong, it is really common.

Those Jiangdong families knew that guarding their own one-third of an acre of land was against Sun Quan, and they were also very wary of Zhou Yu and Lu Su, who were born in the Huaisi Group, as if everyone went to Jiangdong to rob them of food.

Therefore, if you let these families guard their homes and fight Shanyue, they are very energetic, but they are not very interested in expanding externally.

Second, Sun Quan is tactfully persuading Zhou Yu, if the march really doesn't go well, let's come back Anyway, this gang of Jiangdong families does not support it, but if Zhou Yu leads the army to leave Jiangdong for too long, God knows if these families will have any strange thoughts.

Didn't you see Sun Quan say that the matter of organizing reinforcements encountered "somewhat" obstacles?

If it was really just a slight obstacle, how could Sun Quan write it in a letter to let himself know?!

Therefore, Zhou Yu is now thinking about whether to withdraw from the army.

At present, the reason for withdrawing from the army is not sufficient, and Sun Quan's reason can only hint at Zhou Yu in the letter, but he did not directly order, so Zhou Yu cannot say that he was ordered to withdraw from the army.

Another reason is that although the siege is not smooth now, the Jiangdong Army has a numerical advantage after all, and it has just defeated the Jiangxia Water Army, so there is no reason to retreat now.

The Jiangdong Army, said to be an army, is actually an army composed of the private soldiers of various generals, and if you want to withdraw from the army, you must give everyone a reasonable reason.

In the end, Zhou Yu also wanted to try again to see if he could conquer Echeng with less losses. Although this may not guarantee the capture of the entire Jiangxia county, occupying a part of the eastern part of Jiangxia can be regarded as an acceptable result.

Although it has occupied the two counties of Xiaqi and Qichun in Jiangxia, these two counties are only two counties in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and they cannot play a barrier role at all.

However, if it occupies Echeng and Yixian on the other side of the Yangtze River, this can be regarded as a barrier, and at the same time, it can also restrain the Jiangxia naval army and lock the Jiangxia naval army in the area of Shaxian and Xiakou, which is beneficial to Jiangdong.

Of course, no matter how advantageous it is, it is not as good as relying on Jiang Xia, but in the current situation, Zhou Yu can only retreat.

Therefore, Zhou Yu deliberately set up a bureau.

deliberately did not attack the city, and it was not attacked for three consecutive days, which made the defenders of Echeng think that the Jiangdong Army was now attacking the city unfavorably, and its morale was low, and it was unprepared.

Then, create an illusion in the army that they are about to retire, as long as the defenders of Echeng can't help but go out of the city to test the situation, Zhou Yu can even choose to retreat for a while, creating the illusion that "something big has happened in Jiangdong, and the Jiangdong army has no intention of fighting" to the defenders of Echeng.

In the end, it was to wait for the defenders of Echeng to come out of the city to rob the camp, set up an ambush by themselves, and strive to defeat the defending forces of Echeng in one fell swoop, so that Echeng could go down without a fight.

But. After waiting for three days, the defenders of Echeng did not react at all, and even Zhou Yu deliberately released it, called patrol, in fact, he was waiting for the soldiers who were captured by the defenders of Echeng to release false news, and they had been walking around the periphery of their camp unharmed, but no one came to arrest him.

Zhou Yu was also puzzled.

You want to say that the defenders of Echeng are calm, but in the face of such an abnormal situation, they didn't even send a single spy, isn't it a bit unreasonable?!

If you don't grasp the situation of the enemy army, how can you defend the city with peace of mind?!

But it is not right to say that the Echeng defenders are too stupid, and they never thought that the Jiangdong Army might retreat, and it is not quite right to say that the Echeng defenders have performed in the past few days, this Echeng defender is not the kind of brainless person.

Then the last one left to explain his plan, I am afraid that the city guard has seen through it.

Zhou Yu sighed slightly, and silently wrote down Zhang Xi's name in his heart.

After all, this is a city guard who once played himself once and successfully responded to the response troops, and now he can see through his own plan and is not unmoved at all, and it is not impossible.

Since it was seen through, there was no need to worry about it, anyway, he didn't have much substantial loss, Zhou Yu decided to continue the siege the next day.

If the plan doesn't work, you can only attack.

In this way, after stopping the siege for three consecutive days, Koto once again launched a siege campaign.

And Zhang Xi, who was still suspicious of Jiangdong's purpose, let out a long breath after seeing Jiangdong launch another siege in his heart.

Jiangdong attacked the city again, so Echeng continued to hold on.

And unlike the previous days defending the city, this time Zhang Xi already knew that reinforcements were about to arrive, so as to motivate the soldiers who defended the city.

The soldiers who knew that they had backup for the city defenders had improved their morale a lot, and they became more and more calm in defense, basically not giving the Jiangdong Army any chance.

Once again, the battle was fought from dawn to dark, and the two sides stopped fighting.

Echeng is naturally continuing to strengthen the city defense, preparing equipment to defend the city, there is not enough wood and stone, Zhang Xi immediately did not hesitate to let people demolish the house to live in the city this year, and most of the people in their own houses are wealthy families, Zhang Xi is not distressed at all when he demolishes it.

On the Jiangdong Army's side, Zhou Yu was even considering the possibility of making trebuchets.

