The mountains stretch, framing violent ups and downs in the land to the southwest.
Under the surging lead cloud, white snow fell on the ground. From Xiangfan to the Jiange direction, thousands of miles away, some are chaotic, some are dead.
In the past few months, the gate of the originally fortified city has been knocked on, and the damage caused by the raging of hundreds of thousands of troops has not yet subsided. Among the scorched ruins, there are still people with shabby clothes looking for their last hope; in the villages ravaged by soldiers and bandits, the elderly couples are gradually dying in their cold homes; the displaced refugees gather in this land, where the few still remain. Outside the unbroken city, after the heavy snow fell, they began to freeze and starve to death in large numbers.
The earth extends to the Jiange, and hundreds of thousands of troops are densely packed like ant colonies, building a new ecological community on the land that is gradually becoming cold. In the mountains adjacent to the barracks, the trees have been cut down, and every day, the plumes of heating smoke rise up in the huge barracks, like towering forests. In some military camps, new war materials are built every day, and they are transported by ox carts to the battlefield at the other side of Jiange.
In the past autumn, most of the autumn harvest fruits that the army swept across thousands of miles of land had already been gathered here. Correspondingly, there are millions of Han people who have completely lost their winter food and past savings. This logistics camp used to support the Southwest War has hundreds of thousands of troops and a radiation warning range of hundreds of miles.
In November, Wanyan Xiyin had arrived here to take up the town, and what he was waiting for and alerting was a black flag team of 20,000 people who came across the mountains and mountains from the direction of Tubo Dayang. This is the most elite revenge force of the Huaxia Army, which has experienced the blood of the Xiaocang River. It is led by Qin Shaoqian, like a poisonous snake, pointing the blade at the hundreds of thousands of troops outside the Jianguo Gathering Pavilion.
If Xi Yin had not been preparing for the attack on the Black Flag for several years, and had investigated the situation of this unit in detail, the rear defense of the Jurchen army would have been defeated by this army, and the Jurchen elites who had entered the southwest would probably have even been in the sword pavilion. It is difficult to come out, the iron locks across the river, and it is impossible to get up and down.
So in November, Xi Yin arrived here and took over the command of the tens of thousands of Jurchen elites. Qin Shaoqian knew that his own movements had been discovered, and more than 20,000 people stopped quietly in the mountains, and by this time, they had not made any movements.
Some things are hard to believe when they don't happen, but Xi Yin knows in his heart that if the Southwest war fails. The 20,000 people who were quietly watching the battle would cut the sharpest knife on the back road of the Jurchen.
Will the Jurchen lose? No one here has this idea for the time being. But the Black Flag Army, who was waiting for revenge, was obviously thinking about it as a real future.
Not long after the battle started, Ning Yi put down the steel knife in the rear, attacked, speculated... or even waited for the Jurchen to slaughter the entire West Route Army on the way to escape. This kind of boldness and arrogance made Xi Yin unhappy.
He calmly organized and trained the surrendered Han troops from the rear, selected the available soldiers step by step, and organized sufficient logistics materials to support the front line.
The line of sight starts from here, crosses the Jiange, and extends all the way. Between the vast mountains, the spreading team weaves a long dragon, and there are military camps one by one on the nodes of the dragon body. Traces of human activities radiated from the military camp, and in the mountains and forests, there were also scenes of pitch-black alopecia areata. The fighting and flames created ugly leprosy heads everywhere.
In December, there was occasional rain and snow under the blue sky, and the roads were muddy and slippery. Although Jurchen organized a large number of logistics personnel to maintain the roads, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the forward transport capacity. The advancing troops, accompanied by ox carts, slipped in the muddy water. Sometimes people crowded together in the mountains. At every node of transportation capacity, soldiers could be seen shivering in front of the fire.
As Jiange moved forward, silhouettes of people, ox carts, and carriages filled the muddy mountain road that stretched for fifty miles. Under the encouragement and mobilization of the Jurchen Marshal Zonghan, the Jurchen troops that were advancing appeared strong, and the Han troops that were forced to advance seemed numb, but the troops were still expanding. In some rugged places in the mountains, people even forcibly opened up new roads. Some people shouted in the mountains, and scouts with strange clothes and different expressions came out from the forest from time to time, supporting their companions, carrying the wounded, and after resting. Going into the mountains again and again.
In order to reduce the pressure on the road, the wounded on the front line basically no longer moved to the rear at this time, and the deceased were uniformly burned near the battlefield. The wounded were also kept on the front line for treatment.
