When he realized that the person who threatened his grain route was likely to be the Liangzhou Army that had entered Xiaoguan in advance, Cao Zhen did not dare to be careless.

In these years, the march and battle, grain and grass first, without a stable grain route, it is definitely impossible for the soldiers to fight with peace of mind.

Therefore, Cao Zhen immediately responded, and asked Niu Jin to lead all the remaining cavalry corps to personally go out to the vicinity of Dali County to find the main cavalry of the Liangzhou Legion for a decisive battle, and strive for a decisive rear.

There is one thing to say, Cao Zhen's decision is really not careless to underestimate the enemy, in fact, Niu Jin, as a cavalry commander, even felt that Cao Zhen was making a fuss.

According to the description of the cavalry who returned from defeat, although the cavalry behind them was an army, it was only six or seven thousand people, and the scale was not large.

Yes, Niu Jin admitted that he did underestimate the enemy at the beginning, and in the face of the scale of the enemy's army of 3,000 people, he only sent a partial general to lead 5,000 cavalry to encircle and suppress, but he didn't expect the enemy army to have backup.

Because he was unprepared for battle, coupled with the fact that the command level of the partial general was really not good, he was surrounded by the enemy and beaten wildly, lost more than 1,000 cavalry, and retreated to Chongquan County.

But now it's different, he personally led the troops to fight, and at the same time, the enemy's back hand has been revealed, and the cavalry that can only kill 7,000 people is not enough, and his combat power is only like this, he only needs to bring 5,000 elite cavalry, he can break the enemy army in one fell swoop, and he doesn't need to bring all the cavalry at all.

Niu Jin's words, Cao Zhen said a little liver pain. Where did this old puppet get such self-confidence?!

But Cao Zhen still has nothing to do with Niu Jin.

This old horseman, although his level is not very good, but he is old enough, he is an old minister of the Three Dynasties who followed Cao Ren as a deputy general in the early years, and now he is valued by Cao Rong and is in charge of the elite cavalry corps directly under the Son of Heaven.

Although in terms of official position, Cao Zhen can completely suppress Niu Jin, but the problem is that Cao Zhen can't do this.

It was already a mistake for him to send troops this time, although the Son of Heaven sent Wang Lang over to make up for it, but. It's better not to be too tough on Niu Jin.

Besides, Cao Zhen is different from Cao Xiu, Cao Zhen is still good at human relations and sophistication, and in the face of such an old minister of the three dynasties, he is still willing to give some face.

Therefore, Cao Zhen had to endure his anger and advised Niu Jin to march and fight, and be cautious first, do you think that the back hand of the Shu thief has been exposed, but what if someone still has a hidden hand?!

Besides, Zhao Yun is also a famous general of Shu thieves, although compared to famous generals like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, the gold content is a bit insufficient, but it should not be underestimated, the old general went all out to get the full credit, isn't it better? !

Even persuaded and coaxed, Cao Zhen finally persuaded Niu Jin and asked him to take 13,000 cavalry to the vicinity of Dali County to encircle and suppress the Liangzhou cavalry led by Zhao Yun.

In fact, Cao Zhen originally meant to hand over 5,000 cavalry from his headquarters, including Wang Chang, to Niu Jin's command.

Now the main force besieging Chongquan County is the infantry, and the role of the cavalry is left to cruise around the periphery, ensuring that the enemy does not dare to rashly go out of the city to burn the siege equipment, or break through and escape, it is better to let Niu Jin take it away to ensure a complete victory.

As a result, Niu Jin was stunned and disagreed, and was only willing to attack with his own cavalry regiment, Cao Zhen's cavalry regiment, he didn't want any more.

The old general's attitude is so resolute, Cao Zhen is not easy to force to tell the truth, Cao Zhen also feels that even if the Shu thief has a back hand, and there are 10,000 cavalry behind him, it is the sky, and Niu Jin should not fall behind with 13,000 cavalry to fight.

If you don't bring it, don't bring it.

Sending away the cavalry regiment led by Niu Jin, Cao Zhen thought about the next countermeasures on the one hand, and on the other hand, ordered the whole army to storm Chongquan, not giving the Shu thieves in Chongquan County any respite.

Compared with the Liangzhou Legion led by Zhao Yun, in fact, Cao Zhen and Zhang Xi, who care about Chongquan County, are a little fox who may give you a moth at any time.

In terms of reputation, although Zhao Yun is a veteran general, he has fought with Zhao Yun, and the older generation of Cao Wei's generals who know that Zhao Yun is powerful are basically withered, plus Zhao Yun has been ruling Liangzhou all these years, located in a remote area, and has always been low-key, it is indeed not as good as Zhang Xi, who is in charge of Yongzhou and is doing things under Cao Wei's nose.

In terms of ability, Cao Zhen has never fought against Zhao Yun.