Trebuchets are of course a siege weapon, but the only problem is that not everyone can build trebuchets these days.

At least the kind made by Liu Ye, Cao Cao hadn't even seen it at that time.

Zhou Yu had read about this kind of siege machine from books, and had also heard that when Yuan Cao fought in Hebei a few years ago, Cao Cao used a stone cart to break through Yuan Shao's camp, and even asked someone to inquire about the structure of this siege machine.

However, it is easy to hearsay, but it is difficult to actually make it.

Zhou Yu tried to make this trebuchet himself, but he didn't know why he couldn't do it.

It's easy to make a stone-throwing apparatus, but the throwing distance is a big problem.

The trebuchet made by Zhou Yu has a range of less than 50 paces, and its lethality is limited, not reaching the 300 paces mentioned in the book, let alone being able to smash cities and destroy walls like Cao Jun's stone trucks.

Fifty steps, you have to venture into the range of the enemy's bow and arrow to work, what is the use of this trebuchet?!

But. Zhou Yu thinks, let's try it, what if I scare the Echeng guards?!

The next day, thirty "trebuchets" appeared in Zhou Yu's army.

Don't say it, it really scared Zhang Xi.

Thirty trebuchets, if they are launched together, it will not take half a day, and the city wall of Exian County will be full of holes, and if it is launched for three days in a row, Zhang Xi will not dare to send people to the city wall to garrison.

If you go up, you'll die, and if you don't know the city walls, you'll have to let these trebuchets collapse.

Didn't a fortified city like Xiangyang in the Southern Song Dynasty finally collapse by a trebuchet, a small Exian county can last a few days? !

At that time, Zhang Xi was quite desperate, and cursed Zhou Yu repeatedly in his heart, bastard, you have this thing, it would have come out earlier, I want to know that you have trebuchets, and there are thirty at once, didn't I run away a long time ago, and I still have a fart!

Well, now the number of defenders in the city is seriously insufficient, and the reinforcements have not yet arrived in Yi County, and they will not be able to come at this time. It's impossible to even go out of the city and burn down the trebuchet.

Zhang Xi's face was pale at that time, and he began to think in his heart, whether it would be better to arrange for everyone to break through from the north gate now.

Wei Yan didn't understand Zhang Xi's bear appearance very much, who was he making trouble for?!

Wei Yan had never seen a trebuchet, and only thought that Jiangdong had made some new siege equipment.

But this siege equipment, Wei Yan really couldn't understand what it was for.

It's not as tall as a ladder, so it's certainly not for climbing walls. It looks about the size of a rushing car, and it is estimated that it is still used to attack the city gate.

What's this, it's a big deal to risk killing it yourself.

Although it is very dangerous, but now that the reinforcements are still two or three days away, what do you care about at this time, you can only defend it.

Of course, Wei Yan didn't care if Zhang Xi's face was pale or not, but Kou Feng would ask, Erha cared about his brother very much.

Then Zhang Xi said, and told him everything he knew about the power of the trebuchet, the range, and the way of destruction.

Kou Feng was stunned on the spot and didn't say anything, and Wei Yan, who was listening on the side, also inhaled cold air.

"The range is 300 steps, it can throw 12 catties of stones, the height can be adjusted, and it can also smash the city wall?!"

Well, Wei Yan didn't have the same calmness as before now, but watched with a solemn face as Jiang Dongjun slowly pushed the trebuchet forward, pushed, and pushed it over a distance of three hundred steps.

Wei Yan was stunned at the time. Could it be that if you hit close to the point, the power and accuracy will go further?!

Well, it's not impossible, after all, three hundred steps, the range of the bed crossbow may not be able to catch up, and it is very reasonable to be too far away from the head and reduce the power.

Then, Wei Yan was stunned to find that the Jiangdong army continued to push the trebuchet forward, and soon exceeded the distance of two hundred and fifty paces and came to a position of two hundred steps.

And not only that, the Jiangdong Army still does not seem to have stopped, arranging trebuchets with the intention of arranged.

This Wei Yan didn't understand, looked at Zhang Xi, and asked, "Zhang Duyou, this thing. Really have a range of 300 steps?! ”

Hawkers, don't talk about Wei Yan, Zhang Xi also wondered why he was still moving forward?!

It's two hundred paces, and it's already within the range of the bed crossbow.

Although the bed crossbow has been damaged a lot in these days of siege, the crossbow arrows have been used up. But after all, there are still two bed crossbows left in Echeng, and the bed crossbow can only fire crossbow arrows.

Anyway, Zhang Xi decided to try it, and had the bed crossbow move to the south gate tower, load the bed crossbow with stones, and then launch it.

Although firing stones will have a shorter range than firing a bolt, against trebuchets, stones are more useful than bolts.

Then, Zhang Xi saw that the earth-colored trebuchets that had just scared him didn't release a single stone, and were directly shot by the stones shot by the bed crossbow.

Zhang Xi is completely dumbfounded now, what the hell is this?!

Okay, now Wei Yan looks at Zhang Xi like a fool.

It's just such a thing that just scared you like that bear?!

But without waiting for Zhang Xi's reaction later, Wei Yan took the opportunity to shout.

"Soldiers, prepare to defend the city!"

After the trebuchet withdrew, the Jiangdong Army's offensive began again today.

(End of chapter)