Along the way, Li Ping ordered his guards to act as sentry posts, constantly going around to investigate the thieves. He led the army slowly to the south, because he would need to fight with the thieves, although it was only a dozen miles away, Li Ping's army was ready to walk for an hour. As the southward movement continues to deepen, the sentinels have come to report.

"Report ...... The marquis, the thieves know the situation of our army, and they are currently making food. ”

"Report ...... The military marquis, the thieves have finished their meal, and they are regrouping their troops out of the village. ”

"Report ...... The military marquis, the thieves sent a total of more than 1,000 troops, and they were in front of the village three miles away. Among them, there were 200 people in the front, rear, left and right, and 400 people in the middle army. ”

By the time Li Ping's troops arrived at the battlefield and were only a mile away from the thieves, the thieves had already completed their entire ranks and were waiting for them with their spears. Li Ping saw that the thieves mostly used long spears and few bows and arrows, and there were many large wooden signs on both wings to protect them. Among them, there are very few armored thieves, only a dozen people wearing iron armor, and less than 300 people wearing leather armor, all of whom are arranged in the Chinese army, and the rest are mostly clothed.

Li Ping summoned the sentry and asked, "After the thieves left the camp, how long did it take to form a formation?" ”

You Sentinel said: "Three miles away, the thief took a cup of tea, and the array also used a cup of tea. ”

Li Ping nodded and said: "The thief formation of 1,200 people took a total of two teas, and it seems that the elite level of this thief is almost the same as that of ordinary county soldiers." Ladies and gentlemen, don't be careless in this battle. ”

The four generals on both sides nodded solemnly, if it is a thief of this level, and it is twice as large as the army, it is indeed impossible to be careless. Moreover, the thieves still had most of their soldiers and horses staying in the camp and had not yet gone out of the field. If the battle situation is anxious, the thieves continue to pour reinforcements, and the army is undefeated and will be defeated.

Li Ping looked at the thief's banner again, raised it high, and held the spear firmly in his hand, and couldn't help but say: "Whether it's a blessing or a curse, you will know in a battle." Let's go down and line up. ”

The four generals arched their hands and rode their horses in all directions, ready to line up. However, at this time, the thieves who were in formation one step earlier suddenly beat the war drums, and the thieves came out in front, left and right three formations, wanting to attack the Taiyuan soldiers by surprise.

After Li Ping looked at it, he couldn't help sneering, it is not easy to boast about the combat strength of the army, but if you talk about the speed of the array, if you call it the second in the world, it is difficult to find the first in the world. So he ordered the guards to pass the order from all sides: "Don't rush to form a formation first, wait until the thieves come." All the archers of each tun gathered in their own camp and stood by to give me orders to shoot arrows. ”

After seeing the thief's actions, the generals of the tuntun invariably let out a sneer. When he heard Li Ping's order, he immediately gathered the archers of each tun, a total of 106 people, to listen to the order before Li Ping's main formation, and he himself slowly commanded the soldiers to move around.

Looking from the side of the thief array, the three officers and soldiers in front of them were in chaos, and the soldiers were running back and forth in a chaotic manner, obviously frightened by the battle formation forced by the thieves, and it was difficult to form a formation for a while.

The thief surnamed Xu couldn't help but laugh and said: "The soldiers of all counties and counties in the world have been promoted for a long time, and they often don't practice, and the soldiers don't know how to fight, and they don't know the soldiers." The Taiyuan soldiers who don't want to break Li Le's department are also like this, which is really disappointing. The order was given, and the front three formations accelerated the attack. ”

When the front, left, and right thieves heard the rapid sound of war drums, they immediately accelerated their pace. However, the thieves had not taken ten steps forward, and the array of the three thieves was a little scattered, and the three thieves had to pause and form a team.

After doing this three times, the thief surnamed Xu couldn't help frowning, and said to himself: "The officers and soldiers are chaotic, if you don't take the opportunity to cover up the killing, do you have to wait until they calm down?" Someone came, and ordered the three departments not to manage the formation, and immediately assaulted. The herald ordered the front of the Chinese army to go out to the left and the rear to the right, ready to assist the front three formations to encircle the officers and soldiers. The rear army should also be ready to fight at any time. ”

When the three thieves heard the order, they immediately ignored the command and the thieves trotted in. Suddenly, the formation of the thieves and soldiers suddenly dispersed, and a group of people were divided into three regiments in a chaotic manner and rushed towards the battle formation of officers and soldiers.

