The enemy general was called Zhang Zhongxiong, and he was Zhang Shuye's second son. Unfortunately, Zhang Shuye was loyal and unyielding, and committed suicide during the Jingkang disaster. However, his son Zhang Zhongxiong eventually surrendered to the puppet Qi, tarnishing his father's reputation.
Zhang Zhongxiong is about forty years old. He wields a golden-backed sword weighing forty kilograms. He has a strong back and a strong waist. He has great martial arts skills and infinite strength.
However, his eldest son Zhang Mingzhong studied literature and is currently an official in the puppet Qi court. Zhang Mingzhong has been engaged to Lu Yihao's granddaughter Lu Xiu since he was a child. The two families are well matched. If there was no national crisis, the two would have been married.
However, the war changed the fate of both of them. Zhang Mingzhong became a court official of Qi State. In any case, it was impossible to marry the granddaughter of the prime minister of the Song Dynasty as his wife. Their engagement was effectively over.
Zhang Zhongxiong didn't know that his future daughter-in-law had been promised to Chen Qing by Lu Yihao.
However, Lu Yihao didn't know that Zhang Zhongxiong had surrendered to the puppet Qi State, and had become a high-ranking official in the army, serving as Yuhou, the capital of Qi State's West Route Army.
Of course, Chen Qing didn't even know the relationship between Zhang Zhongxiong and the Lu family. He didn't even know the name of the army commander in front of him.
At this time, Chen Qing was concerned about the opponent's equipment, training and morale. Historically, the Qi army's combat effectiveness was not low. Almost all of them were surrendered Northern Song Dynasty imperial guards.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, they could not withstand a single blow from the Liao and Jin armies, but after they surrendered, their combat effectiveness increased and they became very good at fighting, and they repeatedly defeated the Song army.
There are many reasons for this. One important reason is that Liu Yu came from a rough background and attached great importance to the army. He did not have the Song Dynasty that valued literature over military affairs. Generals and soldiers were paid very well and had a high social status, and the soldiers were willing to work hard.
But for the Song Dynasty and the Song Army, there was no difference between the Puppet Qi Army and the Jin Bing. The Puppet Qi Army was the lackey of the Jin Bing.
The Qi army's five thousand infantrymen quickly ran across the bitingly cold Wei River. Fortunately, the Wei River was not wide. If it had been the frozen Yellow River, they would have been half frozen to death if they ran across it like this.
Zhang Zhongxiong galloped up to the high ground and looked at the woods a hundred steps ahead. He became suspicious. If five hundred cavalry were ambushing in the woods, wouldn't they be ambushing him?
Zhang Zhongxiong is not Fu Moshan. He followed his father in the north and south, and has rich combat experience. The Song Jiang army in Liangshanbo was defeated by him. Although the number of 500 cavalry is not large, if the strategy is right, he will still hit himself hard.
He pointed his sword and said, "Wang Ling, take fifty brothers to explore the woods ahead, especially near the official road."
"Follow the order!"
The general at the front agreed and waved his hand, "Follow me!"
He urged his horse and led fifty soldiers to run toward the woods beside the official road. But just as he approached the woods, a sudden burst of arrows were shot out from the woods. The enemy generals and soldiers were unable to dodge. They were hit by arrows one after another and fell down screaming.
Zhang Zhongxiong was so frightened that he shouted anxiously: "There is an ambush, form a formation!"
When Chen Qing saw that the enemy had discovered the ambush, he immediately changed his strategy, from ambushing the enemy to attacking halfway across the river. He raised his halberd high and shouted sternly: "Attack!"
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The drums were beating loudly in the woods, and countless cavalrymen rushed out of the woods, shouting to kill, and came towards the Qi army like a tide.
Zhang Zhongxiong looked as if he had fallen into a cold cave. Instead of five hundred cavalry, this was clearly a powerful cavalry force of thousands of people. They had fallen into a trap.
"Hold it! Hold it!"
The two armies are too close to each other, less than a hundred paces apart. Unless they are prepared in advance, the crossbowmen are useless. The opponent is cavalry. They can kill them in the blink of an eye. It is already very good to be able to set up a spear array.
But in fact, Zhang Zhongxiong didn't even have time to arrange the spear formation. He still had more than 2,000 troops who had not yet landed ashore, so the soldiers on the shore could only respond randomly.
Two thousand five hundred cavalry rushed into the Qi army like a violent wave. The cavalry was not chaotic at all. They were organized into a team of a hundred people, led by a captain. They launched a fierce attack on the Qi army from a high position. The Qi army was in chaos.
They couldn't resist at all, and they were forced to retreat steadily. There was no open space on the bank, and the soldiers behind them could not get on the bank. Many soldiers began to retreat to the other side of the Wei River.
Chen Qing could clearly see that the other side's soldiers on the ice could no longer stand the cold. As long as they retreated, they basically had no will to resist.
He immediately ordered: "Liu Cui's and Yang Zaixing's troops attack the enemy's rear!"
