Since ancient times, it has not been uncommon to use the cover of night to launch sneak attacks on enemy camps, but that was limited to sneak attacks.
It is rare for two armies to set up their battle formations and engage in battle at night. Apart from anything else, just how to command the army at night is a difficult problem to solve. Once the two sides engage in battle, the commander cannot distinguish between friend and foe due to limited vision. How can he command the battle
More importantly, most soldiers of this era suffered from night blindness and could not see clearly at night, so it was difficult to engage in night battles.
Qin Mu inherited the tradition of the People's Liberation Army and attached great importance to night combat capabilities. The People's Liberation Army used millet and rifles at that time. The equipment could not compare with the enemy, so they could only make up for the equipment gap by night combat.
During Qin Mu’s military training in Huichang, night combat was included in his training course, and he also learned how to deal with night blindness from the People’s Liberation Army.
When he was in military school, he read the memoirs of General Hong Xuezhi, in which there is such a passage: Just when we felt that we were in a dilemma, we learned two folk remedies for treating night blindness from the Korean people. One is to boil pine needle soup. This method is said to have been passed down from the ancient Chinese folks. During the Second World War, the Japanese used it in the Southeast Asian war and it was very effective. The method is to boil the needles of Masson pine in a large pot. After boiling for more than an hour, take out the needles, let the pine needle water settle, scoop it out, and add some sugar to drink. If there is no sugar, you can drink it dry. Pine needle water tastes a bit bitter. As long as you drink it for six or seven days in a row, your eyes will be able to see. There are Masson pines all over the mountains and plains in North Korea, so there is no shortage of pine needle soup. I asked the Ministry of Health to telegraph the entire army to promote this method.
This method really works. Qin Mu's two thousand men often drink pine needle water, so they can carry out night combat training regularly, and marching at night is not a problem.
He guessed that Zhang Qizai would not dare to fight outside the city at night, so he arrogantly approached the city. Of course, if Zhang Qizai dared to fight outside the city at night, that would be even better. Not to mention that he only had more than 10,000 troops in the city, even if there were 100,000, Qin Mu would not be afraid of him.
In order to boost morale, Qin Mu simply ordered his soldiers to approach the city two hundred steps away and shout arrogantly at the top of the city wall.
"Listen, rebels in the city, your grandfather is here, hurry out of the city and surrender, and you can save your life.
"Zhang Qi, you son of a bitch, dare you go out of town and eat your father's shit?"
"Zhang Qi, you coward. I'll fuck your ancestors for eighteen generations."
“… ... ... ... .”
The soldiers' shouting and cursing made Qin Mu laugh and cry. One moment you said he was his grandfather, and the next moment you wanted to fuck his eighteen generations of ancestors. This was such a blunder...
Qin Mu was too lazy to care and let the soldiers curse at will, just to relieve the boredom and fatigue of the forced march. This was very helpful in boosting morale. From Yuanzhou to the north, there were still seventy miles to go.
Zhang Qi was standing on the top of the city wall. Looking at the torches all over the hills, it was hard to tell how many soldiers were there under the city walls. No matter how much people cursed at him, he would never dare to go out of the city to fight at night.
Qin Muzhi was not here. He did not stay for long under the city. After letting the soldiers curse to their heart's content, he left Su Jin with 120 cavalrymen to guard the rear and monitor the movements of the rebels in Yuanzhou City. He led the army to rush to Wanzai County in the north overnight.
The next morning, just after daybreak, the rebels at the South Gate saw a small hill suddenly appear two hundred steps away. It was too dark to see clearly, so the South Gate commander nicknamed Nine Blades saw that there was no movement outside the city, so he ordered his men to quietly open the South Gate, and then led a group of rebels out of the city to check.
Fifty steps, thirty-two, twenty steps, through the light morning mist, I finally saw the hill clearly.
"ah... ... ... .."
I don't know who screamed first, but it sounded particularly sharp and piercing in the quiet morning. Looking at the pile of heads twenty steps away, each one was covered in blood and looked extremely hideous and terrifying.
Jiubadao and the rebels behind him had all seen corpses, looted, and killed, but to see so many heads piled together, many with their dead eyes open and bloody tongues sticking out, like wronged ghosts seeking revenge, was a horrifying sight that not everyone could endure.
Jiubadao felt his legs go weak and his scalp felt like it was going to explode. Not to mention the rebels behind him, some of them were so scared that they sat down on the ground, not realizing that steaming urine was flowing out of their crotches.
"Hurry... hurry back to the city... go back to the city and report to General Zhang..." Jiubadao's lips trembled as he led the way back. The rebels who fell to the ground shouted "Oh my God!" and crawled back.
A group of people stumbled back into the South Gate. As soon as the gate was closed, they immediately told the defenders in the city about the horrific scene they had seen.
"Heads. So many heads, like a hill."
"What? That's a human head?"
"Yes, we are not lying to you. There are so many heads piled up like a small mountain. Each one has dead eyes open, as if they are looking for someone to kill. It is as scary as it can be."
"I've heard of it. It's called Jingguan..."
“Oh my God!”