At this time, the archers in front of Li Ping's main formation had already finished the formation, and they were divided into five columns and squatted on the ground, with 21 people in each column, and hid themselves in the figure of the sergeant in the middle. The archers stuck the long arrows in the quiver one by one on the ground at their sides and prepared them, while Li Ping looked at the steps of the thieves and silently calculated the distance.

"200 steps, 180 steps, 160 steps, 140 steps, 120 steps, herald the archers to prepare."

The half-crouched archers immediately turned to their horses, took their arrows and prepared their bows, and a sturdy and sophisticated archer stood in front of him as a temporary commander.

"100 steps, 80 steps, the order, facing the thief array forward three rounds of rapid ******* after the archer listened to the order, he immediately raised the small red flag in his hand, and saw that all the archers had already opened their bows, and immediately shouted: "Angle 40...... Shoot. The little red flag in his hand was immediately waved down.

"Buzz, whoosh." The bowstring sounded, and more than a hundred sharp arrows suddenly flew out like rain, watching the thief's forward rush to the face. The dense rain of arrows in the range of five steps in length and twelve steps in the horizontal range, in the desperate eyes of the thief, the clusters of arrows brought blood flowers. In the screams of the thieves, more than 30 people fell to the ground in a dense array of thieves.

"Open...... Shoot, open...... Shoot. ”

After three rounds of rapid arrow rain, more than half of the 200 thieves were killed or wounded, and the blood and wails all over the ground shocked everyone's vision, and the thieves were shocked by the slaughter of officers and soldiers in a short period of time. In the stunned eyes of the thief surnamed Xu, the cry of the thief formation in front of the sky sounded, and the thieves who had been gathered together suddenly dispersed, and the crazy thief army fled in a rout.

The thief surnamed Xu couldn't help but have a blue face, and shouted: "The sword and axe hand will come out of the ranks, kill the first defeated and fleeing pawns, and the guards will guide the rest of the defeated pawns to the rear army to re-array." The Chinese army was ordered to prepare in place and attack forward. On the left and right wings, with shields on guard against bows and arrows, they rushed forward. ”

Thirty fierce axemen immediately rushed out, in groups of three, and saw that a defeated soldier who had escaped was slashed with a knife and an axe, and blood splattered on his face, with indescribable ferocity. After killing more than a dozen defeated soldiers in a row, the defeat of the thieves finally stopped, and under the command of several Chinese army guards, they retreated to the rear.

Just when the thieves sorted out the defeated soldiers and conveyed the order, Li Ping had already ordered: "Seven five steps in front of the left flank and three rounds of rapid fire, and 70 steps in front of the right flank******* the archers immediately waved the red flag and shouted: "45 to the left, 35 at the angle, three rounds of rapid fire." Shoot, shoot, shoot. 85 to the right, 30 at an angle, three rounds of sharp shots. Shoot, shoot, shoot. ”

More than 600 arrows rained down in these six waves, and because the thieves were on guard, they only took away more than 20 people and injured more than 40 people. Even so, the thieves on the left and right flanks also suffered a lot of casualties, plus the front was defeated, the center was empty, and the thieves couldn't help but have a faint idea of defeat.

Seeing this, Li Ping ordered again: "The archers are divided into two branches, left and right, and after ten rounds of free scattering, they will return to each tun and stand by." When the thieves were thirty paces apart, they were almost ready to form a formation. The Chinese army can be divided into two teams to support both flanks at any time. ”

The thief surnamed Xu saw that his army was shot nine rounds by the official army, and the casualties were heavy, but he did not panic. Because the bows and crossbows of officers and soldiers everywhere have always been powerful, close combat is not good. As long as the own army insists on being undefeated, when it comes to close combat, the officers and troops will definitely not be supported, but only order the Chinese army to advance quickly to meet the two wings.

