After wiping away the blood stains and drinking two sips of water, Bai Liyan (Wei Xian) rode to the various departments to count the casualties.

In the morning, the casualties of the first battle were quite large, the vanguard battalion of 4,800 people out of the city, there were still 4,000 left, there were nearly 800 people who did not follow, most of them had been killed or captured, this was the pioneer battalion since its formation, the worst loss in a charge, if it were not for the carelessness of last night, maybe these 800 people would still be alive.

But who would have thought that the Black Turban Army would be able to transfer the main forces of Gu Bai and Ikeda to the south, and this blood account would have to be recovered from the Jin Army in the future.

The horses were tired enough to snort incessantly, and the soldiers of the pioneer battalion accompanied them with not only rations, but also a cloth bag and a cloth baggage. In the pocket is pine oil, alcohol, coal tar ceramic tubes, and in the baggage is hemostatic and anti-inflammatory powder, and some salt cubes.

When the horse is extremely strained, it is given salt cubes and water, which can quickly replenish electrolytes and help restore physical strength, and only a moment later, the panting war horse has regained its composure, and began to lower its head and eat the grass on the ground.

At this time, two sentinels came to the west, galloping all the way.

"General Qiyu, more than 20,000 cavalry members of the Black Turban Army will no longer chase after chasing five miles away, but rest on the spot, and release 5,000 cavalry to the north and south to encircle our army." The whistle rider is fast.

Bai Liyan smiled coldly:

"They can be considered cavalry, too! Go, take everyone back, and don't need to probe again. ”

"No!"

The sentry rode away, and Lu Gao asked:

"General Wei, to the east is the 50,000 infantry of the Black Turban Army, and if our army is stopped by enemy cavalry in the west, south, and north at this time, I am afraid that it will be surrounded."

"General Lu, the cavalry of the Black Turban Army is weak, 60,000 cavalry, 50,000 infantry troops have changed to horses, and the city has been killed by us and others and turned over on their backs, this is not daring to wrestle with my elite, so they want to make a situation of encirclement, forcing our army to continue to the east, and drive our army into the encirclement."

"That's the return pistol to the west to kill the Black Turban Army?" Lu Gao guessed.

"There are still 4,000 men and horses left in our army, and it is inevitable to break through to the west and join the main force of the Dadu Governor, and the Black Turban Army must also know it, so behind these 20,000 cavalry infantry, there must be other Black Turban Army and other horses intercepting layer by layer.

Although it is possible to break through the encirclement, the loss is huge. At this moment, under the optional circumstances, we should choose a tactic with the least losses to break through and preserve the strength of our army as much as possible, rather than fighting recklessly. ”

"And how does the general plan to meet the enemy?"

"It depends on the enemy situation of the Black Turban Army, if it is favorable, our army can continue to break through to the east, and then take the west. If it is unfavorable, it will concentrate on breaking through to the south. ”

"Why south?" Lu Gao asked.

"The Black Turban Army has no baggage to accompany here, and there is not much grain and grass, so it has to transport grain from Anxing, Jinnon, and Mogao to the south, and the enemy cavalry must strengthen the defense of the northern front, and if our army attacks to the north, it will rush to its grain route, not only can not get rid of the Black Turban Army, but force it to pursue frantically.

The next target of our army is its northern grain route, and if we advance northward, our army's intentions will inevitably be exposed. Eighty miles south of the Changchao River, the Black Turban Army's defense is weak, even if the troops are transferred, most of them will think that our army will not be able to cross the river, once it is surrounded, it will fall into a dead place, so it is unlikely that our army will choose to break through to the south.

Therefore, the Black Turban Army judged that our army must continue to attack to the east, or to the west and north, and it is less likely to attack to the south. However, our horses have strong endurance and speed, and their physical strength recovers very quickly after eating salt cubes, and if we attack south, the enemy will definitely not be able to catch up. ”

The scale of victory is often changed by inadvertent and unexpected actions, and the technology and knowledge contained in it are often not well understood by the world.

