Wei Yan did use the virtual and real plan, but Wei Yan's virtual and real plan was not the same as what Biqiu Jian thought.

Biqiu Jian thought that Wei Yan would be tired of the number of people going out of the city, and he would do more for a while and less for a while, and quickly send a receiving force when he couldn't figure it out.

But in fact, the change in the number of soldiers out of the city at the entire West City Gate was an illusion posed by Wei Yan.

After sending a thousand soldiers out of the city for the last time, Wei Yan had already assembled the remaining more than 4,000 soldiers in the city, and all of them were on standby near the east gate of Meixian County.

After the last group of 1,000 soldiers left the city and attracted the attention of all the scouts in Biqiu Jian, Wei Yan directly led the remaining 4,000 soldiers to collectively go out from the east gate of Meixian County and make a detour to pick up Wu Ban and the others.

This is indeed a false and real plan, which can be said to be a sound attack, or it can be said to be a cover-the-sky. But that is the name given to the later generations when summarizing the classic battles, and on the battlefield, the generals used it, in the final analysis, it is just a means of alternating fiction and reality, creating an illusion to deceive the enemy.

But to tell the truth, Wei Yan also took a big risk with this method. In case Biqiu Jian really sent troops to attack the 1,000 people who went out of the West Gate, these 1,000 people would definitely not be able to stop Biqiu Jian's attack, once the defeat and retreat, Biqiu Jian followed and killed, Namei County was basically an empty city, and no one defended it at all.

But there is no way, fighting a war is like this, there is no way to be perfect, and Wei Yan feels that even if he thinks from the position of Biqiu Jian, it is estimated that he will not choose to attack immediately, even if he chooses to attack and succeeds, it is unlikely that he will choose to follow and kill After all, Biqiu Jian does not know what the real reality of Meixian is.

The fact is indeed as Wei Yan predicted, Biqiu Jian did not choose to let his cavalry attack, nor did he find that Wei Yan led his troops out of the city from another city gate. By the time Biqiu Jian discovered Wei Yan's whereabouts, Wei Yan was only less than ten miles away from Wu Ban and the others.

Biqiu Jian could detect Wei Yan's movements, and it was impossible for Wu Ban, who had been paying close attention to the direction of Meixian, not to notice it.

When he learned that Wei Yan had led more than 4,000 troops to meet him, Wu Ban immediately made a decision, and asked Wang Ping to lead the 1,500-strong Wudang Fei Army plus the 3,000 soldiers handed over by Wu Ban to Wang Ping's command, a total of 4,500 people were responsible for the broken rear, while Wu Ban himself took the remaining 7,000 soldiers to adjust the formation, retreat slowly, and go to join Wei Yan's army first.

Retreat and response are both technical tasks, especially when there is enemy oppression, and they must be cautious.

Wu Ban's retreat is not to leave people to delay time, if he leads the troops to turn around and run like this, with the speed of Biqiu Jian's cavalry, Wu Ban himself can't run, not to mention, maybe he will break up the formation of the soldiers brought by Wei Yan to pick up.

Wu Ban is also a general in Shuzhong, and may not be as good as his brother Wu Yi in ability, but he has always been cautious in his use of troops and is a very qualified commander of the army.

Although it was a retreat, Wu Ban still let the soldiers maintain a certain defensive posture, and to deal with the surprise attack launched by the enemy cavalry at any time was just to change the circle formation used for defending in place to a phalanx for convenient retreat.

As for intercepting the pursuing troops, Wu Ban was not careless, he sent Wang Ping to be responsible for intercepting after the break, but he also knew that although the Wudang Fei Army led by Wang Ping had excellent combat strength, the number of troops was too small, so he specially supplemented Wang Ping with 3,000 soldiers from the headquarters.

These people, it's not that Wu Ban has completely given up, that's not what it means.

The 7,000 retreating troops led by Wu Ban and the 4,500 troops led by Wang Ping always maintained a distance of less than five miles, and once one side encountered danger, they could rescue each other in time.

This is the real retreat, an orderly retreat.

But obviously, Biqiu Jian would not give Wu Ban such an orderly retreat. If these Shu troops are allowed to retreat to Meixian County in such an orderly manner, with the city wall as a backing, so many Shu army defenders, no one can defeat Meixian.

Although Biqiu Jian was tricked by Wei Yan, not only missed the opportunity for the cavalry to raid, but even let Wei Yan send a response force under his nose, but Biqiu Jian was not without a chance.

It is impossible to completely attack the defenders of Meixian County, or to trap the Shu army of Wu Ban, in terms of overall strategy, Biqiu Jian is indeed lagging behind, and there is no way to complete his combat mission.

However, it was still possible for Biqiu Jian to use the infantry to entangle the rear flank of the Wu Ban army, use the cavalry to attack, kill and injure a large number of Shu troops, and reduce the Shu army's defending force.

It's just that at this time, Biqiu Jian himself doesn't know how many Shu troops he can kill and injure in this less than fifty miles away. But it's better to do it than not to do it well, the smaller the number of defenders of the Shu army, the less difficult it will be to attack Meixian after the convergence of Cao Dudu and Guo Tingshi in the future.

At this time, Biqiu Jian didn't have any room for extra thinking, and when he saw Wu Ban start to organize a retreat, Biqiu Jian also made his own decision.

Biqiu Jian ordered Zhu Zan to immediately lead more than 3,000 central forbidden troops and make every effort to delay the retreat of Wu Ban, while he himself led 3,000 elite cavalry to begin to detour around the battlefield, while raising the speed of the cavalry, while trying to attack the flank of Wu Ban's retreat.