The archers fired ten more rounds of arrows, thousands of sharp arrows, only killed more than a dozen of the two-winged thieves, and wounded less than thirty people, and the thieves at this time were less than thirty paces away from the official army.

The archers were unable to shoot because their arms were temporarily weak, so they obeyed Li Ping's order and returned to their respective camps. After the thieves saw it, the morale that was on the verge of collapse suddenly recovered a lot.

On the left and right flanks, the leaders of the thieves shouted in the formation: "The officials and thieves have no strength, I will attack the enemy formation at a fast speed, as long as I fight with the officials and thieves, the archers of the officials and thieves will have no other way." If we retreat at this time, wait for the strength of the archers to recover, and our backs will definitely be diffused by the officials and thieves again. So moving forward is life, and going backward is death. Listen to my orders, abandon your shields, and assault forward. ”

The thieves suddenly let out a terrible howl, like a wolf's howl, and they abandoned their heavy wooden shields, held their spears in their hands, and rushed towards the officers and soldiers in front of them. The thieves, who were injured by arrows and were still able to act, also forgot about their injuries for a while and joined the charging formation.

I saw that the Taiyuan soldiers quickly formed a team at the speed they saw, and before the thieves could react, the two hedgehog-like arrays on the left and right had already been erected. The Chinese army was also divided into two small formations at the same time, faintly targeting the thieves on both wings.

I saw that at the forefront of the large array of officers and soldiers was a row of sword guards with round shields and rings sitting on one knee on the ground; The second column is a long shield hand, which is mostly half a man high; This is the main defense force of the officers and troops.

The third column is a long-handled Qigo that is one and five feet long, Qigo is protruding from the gap between the long shield hands, and the six-handled twigs and Changge itself emit a dazzling cold light, which should be the main killing weapon of the official army.

After that, there is a long spear that comes out of the left and right, which is specially used to assassinate the fish that have slipped through the net. Faintly, the last two columns are strong archers, who are specially designed to lurk behind and stop the fierce thieves. Or throw the sharp arrows in your hand to block the thief's follow-up forces.

The leader of the thieves saw that the official army was different, but he did not dare to retreat, so he had to stubbornly continue to lead the troops to charge, only to let out a louder howl to vent the fear in his heart.

just rushed to the front of the eyes, and saw this hedgehog-like array, but the thieves couldn't speak. Faced with Chigo, who was slightly longer than his spear, the thieves stabbed their weapons out of their hands.

However, there is a shield hand blocking and a Qigo block, which is either blocked or locked by a Chigo branch. In addition, the thieves behind him kept coming, and the thieves in the front couldn't help but fall forward.

The blood flashed on Ge's body, which was constantly stabbed, and the thieves began to suffer casualties. Just as the thieves were guarding against Chigo, the half-kneeling round shield hand under Ge began to move again. Borrowing the ring knife in his hand, he rolled and slashed at the thief's legs and feet, and his calves and thighs were broken.

In the screams, the thieves in the front line were constantly killed, and the thieves in the back continued to swarm forward, like moths to a fire, endlessly. However, moths are not afraid of death, but thieves are greedy for life. After the thieves on both wings were killed or wounded by forty or fifty people, when they saw the central army of the official army attacking from the left and right, the thieves on both wings suddenly collapsed.

The remaining more than 170 thieves cried, and quickly retreated as fast as the thieves' forwards before. And it was the strong archers who had already recovered their strength to send them off.

The archers stepped out of the array, and with an unhurried speed, they continued to hunt down the thieves who had no power to fight back, which was easier than shooting targets on a daily basis, and only needed to shoot arrows. By the time the thieves escaped out of range, there were less than 50 thieves left in the two wings, out of a total of more than 400.

The two wings of the thieves collapsed at the same time, and at this time, the 400 members of the thief army who were a hundred paces away were in a dilemma. Enter, in the face of the fierce and approaching three-way officers and soldiers, they are only afraid of being defeated. Retreat, the demoralized thieves are only afraid of an immediate collapse. During the three-mile journey back to the camp, I was afraid that there would be casualties.

The leader of the thief's Chinese army had no choice but to look back at the thief general surnamed Xu in his own formation, hoping that the general could give him an order so that he could make a decision.