Despite Yuan Zongdi's best efforts to gather his troops, the Ming army was still quite slow to assemble. Today, the troops were on the road for half a day, moved several times in the previous battles, and went through high-intensity fighting. The soldiers who participated in the battle were quite tired, and even more tired than ordinary soldiers were Yuan Zongdi's heralds and scouts, and they had been running back and forth throughout the battle to convey orders, but the mood of victory encouraged them, making them rise up and work harder to convey the orders of the Duke of Yasukuni to the whole army.

The outflanking troops sent by Daniel Zhang were commanded by another general, and as they advanced further, they finally encountered resistance from the Ming army. The troops assembled in advance by the Ming army no longer retreated under the command of Yuan Zongdi, but held their positions and began to resist. It's just that the Ming army has no advantage in numbers for the time being, and the state of the soldiers is not very good, so they are not in a hurry to counterattack.

At this time, Yuan Zongdi no longer tried to hide his whereabouts, and everything was to gather the troops as the first priority, and the signals and arrows were vigorously shot into the sky, marking his position to the soldiers scattered around. And Hu Wenke, who was far away, found that Yuan Zongdi had taken his silver and did not continue the pursuit after running out in a hurry, and he also sent all the remaining signals to the sky in one go.

Just now, Daniel Zhang saw many arrows from Hu Wenke and Yuan Zongdi rise into the air, but he couldn't tell for a while whether Hu Wenke was summoning troops to outflank, or gathering troops, or something else, so he guessed that Hu Wenke was commanding the encirclement and suppression, and mistook many of Yuan Zongdi's signals for the Qing army.

But now the war began to become bizarre, as Yuan Zongdi's signals became more and more, although Daniel Zhang and Hu Wenke's respective troops did not have a tradition of using unified signals, but after all, the two had been together for a while, and he began to realize that the signals being sent out in large numbers looked extremely strange and may not belong to the Qing army.

"Strange, strange." Daniel Zhang strangled his horse and looked back at the battlefield behind the side, where a large number of arrows were completely unknown and could not understand the meaning one after another. If the Ming army was just a harassing force, then they should be fleeing at this time, and there would not be so many signals.

Daniel Zhang stopped and observed for a while, and finally saw a familiar signal appear in the sky, which was sent by the Qing army generals he sent to outflank, and it was not used to command the troops, but to communicate with himself.

"Met with resistance?" The signal that Daniel Zhang saw was not an urgent call for help, and the Ming army in front of the Qing generals who had already contacted Yuan Zongdi at this time was not very strong, so while they sent the herald to report back to Daniel Zhang, they began to send signals, that is, to briefly report the situation to the rear as quickly as possible, but also to identify themselves - until now, the outflanked Qing generals still did not know that Hu Wenke had been repulsed, and were still vainly looking for the location of nearby friendly forces.

"The whole army stopped advancing." Seeing that the evolution of the situation was getting more and more different from his initial judgment, Daniel Zhang finally gave the order to prepare for battle, and the armored soldiers took the armor from the hands of the unarmored soldiers, and the scouts no longer continued to reconnoiter and open the way, but began to search around the Qing troops.

When Daniel Zhang began to prepare for the battle with suspicion, the Qing generals who had been sent to outflank sent an urgent signal for help. The Qing generals had found that the situation around them was becoming more and more dangerous, and new Ming troops were constantly arriving in front of them to join the resistance formation; And at this time, the generals of the Qing army also judged the identity of Yuan Zongdi. Suddenly met the commander of Wanxian here, which shocked this Qing army general whose strength was not as good as Hu Wenke; To make matters worse, the Qing army noticed that there were also signs of activity of unidentified troops on the flanks, and the signals they sent did not look like Hu Wenke's; The final blow to the Qing generals was that he noticed that the signal from miles away looked like Hu Wenke's, which meant that there were no more allies of his own nearby.

In a hurry, the Qing army general ordered the whole army to retreat while ordering an emergency, and he did not want to engage a famous enemy like Yuan Zongdi in such a confused situation as the enemy. Fortunately, the Qing generals did not rush to attack just now, but observed the situation while maintaining contact, so as soon as he gave the order, the Qing army immediately began to break away from the battle.

Fortunately for this Qing army, Yuan Zongdi did not launch a pursuit, he only had about half of the armor soldiers around him, the rest of the armor soldiers and a large number of auxiliary soldiers have not yet returned, some soldiers may still be advancing north to search for the remnants of Hu Wenke and want to capture a few more prisoners.

Yuan Zongdi had already sent out most of the signals just now, and if he hastily moved the banner to launch a pursuit, then it might cause the subordinates who were rushing back here to lose contact with him even further. Therefore, Yuan Zongdi suppressed the desire to pursue, let the panting subordinates around him seize the time to rest, and at the same time sent several groups of scouts and heralds in succession to contact the 800 armor soldiers of the front army - this team did not participate in the battle, and maintained good physical strength and order.

"Immediately plunge into the river and cut off Daniel Zhang's retreat."

Yuan Zongdi asked the herald to bring this clear and unmistakable order, even if the road by the Yangtze River is slightly easier, it is very limited, and the biggest advantage may be that the Yangtze River is not easy for the soldiers to get lost.

