According to the government soldier system now implemented in the Great Sui Empire, a qualified government soldier first needs his archery skills to pass, and the standard is that each government soldier must be able to fire twenty arrows in one breath, and eighty percent of the twenty arrows hit the arrow target. Only archery is passed, followed by sword and shield fighting, and the third is horsemanship.

Therefore, if an adult government soldier can't even handle a bow and arrow, he can only be the object of ridicule, which is a great shame for the people of Guanxi and Guanzhong, who have implemented the government soldier system for thousands of years, and no adult man can endure it. In this way, the proportion of qualified archers in the Great Sui army, which was dominated by Guanxi and Guanzhong, reached almost 100 percent.

Of course, as the opponent of the Sui army, the barbarian army is dominated by archers, these barbarians will get clothes and small bows and arrows from their parents since they were young, as childhood toys, and when they grow up, they will begin to use bows and arrows to hunt, so the proportion of archers in the barbarians will exceed that of the Sui army.

It is said that the strength of the barbarian army should be above the Sui army, but the equipment and technology level of the Sui army far exceeds that of the barbarians, in terms of the range of bows and arrows alone, the barbarian army is more than 20 steps closer than the bow and arrow range of the Sui army or the Central Plains Dynasty, not to mention that the Sui army is now equipped with more powerful crossbows.

As for the cavalry charge of the barbarians, the Sui army did not care much at the beginning, because in terms of quantity, the cavalry of the 5,000 barbarian army was a drop in the bucket for a barbarian army of more than 2 million, and it was also insignificant for the Sui army of a million people.

But this was not the case for the archers who were at the forefront of the Sui formation. The charge of the 5,000 iron cavalry, at first glance, was still slow, and the movement of 20,000 iron hooves hitting the ground was still insignificant, but as the barbarian cavalry began to jog, run in small steps, and run fast to the final stage, the movement of the iron hooves shaking the ground became bigger and bigger, and even some small stones were shaken and rolled on the ground in the place where the archers of the Sui army were arrayed.

The older archers of the government soldiers are okay, they have all experienced the war between the two races, but those younger ones are different, although they have been mentally prepared, but they are also starting to feel a little frightened, and their legs and stomachs are tendoning.

Five thousand cavalry said that it was not much, but it was only one of the five hundred points of the whole army of the barbarian army, but the military discipline of the barbarian army was not as good as that of the Sui army, and the war horses also needed enough space to run, so these cavalry were divided into a five-row charging formation, and as the running faster and faster, the originally dense cavalry group was also scattered more and more, but as the first wave, the five thousand cavalry could basically remain within the width of two miles in front of the Sui army.

Of course, it is precisely because of the limited spread of the frontal width that the 10,000 archers of the Sui army took turns to fire arrows, and there were not many times when they failed, especially the cross-shooting method used by the Sui army now, which increased the probability of hitting the bow and arrow! Even so, when the barbarian cavalry approached the Sui army's camp, the Sui army's rotation of archery was faster, and in the end, only a few hundred and ten cavalry broke through the blow of the Sui army's arrow rain, and the result was to give the Sui army's magic arrow opportunity.

However, because the first wave of cavalry charges were covered with the corpses of barbarians and war horses along the way, the closer to the Sui army, the more corpses, and when they were about two hundred to four hundred steps away from the Sui army, there was almost no place to put their feet, so the formation of the barbarian cavalry that followed up the charge was also stretched wider and wider, faintly forming a long black wavy line. With the sound of rumbling horses' hooves, it rolled towards the Sui army.

Knowing that the cavalry of the barbarian army is coming in waves in a planned way, Li Hu also made arrangements for the transfer of troops at the same time, not only more archers drove to the front of the cavalry array, but even the sword and shield soldiers with strong walls had someone responsible for handing them a pair of deputy longbows and a pot of arrows, and the soldiers who were deployed on the front line of the sword and shield soldiers were all veterans, and they were also veterans who were proficient in bows and arrows。

The second and third waves of cavalry of the barbarian army came in the blink of an eye, but due to the heavy casualties of the first wave of cavalry, leaving countless obstacles in front of the Sui army, the impact of these two groups of 5,000 cavalry each was not smooth, especially under the baptism of arrows and rain of arrows from the Sui army's continuous cross-shooting, it was still a failed ending.

However, without waiting for the Sui army to mobilize more archers, the fourth and fifth waves of barbarian cavalry came one after another, and the formation of the Sui army was threatened, and it had to begin to retreat gradually, leaving space for the cavalry of the barbarian army - this is a combat strategy, the closer the barbarian cavalry is to the Sui army, the more corpses of men and horses are left on the ground, and in the end they can't even run, they can only become the target of the Sui army's bow and arrow.