Zhang Qizai received the report quickly and hurried to the South Gate. At this time, the first rays of sunlight rose in the east. Looking out from the South Gate Tower, he could clearly see the pile of skulls, which exuded a sinister and fierce aura.
The huge and ferocious head at the top belonged to Yu Da Neng. His angry eyes were wide open, and his loose hair was gently blown by the morning breeze. He looked so terrifying that even Zhang Qi felt his scalp tingling when he saw it, let alone ordinary rebels.
Seeing his soldiers talking about everything and losing their courage, Zhang Qizai quickly sent out a thousand troops to bury the heads outside the city. The troops leaving the city then discovered that there was a wooden sign next to the Jingguan, on which was written the numerous crimes committed by Yu Daneng and others, and warned the rebels in the city that if they did not repent and disband and go home, this Jingguan would be their example.
The head was buried, but the feeling of fear could not be buried. The atmosphere in the city was extremely gloomy, and everyone felt as if a huge stone was pressing on their heart.
The scouts sent by Zhang finally found out that the soldiers who suddenly arrived at Yuanzhou city last night were from Ganzhou. He also confirmed that the main general was Qin Mu, and he had only two thousand troops.
He had never heard of Qin Mu's name, but that was not the point. The point was that Qin Mu massacred a thousand of his men in one fell swoop. Only three or four of them escaped, and the rest of their heads were chopped off and built into a tall Jingguan. This showed how cruel Qin Mu was.
Their progress in the past few months was so smooth that most people thought that all the officers and soldiers were vulnerable. Now Qin Mu used those thousand hideous heads to tell them that retribution had come.
Qin Mu went around the city and headed straight north, his target obviously being Wanzai County in the north.
After checking the map, Zhang Qi vaguely understood Qin Mu's purpose of attacking Wanzai County. He quickly sent his general Liang Yingcai to lead a thousand troops to pursue northward, and he himself set out with an army of 6,000, preparing to annihilate Qin Mu at the foot of Wanzai City in order to restore Di Mi's morale and avoid being attacked from two sides in the future.
Liang Yingcai led a thousand men and horses and hurried northward. Along the way, he could see the bodies of his own scouts from time to time. No wonder none of the scouts he sent out came back. It seemed that they were all killed by the enemy.
Unable to find out the situation ahead, Liang Yingcai began to feel uneasy, like a blind man, and his march slowed down. When they had walked twenty miles on thin ice, climbed over a high slope and came to a relatively open area, they saw more than a hundred black-armored cavalrymen coming like a cold giant arrow, and the sound of horse hooves roared like thunder.
"Quick, form a formation, form a formation." Liang Yingcai shouted urgently.
The rebels were already feeling uneasy as they marched along. Liang Yingcai's urgent shout instantly broke the taut string in the hearts of his men, and they all panicked.
After finally arranging the battle formation, more than a hundred cavalrymen on Su Jin's side rushed over like giant arrows. The clanging of their hooves was like thunder, raising a cloud of dust that blurred the vision. Only some shadowy black figures could be seen in the dust.
There was a shortage of horses in the south, and Liang Yingcai's rebels had never encountered such a fierce cavalry charge. The astonishing momentum of destroying mountains and seas made the timid ones' feet begin to tremble, their palms were full of cold sweat, and their hearts seemed to beat out of their chests. They could hear nothing in their ears but the roar of horse hooves.
"Shoot! Shoot quickly!" Liang Yingcai himself was sweating all over, and he shouted loudly in a timid manner.
"Kill!" Su Jin's men suddenly roared in unison, the sound was so loud that it shook the mountains. Some rebels were so scared that their hands and feet trembled, and their arrows actually hit their companions in front of them.
Su Jin led his team through the sparse rain of arrows, thirty steps, twenty steps, ten steps, and then, boom! More than a hundred cavalrymen slashed fiercely into the rebel formation like giant axes. The rebels who were unable to escape were knocked back like scarecrows. The shining sabers slashed down in the morning sun, leaving a bunch of blood flowers.
Su Jin took the lead, like the arrowhead of a giant arrow, constantly wedging into the rebel formation. A normal person would be frightened and panicked when facing a galloping buffalo, let alone more than a hundred galloping war horses. The thrilling momentum is definitely not something that an ordinary person dares to confront head-on.
"Oh my God!" Most of the rebels were frightened and turned pale. They fled to the sides, fearing that they would become corpses if they failed to escape.
The area in front of Su Jin's charge was like being split by a giant axe of God, leaving a three-meter-wide blank area, and this blank area was constantly expanding, allowing his more than one hundred cavalrymen to pass through easily, and then turn back and rush into the enemy camp again with a deafening roar.
The terrified rebels threw away their weapons and armor, and fled to the hillsides on both sides crying for their parents. Su Jin chased them all the way down the hillside, hacked and killed more than a hundred rebels, and then gave up reluctantly.
What they did next made the rebels who fled to the hillside dumbfounded. Su Jin left fifty men on horseback to stand guard, and the rest quickly jumped off their horses and chopped off the heads of the rebels who died on the hillside right before their eyes.
Nearly two hundred heads were soon piled up on the roadside, forming a small Jingguan. After all this was done, more than a hundred cavalrymen whistled and left in a cloud of dust. (To be continued...)
...