Liu Cui and Yang Zaixing each led five hundred cavalry, like two sharp spears, around the ice of the Wei River from the left and right, and killed the two thousand Qi troops on the ice.
The two thousand Qi troops could no longer stand the cold and had already begun to retreat to the other side of the Wei River. The Song cavalry attacked and their retreat quickly turned into a rout, and they scrambled to flee to the south bank.
The cavalry was extremely fast and caught up with the enemy in just a moment. They began to slaughter the fleeing soldiers without mercy. The spears pierced the back of the neck, the swords chopped off the heads, blood and flesh flew everywhere, and there were cries, pleas, and screams.
The sound echoed on the ice.
The ice was strewn with corpses and rivers of blood, but it soon became frozen.
The collapse of the army at the rear seriously affected the battle situation on the shore. Although the Qi army resisted desperately, their morale and morale were affected, and they would soon be unable to support themselves.
Chen Qing finally found the enemy general and locked onto him. He drew an arrow with a name on it, opened his bow and nocked an arrow, galloped on his horse, and shot an arrow while running.
This arrow was as fast as lightning and went straight to the opponent's neck. Zhang Zhongxiong was extremely lucky. He raised his arms at that moment and shouted, "Don't flee, evacuate in an orderly manner!"
His right arm happened to block his neck at the critical moment, and 'poof!' The arrow hit Zhang Zhongxiong's raised right arm, and the powerful arrow penetrated his arm.
Zhang Zhongxiong shouted, and the sword almost fell to the ground, but his left hand pressed it on the saddle in time. The arrow also made him break out in a cold sweat. Of course, he knew that he had luckily escaped the fatal arrow.
Zhang Zhongxiong did not dare to stay any longer, so he turned his horse's head and fled. The horse rushed down the high slope, onto the ice, and ran towards the southeast. The Song army blocked the retreat, and they could only escape eastward along the ice.
The general's escape was the last straw that broke the camel's back. The Qi army on the shore was defeated. The soldiers abandoned their helmets and armor, threw away their weapons, rushed onto the ice desperately, and ran eastward.
"Kill me! I won't accept surrender."
Chen Qing issued a killing order, and all the cavalry rushed onto the ice to chase the Qi army from behind. The soldiers could not outrun the horses. They were killed so much that they cried for their fathers and kowtowed for mercy, but it had no effect at all. They were still ruthlessly beaten by Song.
Killed by military cavalry.
When Chen Qing entered Guanzhong, he wanted to use brutal killings to gain authority over the Qi army and give the Qi army a taste of his own power.
This battle was extremely brutal. Only more than 100 of the 5,000 Qi soldiers escaped with Zhang Zhongxiong. The remaining 4,800 people were all killed, and all their heads were cut off by the Song army.
The Song Army suffered less than 200 casualties in this battle, of which only more than 70 were killed, creating the battle with the smallest casualty ratio since the Qinzhou Army was established.
...........
Zhang Zhongxiong led more than a hundred remnant troops to run wildly and fled to Jingzhao City in just one hour.
Tang Shaoqing led 5,000 troops just out of the city, preparing to meet the 5,000 former troops. Unexpectedly, he saw Zhang Zhongxiong on the official road ahead with disheveled hair and arrow wounds. He fled back in a panic. The soldiers behind him were also in shock and almost collapsed from exhaustion.
.
Tang Shaoqing was shocked and hurriedly approached him and asked, "What's going on?"
Zhang Zhongxiong said angrily: "Tang Dutong, we have been fooled. The opponent has more than 500 cavalry, at least 3,000, and they are not ordinary strong and brave."
Tang Shaoqing was stunned for a moment, and after a while he stammered and asked: "Where are the other... other brothers?"
"We were attacked halfway by the Song army. The whole army was defeated and completely destroyed. Only more than a hundred people followed me to escape. The other brothers... have been completely wiped out."
When Tang Shaoqing's vision went dark, it was as if he had been struck by a bolt from the blue, and his entire army was wiped out. How could he explain to the King of Qin?
It took him a while to come back to his senses and asked in horror: "Where is the Song army? It can't be Qu Duan's army. They don't have so many cavalry."
"It's not Qu Duan's army. You can tell by looking at the arrow on my arm. It seems to be an arrow with a name on it."
Zhang Zhongxiong ran for his life all the way without having time to care about his arrow wound. Only now did he recover.
Tang Shaoqing quickly stepped forward to take a closer look. There were two words on the arrow shaft, "Commander..." The name behind it was in the flesh and could not be seen.
He hurriedly ordered the soldiers to carefully cut off the arrow and pull out the front end of the arrow. Only two bloody words were seen on the front end of the arrow.
Zhang Zhongxiong didn't care about stopping the bleeding, and he and Tang Shaoqing stepped forward to take a closer look. They finally saw clearly the name engraved bloody on the arrow shaft: 'Chen Qing'.
The two raised their heads and looked at each other, taking in a breath of cold air at the same time.
