Chen Yi flickered the rabble under his command and continued to advance towards Huaili County, while Guo Huai's army outside Huaili County and the Northern Army led by Wu Yi finally met and were ready to go to war.

Guo Huai led the troops early and waited for the battle, and Wu Yi did not make the mistake of underestimating the enemy, and ordered the soldiers to prepare for battle early.

The two sides faced each other under the city of Huaili, and when Wu Yi looked at the direction of Guo Huai's army, he naturally understood that Guo Huai had already taken precautions, and it was impossible to win with a surprise attack.

In the same way, Guo Huai looked at the marching speed of Wu Yi's army and the strict appearance of the army, and he also knew that the enemy generals were not ordinary people, and it was probably unrealistic to want to fight the enemy army with an unstable foothold.

Both sides understand that this is probably going to be a hard-fought battle.

But Guo Huai is confident.

He has 11,000 foot soldiers, plus 5,000 cavalry, and in the face of the enemy's 8,000 foot soldiers and 3,000 remnants in Huaili City, he will not lose no matter how he thinks.

Especially the cavalry, which gave Guo Huai a strong confidence.

Therefore, Guo Huai took the lead in launching an attack after the two armies finished arraying.

On the one hand, attacking can effectively improve morale and show that he is full of confidence, on the other hand, Guo Huai does not think that he has reached the point where he needs to defend passively.

After all, he is the superior side in terms of strength and combat power.

Of course, Guo Huai is also a famous general in the end, and he has his own caution and combat style as a famous general.

Guo Huai did not press the army at the beginning and attack in an all-out way, but asked Qin Lang to lead 5,000 cavalry to the flank to suppress the formation, and he commanded the 5,000 infantry under his command to attack.

This is a tentative attack, Guo Huai needs to understand the opponent's infantry combat strength, and at the same time, he also needs to look at the command style of the enemy general.

And Wu Yi's response was relatively simple and rude - pressed on the whole line.

From Wu Yi's point of view, it is normal to do this.

Wu Yi only led 8,000 northern troops to Huaili in advance, and the reinforcements behind him were still two days away from him, and the defenders stationed in Huaili City, Wu Yi did not dare to count on it, he had to do his best to fight at the beginning and take the initiative.

Therefore, when Guo Huai sent 5,000 soldiers to attack tentatively, Wu Yi chose to press on the whole line without any hesitation.

Then Guo Huai was dumbfounded.

It's not that Wu Yi is dumbfounded, Guo Huai still has some experience.

What really made Guo Huai dumbfounded was the combat effectiveness of the Han army.

Five thousand Wei troops against eight thousand Han troops, Guo Huai did think that his soldiers might be at a disadvantage, but. In less than a quarter of an hour after the two sides fought, Guo Huai found that his front-line soldiers were showing signs of being unable to support themselves.

This was too unexpected for Guo Huai.

Guo Huai actually fought against the Northern Army of the Han Dynasty, which was during the Second Northern Expedition of Shu Han five years ago, when Guo Huai led the elite of Cao Wei's Central Forbidden Army against the Northern Army of the Great Han Dynasty, which had just been in army for less than two years.

As a result, the Central Forbidden Army could suppress the attack of the Northern Army of the Han Dynasty, although it was a bit troublesome, but it still had the upper hand.

Therefore, Guo Huai came to a conclusion that the so-called elite northern army of the Shu thieves was probably slightly stronger than the ordinary county soldiers of the Great Wei, but weaker than the central forbidden army.

Now that Guo Huai is attacking the legion of the right Fufeng, it is indeed no longer the central forbidden army, but the county soldiers in the Sili area, and the combat effectiveness is slightly inferior to the northern army of the Shu thief, Guo Huai is expected.

But even if the overall combat strength is not as good, in Guo Huai's opinion, it should not be too difficult to block the attack of the Shu thief northern army in the short term.

The formation that was beaten in a quarter of an hour was unstable, and there was a possibility of rout, which was not slightly stronger than the combat effectiveness of the county soldiers, but that there was a clear gap in combat effectiveness between the two.

It is impossible for the central forbidden army of Great Wei to completely defeat the local county soldiers within a quarter of an hour.

Looking back and carefully observing the armament and equipment of the Shu thieves, there is no big difference between the Northern Army of the Shu thieves encountered five years ago, but there are still some differences in small details.

Five years ago, the Northern Army of Shu Thieves, like the Central Forbidden Army of the Great Wei Dynasty, almost achieved the level of armor covering all the front-line combat troops, and the ordnance in their hands was also well-cast, so that they could have relatively high combat effectiveness.

And today's Shu Thief Northern Army, on the basis of inheriting these characteristics, the biggest difference is the difference in armament.

Five years ago, in the Northern Army of Shu Thieves, in addition to the thousands of soldiers who retained strange weapons, most of the soldiers' combat weapons were spears with Miao knives, but now, the soldiers of the Shu thieves are more diverse in the use of weapons.

There are not only spears and long ges, but also strange shields, Miao knives, and a strange weapon that resembles a long halberd, but has a hook on the side.

And it was these strange weapons that cooperated with each other, causing the Wei army's forward to deal unfavorably and fall into a completely passive situation.

This is a change in ordnance, and the change in formation also made Guo Huai feel a burst of surprise.

The Shu thieves did not use the common formations such as the Sharp Arrow Formation and the Circular Formation in this era, but used a very strange combat formation.