If the vanguard battalion assaults southward, it will inevitably be caught up by the cavalry of the Black Turban Army, surrounded by the Changchao River on three sides, and finally gathered and annihilated.

But how could he have expected that the soldiers of Baili Yan each carried salt cubes, and when the horses were tired, they quickly replenished salt to produce electrolytes, and the recovery speed in a short time was several times that of the horses of the Black Turban Army, and the goddess of victory extended an olive branch to the vanguard camp in the details that she couldn't help but know.

Three minutes passed, and Su Hong fled back to the pioneer camp with his escort

"General, the Black Turban Army is coming in formation, and it is less than fifteen miles away."

"Oh, what's the formation?"

"I don't know, I can't see clearly."

"Can't see clearly? It's that I didn't see it clearly, or maybe the formation was different. ”

"The formation is different from before, it is neither a phalanx nor a formation, and I can't tell which formation it is."

"Hiss......"

Bai Liyan was suspicious in his heart, it is said that Su Hong was personally trained by him, and the common formations should always be known, but he said that if he didn't know, it must be the infantry army posing in other heterogeneous formations.

The core element of the way of formation is to facilitate the field mobilization of the army, through the ever-changing, miraculous formation changes, killing and injuring the enemy is the secondary purpose, and even a little careless, the frequent change of the formation is easy to mess up the formation, which is a taboo for soldiers.

The actual combat significance of the formations that are often dazzling and varied is not as powerful as it seems.

The phalanx is the most basic formation, and it is also a kind of fish scale formation in disguise, all arms are well-trained, reasonably deployed, and can quickly form other formations in a short time.

The marching battle formation is mostly advanced collectively in the formations of the front arrow, the crescent moon, the goose shape, and the square circle, the front arrow speed is the fastest, but the flank is weak, and the two formations of the crescent moon and the goose shape are more than enough to defend and the attack is insufficient, and the speed is medium. The speed of the Fangyuan array is extremely slow, the defense is extremely high, and the attack power of the pursuit is almost zero, so most of the cavalry in the Fangyuan array is mobile, responsible for chasing and destroying, and responding to emergencies.

Knowing that the Xian Army is 30,000 cavalry, it is impossible for the Black Turban Army to advance with the Long Snake Formation, and most of the other formations are not conducive to the overall defense, Bailiyan really can't think of what formation the Black Turban Army can pose.

After a moment of silence, he said:

"General Lu Gao, I ordered the battalions to advance slowly to the east, I want to see what the Black Turban Army is playing."

"No!"

The Black Turban Army pressed 500,000 people on the Yongxing River, and if the Xian Army wanted to recover the capital and Xijun, the main field battle was the last military measure chosen by both sides as a last resort

However, relying on the long-term confrontation and the tactics of adding troops in batches, the Black Turban Army cannot afford it, and the Xian Army cannot afford it, and when the strategy and tactics cannot completely reverse the stalemate of the battle, the confrontation will become the most direct means of decisive battle.

This time the strange formation is not ruled out as the first battle training of the Black Turban Army, and it is very necessary to explore the inner reality so as not to fall into the magic path of the Black Turban Army.

After the men and horses were assembled, the pioneer battalion set up a zigzag array and advanced eastward at the speed of walking horses, and the black turban cavalry behind them saw that the vanguard battalion was heading east, so they followed behind, always maintaining a buffer zone of four to five miles.

Out of the seven miles, to a mountain bag, Baili Yan rode a horse to look far to the east, the black clouds in front of the sky are raging, the black turban infantry army is huge, the army is in order, and it is less than four miles away from the pioneer camp.

Bai Liyan frowned, vaguely recognizing the mystery of the Black Turban Army:

"I see, there is a mystery in it!"

"The general knows this?" Lu Gao said.

