(The second more, two more 8,000 words, and want to have a third shift today, please vote hard!) ）

When the Huaidong Army put the bed crossbow, scorpion crossbow and other weapons into the defensive formation, the reinforcements who entered the iron pile wharf with Azig Beidu completely suppressed the low-lying river beach, and attacked several times, all under the blockade of bed crossbows and scorpion crossbows, and the heavy casualties were repulsed, and they could not shake the Huaidong army's position on the periphery of the iron pile wharf.

The night is getting deeper, seeing the starry sky has passed midnight, and the fighting and killing people in Fancheng are gradually disappearing, indicating that Fancheng has almost called the Huaidong army to go, and the west base has also been lost, so more than a dozen people broke through the siege and fled to the river beach, breaking away from the pursuit of the Huaidong army.

The scarlet battle flag of the Huaidong Army has been erected at the head of Fancheng City, Azig is anxious, according to the scout who pierced into Fancheng before returning to report, the 5,000 soldiers and horses who attacked Fancheng are the elite of the two brigades under the jurisdiction of the Chongcheng Army in Huaidong......

For the time being, the intention of this Huaidong army is obvious, that is, to control Fancheng and the Qiaodu area in the south of the city, and cut off the grain route from Fancheng to the south - the tens of thousands of stone grain accumulated in Fancheng were destroyed in a small matter, after all, Fancheng was only a relay storage station for the grain route. Fortunately, thanks to Fan Lan's sectional grain transportation method, the grain in the northern section of Hanshui was actually stored in Ruyang, Fangcheng, Nanyang, Xinye and other cities. If hundreds of thousands of stones of grain were stored in Fancheng for the Huaidong army to sneak attack, even if Fancheng was recaptured afterwards, it would be difficult to recover the defeat of the entire Jingxiang war.

However, if Fancheng is lost, the grain route is cut off, and Fancheng cannot be recaptured as soon as possible, the supply of military horses in Jingzhou and eastern Hubei will be unsustainable, and it will be a bad thing......

At this time, Azig was still the army and horse that had attacked Fancheng before, and he had come to cut off the grain route to relieve the siege of Jingzhou.

Although Azig led the Xiangfan defenders to still occupy the iron pile wharf and the pontoon bridge on the north bank of Feiyu Cape, they could not fight out, and the battle formation would encounter a fierce counterattack by the Huaidong army, and the heavy casualties were beaten back - the hard servant men who had enslaved and transported grain were willing to drive the Huaidong army at this time and dig a long trench on the outside of the east base - these made Azig feel restless and restless.

Shen Haobo, the prefect of Xiangyang, and Tong Ruilin, the deputy general, crossed the river at this time to join Azig, and Shen Haobo followed him to cross the river, not that he was bold, but that Azig died in battle on the north bank, and Shen Haobo knew that even if he held Xiangyang, he would not have a good life in Beiyan in the future.

Shen Haobo once served as the deputy envoy of the Qingzhou system envoy Si Zhidu, and he was very trusted by Gu Wuchen, but he failed to keep his integrity after the Qingzhou War, and chose to surrender to Yan in Yangxin in order to survive, and then spared no effort to clear the remnants of the Qingzhou Army in eastern Shandong for the Northern Yan and won the trust of the Northern Yan, but it was also hated by Huaidong and listed as a must-kill target.

Shen Haobo looked at the bed crossbows, scorpion crossbows and other weapons in the Huaidong Army's defensive formation, and his heart snorted: This Huaidong Army has sneaked to attack Jingxiang Grain Road, and it is ready to be sufficient!

Adjutant General Tong Ruilin said: "If you don't want to affect the war on the southern front, the outskirts of Xiangfan can transfer troops to recapture Fancheng, one is Shicheng, the second is Jingmen, and the third is Nanyang, but just drawing troops from one of these three places is not enough to recapture Fancheng, we should give up the entanglement of the iron pile wharf, go east to Baihekou and land, gain a firm foothold in the southeast of Fancheng, and wait for the reinforcements from Shicheng, Nanyang and Jingzhou to arrive, and then advance together to Fancheng City......

"What General Tong said is very true," Shen Haobo also persuaded Azig, who looked like a red-eyed killer, "You should also immediately send someone to ask Chen Zhihu, the king of Ruzhou, for if the king of Ruzhou can come with reinforcements, it will be more certain to recapture Fancheng......"

In addition to Xiangyang, the closest to Fancheng are the soldiers and horses stationed in Nanyang. But on the Nanyang side, the main force of Tu'an's department had to defend Miyang and prevent Huaixi soldiers and horses from passing through Tongbai Mountain to attack Nanyang Basin City.

The troops of Nanyang, Xinye, Xichuan, Zaoyang and Wuguan in the west within one hundred and fifty miles from Fancheng are very limited, except for the core city of Xiangyang, the total number of garrisons in other cities is only six or seven thousand.