On the contrary, he had dealt with Zhang Xi a few times, coupled with the two Northern Expeditions of the Shu thieves, Zhang Xi took on the heavy responsibility of being alone, and Zhao Yun was either a suspicious soldier or flanked Cao Zhen most of the time, and he really didn't feel that Zhao Yun had anything powerful.

In Cao Zhen's opinion, maybe Zhao Yun has some ability, but more of it, he is still a bit like an old man who has achieved his current position with qualifications.

Therefore, although he knew that his back road was in danger, Cao Zhen felt that he had no problem with his response, and his troops were sufficient, so he felt that he should be able to repel Zhao Yun and continue to maintain the attack on Chongquan County.

In other words, at this time, Cao Zhen still felt that he had an advantage, and he had no intention of withdrawing his troops.

And in Dali County. Zhao Yun was already waiting for the cavalry of the Wei army to come to the door.

One thing, in fact, Cao Zhen guessed correctly, Zhao Yun has always kept his own backhand.

The first time he sent 3,000 troops to attack and disrupt the grain transportation team, in fact, Zhao Yun deliberately showed the enemy weakness, wanting to attract the cavalry of the Wei army to encircle and suppress him, and then use heavy troops to counter the encirclement and suppression.

In fact, this trick really worked, attracting Cao Wei's 5,000 cavalry, which was surrounded and beaten by the 7,000 cavalry commanded by Zhao Yun himself, and only more than 3,000 cavalry escaped back.

And the reason why these more than 3,000 cavalry were able to escape back was that Zhao Yun deliberately kept his hands and did not let his own cavalry continue to pursue.

In fact, in cavalry combat, the casualties of fighting each other head-to-head are actually not too large.

The real mass destruction is produced in the process of one side retreating and one side pursuing, especially for the Liangzhou rangers who are good at guerrillas, chasing and killing the enemy army is the most suitable combat method for the Liangzhou cavalry.

But Zhao Yun only let the cavalry pursue for twenty miles and did not pursue, which was equivalent to letting the defeated cavalry of the Wei army go.

And the purpose of doing this, on the one hand, is to mislead the cavalry generals of the Wei army, so that he has a misjudgment of the combat strength of the cavalry led by him, on the other hand, Zhao Yun's purpose is not to eat the five thousand cavalry, his appetite is very big.

In doing so, he still wanted to lure more cavalry to come and encircle him, and then use the killer weapon that he had carefully prepared in Liangzhou for five years to completely decide the victory of Zuo Fengyi's battlefield.

And Zhao Yun's killer weapon is that he has not used it under his command, three thousand heavy cavalry.

Heavy cavalry, in fact, is not a new concept, there was a concept of heavy cavalry in the pre-Han Dynasty.

But Zhao Yun's three thousand heavy cavalry is still different from ordinary heavy cavalry.

Take the tiger and leopard cavalry, the former ace unit of Cao Wei, a large cavalry household, as an example, most of the heavy cavalry in these years were people wearing heavy armor and horses were not covered with armor, mainly focusing on the protection of people.

And the hoplite cavalry that Zhao Yun has carefully trained in Liangzhou for five years is a real hoplite.

Somewhat similar to the Iron Floating Tu of the Golden Vulture of later generations. Of course, there will not be the kind of Iron Floating Massacre where the three horses are connected.

In fact, the idea of forming a heavy cavalry was really not thought up by Zhao Yun, but suggested by Zhang Xi and Zhao Yun, and Zhang Xi's inspiration was indeed the Iron Floating Massacre under Jin Wushu.

However, while Zhao Yun affirmed Zhang Xi's conception of the heavy cavalry, he also questioned Zhang Xi's proposal of a three-horse connected formation.

If one of the cavalry cannot keep up with the speed, or if he is a little cowardly in the battle, he will not be burdened with the other two cavalry.

If the whole army does this, then as long as a small number of people appear cowardly in battle, then the entire cavalry offensive formation will completely collapse The cavalry is not infantry, and the formation collapse cannot occur during high-speed marching, so it is better to fight separately.

Therefore, Zhao Yun vetoed Zhang Xi's proposal to connect the three horses in parallel, believing that this was simply the whimsical idea of people who did not understand cavalry combat.

Zhang Xi didn't force it, on the one hand, he really didn't understand cavalry, on the other hand, Zhang Xi was in Yongzhou, Zhao Yun was in Liangzhou, and the communication between the two mainly relied on communication.

We can't argue about this matter and affect the formation of the cavalry team.

Therefore, Zhang Xi only made a suggestion, and it was still up to Zhao Yun to decide how to implement it and how to form this heavy cavalry unit.

Then Zhao Yun was in trouble.

In order to form such a heavy cavalry, the first thing to solve is the problem of war horses.

The requirements for war horses are not ordinarily high, and even if ordinary war horses can barely support the weight of human and horse armor, they can no longer run fast.

