Wu Jie led an army of 10,000 people and arrived at Raofeng Pass that night. The gatekeeper gave him a letter. Wu Jie was stunned after reading the letter.
"Wu Dutong, what happened?" Li Yuan walked over and asked.
Wu Jie Yang held up the letter in his hand and said with a wry smile: "I thought Chen Qing was chasing the Jin soldiers, but he gave me this task back and asked me to continue chasing and cut off the enemy's rear army!"
"What about him? Where did he go?" Li Yuan asked confused.
Wu Jie pointed to the north, "A hundred miles away from here is Ziwu Valley. He led his army to kill Jingzhao!"
"ah!"
Li Yuan was stunned. He was really confused. Jingzhao was the heart of Shaanxi Road. What would be the consequences of Chen Qing killing him like this?
"I'm a little confused. Since Ziwu Valley can be walked, why didn't the Jin soldiers go south via Ziwu Road?"
"The Ziwu Road is difficult and tortuous, and many of the easy-to-walk plank roads have been destroyed by us. Moreover, there is Ziwu Pass where 300 Song troops were stationed. The terrain is very dangerous and the Jin soldiers cannot carry their luggage, so they can only
Bring dry food and go south. If they capture Ziwu Pass, it will be easy. If they cannot, they will have to kill their horses if they want to go back."
"I see, but why does Chen Qing go to Jingzhao?"
Wu Jie sighed and said: "Chen Qing has always been very courageous and did not take the ordinary path. He believed that when the Jin soldiers attacked Hanzhong and the puppet Qi army gathered troops and dispersed, Jingzhao would be empty. Once he occupied Jingzhao, the Jin army would definitely be depleted.
The country and puppet Qi have been disgraced. Even if Wan Yanchang doesn't want to give up Hanzhong, the Dashan Pass side has to withdraw its troops."
Li Yuan understood, and he smiled and said, "Isn't this just about surrounding Wei and rescuing Zhao?"
"It is indeed to encircle Wei and rescue Zhao. I guess he had this idea from the beginning, but we rushed him urgently, so he came to the rescue first. When Raofeng Pass was recaptured and the crisis in Hanzhong was resolved, he continued to kill Guanzhong."
Speaking of this, Wu Jie said with great emotion: "I, Wu Jie, have been in the army for more than 20 years and have experienced hundreds of battles. I think I am also a famous general in the Western Army, but I really don't have the courage like him. Mr. Li, he is our Western Army."
Such hope!"
Li Yuan nodded silently, this time he remembered Chen Qing firmly.
...........
After walking eighty miles north from Raofengguan, you enter the mouth of the Ziwu Valley. Chen Qing once walked this road, but at that time, the Ziwu Valley was relatively easy to walk. There were bridges and plank roads in dangerous places. It was basically a flat road, but
Last year Wanyan Wushu attacked the Ziwu Valley and almost opened the road. Wu Jie did not dare to be careless anymore, so he ordered the plank roads and bridges to be burned down. Although walking through the Ziwu Valley was still possible, it had to be winding and the road was very difficult and dangerous.
And the baggage can no longer pass.
Four thousand five hundred cavalry entered Ziwu Valley and walked about twenty miles. They were blocked by a hill dozens of feet high. A corridor was dug in the middle of the hill. The corridor was paved with stone steps. On the top of the mountain stood a
Pass, this is Ziwu Pass.
Ziwu Pass, like Jiange, guards a dangerous area and is easy to defend but difficult to attack. To attack, the army must walk through a long corridor. The corridor is very narrow. The enemy has no way to hide in the corridor. The defenders can use rolling logs and rocks to defeat the enemy.
A blockade can be said to be one man's responsibility, and ten thousand men can't open it.
In the past, carts had to unload their cargo when traveling here. The carts were dismantled, the livestock and carts passed through the border separately, and then reassembled. It was very inconvenient. Now it is even more difficult for carts to pass.
Yang Fangxu was very familiar with the guards above. He went up to communicate with Chen Qing's command arrow. After a while, more than a dozen soldiers came down. The leader was none other than Zhou Wu, the general of Ziwu Pass. He was a general of Wu Zhang and had long heard about it.
Chen Qing’s name.
"I have heard about Chen Tongzhi's reputation for a long time in my humble position. I am lucky to see him today."
Chen Qing cupped his fists and returned the gift with a smile: "General Zhou, thank you. I want to go north to Guanzhong from Ziwu Valley. Is it feasible?"
Zhou Wu nodded, "It should be possible if you don't bring a large baggage vehicle, but it will be more difficult to walk, and it will take at least five or six days. But Yang Sihu knows how to go, so just follow him.
In addition, the puppet Qi army built a gate city at the entrance to the valley in the north. It has just been built. Be careful when passing by. It is best not to be discovered by them and succeed in a sneak attack, otherwise you will be in big trouble."