At the same time, the light and heavy cavalry units originally arranged in the center of the Sui army also began to quietly shift their positions and move to both sides, preparing to launch an attack at the last moment when the barbarian army was fruitless.

Sure enough, as the impact of the barbarian army's nearly twenty cavalry phalanx was fruitless, the barbarian Great Khan Tama began to become agitated. In Tama's understanding, this kind of continuous cavalry attack was enough to consume a lot of physical strength of the Sui army, and at the speed of the barbarian cavalry, it was long overdue to break through the Sui army's arrow array and start fighting with the Sui army's cavalry or infantry. But in fact, after more than twenty attacks, the barbarian cavalry still did not break through the blockade of the Sui army's arrow rain.

Is it tolerable, but unbearable! Is the barbarian cavalry so useless?

In anger, Tama made a decision and ordered the elite cavalry of his Chinese army, which was also the direct personal soldier of the Great Khan, to attack the cowardly Xue army - a full 20,000 barbarian armored cavalry, as arrows, led the remaining more than 100,000 barbarian light cavalry to attack in the direction of the commander of the Sui army!

The cowardly Xue army is different from the main cavalry of other barbarian tribes, only the composition of its troops, that is, the leaders of various tribes and the nobles of the samurai, equipped with the best equipment in the barbarian army, so that all the men and horses are armored, each hand is a strong bow, a pot of arrows, a straight knife from the Central Plains, and most importantly, almost everyone has a horse lance or spear, and the charge is called invincible, and it is the most important force to maintain the status of the barbarian Great Khan.

Don't look at the entire barbarian population, which is calculated in the same number of 100 million, but the total number of this cowardly army will never exceed 50,000. And now the 20,000 cowardly Xue army has accounted for sixty percent of all the troops brought out by the Great Khan Tama!(The remaining forty percent must be guarded by the Great Khan's side, and belong to the part of the dead soldiers who will ensure that the Great Khan can escape smoothly once the war is unfavorable, and they will never go to war.) As for the cowardly Xue army that did not follow Tama as a great khan, it was the strength of the Han court left behind. ）

In fact, among the barbarians, the combat strength of 20,000 cowardly Xue troops can sweep more than 100,000 barbarian tribal cavalry, so it enjoys a high reputation on the grassland, and is regarded as a sign of invincibility by the grassland barbarians.

But what Tama didn't know was that his decision had the opposite of what the steppe barbarians had hoped for, and the barbarians would have to pay a heavy price for it.

At the same time as the most elite of the barbarian army, the barbarian shamans also began to hold rituals to send protection and blessings to the barbarian warriors.

It is worthy of the grassland barbarian shaman, although their spells are not directly aimed at the Sui army, but they have given great blessings to the barbarians - especially the most elite cowardly Xue army, under the blessing of the shaman, the original heavy human and horse clothing has become lighter, and the speed of the war horse gallop has also accelerated, and it is more flexible, almost ignoring the corpses of the barbarian people and horses all over the ground, just stepping on the dead men and dead horses, and also maintaining the original dense formation, and not like other barbarian armies when they charged, the horizontal column became wider and wider.

Li Hu also got the report of the lookout in time, and there was no other action, only a hideous and cruel smile on the corner of his mouth - the dispatch of the cowardly Xue army must be the central formation of the Sui army, and the target must be Li Hu, the commander of the Chinese army, but they are also the harvesting target of Li Hu's ballista.

Now it depends on whether Li Hu's ballista troops will finish first, or whether the barbarians' cowardly Xue army will be dumplings made by Li Hu!

When they were only two hundred steps away from the archers of the Sui army, the warriors of the cowardly Xue army saw the Sui archers fleeing in a panic, and the warriors couldn't help but sneer in their hearts: Lao Tzu doesn't believe that your two legs can run through the four legs under Lao Tzu's crotch! Wait for Ye Ye to cut off your head and add some credit to Ye Ye!

However, the archers of the Sui army scattered and fled very artistically, and at the same time as they fled, they also opened a yellow-green cloth wall, revealing a ballista that exuded a strong murderous aura, and a touch of cold light on the ballista directly faced the knights of the cowardly Xue army whose eyes were bloodshot.

The distance was too close, and the speed of the war horse was so fast that it was too late for the cowardly Xue Jun, who had found that something was wrong, to turn in time. Just as the cowardly Xue Army knights who found the clue in the first row hurriedly tightened the reins of the war horse and tried to stop the war horse, the Sui army officer in charge of shooting the ballista waved his raised arm!

"Phew!" "Boom!" "Boom!" the sound of countless mallets striking the ballista mechanism rang out, followed by one thick javelin-like arrow after another, and a crescent-like flywheel.