"My rear army can arrive at any time, and by then there will be more than twice as many soldiers as Daniel Zhang." Yuan Zongdi pondered in his heart, because he knew that his reinforcements might arrive at any time, so Yuan Zongdi was very confident: "Just now Daniel Zhang didn't seize the opportunity to attack me with Hu Wenke, and they lost the only chance to turn defeat into victory." ”

Now Yuan Zongdi thinks that he only needs to face Daniel Zhang as an enemy, and the forces in his hands are not less than the other party, even if he cannot defeat the other party, he will definitely not be easily defeated by the other party, and once the reinforcements of the Ming army arrive, then Daniel Zhang is the turtle in the urn. It was precisely because Yuan Zongdi believed that as long as he did not make mistakes in this battle and was not quickly defeated by Daniel Zhang, he also began to be conservative in his tactical considerations: "The top priority is not to let Daniel Zhang wake up and break through, and defeat these Tatars in one net, my troops can be strengthened by a few percent, and at that time, as long as Sichuan West cooperates a little, I can take Chongqing myself." ”

The Ming army abandoned the pursuit, allowing the outflanked Qing army to return to Daniel Zhang's surroundings without any problems. After repeatedly asking about the banners of the Ming generals, the surprise in Daniel Zhang's heart could hardly be described in words: "It really looks like a thief Yuan!" He can quickly defeat Hu Wenke, he must have at least four or five thousand troops around him, right? Is he singing the empty city plan in Wanxian? ”

After thinking about it carefully, Daniel Zhang thought that he had guessed the truth: "Well, Yuan Zongdi thought that our troops this time were several thousand, and instead of being driven by us to the city of Wanxian to destroy his army, he felt that it would be better to come out and ambush our front army, as long as he dragged us down, maybe he could hold on to Deng Ming to reinforce him, forcing us to retreat." ”

Li Guoying's plan is to make a time difference. At present, Deng Ming did not establish a post station system on the south bank of the Yangtze River, so the transmission of information could only be carried back to Xuzhou by river boat. There may be a post station system between the surroundings of Xuzhou and Chengdu, but when Xuzhou gets the information, it takes a few days to confirm it and then send it back to Chengdu, and most of the months have passed. It will definitely be a long time before Chengdu further confirms the reliability of the intelligence, urgently mobilizes, and sends troops down the river. Moreover, Li Guoying has been careful to hide his strength, for the sake of the suddenness of the sneak attack, even the Qing army on the side of Zhongxian does not know the scale of Chongqing's troops, when Deng Ming hurried with the sailors, if the Qing army's sailors do not have time to return to Chongqing, there may be greater danger, but Deng Ming will probably not bring too many troops, even if the Qing army does not take Wanxian, the Ming army will be helpless to take the Qing army that is strong and retreats by land -- wait for Deng Ming to notify Chengdu of the second mobilization, before more Ming troops arrive, the Qing army will have returned safely to the division.

Daniel Zhang concluded that Yuan Zongdi knew nothing about this, believing that as long as he delayed the Qing army for a few days, he could force the Qing army to return to the division in disgrace: "Yuan thief thought well, but he didn't know that delaying us for a few days was useless. If he defends Wanxian, maybe he has a better chance, and now he still wants to keep his military tun, which is really self-inflicted. ”

After thinking through all this, Daniel Zhang did not have the slightest intention of returning to the division, but ordered the whole army to rotate northward, intending to completely cut off Yuan Zongdi's retreat.

Just as Daniel Zhang began to act, Yuan Zongdi's former army was also ordered to launch an attack, inserting into the river to cut off the retreat of the Qing army.

"Haha, haha." After Daniel Zhang saw the alarm signal on the back road, he laughed heartily: "Yuan thief really has such a big appetite, he originally wanted to wipe out Ben Jiang." ”

More than 1,700 Qing army armor soldiers came sideways, facing the west to spread out a formation, Daniel Zhang was not in a hurry at all, he knew that Wang Mingde's 1,000 armor soldiers and Yuan Jiawenbi's Han Eight Banners were behind him, and Yuan Zongdi's move of sending troops to the riverside was equivalent to helping him inform Wang Mingde of them: "Let me even save the heralds, or really be considerate of the general." ”

Since Yuan Zongdi helped himself inform the friendly forces, Daniel Zhang no longer tried to send people to urgently inform Wang Mingde of the urgent march: "Don't rush to attack!" Like Yuan Zongdi, Daniel Zhang was full of confidence in victory, knowing that as soon as reinforcements arrived, Yuan Zongdi would be attacked from both sides: "As long as we don't let Yuan thieves break through, we will win a big victory." ”

The Ming and Qing armies slowly approached each other, but the battle did not break out for a long time, and both sides carefully controlled the army, preoccupied with keeping the communication between the various divisions open, ensuring that there were no gaps or breaks in the battle line. At this moment, both Yuan Zongdi and Daniel Zhang were very satisfied that the other party did not immediately launch a fierce offensive, they both believed that time was in their favor, and the enemy was stepping into the dead ground step by step.