The Shu thieves divided the eight thousand soldiers into eight thousand teams, which were distributed in front and back, left and right, and as the Wei army attacked, these Shu thieves first blocked with a thousand teams of spears and shield soldiers, and after blocking the first wave of Wei attack, the spear team would retreat, and the Changge team and the Miao Dao team stepped forward for hand-to-hand combat, continuing to maintain the offensive pressure on the Wei army.

And what's even worse is that the cooperation between these thousand-man teams is very tacit, and they will definitely not fall in love, it seems that each thousand-man team will choose to retreat after attacking for a period of time, and let the other thousand-man teams come up to continue the attack, and with the continuous change of formation, constantly squeezing the forward army of the Wei army, and then producing the effect of division and encirclement, in the local area, creating a situation of more fighting and less.

This is the fundamental reason why the Wei army's forward has signs of not being able to hold out after a quarter of an hour of fighting.

The advantages of their own formation could not be brought into play, and the reinforcements on the left and right flanks were divided and blocked, and the forward army had to continue to face the rotational attacks of the thousand-man team with weapons at different attack distances, and sometimes even faced the situation of fighting less and more. It's weird to be able to hold on.

As soon as Guo Huai saw that if he continued like this, his infantry would collapse if it didn't last long, so he immediately ordered Qin Lang on the flank to lead 5,000 cavalry into the battlefield.

In terms of infantry combat, Guo Huai had no way to recover his disadvantage for a while without finding a way to crack the enemy's formation.

But the cavalry is different.

No matter how exquisite your infantry tactics are and how powerful your combat power is, in the face of the cavalry suppressed by the troops, Guo Huai will not believe it, and the Shu generals on the opposite side can still use infantry against cavalry!!

After Qin Lang saw Guo Huai's banner order, he did not hesitate, and immediately ordered the cavalry to organize the attack formation, start to speed up, and directly attack the flank of the Shu army.

And Wu Yi, when he saw Qin Lang tidying up the cavalry formation, he guessed that the cavalry would launch a surprise attack and immediately responded.

The troops of 5,000 men began to move to the flank of the battlefield, and the remaining 3,000 men continued to attack and suppress the Wei army in front.

This adjustment directly made Guo Huai stupid, and the Shu general on the other side was lacking in heart? ! He wants to use 5,000 infantry to resist the onslaught of 5,000 cavalry?!

Really, let alone 5,000 infantry, even if you give Guo Huai 10,000 infantry, Guo Huai can't do such a heartless thing.

But the Shu thief general on the opposite side did just that.

After Guo Huai was dumbfounded for a while, he also sneered in his heart. It seems that this battle will soon be over.

Not only Guo Huai thought so, but Qin Lang, who commanded the cavalry, also thought so.

In Qin Lang's view, the response of the Shu generals on the other side was not to block his cavalry assault, but to give himself military merits.

Such a good opportunity, if Qin Lang doesn't seize it, it won't be brainless.

Therefore, Qin Lang immediately ordered the whole cavalry to assault and rush to the flank of the Shu thieves.

Just when Qin Lang thought that he would soon be able to end this battle and gain military merit in the true sense. The next development made Qin Lang and Guo Huai all stunned.

In the face of the impact of 5,000 cavalry, the Han army listed a spear formation of 1,000 people, and at the same time, behind the pike array, the crossbowmen were in position, and threw arrows at the cavalry's impact route in the form of projectiles.

This is not an unexpected response, this is the standard configuration of infantry against cavalry, there is nothing new, Qin Lang and Guo Huai saw it, and they didn't think there was anything strange.

As long as the cavalry quickly approached the infantry camp and broke the pikemen array in front, the remaining infantry could not resist the cavalry's back and forth rush at all, and there was only one way to go.

Therefore, at this time, Guo Huai and Qin Lang were waiting, waiting for the cavalry to quickly pass through the area covered by the arrows, approach and overwhelm the spear formation.

But in the next battle, Guo Huai and Qin Lang couldn't understand it.

The cavalry did quickly pass through the area covered by the arrows, and quickly approached the pike, and at the first time, launched an attack on the pike.

And the spear formation of the thousand-man team is destined to have insufficient troops to defend the entire battlefield flank, so the defensive thickness of the spear array is naturally not enough, and it is not difficult for the cavalry to break through the defense of this spear array.

But when the Wei cavalry broke through the pike array, they found that there was a long shield array behind the pike, and the archers and crossbowmen who had just been responsible for throwing arrows had given up their crossbows and used shields instead, and quickly established a second defensive position behind the pike array.

At this time, the spear formation soldiers who were broken through did not panic as Qin Lang expected, but after echoing each other, they retreated to the rear of the entire army formation, as if they were going to reorganize the formation and fight again.

At this time, the Cao Wei cavalry, after breaking through the spear formation, no longer had the heart to care about what the spearmen behind them did, they had to continue to maintain their speed and impact to break through the shield array defense in front of them.

Therefore, the only option for the cavalry was to continue to charge the shield array.

To be honest, it was impossible to block the charge of thousands of cavalry with the shield array alone.

However, this time, in addition to the shield array, the Wei cavalry also had to face infantry soldiers holding strange halberds behind the shield array.

What's even worse is that these soldiers with strange halberds, their targets are no longer the cavalry of the Wei army, but the war horses under their crotch.

And the strange halberds in the hands of these soldiers also have a resounding name for later generations - hook and sickle.

(End of chapter)