After Yeji Luorong led his troops south, these places were regarded as absolutely safe hinterlands, and they were not key cities, so how could they put too many troops to garrison?

Within 250 miles from Fancheng, the cities with large-scale garrisons mainly include Wuyang (Chen Zhihu's general Leng Zilin led 10,000 elite troops to garrison), Shicheng (Su Tingzhan led more than 15,000 cavalry to garrison), Jingmen (Yeji Luorong had 10,000 cavalry there to protect Jingzhou's rear road) and Suizhou.

Suizhou's reinforcements were already very unreliable, and if they wanted to get enough reinforcements to recapture Fancheng in two days, they could only count on the garrisons of Wuyang, Shicheng, and Jingzhou to come back.

It is impossible for these three city defenders to send all the reinforcements in their hands to help Fancheng, and it is very likely that half or even one-third of the soldiers and horses will be sent back to help Fancheng, so any reinforcement along the way cannot recapture Fancheng alone-

The most rational thing is that, as Tong Ruilin said, Azig chose an open place outside Fancheng to stand his position, and after converging the three reinforcements, he would enter Fancheng to recapture Fancheng, instead of blindly attacking Fancheng and giving the Huaidong army occupying Fancheng a chance to attack and break through......

Although Azig was unwilling, he could still maintain his sanity: although he still had five or six thousand elites in Xiangyang, he fought for a long time, and he was suppressed in the bridgehead and iron pile wharf, and as time went by, the Huaidong Army's control over Fancheng and Qiaodu District will become more and more tight, especially a large number of weapons to supplement the defense line and Fancheng's hard labor are used by the Huaidong Army, and he only relies on Xiangyang's five or six thousand soldiers to recapture Fancheng, which is undoubtedly delusional......

Tong Ruilin was born in Tong Jia's family, changed his Han surname to Tong, and was a general of Beiyan, Azig had to admit that what he offered was indeed a serious strategy, and he was more stable than himself in the key head.

Neither the iron pile pier nor the pontoon bridgehead could be used to gather reinforcements.

The iron pile wharf and the flying feather cape, the terrain is too narrow, no matter how many troops they have, they will not be able to spread out, and they will only make the Huaidong army, which has a large number of heavy crossbow weapons in the defensive array, take advantage.

Beiyan does not pay attention to engineering and warfare, although many princes and ministers who fought on horseback and fought unremittingly about these, but the Emperor of the Mandate of Heaven attached importance to smelting and forging and other craftsmanship as early as when he ruled Liaodong.

When the swallow thistle was obtained, the Emperor of the Mandate of Heaven even sent the elite of the royal tent to protect the Zunhua Iron Works to ensure that it would not be destroyed in the chaos; He sent an important minister equivalent to the head of the household department to manage the Zunhua Iron Works, so that the annual output of iron and stone increased to four million catties in two years.

After occupying Yanjing, the Emperor of the Mandate of Heaven first included tens of thousands of craftsmen in Yanjing City into the military household to protect them, and also made and used bed crossbows, stone-throwing crossbows and other weapons on a large scale in the army, and even made craftsmen imitate Huaidong's warships, scorpion crossbows and heavy catapults fired with heavy objects at the tail end of the cannon......

It's a pity that Huaidong's heavy crossbow weapons benefit from their overall manufacturing level, and they cannot be simply imitated by others.

The counterweight catapult is simple to say, lifting a weight weighing more than thousands of catties or even tens of thousands of catties at the tail end of the pole, but it falls suddenly, and uses the principle of lever to knock out the big stone projectile that weighs more than 100 catties at the tip, and the other is not much different from the ordinary catapult - the key is the creation of the tail weight.

The Huaidong Army directly made a large iron ball, a hemispherical iron ball weighing four or five thousand catties, which was merged into two on the battlefield, weighing more than 8,000 catties to about 12,000, and formed a heavy catapult tail weight.

Not to mention that iron and copper are at the same price in the world, the value of 8,000 catties of iron is amazing, and a siege battle is lined up with 50 heavy catapults, and only the tail weight will use up 450,000 catties of iron, which force can easily play?

In addition, how to easily and quickly transport each hemispherical iron ball weighing more than four or five thousand catties into the battlefield is also a distressing problem......

All these factors add up, so that even if others can imitate Huaidong's heavy catapult, there is no way to use it on a large scale!

The Northern Yan army is equipped with some bed crossbows, but everything must be prioritized to ensure the soldiers and horses attacking Jingzhou, Xiangyang as the rear, as the hub of the grain route, how can the defenders have how many heavy crossbow weapons?

I didn't even have a bed crossbow at hand, and I suppressed it in a narrow area that was not easy to deploy, and what could I do to fight with the Huaidong army, who was as heroic as it was but placed more than a dozen heavy crossbows in the defensive array? If it is fought down again, it will only make the Huaidong Army wear out the elite of the Xiangyang defenders in vain.

