Just when Ma Chao was desperately rushing to Tianshui County, the battle situation in Ji County was slowly developing in a direction that was not conducive to Liu Bei's group.

The first to bear the brunt is the urban defense of Ji County.

In fact, the defenders of Ji County suffered little losses, in the five or six days of Guo Huai's siege of the city, they only injured about 2,000 people, and there are still nearly 20,000 defenders in the city.

But the problem is that there have been cracks in the city wall of Ji County in several places, which is what worries Zhang Xi and others the most.

Once the city wall is smashed, Guo Huai can lead his troops to break into Ji County, and at this time, the defenders of Ji County have no advantage in city defense, and it will really be completely finished.

Of course, you can also say that after the cavalry enters the city, they are limited by the terrain and cannot exert much combat power at all, and they can stay and fight street battles. There is one thing to say, this is indeed reasonable, the city is full of houses and dwellings, the impact of the cavalry can not be exerted at all, and the defenders, who are mainly infantry, are not without the strength of a battle.

But this is just a theoretical conjecture, in fact, when the city wall collapsed and Jixian County was breached, it was unknown how much morale and fighting will the defenders in the city would have left, and how many people would be willing to fight street battles with the enemy.

It is believed that by this time, most of the soldiers will either surrender or escape from the other gates to seek a chance of survival.

In this era, the army's organizational ability was simply not enough to fight street battles with people, and when the city gate or city wall was captured, it was tacitly assumed that the city defense failed, and the soldiers would only flee for their lives in a hurry, and they would not have the courage to stay and fight with the enemy in street battles.

It is not excluded that some special cases can be done, such as Geng Gong back then and Guo Xin in later generations, but it is precisely because they are too uncommon that they can remain in the annals of history.

Zhang Xi didn't dare to pin his life and hope on special cases, so the top priority was to stick to the city wall.

At the same time, Zhang Fei, who was sent by Liu Bei to rescue Ji County, had also arrived fifty miles southwest of Ji County at this time.

At this time, Zhang Fei was also a little difficult to move forward quickly, because Zhang Fei met the Qianghu cavalry.

Zhang Fei had a lot of dealings with the cavalry, whether it was the elite tiger and leopard cavalry of the Cao army, or the Wuhuan cavalry in the north of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Fei had fought with them, so Zhang Fei would never dare to take the cavalry lightly.

On the one hand, Zhang Fei hurriedly sent a messenger to report the current situation to Liu Bei, telling Liu Bei that there were no less than 10,000 Qianghu cavalry on the way to Xixian, so that Liu Bei could prepare for defense.

On the other hand, Zhang Fei ordered his subordinates to swing out of the car formation.

In these years, the effective means of blocking the cavalry are probably the two options of spear formation and chariot formation.

However, the pike formation has extremely high requirements for the quality of the army, and even if it can block the impact of the cavalry, its own casualties will not be small, and it does not have a very good defensive effect on the cavalry cavalry, so most people, when leading the infantry to meet the cavalry, still use the chariot formation to resist the enemy and attract the enemy to attack.

In addition, Zhang Fei's department was a soldier of the Mandarin Duck Formation that Zhang Xi helped train in the early years, and the training techniques have always been on Zhang Fei's side, and Zhang Fei even used the car formation and the Mandarin Duck Formation to block the tiger and leopard riding, so Zhang Fei has great confidence in this set of tactics.

Soon, Zhang Fei ordered the whole army to move into the car formation defense, set up the car formation, circled it, and then set up a spear of four or five meters as antlers. After combat practice, Zhang Fei found that the wolf is a thing that has a miraculous effect on the training of recruits and the first time in battle, but for the real elite soldiers, the wolf is not as good as a spear.

Therefore, in the current Zhang Feijun, the wolf whith has been gradually eliminated, and it is basically a spear that has been reused.

After setting up the chariot array, Zhang Fei waited, waiting for this group of Qianghu cavalry to launch an attack on his chariot array.

As a result, wait, wait, Zhang Fei miraculously found that this group of Qianghu cavalry, just like not seeing his own army, no one stepped forward to attack at all.

Well. It doesn't seem to be right to say that, these Qianghu cavalry must have seen their own military formation, but they all bypassed it one by one.

You are still not cavalrymen who wonder to Zhang Fei?!

When the cavalry saw the infantry, even if there was a chariot formation for defense, why did you still walk around?!

But the leaders of the Qiang Hu cavalry said, you are fools when we are, who has nothing to do to provoke the Han army.

You led more than 20,000 people, and you also set up such a large car formation, isn't this obviously waiting for us to attack, you Han people have been playing this game in Liangzhou for almost 400 years, and no matter how stupid we Hu people are, we will not fall for this evil again.

Besides, the purpose of our troops this time is to plunder reasonably and legally, and we are not to fight with you Han people, so why should we take the initiative to provoke you Han people.

Anyway, whoever lacks the heart and eye can attack, I won't go.

Most of the Hu leaders had this idea.

The order they received was to cut off the connection between Ji County and Xi County and contain the defenders of Xi County, but not to fight the contradictions between you Han people with a well-trained Han army, or to let you Han people solve it yourself.