"Well, it's still a long way off, but look at the large wooden pole that rises above your head, it's two feet long, to say the least. If our army had stolen the camp last night, it would have been attacked by a two-zhang spear array like the Black Turban Army. ”

It's no wonder that Su Hong didn't recognize what kind of formation the Black Turban Army was compiling, and there was indeed no country equipped with spears or spears up to two zhang long at the moment.

The most famous spear formation in the history of the earth is the Macedonian spear formation, a spear of four to five meters long, every 4,000 people are a standard phalanx, the long spear formation is at the forefront of all military formations, unfolded in a linear tactical posture, and the impact is launched from the front, so as to use the super long advantage of the spear to stab the opponent to death before the enemy's long and short weapons stab their own side, so as to open the gap, and it is invincible to deal with the frontal impact cavalry.

However, this kind of extra-long spear formation, after launching an attack, was in motion, and the flanks and rear flanks were extremely weak, and the cavalry flanks collapsed with a single blow.

The front can also be a short knife, using the tactics of rolling on the ground with a shield, using the characteristics of the spear being too long and the front and rear combat positions being sluggish, rolling into the formation to kill and injure the spearmen, so the Macedonian spear formation is not terrible, what is terrible is the length of the spear, which can attack a few meters before the opponent.

The length of the spear of the Black Turban Army is two zhang, the density is extremely high, the density of each array is as high as 10,000 people, and there is almost only half an arm's distance between people.

When the spear formation of the Black Turban Army moves, it is flanked by short sword guards and several pikemen as cover. The spearman also has a wooden shield on his back, and there is a notch on the right side of the wooden shield, which allows the long hair to be placed on the gap to block the body from arrows.

These battle formations are shrunk like a hedgehog curled up, and there is a long-range crossbow behind it as cover, and even if the attacking side uses a crossbowman, it may not be able to break the formation with a long-range weapon. If the infantry and cavalry charge into battle, no matter what direction the enemy attacks, they may be stabbed to death by the super-dense long burrs.

As far as the eye could see, two formations of 20,000 spearmen were followed by crossbow formations, based on the position of the crossbow formation, Bailiyan suspected that the Black Turban Army was most likely equipped with Zhiguo's Chaotian crossbow.

This is a large, two-player crossbow that has a range that can keep out almost all current individual crossbows, meaning that you can strike an enemy outside of range of your long-range individual weapon.

When this kind of sky-facing crossbow is fired, one person lies down, one person sits, the legs of the lying person are on the shoulders of the person who sits, and the sky-facing crossbow is placed between the two legs, and the sky-facing crossbow is fired, and the angle of the sky-facing crossbow is controlled by adjusting the distance between the two positions, so as to achieve the purpose of regulating the angle of shooting and the range.

The farthest range can reach 200 paces away, almost the same as the bed crossbow and the car crossbow, far beyond the range of the ordinary strong crossbow. The reason for this is that the parabolic principle is used to fire a cluster of arrows at an angle of less than 43 degrees, which can make the difference between 200 and 100 steps a dead land, making it difficult for the opponent's long-range weapons to return fire.

There are also 3,000 archers on each side of the crossbow array, who can move to the front of the array or other directions through the transportation channels between the arrays. On both sides of the large array and behind the array, there are also spears and short swords to protect the formation. In this way, an undefeated formation that can be attacked and defended can be attacked, even if this formation is defeated from the flank, the super-dense two-zhang spear formation of two thousand people will be extremely difficult to deal with.

In fact, there is nothing new in this formation, it is no different from the traditional phalanx, the difference is that this formation is extremely dense, both offensive and defensive, and when taking the defensive position, it is extremely difficult for attackers to break through from any direction.

Bailiyan believed that if it was a large array of 100,000 people, with at least five or more spear formations, surrounding all directions as a formation, suppressing the entire military formation, and with tens of thousands of crossbowmen, this formation would be extremely difficult to break.