Azig thought through this, that is, he returned to the warship with Tong Ruilin and Shen Haobo. Azig did not give up the bridgehead and the iron pile wharf, but reduced the troops, to avoid the excessive concentration of troops and the Huaidong army's weapons to kill a large area, to ensure that the bridgehead and the iron pile wharf are not the mainstay, and no longer delusional about the two narrow areas to open up, but take advantage of the naval army to control the Han River, to find an open landing point in the downstream direction, and plan to stand on the periphery of Fancheng first and wait for the convergence of reinforcements from all walks of life before attacking Fancheng.

Azige, Shen Haobo, and Tong Ruilin did not expect that the soldiers and horses lurking in the hinterland of Jingxiang in Huaidong were far inferior to those in front of them, let alone the establishment of a new river crossing channel in the west of Xiangyang as soon as possible, connecting with Baiyang Pass and Danjiangkou on the north bank, but they were bent on recapturing Fancheng.

The enemy will slow down the offensive, which is exactly what Huang Zuyu and Zhou Bin wanted, seize the time to pull the wagons loaded with various materials into the city, seize the time to build the east and west defense bases in the Qiaodu area, dig long trenches on the outside of the defense base to strengthen the defense, and select some reliable young men to directly distribute armor and integrate them into the army to make up for the lack of troops defending Yufan City.

Even if the reinforcements led by Sun Zhuang were blocked in the middle of the road and could not come in time, Huang Zuyu and Zhou Bin were determined to lead 5,000 generals and 5,000 people to defend the moment when the main force of the Huaidong Army hit the city of Fancheng......

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On the 18th, Huang Zuyu and Zhou Bin led 5,000 elites to attack Fancheng under the guise of Chaishan and soldiers and horses.

Xiangyang's defender Azig counterattacked Fancheng unfavorably, and led the Shuibu army to retreat to the mouth of the Baihe River, thirty miles east of Fancheng, to land and dig a long trench, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. At the same time, Xiangyang Xinqi took advantage of the night to gallop out to report and pay respect: south to Jingmen, north to Nanyang, west to Wuguan, east to Zaoyang, Suizhou gallop, to spread the news of the attack on Fancheng to all parts of Jingxiang in the shortest possible time.

Considering that the soldiers and horses who attacked Fancheng came from the east, scouts and horses might be left in the area east of Fancheng for a tight blockade, and the letter horses sent by Azig to Zaoyang and Suizhou to report the news were detoured from Zhongyi on the south bank of the Han River.

In the early morning of the 19th, four Xinqi from Xiangyang crossed the Han River by boat from Zhongyibei with eight fast horses, planning to go to Zaoyang and Suizhou after arriving at Heishigou.

The name of the black stone ditch is the ditch, it is really a mountain, the rocks are a beach, the grass and trees do not grow, the four letters rode to the sparse forest in front of the black stone ditch to rest their feet and sharpen, eat some dry food indiscriminately, and plan to rest for a while and continue to hurry.

The scouts and messengers were usually the elite of the Northern Yan army. Not to mention the rest, just running fast in the wilderness without getting lost is what ordinary people can do. They did not know the news that Fancheng had been lost, and they firmly believed that the Huaidong army that attacked Fancheng was only a small force, and as long as all localities cooperated well, it would not be a problem to recapture Fancheng.

At this time, a little wildfire burned on the top of the mountain in Heishigou, and under the illumination of the sun before noon, it was not so obvious, only a faint green smoke rose into the air, and was blown away by the wind, and there was no trace.

On the east bank of the Han River east of Zhongyi, some people lived and farmed, but as the war unfolded, a large number of Ding Zhuang were drawn to the battlefield, and this area was completely barren.

The wildfire on the hill did not arouse the suspicion of the four people, they ate dry food, changed horses to the north, there is a barren post road in the north of Heishigou, Zaoyang in the north and Suizhou in the west, the four planned to go there to separate ways, but unfortunately they rushed to the predetermined location, and killed more than a dozen horsemen from the sparse forest - although the horsemen wore ordinary horse thieves would wear half-hung leather armor, but the four letter riders who went to Zaoyang and Suizhou to warn quickly understood that Fancheng attacked the enemy to block the channel and blocked this side, which showed that the ambition of the enemy soldiers was not only a city in Fancheng.

The blockade of the channel will only slow down the spread of news, but cannot completely prevent the spread of news, especially the incident of the 5,000 soldiers and horses attacking Fancheng, which will inevitably spread throughout Jingxiang through word of mouth. A large number of people were sent to blockade, just so that other places could not get the news in the first time and make the right response.

The four horsemen did not know if there was an obstacle in the road ahead, but their duty was such that they continued to rush forward even if they knew that there was an obstacle in front of them......

For the Huaidong Army, at this time, they did not care at all about the issue of Shicheng, Jingmen or Nanyang enemy troops aiding Fancheng, and the reason why they focused on blocking the channel to Suizhou was to delay Suizhou's vigilance as much as possible, so as to allow the main force of Chaishan soldiers and horses to attack Suizhou by surprise......