When the weather is clear, hot air balloons will rise high in the sky, and when the weather is cloudy and windy, people are wary of possible small-scale raids in the woods.
The Huaxia Army sneaks up on the Jin Kingdom's troops, and sometimes the Jin Kingdom's scouts also raid the Huaxia Army.
The chaotic road stretches for 50 miles. On the battlefield at a point to the south, the front of the small town called Huangming County is littered with corpses. The land is full of potholes. Such siege equipment, and even the remains of the iron guns were mixed in the corpse and stretched forward.
Several siege shields, huge enough to withstand the artillery fire, collapsed all over the battlefield. The appearance of this shield car is like a right-angled triangle that is as high as the city wall. The front is a thick surface that is resistant to shelling, and the slope of the bevel at the rear is enough to climb people. The soldiers who attacked the city pushed it to the side of the city wall. You can climb the city in groups from the slopes to expand the advantage of the formation. Today, these shield vehicles are also falling apart on the battlefield.
In the past month or so, the Jurchens have climbed the city several times relying on various weapons, but it does not make much sense. The stragglers will be set on fire by the Chinese soldiers, and they will only be able to rush up in groups. Encountered by the grenade thrown by the opponent.
Before the Huaxia soldiers on the city wall died, it became a completely unrealistic attempt to fight on the city and then win. Over the past few days, it seems that only bows and arrows, fire thunders, catapults, or iron cannons that are forcibly pushed forward and fired at the city walls can really cause damage to the defenders on the city wall. has an absolute advantage.
For Pulling Speed, who is presiding over the war here, there are even more devastating things happening ahead.
The attack on Huangming County started in early November. During this process, the hot air balloons on both sides were observing the movements of the opposing positions every day. The attack had just begun, and the soldiers in the hot air balloon reported the changes in the opponent's city to Ba Lisu. In that small city, a new city wall was being built dozens of feet behind.
The Huaxia Army organized a large number of engineering personnel to demolish the buildings in the city at an astonishing speed. Some preparations have already been done, but they used the buildings in front of them to disguise them. The foundation, the earthwork and stones that had been removed from other houses were put in, and the gray "mud" was poured into it... In just half a month, the front of Huangming County resisted the onslaught of the Jurchen in turn, and it was convenient to build it later. A new city wall, several feet high, was built.
In the process of building the new city wall, the head of the Huaxia Army named Ning Yi even appeared at the construction site several times, and participated in the construction of some key places.
For pulling out the speed, this is simply a very bad slap in the face.
But this also made the female real name sink down and gave up many fantasies. He exchanged a large amount of life and materials for the life and materials on the city wall. By mid-December, the first city wall of Huangming County had been beaten with holes and crumbling. The team suffered tens of thousands of casualties, and among them, the Jurchen lineage, which he regarded as the main force, also suffered 5,000 casualties.
Adding fuel to the city wall wave after wave, and going forward with artillery bombardment will lead to higher casualties. However, if the manpower advantage is used to continuously and saturated in turns, the exchange ratio will be narrowed. In a month and a half, Tua Lisu organized several rounds of attacks that lasted eight or nine days. He filled the battlefield with splendid Han army skirmishers, reducing the efficiency of the opponent's artillery as much as possible, occasionally feigning and attacking, and there were still a lot of them in the early stage. The Han prisoners were driven out, and the black flag army on the city wall couldn't relax.
In the early days of this battle, the Black Flag Army on the city wall was obviously fighting spirits high, but after arriving, the city head gradually became silent, enduring the onslaught from the speed one after another. Under the premise that the Jurchen paid huge casualties, the number of casualties on the city's head continued to rise. Pulling away from the speed to organize artillery arrays, catapults occasionally set fire to the city's head, and then ordered soldiers to seize the city, but every time It was taken back by the soldiers of the Huaxia Army.
The Yuyuxi battlefield in the north is relatively low-lying. At this time, the attacking position has already turned into a muddy field. Jurchen's attack often has to cross the blood-stained mud to fight against the Huaxia army, but the nearby woods are relatively easy to pass through. , so the defensive front is stretched, and the rhythm of offense and defense is a bit weird.
The defense here is not based on a city wall without flaws, but occupied several high ground at key points, controlled and strangled the main road leading to the rear, and there were three lines of defense in front and back. In fact, there are many paths in the nearby streams and woods, and the vicinity of the position is not completely blocked, but if you ignore it and force a breakthrough, you will be trapped in the narrow mountain road and step on a mine, and then be attacked by the active forces of the Huaxia Army. faster.
