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Mo Qingniu's two thousand vanguards walked cautiously for another six or seven miles and did not notice anything unusual. The morale of the army finally gradually settled down. However, before he could breathe a sigh of relief, the thunderous sound of iron hooves came from the front again. Su Jin's ghostly cavalry rushed over again, raising dust and with astonishing momentum.
At the same time, the sound of gongs and drums rang out again on the hillsides on both sides. "Prepare for battle, prepare for battle, watch out for ambushes on both sides..." Mo Qingniu roared loudly. Two thousand soldiers and horses hurriedly formed their battle formation. The spearmen in front pressed down the butts of their spears, and the tips of their spears pointed diagonally forward like a thorn forest, ready to resist the charge of the cavalry. Shield walls were built on both sides to guard against ambushes on the two hillsides. The archers in the middle drew their bows and were ready to shoot, ready to rain arrows down as soon as the enemy entered the range.
When the rebels had hurriedly set up their formation, Su Jin and his men rushed beyond the range of the bows and arrows and then stopped, mocking them wantonly, and soon there was no movement on the hillsides on both sides.
Mo Qingniu was fooled again and was filled with hatred, "Kill them, kill these sons of bitches..." Mo Qingniu waved his sword and urged the army to move forward. Su Jin and his men rode away and disappeared, leaving behind a large cloud of dust for Mo Qingniu's rebels to eat.
While cursing, Mo Qingniu quickened his marching speed in order to reach Wanzai as soon as possible. The army marched another seven or eight miles when Su Jin appeared again, and gongs and drums sounded in both canyons at the same time.
This time, both Mo Qingniu and his men were calm and composed, and they arranged their battle formations calmly. As expected, Su Jin did not launch any substantial attack except for bluffing. He cursed for a while and then disappeared. There were no ambushes in the canyons on both sides, and once the gongs and drums stopped, there was not even a ghost to be seen.
This situation repeated two or three times, and Mo Qingniu was certain that Qin Mu's army had already rushed to Wanzai. He just left Su Jin and his hundred cavalrymen to harass along the way, using the strategy of confusing the enemy to slow down their speed, so as to buy more time for Qin Mu.
When Su Jin came to harass them again, the rebels remained calm and some of them even laughed and chatted with each other.
"Don't be afraid, they are definitely playing tricks to confuse the enemy again."
"That's right. They don't feel tired."
"You still think we are all fools. Damn it, even a fool will learn his lesson after being fooled so many times."
"Haha, no matter how powerful they are, there are only about a hundred of them. We don't need to pay any attention to them."
Amidst such laughter and chatter, the morale of the rebels was greatly boosted. They no longer feared Su Jin's cavalry, and had long since become numb to the occasional drumbeats from the canyons on both sides. Mo Qingniu's marching speed became faster and faster, and the distance between him and Zhang Qi's rear army was getting farther and farther.
Zhang Qizai was a cautious man, fearing that Qin Mu was playing a trick of combining the real with the fake, and the real with the fake, so he quickly sent someone to tell Mo Qingniu not to advance rashly and to keep a proper distance from the rear army so that they could support each other in case of an ambush.
After a day, nothing happened. However, due to the harassment by Su Jin, a lot of time was wasted. Zhang Qi's 7,000 rebels only walked more than 30 miles. There were still more than 40 miles to Wanzai.
Seeing that it was already dusk, Zhang Qizai did not dare to march at night like Qin Mu did, and soon after the Yin hour, he hurriedly ordered to set up camp and at the same time deployed a large number of sentries on the periphery.
"Damn it!" Mo Qingniu looked at the scene outside the camp and couldn't help cursing. It was quiet for more than an hour, and before it got dark, Su Jin's ghostly cavalry appeared again, wantonly hunting down the sentries they sent out. They even rushed a hundred steps outside the camp, shouting and provoking arrogantly.
The rebels couldn't shoot with arrows, so he sent infantry out of the camp. If there were too few, they would be useless, and if there were too many, he couldn't catch up with them once they ran away. He could only blame his remaining hundred or so cavalrymen for not being able to perform well and being no match for the rebels. Mo Qingniu could do nothing but smash the bowl and curse.
The guards on the periphery were in a miserable state. They were hunted down one by one. Those who were lucky enough to escape back to the camp would rather be punished by military law than go out again.
While Su Jin and his men were hunting down the sentries, they captured more than a dozen war horses. All in all, they had captured nearly a hundred war horses that day, almost enough for each of them to ride two horses. Although everyone was a little tired after a busy day, they were able to bully others and had rich trophies, so naturally everyone was smiling.
Where there is joy there is sorrow. Zhang Qi had 7,000 men and horses, but they were badly troubled by more than a hundred cavalrymen. Now he couldn't even send out sentries. He became like a blind man. He felt so uncomfortable in his heart, as if he clenched his fist but hit cotton, which was soft and had no place to exert force.
This won't work. Although Qin Mu's army has not been seen for a long time, there is a 90% chance that they went to attack Wanzai. But one should always be prepared for the worst. What if Qin Mu didn't go to Wanzai, but was waiting in the dark to attack him
Anyone with a little military knowledge knows that a makeshift camp is very easy to breach. If no sentries are posted on the periphery and the enemy sneaks up on the camp wall, the simple wall will be reduced to ashes in an instant with a single explosion of gunpowder, and the army attacking at night can rush into the camp like a tide. Unless all the soldiers are awake, they will undoubtedly be defeated if faced with such a sudden attack.
