Despite Yuan Zongdi's best efforts to gather his troops, the Ming army was still quite slow to assemble, and the troops rushed 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 feelings 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 when they advanced further, they finally encountered resistance from the Ming army, and the troops assembled in advance under the command of Yuan Zongdi no longer retreated, but held their ground 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 took gathering the troops as his first priority, signaling and sounding arrows into the sky one after another, marking his position to the soldiers scattered around. And Hu Wenke, who was far away, after running out in a hurry, found that Yuan Zongdi had taken his silver and did not continue the pursuit, 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 has become bizarre, as Yuan Zongdi's signals become more and more, although Daniel Zhang and Hu Wenke's respective troops do not have a tradition of using unified signals, but after the two have been together for a while, he began to realize that the signals that are being sent out in large numbers look 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 only harassing the troops, then they should be on the run at this time, and there would not be so many signals being sent.

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 general he sent to outflank, and it was not used to command the troops but to communicate with himself.

"Met with resistance?" The signal 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 he sent the herald back to report to Daniel Zhang, and began to send a signal, that is, to briefly report to the rear as quickly as possible, but also to identify himself - until now, the outflanked Qing generals were still looking in vain for the location of nearby friendly forces until Hu Wenke had been repulsed.

"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, 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 army general who was sent to outflank sent an urgent signal for help, and at this time he had found that the situation around him was becoming more and more dangerous, and new Ming troops were constantly arriving in front of him to join the resisting army; Moreover, at this time, the generals of the Qing army also judged that in addition to Yuan Zongdi's identity, he suddenly saw 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 want to be Hu Wenke's; The final blow to the Qing general was when he noticed that the signal from miles away looked like it was from Hu Wenke, 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 was not as confused as he was in such a situation where the enemy situation was unknown. Fortunately, the Qing generals did not rush to attack just now, but observed the shape while keeping 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 he might further lose contact with his subordinates who were rushing back here. Therefore, Yuan Zongdi suppressed the ** of the pursuit, let the panting subordinates around him seize the time to rest, and at the same time sent several groups of scouts and heralds in a row to contact the 800 armor soldiers of the front army - this team did not participate in the battle, and the body and order were well maintained.

"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 when the time comes, 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 he 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 can't defeat the other party, he will definitely not be defeated by the other party, and once the reinforcements of the Ming army arrive, then Daniel Zhang is the turtle in the urn. Because Yuan Zongdi believed that as long as he did not make a mistake in this battle and was 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 wipe out these tartars, so that my forces 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 gave up the pursuit, allowing the outflanked Qing army to return to Daniel Zhang's surroundings along the way, and after repeatedly asking the Ming generals about the banners, the surprise in Daniel Zhang's heart can hardly be described in words: "It seems that it is really a thief Yuan, he can quickly defeat Hu Wenke, there must be 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 what he really thought: "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 out until Deng Ming came to reinforce him, forcing us to retreat." ”

Li Guoying's plan is to make a time difference, now Deng Ming has not established a post station system on the south bank, so the transmission of information can only rely on river boats to return to Xuzhou, and there may be a post station system around Xuzhou and between it and Chengdu, but when Xuzhou gets the information, it takes a few days to confirm that it is being sent back to Chengdu, and most of the month has passed. Deng Ming further confirmed the reliability of the information, urgently mobilized, and sent troops down the river, which would definitely be a long time later. Moreover, Li Guoying has been carefully hiding his strength, for the sake of the suddenness of the sneak attack, even Zhongxian did not know the size of the Qing army's troops, when Deng Ming hurried with the naval division, if the naval division did not have time to return to Chongqing, there might be a greater danger, but Deng Ming probably would not bring too many land forces, even if the Qing army did not take Wanxian, most of the Ming army would be helpless to take the Qing army that was strong and retreated by land -- when Deng Ming notified Chengdu of the second mobilization, the Qing army would have returned safely before more Ming troops arrived.

Daniel Zhang concluded that Yuan Zongdi didn't know anything about this, so he thought that as long as he delayed the Qing army for a few days, he could force the Qing army to have 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 stubbornly defended Wanxian, maybe he would have a better chance, and now he even wants to keep his army, it's really self-inflicted." ”

After figuring out this qiē, 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.

When Daniel Zhang began to act, Yuan Zongdi's front army was also ordered to 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 the 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 river was equivalent to helping him inform Wang Mingde of them: "Even the herald soldiers are saved, or they are really 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, and he knew that as long as the reinforcements arrived at Yuan Zongdi, they would be attacked from both sides: "As long as we don't break through than Yuan Thief, 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, and concentrated on keeping the communication between the various divisions open, ensuring that there were no flaws or breaks on the front. 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.