And the cavalry, which could not raise the speed, did not have any real combat significance at all.

Therefore, the first headache for Zhao Yun is the optimization of war horses.

But it won't be easy.

Although Liangzhou is a horse-producing place, Liangzhou has never been famous for its heavy cavalry, and most of the cavalry in Liangzhou are rangers wearing light armor or even no armor.

The endurance and explosiveness of the Liangzhou war horse are good, but the weight-bearing capacity is like that, if the heavy cavalry of this year may be able to withstand it, but if even the horse has to be put on heavy armor, it is not something that the ordinary Liangzhou war horse can bear.

Zhao Yun tried to use the Liangzhou war horse to form a heavy cavalry with men and horses, and the impact distance should not exceed ten miles, otherwise the horses would be damaged a lot.

If the impact distance is only ten miles, the meaning of cavalry combat will be completely lost.

It's definitely not going to work.

For this reason, Zhao Yun had to write to Zhang Xi again to ask if there was a solution, and Zhang Xi's reply gave a solution, but Zhao Yun couldn't accept it.

It's too late.

Zhang Xi's solution, one is to select the war horses with excellent weight-bearing capacity and explosive power, and after several generations of training, strive to select and breed a batch of high-quality war horses that can take into account the advantages of both.

But this matter, there is really no need for Zhang Xi to give an idea, since the former Han Xiaowu Emperor seized the Hetao area, this matter has been done, and Emperor Xiaowu even did not hesitate to work on an expedition in order to obtain Dawanju to improve the local war horse breed.

But even so, in the end, after more than 300 years of improvement, it is only the formation of today's Liangzhou, Bingzhou, Youzhou three horse-producing areas.

Zhao Yun didn't have three hundred years to wait, and he couldn't be sure if the improved horses would be able to meet their requirements in terms of endurance, weight, and explosiveness.

I can't afford to wait.

And Zhang Xi's second method is still to follow the example of Emperor Xiaowu and send envoys to the west to find more suitable breeds of war horses.

In his reply to Zhao Yun, Zhang Xi ambiguously mentioned that there was a kind of war horse in the extreme west, which could carry cavalry like iron cans to fight, and sent people to the west through the Silk Road to look for it, maybe they could find this kind of war horse.

Of course, today's Han Dynasty must not have the strength to swallow the world during the period of Emperor Xiaowu, and the Silk Road is not easy to walk, but it is always a kind of hope.

But this method, even if Zhang Xi conveyed his opinions through letters, Zhao Yun could see between the lines that it was unreliable.

Let's not say that this method of finding a needle in a haystack will not work, let's just say that this Silk Road is not under the control of the Han Dynasty now.

During the period of Emperor Xiaowu, the Silk Road was first opened, and with the national strength of the Han Dynasty as the backing, no one dared to stab the Han Dynasty.

But now, the Silk Road is intermittent, and the Han army has not returned to the Western Regions for decades, and no one dares to guarantee what the attitude of the Western Regions towards the Han is, and few merchants in the Western Regions are willing to come to the Han again, after all, the current Han is in a period of war.

If you want to find the kind of war horse that Zhang Xi heard about in this situation, you can only rely on luck.

These two methods, one can't afford to wait for time, and the other can only depend on luck, which is not what Zhao Yun is pursuing.

Zhao Yun was really worried, Zhang Xi's suggestion could not solve his current problem at all, and if the problem of war horses could not be solved, it would be impossible to form a heavy cavalry with men and horses in armor.

Even, Zhao Yun thought that if he didn't reduce the weight of the war horse's armor and replace it with leather armor from the original iron armor, maybe it would be okay.

Originally, Zhao Yun had already planned to compromise, so he did so, but God favored the big man after all.

I don't know where a merchant from the Western Regions came out of nowhere, who wanted to enter Liangzhou in the Han Dynasty to do business, asked someone to find a relationship, and sent some "gifts" to the Liangzhou Thorn History of the Han Dynasty, including a high-quality war horse from the "Western Regions".

Originally, in the face of this kind of "ignorant and bad" Hu businessman, Xu Miao, the assassin of Liangzhou, would never see each other, let alone receive gifts.

But coincidentally, on this day, Zhao Yun happened to be in Liangzhou Thorn Shi Mansion to discuss military affairs with Xu Miao, and then unfortunately, Zhao Yun also saw the war horse at a glance, and Xu Miao's face was red on the spot.

Who is so ignorant, who gives himself a gift in front of Zhao Yun and the conscience of heaven and earth, even if he wants to bribe, you don't do it.

Just when Xu Miao was worried that Zhao Yun had misunderstood and was about to explain. Xu Miao found that Zhao Yun looked directly at the war horse, and his eyes began to light up slowly.

Hm. Xu Miao suddenly stopped worrying about his future.

(End of chapter)