After some thought, Zhang Qi ordered the construction of four small camps around the main camp before it got dark, and sent 500 soldiers to each camp. In this way, the small camps could both protect themselves and provide vigilance for the main camp.
Zhang Qi was busy setting up the camp while Su Jin was busy resting. After resting for more than an hour, after dark, the sound of "dee! dee!" of horse hooves could be heard outside the rebel camp again. If anyone wanted to launch a sneak attack, they had to wrap up their horse's hooves to avoid being noticed by the other side in advance.
Su Jin and his men, on the other hand, were afraid that others would not know they were coming, so they did not hesitate to whistle. When they felt that the rebels in the camp were not reacting enthusiastically enough, they immediately beat drums and gongs and set off firecrackers, making the scene earth-shaking and joyous, even more lively than the emperor's wedding.
Thousands of rebels were uneasy and unable to sleep. The lights were brightly lit around the village walls. A large group of rebels stared at the night outside the village with wide eyes, fearing that a large group of troops would suddenly launch a surprise attack in the dark.
Su Jin and his men made a fuss for a while, then stopped for a while. The more than one hundred men were divided into two groups, one group rested while the other group continued to make fuss, over and over again. Occasionally, they would even bypass the small camps on the outskirts and rush to the big camp inside, loudly beating gongs and drums, causing panic in the camp, and then immediately ride their horses to withdraw.
By the fourth watch, all the rebels were exhausted. Su Jin and his men seemed to be tired as well. There was finally no sound outside the camp. The rebels, who had been tormented for most of the night, fell asleep one after another. Soon, the camp was filled with snoring.
Ten miles away, Qin Mu's two thousand troops were just the opposite. They slept soundly for most of the night, and just got up at the general's call, eating dry food with hot water brought by the fireman.
Qin Mu did lead his troops straight to Wanzai at the beginning, intending to capture Wanzai first and then hold the fortified city to defeat Zhang Qizai. However, at noon he received a report that Zhang Qizai's 7,000 troops were severely defeated by Su Jin. Qin Mu made a prompt decision to change the original battle plan. After all, war cannot be based on conventions and must be adjusted continuously according to the battlefield situation.
"Quick, tie the white silk around your arms. Tie it up tightly. If it falls off, you will be mistaken for a rebel and killed in vain. The sergeants and squad leaders are responsible for checking whether their soldiers have tied it up properly." Qin Mu gave orders loudly. Although the two thousand men under his command did not have night blindness, it was dark at night and once a melee broke out, it would be difficult to distinguish between friend and foe without a mark.
Qin Mu was preparing for the sneak attack, and Zhang Qizai was not idle either. The seven thousand soldiers had been harassed for most of the night and were very tired. At four o'clock in the morning, it suddenly became quiet outside the camp. This silence made Zhang Qizai feel a little weird, and he felt uneasy.
Although he could not be sure whether Qin Mu's army was waiting nearby to launch a night attack, the sudden silence still made him alert, and he ordered 1,500 soldiers to get up and deploy defenses. In addition to burning some fires outside the four walls of the camp, all lights in the camp were turned off to prevent people from discovering the arrangements in the camp in advance.
There were also four small camps on the periphery, and everyone was ordered to stand up and deploy defenses. They agreed to use fireworks as a signal. Once a small camp came under fierce attack and showed signs of being unable to hold out, fireworks would be set off immediately. As long as the fireworks were seen, the main camp would immediately send reinforcements.
After arranging all this, Zhang Qi finally breathed a sigh of relief. It would be dawn in an hour and a half. As long as he could hold on until dawn, everything would be fine.
He had just let out a breath when the people in the camp to the south immediately came shouting and killing, and the night attack actually came.
It was Cui Feng who led the troops to attack the small camp in the south. Su Jin had been harassing them for most of the night, just in preparation for this moment. Cui Feng thought that the rebels were already exhausted and must be fast asleep now.
But what surprised him was that although the rebels were indeed exhausted, they were not sleeping soundly. When he and his 300 men were still fifty steps away from the camp, a rain of arrows suddenly broke out from the dark camp. The sound of arrows entering flesh was heard, and immediately more than a dozen of his men were shot and fell down, and a scream pierced the night sky.
A soldier next to Cui Feng was shot in the left eye socket, his eyeball was squeezed out, the arrow was deeply embedded in the eye socket, blood was gushing out, and the extreme pain made the soldier roll on the ground holding the arrow tail.
Cui Feng's eyes were red with anger. "Put out the fire, put out the fire, disperse, fight back... Charge, charge." There was a fire burning by the rebels twenty steps outside the camp. Cui Feng rushed over and scattered the fire with his knife.
The other soldiers did the same and put out all the fires. The surroundings suddenly became dark, and two or three hundred soldiers dispersed and ran towards the enemy camp in the darkness.
If a sneak attack fails, then attack from the front. Three hundred versus five hundred, it’s no big deal.
Boom! With a loud bang, flames shot up into the sky, and the village gate collapsed in the flames. Some of the rebels near the village gate were blown to pieces.
Cui Feng, who took the lead in rushing towards the village gate, had a piece of flying intestine entangled around his neck. The fishy smell was so nauseating that he wanted to vomit. He tore the intestines off his neck and rushed in through the collapsed village gate.
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.(To be continued..)
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