Because of this situation, the nearby hilltops are like a huge ecstasy formation. The Huaxia Army often takes the initiative to attack at the right time to create results, and the Jurchen can choose more and more tactics. For more than a month, the two sides came and went, and the Jurchen suffered a few losses, and forcibly pulled out a position on the front line of the Huaxia Army.
The person responsible for guarding the position here is Yu Zhongdao of the Fifth Division of the Huaxia Fifth Army. In a battle in early December, the two sides faced each other in muddy and icy muddy water, and each other's casualties were not small. The fourth division Qu Zhengyan led a team of less than 500 people in half a regiment to carry out a counter-attack across the mountains and ridges, and went straight to the perimeter of the Jurchen barracks on Yuyuxi. The people attacked and was intercepted by Qu Zhengyan looking at the gap, almost beheading the opponent on the spot.
The news of the accident from the rear spread to the front, and the front line of Jurchen was in chaos, with heavy casualties. Qu Zhengyan saw that he could not kill Xu Lili, and immediately ordered the soldiers to charge towards the Yuyuxi position.
His advance was so resolute that he held a head in his hand and shouted: "It's dead in the wrong! Attack them from the front and back!" There were thousands of Jurchens who had withdrawn from the front to save the general, but at first glance this attack With his posture, he really thought he was being attacked from the front and back, he hesitated a little, and was pushed out from the center of the team by Qu Zhengyan.
The stench of blood permeates the winter air, and fighting and hedging continue to spread among the mountains every day.
Going southwest from Yuyuxi and Huangming County, you can see stretcher teams and reinforcement teams running past from time to time on the road between the mountains. Pack horses carry supplies, pull cannonballs, gunpowder, grain and other supplies, and send them to the battlefield every day. In the wounded soldiers' camp built in the mountains, there were screams and shouts from time to time, and the heat and black smoke from the boiling water in the shack lingered over the camp, which looked like a strange mist.
Ning Ji ran out of the tent and poured the bloody water in the wooden basin into the ditch beside the camp. Without any rest, he went back to the hut to pour boiling water into the wooden basin and ran back. The wounded barracks at the rear of the battlefield are not safe in theory. Jurchen is not a soft persimmon. In fact, it is not impossible for the frontline battlefield to suddenly collapse on a certain day, and it is even quite possible. But Xiao Ningji still came here stubbornly.
In a sense, this is also the bottom line he can accept.
Not far from the wounded barracks, there are POW camps that stretch out. In November, most of the prisoners of war are left by civilians who survived the battlefield. By December, the Han army troops that broke into the rainwater creek were gradually surrounded. After the blockage, they surrendered and were sent here.
These people are not trustworthy. The Han army troops who were selected by Zong Han to join this war are either outstanding in combat power or relatively "reliable" in the eyes of Jurchen. They were not driven into the mountains by turns during the Xiao Canghe War. The kind of team in the middle is basically impossible to absorb in a short period of time.
These people don't stay nearby for a few days, and the biggest reason for not being able to move them quickly is also because of road problems. The Huaxia Army staff responsible for guarding them will conduct a quick round of review on them, and the missionary work will also be launched immediately. Hou Wu, who had left the main army earlier to participate in the security work in the rear, was one of the leaders here. At this time, Hou Yuanyong, who was involved in the management of battlefield intelligence, was able to come to see his father several times.
The tortuous road extends to Zizhou, and all the way to the Chengdu Plain in the southwest. In winter, the clouds in the Chengdu Plain are extremely low, and the sky looks like a cover of oppressive lead blue. Every family’s workshops are operating at full strength in the cities and towns. Blast furnaces of all sizes are breathing flames under the hazy sky. People driving ox carts, wheelbarrows, and even carrying burdens are also continuously bringing all kinds of materials. Gathering in the direction of Zizhou and Jiange, this is a situation similar to the transportation of materials outside the Jiange.
This is also the scene of two giant beasts fighting under the winter sky...
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On December 19th, before the new year, the rain continued.
For more than a month, every rainfall will bring about the most tragic fight, because on the Jurchen side, the rain will take away the gap between firearms, and now is the time when they can take advantage of the most.
In the direction of Yingzuiyan where the road is not wide, Mao Yishan exhaled heat in his hands and clenched his fists. In his field of vision, a dark figure was advancing towards this direction.
A decisive battle is about to break out at this moment...