Zhang Fei was depressed.

If these Hu people don't come to attack, then Zhang Fei can't rely on the chariot formation to defend and kill these cavalry on a large scale with bows and crossbows.

And let these Hu cavalry behind him, his own march did not dare to be too fast, and he had to worry about being attacked by these Hu cavalry at any time, and even the grain road had to be protected.

In such a situation, how can you quickly rescue the chief?!

No, Zhang Fei felt that he had to find a way to attract these Hu people to take the initiative to attack.

Zhang Fei thought about it for a long time and finally came up with a solution. Division of troops.

Zhang Fei dared to do this, and it was also carefully analyzed and considered.

Through several observations, Zhang Fei found that these Hu people did not seem to have a unified command, and many Hu people acted in batches, with thousands of people in large numbers and only a few hundred people in some few, and they did not belong to each other.

Zhang Fei once saw that two teams of Hu cavalry discovered their car formation, but in the end, the two teams of Hu cavalry did not join forces, but dispersed one to the south and the other to the west.

This has happened more than once.

If this is the case, Zhang Fei will not have to worry about these Hu people setting up ambushes and uniting to besiege him, and at the same time, Zhang Fei will also have the confidence to divide his troops.

Zhang Fei divided his soldiers into ten thousand-man teams, and let these thousand-man teams scatter their directions and leave the army to act alone.

And Zhang Fei led the remaining 10,000 people to secretly follow behind these thousand-man teams, using ranger scouts to keep in touch.

In this way, there will always be blind Hu people who want to attack these thousand people, and the thousand people can be deployed in a vehicle formation on the spot, and he will lead 10,000 soldiers to quickly reinforce, and he can always kill and injure these Hu cavalry.

In fact, Zhang Fei's judgment was correct.

The Qiang Hu cavalry is a righteous obedience, and it sounds like a Hu army, but if it sounds bad, it's just a group of tribal alliances.

In this alliance, there are not only Qiang people, but also Di people, Xianbei people, and even a small number of Qi people.

There is no ethnic statement within these Hu people, and the Qiang tribe and the Qiang tribe are full of various contradictions, not to mention that the Qiang and Di people have been entangled with each other for nearly a hundred years, and the hatred between the two sides has become greater.

If it weren't for Guo Huai's deterrent power this time, these Hu people would be afraid that they would not respond to Guo Huai and be beaten, and it would be really impossible to gather so many Hu people's righteous followers.

But now, Guo Huai is in Ji County, fighting with Zhang Xi for a piece of women's clothing, these Hu people were sent by Guo Huai to the south of Ji County, without Guo Huai's restraint and deterrence, who can listen to whom, these people are not tribes as a unit, and they act separately.

Zhang Fei's fishing behavior really caught a lot of Hu tribes thinking that they had a advantage, and then attacked some thousand-person teams, and finally after Zhang Fei led the army to catch up, they were bullied enough.

But Zhang Fei's harvest is actually not big, the reason is that Zhang Fei led the infantry after all, and the Hu people were cavalry.

Zhang Fei can attract these Hu people with fishing techniques, and then use crossbowmen to effectively kill Hu people, but as long as these Hu people run, Zhang Fei's foot soldiers will definitely not be able to catch up.

In addition, the Hu people are not stupid, Zhang Fei is fishing like this, it won't take long for the nearby Hu people to know, and no matter how much Zhang Fei wants to fish, no Hu people are willing to take the bait.

Anyway, there are people in other places who can rob, even if there are no people, when this battle is over, Guo Huai will give them enough rewards, why do they have to get along with these Han armies?

But Zhang Fei can't do anything about it, the infantry really has short legs, and they can't catch up with these Hu people.

If Hu people are robbing the people on the march, Zhang Fei can still clean up the Hu people, but the people he didn't meet, Zhang Fei couldn't save them one by one, after all, Zhang Fei's military order was to rescue Zhang Xi.

In this way, Zhang Fei was fishing and marching along the way, not only to clean up the Hu people, but also to defend his own grain route, and the speed of the march could not be improved.

And this is the purpose of Guo Huai sending these Hu people to the south of Ji County.

I really didn't expect these Hu people to defeat Liu Bei's army, as long as they could hold off Liu Bei's army so that they wouldn't be able to quickly rescue Ji County.

Guo Huai's purpose is to take advantage of this gap to quickly break through Ji County, and with Ji County in hand, Guo Huai will have a foothold forward base, and he will have no worries, and he can lead his troops to a decisive battle with Liu Bei.

Now, Guo Huai has seen this kind of hope, the city wall of Ji County, some of it has been loosened and fallen off, and then use the thunderbolt to concentrate on attacking, at most there will be a day or two, and the city of Ji County will be broken.

At that time, Guo Huai not only did not need to wear women's clothes, but could also grasp the initiative of the entire Liangzhou battle situation.

But at this time, Zhang Xi's reinforcements arrived.

And this reinforcement, not only Guo Huai did not expect it, but Zhang Xi also did not expect it.

(End of chapter)