This news really surprised Chen Qing. He quickly asked: "How dangerous is Guancheng in the north, and how does it compare with Ziwu Pass?"
"Of course it is not as dangerous as the Ziwu Valley. It was not built on a high place, but at the mouth of the valley, blocking the valley path. I have studied how to capture it, but I can only wait until the moon is dark and the wind is high, then the valley will be completely dark.
, if there is moonlight, the soldiers on the top of the city can see the situation in the valley, I am afraid that there are so many controls that I can't understand, just go and take a look."
"Thank you very much!"
Under Zhou Wu's arrangement, Chen Qing led the army through Ziwu Pass and walked deep into Ziwu Valley.
There has been no caravan traffic in the Ziwu Valley since last year. The valley is overgrown with weeds. Many long ravines used to hide thieves. Now the thieves can no longer survive. The 600-mile-long Ziwu Valley has turned into wild animals.
world.
The Ziwu Valley is 660 miles long. It is not always a narrow valley, nor are it surrounded by cliffs on both sides. In fact, the middle part of the Ziwu Valley is the hinterland of the Qinling Mountains. Many areas are dozens of miles wide, with lush forests and are spread over ten thousand miles.
There are several large and small lakes, numerous mountain streams and rivers, and there used to be many villages scattered in the valley, but now they are all abandoned, with only occasional hunters and herb collectors coming and going.
Chen Qing's men are cavalry and are relatively fast. They can complete the Ziwu Valley in about six days. They have ten days of food, which is basically enough.
At noon on the third day, they arrived at Jinxian Dam, the widest place in the Ziwu Valley. It was a basin with a radius of a hundred miles and a large forest to the west. A small river flowed out of the forest and poured into Jinxian Lake in front of Chen Qing.
There is lush grassland on both sides of the river, at least several thousand acres, which is also a good place for grazing.
Chen Qing saw that it was already getting dark in the afternoon, so he ordered to camp at Xiaoheben, rest for the night, and set off again tomorrow night.
"There are deer over there!" Liu Qiong pointed in the distance and shouted excitedly,
Sure enough, there was a group of sika deer drinking water by the river a few miles away. There were more than a hundred of them. Everyone was overjoyed. They could have a good meal tonight.
Chen Qing smiled and said to Liu Qiong: "If you can hunt two more bears, I will give you a boost!"
Liu Qiong suddenly became impatient and immediately galloped away with hundreds of cavalry, chasing the deer into the forest. More than half an hour later, the cavalry came out happily. They annihilated the deer and hunted two.
There are more than a hundred sheep, more than 20 cattle, and a dozen wild boars.
The residents in the valley had no time to take away the cattle and sheep, and they turned into wild cattle and sheep. The prey was so abundant that Chen Qing had to send 500 more brothers to help.
Liu Qiong came over carrying a precious clouded leopard, "Commander, I didn't hunt a bear, but I hunted a clouded leopard. Does that count?"
When Chen Qing saw that the arrow was shot through his eye and the leopard's skin was basically intact, which could be a perfect birthday gift for Lu Yihao, he smiled happily and said: "It can be counted!"
Liu Qiong was overjoyed and dedicated the leopard to Chen Qing, and then ran off to kill the cow happily.
That night, the Song army lit dozens of bonfires by the Jinxian Lake and had a delicious meal of barbecued game. They also brought the captured sheep wine with them. The soldiers drank wine, ate meat, and slept happily.
Early the next morning, the army set off again. The road ahead was indeed very difficult. The original straight road was no longer there, and we kept taking long detours. However, some sections of the road could not be bypassed, so we had to find a way to solve it.
It mainly goes through a section of Xiaowutai Mountain in Ziwu Valley, which is about a hundred miles long. Many of the planks on the mountain road have been burned. People can climb over the stone cliffs little by little, but war horses cannot get through.
Chen Qing had to send people to cut down trees to build a bridge, and repaired more than a dozen dangerous sections of the road. Although the road was open, it still took three days.
On the ninth day, the army's dry food supply was running low and could only sustain them for another day and a half at most. At this time, they finally arrived near Beitanikou.
Only then did Chen Qing understand the reason why the Jin soldiers did not go south through Ziwu Valley. Without logistical support, they would have cut off the food supply as soon as they reached Ziwu Pass in the south. It was luck to capture Ziwu Pass, but if they could not capture Ziwu Valley, the Jin soldiers would
They had to kill horses for food before they could return to Guanzhong. This was a result that Jin Bing could not accept under any circumstances.
But the Song army could attack Ziwu Valley in the north, and they could build a logistics camp at Jinxian Lake, so they would have no worries.
Of course, Chen Qing did not expect this, and it was too late to establish a logistics camp.
Now they are facing the same consequences as the Jin soldiers. If they cannot capture the pass at the mouth of the valley in the north, they will have to kill horses for food.