But, in fact, it is not easy.

Wu Ban is not a fool, although there is nothing special about the retreat arrangements he made, they are just decent, but in these years, on the battlefield, being decent means that there are no mistakes.

If Wu Ban is in a hurry to flee for his life and let the soldiers put up a long snake formation of the army, then Biqiu Jian's approach can easily cut into Wu Ban's military formation and cut Wu Ban's army into several pieces, even if time does not allow Biqiu Jian to completely defeat Wu Ban's army, but it is still possible to create chaos in the Shu army and kill and injure the Shu army in large numbers.

But the problem now is that when Wu Ban retreated, he put up a phalanx, which is a formation that still maintains a certain defensive ability, but can also move and retreat.

Although it can't travel as fast as a long snake formation, at least it's not the kind of formation that will fall into a passive formation when attacked by a flank.

If Biqiu Jian wants to enter the phalanx organized by Wu Ban from the flank, then in the first level, he must face the shield and spear erected on the outside of the phalanx.

In the face of such a battle formation, although the cavalry still has the advantage of impact and speed, it does not mean that the cavalry will not have casualties. Even if it is the elite cavalry of the Great Wei, it is just a person covered with leather armor and horses without armor, and it cannot be a heavy armored cavalry with men and horses.

But at this time, Biqiu Jian had no other choice, even if he fought all the 3,000 cavalry he brought out, he had to kill and wound the enemy as much as possible, otherwise the whole strategy would lead to serious consequences because of his carelessness.

The next battlefield is not an occasion to use strategy, it is a simple battlefield battle, a life-and-death duel.

Biqiu Jian commanded the cavalry, constantly detouring around Wu Ban's headquarters, looking for a breakthrough, and once he found a slightly weak defense, he immediately commanded the cavalry to launch a surprise attack, and rushed towards the shield and spear formation.

The cavalry of the Wei army on the front line directly collided with the shield array and the spear array without accident.

The horses pierced by the spears fell to the ground after a neighing, and the cavalry on the horses were also thrown off the ground, either falling into the Han army and being killed, or falling on the path of their own friendly troops, and in an instant they would be trampled into pulp by their own followers.

The shield soldiers in the first row of the Han army, after encountering the first wave of cavalry impact, even if the shield soldiers were in pairs, shoulder to shoulder against the cavalry impact, they were still hit by the horse impact and flew seven or eight steps away, under such a big impact, the possibility of survival was very small.

And most importantly, in some places directly facing the impact of the cavalry, without the protection of the shield soldiers, a gap immediately appeared in the formation.

Biqiu Jian immediately seized this opportunity, commanded his cavalry to enter from this gap, fighting all the way, trying to expand the scope of this gap, and Wu Ban also desperately commanded his soldiers, filling this gap at any cost, and using his life to face the cavalry that broke through the gap.

When Biqiu Jian found that the speed of his cavalry had slowed down, or he was unable to expand the gap in Wu Ban's army, he immediately ordered the cavalry to retreat temporarily and continue to cruise on the battlefield, while speeding up, while looking for the next opportunity to break through.

Wu Ban also hurriedly mobilized his soldiers, rearranged the defensive formation, and retreated while fighting, preparing for the next assault of Biqiu Jian, and at the same time, he tried to get as close as possible to General Wei's receiving troops.

Wu Ban now has no way to divide his troops to resist the cavalry of Biqiu Jian again, firstly, the infantry cannot outrun the cavalry, and secondly. Wu Ban now has only 7,000 men, and if he divides his troops again, it will be the situation that Biqiu Jian is most happy to see, and he can completely rely on the high mobility of the cavalry to destroy Wu Ban's troops one by one.

Therefore, Wu Ban must let the soldiers gather together, retreat slowly, and wait for Wei Yan's response As long as Wei Yan's army joins the battlefield and he has a second barrier, then the remaining forty miles can be calmly retreated.

After all, it's almost evening.

I have to say that Wei Yan chose the time to go out of the city to respond, and he really chose it very well.

He set out before noon, marched for more than two hours, and traveled forty miles to meet him. In another hour, it was completely dark.

For the infantry, although it also affects the speed of the march when it gets dark, it is barely possible to march with torches, after all, it is now a retreat, and it is not the time to pay too much attention to it.

But for the cavalry, it is very dangerous to rush with a torch in the middle of the night, once the speed of the cavalry is raised, only the lighting range provided by the torch, that is, there is a tree in front, the cavalry has no time to react, let alone fight with a torch.

Therefore, for Wu Ban, as long as he finds a way to hold out until General Wei comes to respond, he can retreat all the way, and then march with torches at night and retreat to Meixian first.

And General Wei Wu Ban believes that General Wei Yan chose to come over to meet him at this time, and he must have his own way to retreat.

So. Wu Ban continued to maintain the phalanx formation, retreating while fighting, trying his best to move closer to the direction of Wei Yanjun.

And just after Biqiu Jian ended the third cavalry assault on Wu Ban's army. The 4,000 foot soldiers led by Wei Yan rushed to the battlefield.

At this time, Biqiu Jian did not have any way out, or rather, Biqiu Jian had already thought of Wei Yan's arrival.

Therefore, Biqiu Jian did not continue to let the cavalry attack Wu Ban's headquarters in a roundabout way, but directly turned around and ran towards Wei Yan's receiving army.

Biqiu Jian wanted to take advantage of the fact that Wei Yan had just arrived on the battlefield and had an unstable foothold to launch a wave of surprise attacks, and strive to break up Wei Yan's army in one go.

(End of chapter)